Quas has indeed signed onto Curse, meanwhile Aphro got the boot for saying it was dumb he had no say in Pobelter's removal (Voyboy was also pretty upset about that, gg Liquid as per usual being everyone's most despised asshat).

Apparently the line-up lock is tomorrow (I had no idea there was such a thing) so, this makes me really scared for the final announcements, and then the shift to the EU side of things. Unless we follow the same schedule, in which case it hasn't been too bad yet.

 

I think the deadline is only for promotion tournament, or am I wrong?

 

Probably is, makes no sense for it to be for the LCS teams as they have the next 2, 2 and a bit months to practise.

edit; Riot confirmed there'll be SKT T1 skins in their E-Commerce's teams AMA on reddit. Designs are a wait-and-see though.

Edit 2; Looks like there might be some truth to the 'EU super team' after all - recently Froggen, Edward and others have stopped streaming almost exactly before a certain team of players has started playing - and is already in Challenger of ranked 5s.

The team?

xXx East Pro xXx = Froggen
I love LatinGirl = Freeze
East GodSupport = Edward
elitekiter = Jwaow (TCM's current top laner)
Playboy hanne = Shook

Item builds, champions played are almost identical, rune pages add up etc. Yes yes, it's very, very possible it's all coincidental and so on but currently everything's pointing towards it being a possibility - potentially under Alliance.

Other hints come from Snoopeh on twitter who just this minute said that "Much will change over the course of the off season. For pretty much every team in the LCS with the exception of a few" - Krepo was on about becoming a commentator or analyst at Worlds and was talking with Rioters constantly, Snoopeh himself may decide to pull a St Vicious and take a break for a split.

It seems odd that Froggen and WickD would leave EG and the team they've been a part of for 18+ months but it would seem they want to break out and see just how well they can do with different players.

There's a lot missing from this and again, a lot of it's drawn from reddit and recent rumours, there's nothing too concrete yet, but the team information etc is starting to add up, and it can only be a matter of time before we start seeing changes to the EU scene on a scale like that of NA.

Link to 'Froggen's super team account - currently 40-3 in Ranked 5s, in Challenger.

Edit 3; ex Fnatic member macftw had this to say; Alliance in S4 EU LCS - Considering Alliance are basically the EU!EG then I think something rather big is happening to EG in its current form.

 

Goddamn I love Lee Sin. ARAM: Hydra, Blade, Spirit Visage, was building a Viel against a heavy Ap team. Dive in, hit W twice, rape, dive back out. I couldnt stop laughing. My new Nocturne. Plus the Pool Party skin is boss.

 

BsuperB, you don't watch alot of streams, do you? The ranked 5 team was never a secret, nor were its members. Froggen streamed their games and it was clearly only for fun. He had been doing duo q with all of them before. The games were on stream.
Froggen apologised for his inability to stream, and plans to start up again soon.

There is zero proof that EG is breaking up. Watch more streams.

 

I watch plenty of streams, and I'm still standing by the fact that something is going on with EG and it wouldn't surprise me if we see a new team form out of several players.

Every EU LCS team is having changes, understandably so (though less so on the side of Fnatic and LD considering people still rank Rekkles as god-like for whatever reason) and if they wanted to play as a ranked 5s team, why not just do it on their main accounts? Doesn't make any sense, albeit today both Jwoaw and Shook played on their mains.

TLDR; Something's gonna happen regarding it all, players HAVE to say nothing's going on even though we're not dumb because contracts/NDA. Just look at CLG EU > EG.

 

The problem with their 'main' accounts is that they are basically the same level as theirs alts. They simply don't care. Every high end player/pro is part of several teams. You will occasionally see a streamer play ranked 5's or 3s. It's nothing new or unusual.

Maybe something will happen, but it won't be because of this, and this is not a sign of such.

 

Except that ganking a Riven is an exercise in futility if the Riven is any good. But to be honest, most top Lane snowballers are asking for ganks by overextended.

And I'd set up a tent if you could gank Riven. Id gank her all night and twice after red the next day.

 

I'd gank her more often if it didn't keep leading to double kills for Riven.

My luck with top laners is terrible.

 

I wish you could report people in ARAM for ignorance or just stupidity. It's for fun, why do you have to take everything so seriously?

Enemy team has Xerath, Cait and Graves for damage with Warwick, arguably the most broken ARAM tank and Lulu to support.

We had Heimer, Teemo, MF, Zilean and me as Shen - My team, or at least Heimer and Teemo are convinced we can win.

TLDR; We didn't, Heimer and Teemo rage at me for not engaging on Xerath sooner.

Engaging on Xerath. As Shen. In ARAM. With a 0 damage team. Just... Sigh, why is it impossible to explain to people that thick how a siege champion works and why we were fucked from the start?

It's even more depressing with how weird Xerath looks on the PBE right now, and his ult is even more broken than it is currently. At least in ARAM environment, it looks broke on SR to boot though PBE wise, 4 charges, just, yikes...

Edit; Speaking of PBE, has anyone checked out Heimer's rework yet? I haven't looked at it but it seems to be keeping everyone rather quiet.

Edit 2; Just had an Ashe that had 0 ways of getting into trouble against an enemy team, yet somehow she'd walk her way into the fight and die every time, blaming us tanks for trying to kill Twitch/MF every fight, man =\.

 

I was Zilean in my last ARAM match. I would just strap a bomb onto my loyal bear friend and speed him up to engage every time. Hilarious, and effective. While Shen doesn't have his own movement buff like Volibear does, I imagine the principle could work similarly, since Zilean's speed buff is fairly strong.

...well, ignoring the fact that Volibear and I were in a Skype call...

 

We had a nice streak of 6 wins doing 5 man premades the other day. Used a dive compy team.

Noct/Lee Jung, Zac+Vi bot, Shen top, then middle has been Teemo, prefferably Fiddle or another Ap caster. Pretty much we just focus one at a time, we'll focus 2 targets, Noct ulti, and Zac and Vi will dive one, Noct and Shen/Fiddle dive another. We might loose the odd teamfight, but usually we're so tanky with so much raw damage theres nothing they can do. Yes its cheesy, but its amusing messing up the meta, and they get so pissed, lol.

 

Yeah you could have won that easily tbh. You have crazy clear and disengage, decently strong poke and amazing zone control. If you had the coordination you could have turtled up with auras (heimer goes the promote item and heals the team like crazy without any actual mana cost) and waited until late game where you leapfrog your zone control and sped up taunts to take towers and get opportunistic picks.

If they siege you just have AP zilean bomb the back and front waves and have teemo shroom the walking path. Instant wave death then heimer missles can poke. Shen and heimer bomb disengage from WW and teemo anti carry capabilities (since he is doing his job from within a fiels of turrets and shrooms). Honestly im surprised you lost that at all, youve literally got almost every amazing pusher/counter pusher in the game with a combo super hard engage and zilean rez. Your team literally had the capacity to lolno every push and attempt to zone you all game.

 

He kept speeding me up to engage but I didn't see a point - my team was eating far more poke than they were putting out. I get you're supposed to engage poke teams or else they win bthe fight because you're all low but I couldn't see the point when Exerath was just blowing up anyone who came within range, all the while sitting behind his meat-wall.

The few times I did get an engage off (with Zilean speed buff after pinging it), nobody could follow up, and we did no damage anyway. MF ults? WW ults and we can't do anything whilst we get cleaned up, it was just a dreadful game all round.

Sure we had great wave clear, but Xerath just deleted someone/out-poked, everybody farms and they have the infinitely stronger late game as WW ults our only damage source in MF - We were screwed regardless how long it went on unless they tried some really weird dives, which they never did.

Oh well, moment of disbelief at peoples ineptness at a game. There'll be more.

Disappointing to see so many teams get DQ'd from a shot at being promoted into the LCS, though you'd think if your team had a shot at that, you'd want everyone there and ready ahead of time - 4 teams got DQ'd on day one alone just for being late to their match. Can't imagine how frustrated the team must be with the responsible player(s).

 

Just made a new 5's team as well, and our main success has been when we ran engage-team as well(with a secondary poke/aoe setup team that's done okay).

Engage team was Akali mid, Mao/Jarvan jungle, Jarvan/Riven/Garen top, Leona/Sona/Blitz bot. The AD was rather incidental to the comp, but was Ez/Vayne/Cait, for what it's worth. We generally banned some combination of Janna, Zyra, Lee Sin(*cough*), Thresh and Kass.

Our weakest link overall right now is probably our top laner, and the bot probably needs to fully decide on their synergy, but it's going pretty well otherwise. Our jungler ran 16.5 average kda on our first three matches, which was reasonably impressive.

 

I wish I had time for league these days. How's Jinx?

 

I would say that she has good harassment, especially with that 1.4 total AD scaling W that despite base 40, hits closer to 130 at level 1, and at 1450 range. Also, a reasonable amount of preemptive escape, if not actual reactive escape.

Other than that, by virtue of her passive, and intelligent use of her Q, she can be fairly snowball-y with a decent amount of protection. Otherwise, if caught out, she's in much more dire straights than say, Vayne, Trist or Quinn in particular(who have decent reactionary combinations of cc + escape). A quick, E, backing off into a W then running, or fighting, can work sometimes, though.

Personally, accuracy of a global ult aside, I think the timing of using her W is probably the trickiest part of her kit. Considering the casting delay and the flight time combined with the visual indicator. E is fairly simply, really, and while there are some exceptions, with Q generally it's rocket to poke and stay at range or mass wave clear, and minigun if within minigun range. Admittedly, the latter is something I often see people failing at, and using rocket three or four times in a row at under 300 range against a single target.

That being said, she absolutely demolishes towers and other objectives, since she can afford to donate more of her budget towards damage, due to the +130% aspd.

 

Can I mention something that really annoys me?

When people have to pick between 2 creeps and they pick the range one. The melee creeps are worth ~5g more, so after 20 creeps if you'd picked the melee one you're 100 gold ahead of where you normally would be. And also, if you kill the melee creep (instead of the ranged one) which would have died to a melee attack, that attack will take slightly longer to get to the range one, and you might get both. The other way around? Doesn't work. But wait! There's more. Killing the ranged creep will always place you farther from safety than killing the melee one, because you have to extend farther to hit the back line.