League Of Legends

The ANX/CLG game was painful. I'd love to see a stat on how many skillshots Huhi/Xmithie actually hit, it seemed like every Q/cocoon missed.

Sidian said:

Yeah, how crazy would that be to have ANX #1 and CLG #2. I'm staying up all night as well. Fuck yeah, let's go CLG!

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CLG... lol. I was shocked they did as well as they did. Expected them to fail harder then G2 did.

Holy shit is Huhi terrible. Can't have players that unpredictable.

After last night, I've been trying to prepare myself for the inevitable disappointment incoming from C9 and TSM shitting the bed this weekend.

During the ANX draft, it was going great! Ziks had the flex in both Jace and Karma and was about to drop the fucking hammer with the final pick on red side. And he busts out... Nami... The fuck? CLG then proceeds to show why a team based on the power of friendship <<< mechanics by drafting a full skillshot based team and failing said skillshots.

I at least understand the logic of the CLG/ROX draft. Their team could engage like motherfuckers and use Malz to keep enemies from engaging onto them. Except they were against an Alistar and both Huhi and Aphro decided to reenact the Mata/Doublelift soulstealing game from last week by never flashing. Never.
(OK, I really don't understand the logic of the draft order - but I guess it shows Ziks has 0 expectations out of Huhi once he's off his comfort champs. Cait & Alistar first rotation would have been so much fucking better.)


Oh, and wtf is up with the A,C,D,B order of groups?

Was really happy EDG wasn't fucking around and were going to end that shitshow asap. And then they proceed to slow roll the fuck out of the game. KDA whores

Those 2 H2K games were actually kind of enjoyable. I didn't think I'd want to watch much of today's games.

If H2K somehow ends up as a 1 seed, whichever 2 seed gets them is going to be high fiving their way to victory. But, I still think H2K ends up as 2nd seed.

I like H2K because forgiven is the only player that looks older than me.

lease surprising result for the day possible.

Knew it was over as soon as I saw hauntzer picking jayce top.

I feel bad for bjergsen how hard does he have to carry, especially sven who is just god damn useless.

Bjerg tried so hard. So so hard. All about c9 now baby! It's crazy that at the end of the day, H2K is the only NA/EU team to make it into quarters so far.

Why the jayce pick? Why not pick the Gnar that Hauntzer crushed face with earlier? Jayce against EZ makes no sense to me since EZ usually always builds iceborne and gets extra armor anyway (sure Uzi didn't this game because he got so far ahead he rushed TF).

Do the Sven/Hauntzer tank front line with the bjerg/dlift carry which has worked for them all season long.

They just seem to overthink it when pressure is on. Terrible pick and ban phase cost them today in both of their big games. That bjerg zilean pick was just a laughing stock.

"After being banned by Bjergsen twice becuse of bugs, Aurelion sol finaly got his sweet revenge by banning Bjergsen from the rest of worlds." - reddit

I guess TSM watched sencux never leave midlane and thought sol wouldn't be a problem?

Blah, I am one of the few people who enjoyed the old version of Dominion. Tried to play the "Definitely not Dominion" thing they have this weekend, and they completely butchered the mode. It's total garbage.

Last day of groups today...

SKT looking dominate as always. c9 giving me quite the scare. I'm not sure if they could have won if it went to tiebreakers. Oh well, at least one NA team got through.

SKT vs RNG
ROX vs EDG

H2K vs ANX
SSG vs C9

Soo, SKT wins easily. Rox should dominate EDG. Guessing both 3-0 victories, MAYBE 3-1 at worst. H2K will pull out the win over ANX with either an ez sweep 3-0 or it'll be close down to the wire at 3-2. SSG should win against c9 fairly easily especially since c9 looked like shit today. Although I'll be rooting for c9 because NA.

SKT vs SSG in the finals?

my random kneejerk reaction after this weekend. (this is not meant to be rational, but rather a cathartic response to C9 being the only to get through groups, and really doing it by failing their way out of groups at that.)

CLG - upgrade their korean midlaner. upgrade toplane. neither will happen, because they won spring and did well at MSI.
C9 - contractz or dardoch take meteos' spot.

TSM - doublelift to support, so he can shotcall. adc import? hell, there was talk of huni wanting to switch to adc. he'd even be able to play all the lucian he'd ever want!

None of the above will probably happen. reality? Doublelift retires and they end up with like... altec? sigh, this was supposed to be uplifting.

I haven't been following professional league as much as I used to, but is doublelift suddenly a great shot caller? I thought it was bjergsen as the shot caller before, and now it's sort of split between him and doublelift, but that doublelift has never been an 'elite' shotcaller. On CLG, it was all aphromoo, and still is as far as I know.

From the games I watched, it still seems like their top/jungle is their weakest spots but that was mostly a factor of getting outpicked/banned in a few games. The jayce pick looked horrible, not sure if I can blame hauntzer for that though. He's been solid all year, but maybe just he fails under the pressure of worlds? Biofrost has impressed me for the most part, and doublelift still has some insane late game plays but his early game is 50/50 against elite competition. Sven had some great games at worlds when they won, but he also did poorly in their losses. Not sure if replacing him or having another year working together would be better.

It's hard to say what TSM needs to do, because it takes awhile playing together to really build your synergy, so replacing anyone (no matter how good they are) will be a setback for awhile. But, they need to do it sooner rather then later if that's what they end up doing, so they have a full year to get a feel for any new players. Huni/reignover come join TSM?!? I can dream..

CLG: huhi and xmithie need to go eventually. Darshan had a bad split, from what I heard, but he still showed up at worlds and is still very talented. I don't think he's their weakest link, unless he started losing interest during the split and isn't practicing as hard these days. I can see that, and therefore he didn't 'get' the meta during the last split as a result. But, I'd also be willing to give him another chance if I was the owner. He fits the style CLG likes to play and the team has been built around what he can do for a long time. Replacing him would drastically change how the team plays, and Aphromoo might not be comfortable with that style.

C9: Obviously, Meteos is the weakest player, mechanically/individually. Whether he adds something intangible to the team, similar to what Hai did, is the only factor I'm not sure of. C9 is a very odd team, on their best days they look like they can beat anyone easily. In their bad games, they look like a challenger team. Whatever they need to do to get the 'good' C9 to show up more consistently is what they need, but who knows what that is exactly.

Doublelift has actually always been infamously bad at macro decisions (and even individual ones a lot of the time), he was mechanically on top of NA Marksmen though for the longest time. Meta changes, champ changes, and improvement across NA have kind of caught up to him.

CLG and C9 largely seemed hindered by macro decisions as well. A lot of people are attributing it to other regions trying to play Korean-style after a couple weeks in boot camp, rather than sticking with their own strengths. There is some merit to that argument, I think. Individual players get a lot of flack but mechanics-wise, the gap is very very narrow at that level. Maybe that tiny gap stands out that much, but I really think NA/EUs biggest weakness is strategy and organization inside the match, and that would be all the harder to be good at if you're playing a style foreign to your previous 6+ months of pro play all of the sudden.