Koo Tigers Hojin is known for his pocket picked in Korea and the casters were confident that one of them would pop up during semi finals. This prediction proved more than accurate as the first Zac of the tournament was locked in for game 1 and the second was locked in game 2. Zac at first seems like an odd choice being out of the meta for about a year now but looking at the series a bit closer we can see the numerous factors that made the jungle Zac pick as successful as it was. An intelligent counterpick, a great pick for team cohesion, and a bit of cheese had made Zac the perfect jungler to take the series in a convincing fashion.
The Importance of the Global Gragas ban: The series Fnatic played prior to this ended with a bug that has banned a number of champions from the remainder of the tournament with the most notable being Gragas (however I do think a possible Lux/Ziggs into Veigar counterpick has also been deprived from us). This is important to Zac’s success as a jungle pick. First of all the Gragas ban eliminates a stronger tank jungler from both teams necessitating a work around in the first place. However the ban also eliminates the strongest form of disengage coming from the jungle role from being picked. This allows a champion like Zac to be far more successful as his engages could easily be negated by a Gragas counterpick. Furthermore Gragas himself is arguably the strongest counter to Zac when coming from the jungle. The variety of stuns, slows, and displacements both stop Zac from engaging successfully but also from escaping easily if caught out and can isolate him from his teammates if his passive is popped. This double whammy of negating the strongest alternative to Zac and the strongest counter to Zac is vital when understanding the nature of the pick in this series and arguably is the largest factor. Still another more key factor has lead me to believe we’d still likely see the pick pop up in game 1
The Importance of Rek’sai: In the worlds tournament two junglers have been highly valued over all others; Elise and Rek’sai. Most teams aren’t comfortable enough with letting Elise get through the ban phase of their draft but Rek’sai is often let through and is a dependable first pick on blue side should powerpicks like Tahm Kench not be available. Now let’s talk about Reignover’s Rek’sai specifically. Historically we see that Reignover is one of the most aggressive Rek’sai players globally. He counter-jungles on this champion more than any other champion in his pool and tends to use the general early power of the champion to bully his jungle opponent, snowball his solo lanes, or push for early contests on objectives. He also is one of the last players to switch from a Warrior enchant Rek’sai to a Cinderhulk enchant Rek’sai jungle so Koo should have been expecting a lot of aggression to come out of Reignover early. This is where Zac becomes powerful. Zac as a champion does not require a lot of Gold in order to be effective relying more on levels to spike his effectiveness when fighting. Furthermore Zac’s strong mobility and sustain makes trying to bully him in his own jungle a wasted effort especially on a jungler like Rek’sai that can’t stop him from channeling his e cooldown while being in a position to deal damage. As long as Hojin saved his Elastic Slingshot until Reignover un-burrowed he would become essentially unkillable in a solo duel situations where many champions would find themselves struggling. Now we need to look at Hojin’s preferences as a player. As we saw throughout the series he is a very patient player; able to spend long periods waiting for a gank to begin to counter or for an enemy to step an inch too far forward. While Zac is especially adept at this following the buffs that drastically extended the range of his Elastic slingshot, what's really key is that while prepping for a counter gank Zac doesn’t move thus making Rek’sai’s early warning tremor sense system effectively useless and gives Hojin an edge when countering Reignover’s plays.
The Importance of the Cheese Factor: When looking at Zac’s kit we see a lot of things that lend the champion to unpredictable cheesy strats. However as Unicorns of Love should have taught us by now the nature of cheese strategy is powerful as long as you plan for it appropriately and in this sense the Koo Tigers know their Zac cheese inside and out. First let’s talk about some of the things we didn’t see. A flyby steal attempt is a Zac specialty but because Fnatic’s dragon control was so poor and they failed to threaten the baron for a large portion of the series this aspect of Zac’s kit went by unnoticed. However one thing that was key to Hojin’s success was Zac’s passive Cell Division. One thing that helps Koo’s ability to comeback is their reliance on champs that have hidden gold value in their kit and a free GA is certainly one of the biggest boons for the team. In his games on Zac Hojin died a total of 4 times and all those deaths came at the hyper competitive game one. Knowing his passive was up allowed Hojin to zone the low damage adc’s Rekkles played in the series with very little fear and also allowed him to bait in Fnatic off a catch that would have been a lost Baron for any other jungle who would have died before his team had a chance to formulate a counterattack. Additionally it’s important to note that Zac’s passive can be salvaged by teleporting on one of his bloblets. While this never happened at a key point in the game to save Hojin, with Koo’s constant usage of double TP in their games it’s not a far stretch to see them being caught in a 4v5 only to have Hojin saved by a tp that would also bring Smeb and Kuro into a fight. Finally there is a matter of his in combat sustain. Koo’s playstyle is dependant on time and Zac’s in combat sustain combined with his passive GA allow his to waste a lot of time in fights. We saw the passive sustain of Zac often let Hojin stick in fights and get away with a sliver of health where more fragile and less sustained junglers would simply fall over.
In conclusion Zac quite possibly was the perfect pick for the series. The bugged Gragas allowed Harder engage junglers to be successful and by reading Fnatic’s admittedly predictable style of play Koo Tigers had found the perfect counter to whatever Reignover could bring out and by manipulating the pick ban phase tendencies of the tournament they were able to find a reliable early pick that completely shut down Fnatic’s aggressive play style while letting their solo lanes get counterpicks and comfort picks with ease in a way that put Fnatic off guard.