Game 1 was especially insane. Love that kind of stuff.
I wonder if either of these teems could beat cloud 9 (said no one ever, but theyâd love to watch the games.)
So of what seems like the big four leagues â LPL, LCK, LEC, and LCS â which is perceived to be the strongest, generally?
You mean big 3 leagues? LPL, LCK, LEC? LCS is a wild card region where a lot of riot happens to live. Vietnam might be more worthy of the major region seed.
Iâm not sure where power rankings are this year (LEC top teams look weaker than usual, and G2 / FNC were the only team that really challenged the top level teams). Historically itâs been LCK with LPL right behind them, but LPL has won the last 2 years, and smashed the mid season cup. This yearâs top LCK teams are playing more like LPL teams (more aggressive early game, as youâre seeing in the games I linked), so itâll be exciting to see.
The sad thing about Riot is that they have so few international tournaments, unlike DOTA2, so you only get 2 chances in a normal year to see regions play each other. At least the eastern countries have the virus under control, so maybe weâll at least get a bunch of games between the big 2 regions this fall if worlds doesnât happen.
Howâs your prediction algo doing? Can it predict teams inting the draft?
Pretty much. And this is reflected in the number of seeds at Worlds.
LEC is back from a weekâs break this week. It will be interesting to see where teams are after the reset. Iâm not sure whether they really are weaker as such. But there have been a lot of upsets. And FNC is definitely struggling to find itâs rhythm. As for G2, Perkzâs dad died if cancer 3 weeks ago and he took the last week off. So you canât really judge the team on its performance in the last 2 weeks. Mad Lions seems strong and one to watch though. They have come in swinging.
The DRX/GEN games were quite something. Link to the twitch recorded stream for those interested:
Just finished watching game 1, and holy crap that was amazing. No spoilers for the rest of the match 'til I can catch the rest of the games.
The final play was absolutely something youâd just never see in the LCS. The split base push is what passes for an exotic and âexcitingâ tactic in North America.
Also: why do LCS teams keep drafting Tahm Kench? I gather that was a great champ pick for a good while, but lately itâs been like pushing the âWe Loseâ button.
Kench is still seeing a fair amount of play in the LCK, and his win rate isnât terrible (11W, 13L):
If you look in NA, heâs 3W 3L right now:
But youâll notice it was 3W a few weeks ago, followed by 3 losses now. So a combination of maybe meta changes and recency bias?
Kench is a bit like Nunu. If youâre doing your job, the other support isnât having any fun, as heâs good at neutralizing engage. But if you put your only engage player on kench, youâre gonna have trouble with your team doing anything.
Well, LEC won againâŚ
[NA, as usual, gets caught in the crossfire]
Heh. We put things on hiatus â even though we were doing decently â in mid July. With EPL, NBA, NHL, and MLB all starting, we didnât have the personnel bandwidth to stay on Esports.
But Iâve absolutely become a fan of the pro leagues. Iâve got the LEC playoffs teed up to watch over the weekendâŚand I really enjoyed a couple of the LCS playoff matches, especially the one with C9 today. It took them getting waxed by FlyQuest and then nearly losing game one to EG to finally decide that theyâd better ban Shen, because they were not handling comps with that champ well at all.
When EGâs game 3 early game comp roared out to the league they absolutely hoped it would (objectives included), C9 just methodically and inexorably seizing the game from then on was something else.
Holy shit. Todayâs LCS games might not be the highest quality in terms of play, but theyâre pretty damn exciting/dramatic.
It was so weird that Golden Guardians blew a big lead, both in games and in the 5th and deciding matchâŚ
The FNC G2 series didnât seem that interesting at first, but it got NUTTY. Suggest you watch at least the last game of the series all the way.
I just caught up on those games. That last game had me glued to the couch. The 2 man defense of the base was so clutch. It was balanced on a knifeâs edge throughout. Insane watch.
That was an amazing match â but especially that Game 5. What a great hail mary play to run into the base by G2, and then to have Nemesis there like Dikembe Mutombo, wagging a finger.
That easily made up for the dull, final destruction of C9âs season. Man, what happened there? failure to adapt tactics? Failure to adjust with patches?
Itâs not the first time a team has failed to adjust to midseason balance changes.
But their macro play in midgame from what Iâve seen late in the season on has been erratic, to put it kindly. Never better than good, and often poor to appalling. They kept sending 3-4 people to pick off one TSM member in a side lane yesterday while TSM used the time to take other objectives/set up Dragon/Baron/keep other lanes pressured, and wound up poorer for it. This happened multiple times across the series. There was a play in game 3 I suddenly canât remember the particulars of but they had 3 people just muddling about the map not really doing anything (I mean a bit of farming but nothing like a concentrated push) after getting a pick maybe. And they just didnât do anything after it. Another time they had people wandering hither and yon while TSM collapsed and got a pick I think, and they saw it developing and just took so long to respond.
They kept drafting Ezreal even though that hasnât worked well for anyone over the playoffs.
I can point to specific instances of maybe bad positioning individual play, or TSM outplay. Those matter, to be sure. But I donât think C9 really set themselves up to succeed very much yesterday. They rofl stomped game 2 and had a brief period during game 3 midgame, but that quickly faded. The rest of the day they largely looked outclassed and often without a firm idea or plan.
I donât think any of that can be chalked up to meta changes.
Thatâs one of the things I noted â C9âs drafts. When they went up against FlyQuest, FQ clearly had a strategy based around using Shenâs Stand United and TPing into fights while whomever the Shen had shielded ate damage. And C9 seemed to welcome this play by not banning ShenâŚbut then getting hurt badly by FlyQuest on Shen.
The other thing that has changed â and Iâm still not smart enough about the micro play in the game to know why â is that it just seemed like C9 would dominate early game play aggressively, both in objectives (they were always on the Rift Herald and first dragon) and in farm (youâd be watching a C9 game where it didnât seem like much was happeningâŚand then youâd look at the gold and theyâd have a 1,500 lead less than 10 minutes into a game with no kills or towers.) It seemed like other teams finally started to counter them in the early and midâŚand C9 just fell apart when pushed back like that.
It kiiiiiiiiinda reminded me of 1980s Oklahoma or Nebraska football, when those teams only ran the option/wishbone offense. Theyâd kill you and stomp you into flinders with it if they got an early leadâŚbut if they fell behind by 10 points or so, theyâd just collapse.
Back when the meta was olaf, and there were some support picks that had high synergy with olaf, the gameplay was for Blabber to play like a hyper aggressive monster, and his mid lane and support would help him pull off plays that he would otherwise win in solo Q. Olaf is one of the best early game duelists, and can tilt the entire game in the first 10-15 minutes. Olaf is effective for maybe 25-30 minutes, but he starts to really fall off late game (though if you have a yumi or a karma support, that can help you out a lot.)
C9 played as a jungle first team, and got away with it, for most of the year. A combination of a shift in meta and required shift in playstyle really hurts the team.
Blabberâs been playing either in C9 or acedemy for a few seasons. Heâs always been the barely restrained force. The thing is, in other metas he would either hard win the game early, or feed his ass off and lose the game. He and golden glue used to pair up on occasion as the substitutes and play this style for C9 in the occasional game [2019 season]. This season had been perfect for him, with the right supporting cast.
Also, players like Licorice didnât hard int their lane repeatedly before level 6 earlier this year. You should NEVER get solo killed in lane in pro play - dying 1v1 early game is a big indication of either a huge skill disparity, or a huge mistake in play.