so 10 game of urf done total, 0 win. but i,m having the time of my life anyway

 

SKT T1 K wins All Stars without losing a single game. Remember that this team got kicked out of OGN Champions in the round of 8, and didnt even win the loser's tournament. Korea Please.

 

Bengi was also playing like he'd just come out of a coma and teams seemed to have finally picked up on countering his vision-centric play, alongside Poohmando having taking a break for his health so it's more SKT stepping up again after slumping recently, still impressive to see.

Proud of NA too, you guys now arguably rank above EU if we were to use All-Stars as 'proof' albeit there are people, myself included who would argue that Fnatic are far from the best EU has to offer in terms of a competitive team. Either way, C9 played well without Hai and whilst they fell apart against OMG in the semi's, I think they'll take a lot away from the International experience.

Meanwhile Soaz has taken to being a sourpuss on twitter as usual and the sooner Fnatic kick him out the better - that and they bother to start taking anything outside of Europe seriously again. They need a coach and an analyst and as a whole, EU needs to stop just buying players from one pro-team or another and start actively scouting solo-q ladders for talent or else Worlds is going to be embarrassing for us this year.

 

So, I now have 11,000 IP saved from the Double IP weekend grind and some games afterwards.

Yay for Braum.

 

For all the shit Fnatic are getting their results speak for themselves. They've won literally every split of LCS and got to the semis at worlds. I really don't see how you can say they aren't the best team in Europe with the way they spanked everyone in Playoffs

 

They've been getting worse as time has gone by and its been very noticeable - even putting my personal bias against them because I think Soaz is a walking pile of shit aside, they've been getting worse as a team and slacking off.

They won the first 2 splits of the LCS and proceeded to grab 4th at Worlds in S3 - during this time, they had a coach who made them train hard, play solo-q constantly and scrim with a purpose. They had an Analyst who did his job, both of whom or certainly the coach at least they had since late S2 as far as I can remember, I may be off slightly with the time but my own interest in LoL was only just kicking off when S2 Worlds hit.

After S3 Worlds, their coach left followed by their analyst a few weeks later - queue their worst LCS split and they're not getting any better. Cyanide and Peke have been getting worse, they're out out-played, out-laned or just simply outmatched nearly every game, it's rare you see either of them dominate like they used to. Some argue they're part of the old-guard that needs to step down, others argue it's the new influx of talent that's simply just better than they are.

Soaz can't or won't adapt to the current meta and gets repeatedly dumpstered because of it. He plays champions that have little to no impact or if he does, he's shut down with no help from his team, albeit his All Star performance and final weeks of S4 Spring Split were awful - something like 0-9-2 on Lulu against SKT. Why the hell do you even play top lane Lulu anyway, or double AP?. On top of this he takes to twitter post-game and takes 0 criticism. Fnatic were cheered for the loudest and hardest of any team there because they had 2 French players and what does Soaz say? Says his Fans aren't Fans because they criticise him when he played like shite, throws his toys out the pram and wants to continue being the best in Europe. Being the best in Europe isn't good enough when Europe just took 4th place in an International event as that means practically nothing on the global stage - even more-so when you consider the fact that EU has never had a decent pool of top-lane talent to begin with. Soaz saying he's the best top-lane in Europe is akin to me saying Derby's the best Football team in my local area because its had the best results; they just happen to be the best of a poor area in general.

Rekkles is basically EU's Cop when his team isn't ahead in that he's passively farming ala Genja, or running around the outside of a fight doing 0 damage because he keeps changing his mind about going in unless they're winning - he cares too much about his KDA out of the blue.

Yellowstar's been the only member whose had some form of consistency, if by consistency we mean getting caught out doing stupid things and getting himself killed leaving Fnatic in a bad situation. He openly came out and said today that Fnatic have a problem and they need a coach, an analyst. They're taking the first step to get help which is good because if I were the other EU teams, I'd smell blood in the water.

As a team, they have no fucking idea how to end a game - hell, their mid-game isn't much better. They spend far too much time setting up death-bushes or chasing 1 kill and getting nothing off the back of it. They can't rotate all that well anymore, they get out-smarted and led around like blind pups. Throughout this event they chased relentlessly with no vision, no idea about their surroundings, or charged in to get that 1 desperate kill, giving up 2 or more every time, and losing the objective off the back of it.

They'll pick a comp and then not play to its strengths. They pick poke? They try and fight and get caught and pounded all over the place. They pick a fight comp? Again, they get picked off and dragged around because they don't react and are confident people will just stroll into a bush 5 or 6 times. Their pick comps seem to be the only thing that work, but they're so obvious because they pick the same champions for each comp making their game-plan obvious as all hell and frankly, easy to counter.

The team has no flair, no gel, they're playing like 5 strangers and they couldn't seem to care less. Great, they won the EU LCS again, another $50k in their pockets. It's clear to see they're not performing as well as they used to, they don't stream much (which means nothing really, but I always assume streaming = solo-q practise) and it feels like they don't practise at all. There's 0 motivation to improve because they're the 'best' in Europe currently and they all seem convinced that's good enough to get by, to get to Worlds and be our hope there.

I'd rather Alliance went despite all their faults as a team, I'd rather Gambit went even though they're in a very similar situation to Fnatic albeit for completely different reasons. Hell, I'd rather SK go as they seemed to be the only team in the EU LCS last split who looked like they gave a shit.

 

As a whole, EU and NA as entire regions need to step it up.

Korea simply has a better structure.

They have multiple coaches/analysts per team. Teams come in Pairs with the 'main' team and the 'sister' team. Those two teams scrim against each other constantly and are always trying to innovate and change things up. The sister team is constantly clawing at the 'main' team. Threatening to overwhelm them and become the 'main' team while relegating the old main team to the 'sister' team. If you followed CJ Entus Frost/Blaze you know that happened between those two teams on multiple occasions.

Furthermore, they have better dedication. Fucking NA and EU players are constantly on their own personal streams, fucking around, playing it up for the fans, trying to make more money from the stream viewers, it's pathetic.

Nor do they practice as much. Korean players practice endlessly, assisted by analysts and coaches who know their roles and DO. THEIR. JOBS.

NA players fuck around, waffling around between champions and switching up their pools based on whats FOTM and not what's neccessarily best or what fits them or their team best. Korean players like Faker pick a champion and fucking Master them. They play that champion until the mechanics are like second nature.

On the other hand, they also know when they need to diversify their champion pool. Look at TheOddOne. He's got good instincts, good game knowledge, can be a team leader, can make calls, and good reaction time. But his champion pool holds him back because he either couldn't or wouldn't adapt away from his tanky junglers.

Look at Scarra. Scarra used to be one of the best. Now he's just a relic of LoL's past. He doesn't adapt, he doesn't innovate, and when he tries to expand his champion pool his efforts are obviously sub par because his mechanics with more powerful champions are ALWAYS lacking as compared to those who adapt better.

In Korea, if you don't carry your fucking weight, you are trashed and kicked off the team with no regrets. Their teams are not families, and it's not about friendship, it's about being as good as you can. About rising to the top, winning tournaments, getting sponsors, and making fucking bank. They gain fame and followers by WINNING and being INCREDIBLE to watch. Not by being internet personalities who spend six hours four times a week fucking around on stream.

Despite not being 'families' like NA and EU teams, their teams play like TEAMS. Not a group of five assholes who all want to be the best individually. They work together like seamless machines in a way that the most NA and EU teams only ever show flashes of. And the only NA team who does it consistently at all (C9), is the best in NA by far.

I hate it. It pisses me off, and when I was researching it I didn't want to admit it.

But the facts are facts.

Korea's approach to the game is superior in every fashion. That is why they stomp us.

Get your shit together, NA and EU.

 

So cereal and deep Walking! Have a thumbs up for telling it how it is

 

Western teams have known this for a while, they're not completely stupid. The problem is, they can't hire coaches and analysts if there aren't any good ones for them to hire. Korea have been doing this shit since the Starcraft days, they have have fifteen years worth of retired pro gamers to act as coaches and analysts. They also have people who've grown up with pro gaming being a thing, who now hold powerful roles in businesses and are cool with sponsoring teams.

NA and EU have dabbled in pro gaming for a while, but only really started to take it seriously in the last few years. The first generation of pros are only now starting to step back into administration and coaching roles. New players being called up from the amateur scene are only just starting to have those established team structures to fit into. Potential sponsors outside of the usual Razor/Monster/Alienware gaming companies are just starting to realise that pro gaming is pretty big thing.

CLG and TSM both tried to have sister teams way back in Season 2 (remember CLG Black and TSM Evo?), but the volatility of semi-pro play in the west made it extremely difficult to keep teams together. The Challenger Series is starting to help with that by giving teams outside of the LCS a reason to not immediately disband. It's no NLB, but it's a good start.

We'll get there eventually, it's just going to take time. Honestly, we might have to wait for the next game before we're able to compete with Korea.

 

The main reason most western teams don't have sister teams is that Riot have a rule an organisation can't have multiple teams in the LCS. That's why there was the whole EG/Alliance shenanigans instead of them both just being EG. The LCS teams don't really want a challenger team to practice with because their practice won't be competitive enough and they can't have another LCS team so why bother.

 

Just another silly rule Riot implements, like the no under 17 players rule. Riot is way too zealous in their attempts to form and regulate competitive play. I disagree with the whole LCS format since it stifles any other tournaments or plans the teams might have.

 

The western scenes simply aren't big enough yet to support the kind of two team partnerships we see in Korea. We're getting there, but OGN Champions has 16 teams in it, while the LCS struggles to field 8 halfway decent teams. We end up having to give spots to bad teams like MRN, Velocity and DragonBorns just to make up the numbers - teams who have absolutely no chance of competing against TSM or Fnatic.

Having said that... there's actually a surprising number of sister teams around. In the last NA Challenger Series there was Curse Academy, Cloud 9 Tempest, compLexity.Red and compLexity.Black. There was also Team LoLPro (a third Curse team), vVv Gaming Red and vVv Gaming White not making it out of the play in bracket as well as Cloud 9 Eclipse and SK Gaming Prime over in Europe.

I assume that's more to do with legal issues than anything Riot decided on. With LCS players officially being on Riot's payroll, there's got to be a whole lot of child labour laws to navigate.

 

Pretty much hit the hammer on the head, LCS players have to be over the age of 17 as it falls under some kind of child labour law, but at the same time it's odd given that you can also get jobs here in the UK at least as young as 16 - perhaps it's due to the fact it's a contracted thing, or is it more a rule in the US? I'm terrible with law and someone published the contract, or at least the part pertaining to the labor law somewhere I'm sure of it. Unfortunately I'm on my potato of a laptop and it'd probably blow up before I found the relevant link(s).

I feel like the LCS has it's advantages, but it has some definitive downsides such as all but removing International tournaments from the calender on top of falling into the trap of being a fairly small event team-wise, but massive in terms of the time it takes to actively play out the full split.

On top of that it's more crippling than it is improving the Western scene because we simply don't get to compete vs the best or hell, even each other outside of a one-time tournament which is simply the 'best' team from each region playing each other maybe twice. The last the Western scene wants to see is another Cloud 9 at Worlds where they get to play 3 games and go home though that's more a problem with the way Riot constructs its Worlds bracket than it is most other things.

I think it was on the most recent podcast he did with Montechristo that Thorin or IWD suggested that we just eliminate the spring split and instead allow teams to attend international events or have some hosted, allow teams to go play in OGN if they're invited/want to, have some focus on developing the Challenger scene even further as even now it's hardly watched or cared about but still pales in comparison to things like NLB.

Korea will be dominant in E-Sports for a long time due to the fact its own Government see's it as a legitimate sport, it gets funding on top of being heavily invested in because its players are treated like national treasures. Hell, it's played live on tv for gods sake. We have a long way to go as a scene if we want to get even remotely close to competing at that level, but there are certainly steps we (admittedly with Riot loosening its grip a little) as a region can take to try and improve and close the gap on the Korean powerhouse.

 

So, I'm watching the EU Super Week and the one thing I'm really noticing are the really long games.

EU really doesn't seem to be able to close out games.

 

The current patch also favors long games, its not just EU.

 

That was the thing that bugged me the most reading comments about the games - it's like people don't remember that only 2 teams in NA know how to finish a game in a short time and that's generally because they stomp everyone else - or throw at Baron.

I prefer the longer games, admittedly every game going past the 35 - 40 minute mark gets old when there's no real wave-clear on either side though. I think it's just jitters of teams getting back into the competitive swing of things as scrims only do/say so much.

That said, I don't think NA games will be as slow - new blood on the scene, hype around several roster changes and rivals clash repeatedly. Really excited for NA to kick off on Friday just to see what the table looks like after the first super-week.

 

Have you guys seen the new Pentakill song? Haha it's not bad

 

You could say it rocks....

 

So someone on my team decided to go AP/AD hybrid tryndamere mid...agaisnt ziggs. It didn't turn out well...

I'm really liking Wukong though!

 

Lots of new & exciting stuff up on the PBE!

Summoners Rift Graphical Update

Skarner and Nidalee revamps/updates

And to finish with, fighting off an updated Summoners Rift (only marginally because I know it annoys plenty of us) - Ranked duo-q restrictions!

It's not much regarding the final link, but it's a start at least.