[2020] To defend Bjergsen from “bronze 2 analysts,” CaptainFlowers said Bjerg couldn’t ult because he was chain CC’d from 100-0. This is untrue. You can ult while rooted, and he walked away from the root momentarily.

The Fight

Bjergsen walks up, Doublelift hits him with some feathers and uses E to trigger the ROOT onto Bjerg. Bjerg waits it out, backs up, and gets charmed and knocked up by CoreJJ.

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The Facts

When rooted, you can perform abilities as long as they aren’t movement abilities, as seen in this table of CC. Thus, Zilean CAN CAST ULT DURING A ROOT.

Xayah root lasts 1.25 seconds. Bjerg also walks away momentarily. To be on the conservative side, we’ll say it was 0.75 seconds of a walk. That makes about a 2 second window for him to cast ult. During that time, he went from 100% to 60% health, which is an adequate warning that he might need to ult before he gets blown up with where his positioning is.

Zilean ult lasts for 5 seconds and puts you into stasis for ~3 seconds. Even if he ulted early on in the root, he would’ve bought his team a minimum of ~3 seconds.

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The Flower

Captain Flowers specifically made it a point to defend Bjergsen not using ult here.

If you can’t watch it, the transcript is:

“And before I hear some Bronze 2 analysis from the Twitch chat, I want to point out that Bjergsen didn’t forget to use his ult there. Bjergsen was chain CC’d…from 100 to 0. There was never the opportunity to press R. You can be pressing it the entire time. It’s not going off. And that was what enabled them to take control of that fight enough, to wrest control of that drake away.”

He said this after they went through the replay too. I’d understand if he said it during the fight itself, but if it’s through two instances of the fight, AND ONCE IN SLOW MOTION, it’s a lot less forgivable.

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The Flaw

Personally, I don’t like this for a number of reasons.

1. It paints a false narrative (Bjergsen didn’t forget to ult / he couldn’t have made the mistake of not ulting). In reality, he had time to ult. We don’t know why he didn’t. He could’ve forgotten. He could’ve been c*cky and thought he could hold it a bit longer. He could’ve been overwhelmed by the fight. He could be losing his reaction time. Who knows.

2. It gives incorrect information about the game. Yes, it’s not a play-by-play casters job to teach the game, but they shouldn’t mislead players about the counterplay to certain champs and mechanics. Knowing you can cast game-saving abilities during a root is a pretty important mechanic to know for the 100,000+ people watching.

3. Being condescending to people taking time out of their nights to watch you isn’t a good look. Being condescending AND wrong is an even worse look.

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