Regarding EU's performance in the All-Stars, a friend of mine is convinced that it wasn't a matter of the team not meshing or lacking practice time, but that of language issues. I don't pay all that much attention to the EU scene, but he said at least one player didn't speak English at all, nor the other European languages, resulting in him not understanding a single thing his team said leading to the really bad team fights.

Given their performance in lane and then the significantly poorer performance after the laning phase,I'm inclined to agree.

Also, LOL cinematic was amazing. That Garen Ult.

 

Eh, yeah that's not true. All of them have shown themselves to be perfectly capable of speaking English in interviews. Yellowpete and Soaz both speak english with their own teams so it wouldn't have been a problem for them. The three Gambit players would be used to speaking russian with their team, but can all speak english if necessary. It might have been a minor annoyance, but not the sole reason for them losing.

 

Some crazy stuff going on in the pro world and I can't tell if it's true or not given how I'm visiting a friend and don't have access to reddit... Frustrating. Things like Nien being signed by CLG (I assume as a sub), MakNoon leaving Najin Sword and something to do with Hotshot , though that's always a rumour just because it's Hotshot.

MVP Ozone destroying SKT T1 #2 'Judgement Day' in game 1 of the first OGN Semi-Finals for this years Spring Season, unreal play from Mata in particular on support Zyra.

 

Hotshot wants to focus on CLG business side, Nientosh is new top laner, Aphromoo got bored of support, so Chauster moved there, Aphro left, and Bigfatlp went to jungle.


Maknoon's contract expired and wasn't renewed. He is currently free agent.

 

Wow, that's unfortunate regarding MakNooN though I haven't had chance to watch much of OGN this season so, guess they had their reasons.

Great news for CLG though and Aphro fans alike. Aphro can finally go back to having a fun and fairly popular stream whilst Hotshot benching himself (finally) alongside Chauster going back to a role he's good at, sounds good to me. Interesting that bigfat's back on CLG too as the jungler, should make for an interesting Super Week to start off the summer split on June 13th for NA.

 

Just a shame that Hotshot finally started playing a bit more varied champions in the relegation games, then he benches himself. He played beastly against Azure Cats. Interesting to see how Nientonsoh adapts to toplane.

 

This stupid obsession with streaming solo queue games rather than actually practising as a team is the reason why NA and EU will forever struggle to compete on the world stage.

 

But he sounds so yoooouuunnnggg, like a kangaroo.

AND AND AND on the Byebye Maknoon reddit thing, there were people going byebye Nientonsoh...was that a joke?? He didn't get benched 24 hours of becoming a starter did he?

 

Yup, but it's $$$ and sponsor contracts in particular are what's to blame for it. Curse is basically a reality show team these days and TSM aren't far behind, they just happen to have the experience of LAN events and previous tournaments to function well as a team once they put their heads down and work on it and is probably why they're still dominant in the NA scene.

I enjoy watching solo q streams though even though EU ad NA teams need to sit down and do nothing but practice, sadly they won't get the chance till contracts change. Fairly certain EG are in a similar situation as I'm fairly certain they have mandatory streaming hours to meet in their contracts.

If the LoL scene's anything like the SC2 scene, the majority of Korean pro's hate streaming as it takes away from their practice time and it doesn't really fi into their schedule, the problem is of course Western teams hate the Korean set-up in terms of training and I've only seen a few people adapt to it fairly well - none of them in the LoL scene.

 

It's not like none of the asian teams as well. All of the TPA members stream on Azubu.tv just as much as the CLG members do. I know several of the koreans, such as Reapered, have streamed on twitch before and a lot of them stream on some korean site that I've forgotten the name of.

 

It's funny how dominant Blaze are looking against Frost. On this form, they are like the scariest team in the world.

---------- Post automerged 01-06-2013 at 01:51 ---------- Previous post was 31-05-2013 at 14:32 ----------

Was playing some normals with Republic21. We were bot Graves(me) and Nami. He had to leave in the middle of the game, which was fairly even.


And then something amazing happened. We all went super positive in the chat after I lied to them that Rep's computer went up in smoke, and we easily trounced the enemy team 4v5 with me, Trundle and Brand executing some impressive teamplay for blind pick randoms. Felt pretty damn good, although part of it was enemy tunneling on full tank trundle and leaving me and Brand to wreck shit.

 

See, it was only the non-tank support that went AFK after laning phase, so you guys still had a chance.

 

Yeah, sorry about that pete. Still, glad to hear you guys pulled it off, congrats.

I had played a game earlier today in which our Pantheon jungle was afk from the start. We dominated the lanes, took dragons and eventually won without much trouble.
Might have to do with the fact that I was Khazix, and I got fed.

 

Nicely done Pet - speaking of Nami, thoughts on her?

I've been watching some games of high level solo queue play involving her and I'm really starting to like her kit, the problems of course being it's Nami, she's rather squishy and if you miss your Q you're basically on the defensive/open to initiation for the next 15~ seconds with nothing left to play.

Still not sure whether I should hold off on buying her though. I'm on 6k IP but feel like getting flat cdr blues or hybrid pen reds would be far more beneficial.

 

Nami is very fun to play but incredibly underwhelming in performance. Everything she does, other supports can do easier or better.
As I said though, she is a very fun champion and strong in her own right

Edit: I should mention that if one practices and learns how to land q 90% of the time, she can be a terror worse than Leona.Nami's q is hard, however.

 

I don't find Nami to be worth it in competitive situations, because other supports just offer more/better things, but she is fun. If that heal skill just wasn't worthless waste of spell she would be a true terror.


Currently I'm thinking Elise is the best/funniest support bot. Of course you need a dive buddy in teamfights, but damn, she is so easy to make your AD snowball, just land stun on level 3 and then do full rotation and the lane is all but done.

 

Yeah, Nami is great but flawed in that other supports do what she does better, though still think she'd be worth trying in low gold as I've only seen maybe 2 Nami's in my entire ranked career, if you can call it that. Probably get stomped but hey, worth a try if she pops up on sale soon or I get the IP after my runes.

I still haven't tried Elise bar that on ARAM game where I got put up against 3 natural tanks with a Heimer and Karma on my team.. That was a rough game, lots of buttons is always fun though.

 

Nami is awesome. In my opinion she's the best all round support in the game. Other supports might do things better, but Nami has no real weaknesses. She has good sustain, good poke, good all in. She's also a really good teamfighting support, her ult is obviously good and you can usually get 2 or 3 people in a Q when you are grouped up.

So yeah, play some Nami. Next fotm.

 

Disagreed. Her CDs are too high, her damage and heal aren't amazing, and her ult is meh. And she's squishy.

IMO, she won't be FOTM before she gets more buffs, the meta shifts, or other supports get nerfs.