Week 11: Digging Through as Many Issues as I Can!

Recently, I have been extremely busy, and I apologize for this. Life comes first, writing is my dream, and getting to sit around all day and talk about League of Legends is something I someday wish to be able to do. Until then, I will tirelessly pour my thoughts into this blog until maybe someone reads it (ha!).

Either way, there has been a lot going on, and I am going to write this article in a bit more of a free-form style, talking briefly about as many topics concerning LOL as I can, and what has happened over the last few weeks; giving, as always, the fan's perspective.

ON TSM replacing Gleeb with Lustboy:

I think no one was surprised when this announcement came out. We are all familiar with the idea that Locodoco knows a lot of Korean professional players, Gleeb was performing "fine" but nothing stellar, and TSM for the first time is/was facing the idea that they might not be going to worlds. It came as no surprise that when former CJ Blaze player Lustboy said he was done in Korea that Reginald was at the front of the fan-boy line anxiously waving his hand in the air saying "pick me, pick me" (or rather, come to TSM). Either way, it is a good replacement that will definitely improve the team but it was done at a really poor time. Getting a new player on a team two weeks before playoffs seems in some ways like season-suicide. The team will need to overcome a barrage of issues including: language, communication, play style, synergy, calls and champion pools in order to really get Lustboy into the TSM culture and into their winning ways. Despite the change and a decent 3-3 record of TSM post-Lustboy it still appears that Wildturtle and Lustboy have yet to really win their lane and have been pulled through by good mid/jungle play or strong pushing from the top lane. This will be a story to watch and TSM may yet win worlds but in reality I believe Reginald is still looking at next season being "his season". There is still some speculation as to whether Gleeb was replaced solely because of his play and I find this idea very hard to believe. Reginald is not the type of person to give up on a player no matter how good or bad they are. If this were the case he would not have dropped Xpecial in the first place nor would he have benched himself or allowed TheOddOne to step down. I guarantee that there was some other kind of "team issue" that was at play here and this was somewhat confirmed by Locodoco's vlog. I am not nearly close enough to TSM or Locodoco to actually know what this reason was but I guarantee that it had to do with more than, only, play.

ON Alliance's on the rift behavior:

There was some controversy a few weeks ago when Alliance beat Copenhagen Wolves in a match where they began to snowball the game and ended up buildings "stacks" items against the team to finish it off. Some say that this was a show of arrogance and that Alliance was really aiming to troll the team more than anything for the crushing defeat. Again, I this could not be further from the truth so much that the manager of CW released a statement on Twitter saying how they "do not plan to take action against Alliance" and Riot followed suit by not giving Alliance so much as a slap on the wrist. The fact is that professional teams are not going to risk trolling in a game that matters and really would not so easily give up the chance for an easy win by building "troll items". The levels between the teams in the LCS is so high that many times even a single item one way or the other can mean the difference in a team fight and can tip the map the other way slowly letting the other team crawl back in. In fact, the better way to look at this is to simply understand that Alliance saw how far ahead they were and decided to try some stacking items to see if they are able to maintain a lead and close out the game faster with these. They could then use this video later on with their coach and analyst and see if it was really worth it to buy these items, seeing if they gave them the value they wanted. As a fan you need to understand, in order for teams to grow they need to try different things, sometimes the best time to do this is in a real match simply because you are ahead and it doesn't change the outcome of the game "that much". This gives you the best example of if a new idea works or not and gives you testing at the highest level of your strategy. In reality, these buys changed the game very little over going conventional builds and the correct way of handling it was done by all parties. I think we can, now, see a stark contrast to this as in the last game of the season we really got to see Alliance and Millennium go at it in a real troll game. Malphite mid, Ashe jungle, Rammus top lane...yea these things happened.

ON C9's comeback:

It seems that Cloud9 has surged in the last few weeks and were able to find their own groove and get their record back to the level their fans have come to expect. While it was a very tight race with LMQ in the end Cloud9 were able to take first place and get their bye into the playoffs. It seems with a new patch (or a few new patches, seriously Rito) Cloud9 showed why they are constantly on top and put their own Cloud9 spin on things and were able to adapt to the changes much better than most. The biggest improvements were seen in Hai and Balls as these two came storming back with strong picks, domination of their lanes, and creating a lot of space for Meteos to do what Meteos does. Realistically this is how Cloud9 needed things to go to get back to their winning ways as caster RivingtonTheThird has even talked about how C9's early game strategy with their jungle is to win their lanes, feed Meteos information, and then allow him to be Dr.Mundo (get it? go where he pleases?!?!) and just create chaos. I cannot get out of this portion of the article without talking about the triumphant return of Sneaky who, with the rest of the team, has seem to again pull a Zyra hit with Sunlight (Ahh! More League jokes!) and grow with the team becoming the most feared ADC (next to Doublelift) and really putting his team on his back. The entire carry-core from C9 really have completely turned a corner and are showing they have their eyes on the prize of getting to and winning Worlds. If C9 continues to improve at the rate they are we will be seeing them in the top2-top4 matches we were hoping for last year. The greatest thing that Cloud9 showed the NA scene is: despite your rough start, it is a long enough season that it really is anyone's game, work hard, constantly work on your mistakes, and you will improve.

On Gambit/EG's resurgence during Super Week:

It seems that the times you play your best are when you feel like there is no pressure. I am sure we've all been in that situation where you just want to get your win for the day and only have time for 1 or maybe 2 games and the first game is drawn out to 55 min and you still end up losing a close game and now you don't have time for that other game because you...well...need to sleep. Well, imagine that but about 6000 times more because all your fans in the audience are expecting you to get your win for the day against the best players in your region (and others in some cases, looking at you NA). Well, needless to say, that is a ton of pressure and in some cases can mean your job is on the line. Gambit and EG were the two unfortunate results of the pressure that the LCS creates and really seemed to be the two teams that cracked under the pressure the most. Their lackluster records throughout the season landed them at the bottom and had them fighting against themselves and the other teams throughout the entire season. While both teams ended 7th in their respective reason the one bright spot in both their records was definitely their performances in super week and a lot of this resurgence showed that they are not incapable of winning, but maybe just fighting through a slump. Once the pressure was off and both teams were able to re-focus and set their sights on their relegation matches they performed "light years" better. Gambit and EG were able to put together 4-1 and 4-0 records respectively and really blew away their competition. EG's Krepo even spoke to this saying that once the pressure was off the team performed much better. Krepo had even mentioned that he was very "close to retiring" in the weeks prior. He continued saying that the resurgence at end gave him a kind of "renewed faith" in the stream and made him more able to re-focus and tune-out the hate. While Krepo didn't say if he was done or not it is hard to think that EG will not keep going and come back better than ever in the next seasons. What I think we need to take from this is, teams play the best when they're prepared, focused and relaxed about their own situation, which is how we should all play. Remember the Cloud 9 article just above, anything is possible in the LCS.

ON the LMQ controversy:

There were a number of huge LMQ updates over the season from welcoming them to the LCS, to them streaming only in English, to answering interview questions in English, to Sharon being removed, and now an owner of the team leaving? Well, despite all the highlights, or low lights if you will, LMQ has remained surprisingly consistent apparently not knowing they were a first year team and just playing their own signature aggressive style and taking NA by storm. On the back of their leader and world-class top laner in Ackerman they had an amazing record in NA that took them to a 2nd place finish overall. Digressing a bit, a few weeks ago when the team announced that they will no longer be working with Sharon a lot of rumors started as to why this is. No one was really sure despite things getting leaked in Chinese on their streams and roughly translated by Reddit users. However, a few weeks after, Reddit received an extremely formal post from one of the coaches from LMQ pleading with the team and taking about how he was done with the team. It seemed rather impassioned and was explaining how he felt like the team wasn't the same that it was when they first formed. He over and over harped on the idea that the team was not the same and he would no longer be a part of it. The article didn't go into much more detail but it appeared that LMQ was going to be going into the last two weeks of the LCS coach-less and with not much support from the analysis side. Despite all this LMQ still had an amazing record and, as stated, ended up second overall securing the bye in the playoffs in front of TSM. It seems that nothing rattles the team and they are steadfast in the face of adversity no matter what that adversity looks like. LMQ is going to be a very interesting team to watch no matter what else happens and it seems like their continued success in NA will, if anything, bring up the level of play in the region.

There will be more to come but this seems like enough for now!

It has been suggested to me by a number of people now that I am writing a ton and that longer posts become very daunting for readers especially when this is supposed to be a blog-style post and I am doing it in a newspaper-article type way. To that end, I will try a new strategy in hopes to maybe attract more readers and be able to communicate with you all more and get content going more frequently. I will chop my larger posts up into smaller bits so that I can cover one example at a time. I will also make them a little less formal so that the posts don't sound quite as stuffy and this will encourage readers to keep checking back and hopefully make discussions.

As you can see, I can cover a range of topics and even just for these few issues it can turn into a very long, drawn out, and lengthy post which will make you, the reader, lose interest. Again, this is a blog by fans for fans, so let's keep it that way! The new strategy will come in soon! So I hope you enjoy the articles for now! Stay tuned for some major changes and hopefully more frequent posts!