LoL eSports Discussion

[zoraster]

and it's gone

[zoraster]

After Quarterfinals

1 . Zoraster 15
2 . AstralFlare 14
3 . DDo 14
4 . Voidedmafia 14
5 . theelkspeaks 13
6 . BROseidon 13
7 . Shanba 13
8 . Glork 13
9 . jahudo 13
10 . Cabd 12
11 . FakeGod 12
12 . Gendaberry 12
13 . The Bulge 11
14 . Nexus 11
15 . Bins 11
16 . dramonic 10
17 . Siveure Dttrikyp 10
18 . MTD 10
19 . Espeonage 10
20 . Animorpherv1 9
21 . Iecerint 9
22 . quadz08 9
23 . Bella 9
24 . hiplop 9
25 . Klazam 8
26 . pickemgenius 7
27 . hitogoroshi 6

[zoraster]

that's not that far fetched a possibility

[zoraster]

i agree, but it's not like TL is certain to win out. That's even true of Fnatic, and Fnatic is farther ahead of the rest of their league than TL is ahead of NA.

[zoraster]

set up my tv. Not sure if my wife will love the cords all over the place so for now it's just while she's out of town


I don't know who I want to win, but Hermes has made his choice clear: he's a reneGade fan

[zoraster]

Well she's been on camera so you don't have to be galled or "insulted"

[zoraster]

It's weird to me that rng is so willing to let early drags go uncontested leading to serious problems later.

[zoraster]

yes they do. they just did in champ select and they have a handful of other times. But yes, they have limited her exposure.

[zoraster]

From my recollection of things I've seen, her main issue isn't being seen on stage.

[zoraster]

yeah public eye and the additional stress of LCS is what I've heard. I imagine she's probably already keeping LCS hours the past split. They even have a team house, right?

[zoraster]

that thresh play where she lantern flashed crumbz's lee sin out of danger was amazing.

I hope she stays too.

[zoraster]

because we were talking about it earlier.

Spoiler: reddit post

so everyone keeps throwing around support and it means a lot, it really does. after the games last night i went back stage and like sat in a fetal position and cried while my team was doing interviews, took some xanax and passed out. playing on stage was really easy, i've always been able to perform when it mattered in everything i've done, basketball, gymnastics, track etc. i'm really not scared of the competition like my fortune cookie reminded me lol.
anyway, yes playing league is a stressful thing, it's rewarding though. when we won that group huddle was so satisfying, i worked with these guys for like a few months for 10 hours a day. i'm so proud of my teammates and myself for actually living up to what i promised them. especially alex, i promised alex i would carry him no matter what.
in the end though the competition doesn't mean much to me. i don't care to be the best in the world. i love playing with a team and accomplishing stuff and being recognized for it. when i set out initially, i wanted to be the first girl in LCS. that was what motivated me. that dream i had i accomplished and yet it is being challenged in such a heartless way. i really honestly truly hate so many people. if you want my honesty, everyone that tries to take away from what i accomplished, well i will always spite them. i'm always extremely salty when dealing with fans on mediums like twitter and reddit, i met some really cool fans in person at the studio for sure.
i just want it to be known that i accomplished my goal for real, and i accomplished it for me, my teammates, and girls in esports. that's it. no one else. don't fucking put me on some lgbt agenda or some bullshit and bring that up. that's not me, i don't believe in that. i don't want messages acknowledging that part of my life, sorry. that's not for any of you guys. that's why i get so pissy on reddit, everyone thinks that's there for them to comment on. yeah, it is because of a lot of circumstances that forced it out there, but fuck you lol. i'm not angry or upset or anxious anymore, i'm feeling pretty okay. hope i looked decent on stage. i'll be sticking around for one more project in League of Legends. after that i'm gonna peace out. much love to you all.
also just for the record chris is the nicest person in the world, fuck whatever the big 3 team orgs say, i don't think i will every respect them after the bullshit they pulled. please support renegades, everything from the players to the management stand for something that other orgs don't.
remilia
edit: also accepting applications for fangirls

[zoraster]

Just to warn, My wife and I decided yesterday to spend the weekend in vail so I may or may not be on to provide live score updates

[zoraster]

What are you referring to with "she is"

[zoraster]

After Origen's 3-1 win

1 . Zoraster 21
2 . AstralFlare 20
3 . Voidedmafia 20
4 . theelkspeaks 19
5 . BROseidon 19
6 . Glork 19
7 . jahudo 19
8 . FakeGod 18
9 . Shanba 17.5
10 . The Bulge 17
11 . Bins 17
12 . Gendaberry 16.5
13 . Nexus 15.5
14 . Animorpherv1 15
15 . Iecerint 15
16 . hiplop 15
17 . Siveure Dttrikyp 14.5
18 . DDo 14
19 . Cabd 13.5
20 . quadz08 13.5
21 . Bella 13.5
22 . Klazam 12.5
23 . hitogoroshi 10.5
24 . dramonic 10
25 . MTD 10
26 . Espeonage 10
27 . pickemgenius 8.5

[zoraster]

i feel like those numbers are wrong since I got 1.5 points for picking the games right and there's no other .5.

oh wait. no it's correct. it's 4.5 points for picking the winner correctly.

[zoraster]

for what it's worth, there are 60 points still left, so nobody is really out of it

[zoraster]

1 . Zoraster 25.5
2 . AstralFlare 24.5
3 . Voidedmafia 24.5
4 . jahudo 23.5
5 . FakeGod 22.5
6 . Bins 21.5
7 . Iecerint 19.5
8 . hiplop 19.5
9 . theelkspeaks 19.0
10 . BROseidon 19.0
11 . Glork 19.0
12 . DDo 18.5
13 . Shanba 17.5
14 . The Bulge 17.0
15 . Gendaberry 16.5
16 . Siveure Dttrikyp 16.0
17 . Nexus 15.5
18 . Animorpherv1 15.0
19 . Cabd 13.5
20 . quadz08 13.5
21 . Bella 13.5
22 . pickemgenius 13.0
23 . Klazam 12.5
24 . MTD 11.5
25 . hitogoroshi 10.5
26 . dramonic 10.0
27 . Espeonage 10.0

[zoraster]

15 people picked TIP to win their game, which is tied for the most wrong answers so far (15 picked gravity to win).... but only two people picked them to get 1st place. Only one person picked H2K to win it all.

[zoraster]

to be fair, tip looked pretty good in their first round game. of course that was against dig, but still

[zoraster]

CLG has a pretty small road to getting into world via championship points. they need TSM to win today and Liquid to lose to TIP in the 3rd place matchup.

So really they need to actually win this thing.

With CLG's win, that means C9 will have to run the full gauntlet.

[zoraster]

finally watched the games from yesterday. hard to believe this is the same xmithie.

[zoraster]

the team that performed better in the summer playoffs gets the higher seed i think.

[zoraster]

whoever places highest. the only teams where that can't be told is 5th/6th.

[zoraster]

was out hiking, haven't seen the games but know the result.

As of all EU semis being done

1 . Zoraster 31.5
2 . AstralFlare 30.5
3 . Voidedmafia 30.5
4 . jahudo 29.5
5 . Bins 27.5
6 . FakeGod 27.0
7 . Iecerint 25.5
8 . theelkspeaks 25.0
9 . BROseidon 25.0
10 . Glork 25.0
11 . DDo 24.5
12 . The Bulge 23.0
13 . Gendaberry 22.5
14 . Shanba 22.0
15 . Siveure Dttrikyp 22.0
16 . Nexus 21.5
17 . Animorpherv1 21.0
18 . Cabd 19.5
19 . quadz08 19.5
20 . hiplop 19.5
21 . Bella 18.0
22 . pickemgenius 17.5
23 . dramonic 16.0
24 . MTD 16.0
25 . Espeonage 16.0
26 . hitogoroshi 15.0
27 . Klazam 12.5

[zoraster]

interestingly 7 people picked fnatic's perfect streak to end with the semis.

[zoraster]

i think they can't leave azir up in general unless they're going to give it to fenix. TL looking kind of sloppy in general though.

[zoraster]

4 Gravity picks
6 TSM picks
17 TL picks

Spoiler: picks

[zoraster]

piglet is playing twitch.

[zoraster]

4 3s, 11 4s and 12 5s

[zoraster]

1 . Voidedmafia 36.5
2 . jahudo 34.0
3 . Zoraster 33.0
4 . AstralFlare 32.0
5 . theelkspeaks 29.5
6 . Glork 29.5
7 . Bins 27.5
8 . Iecerint 27.0
9 . FakeGod 27.0
10 . Gendaberry 27.0
11 . BROseidon 25.0
12 . DDo 24.5
13 . pickemgenius 23.5
14 . Shanba 23.5
15 . Siveure Dttrikyp 23.5
16 . The Bulge 23.0
17 . Nexus 23.0
18 . Animorpherv1 22.5
19 . Cabd 21.0
20 . quadz08 19.5
21 . hiplop 19.5
22 . Bella 18.0
23 . MTD 17.5
24 . dramonic 16.0
25 . Espeonage 16.0
26 . hitogoroshi 15.0
27 . Klazam 12.5

[zoraster]

5 people have TSM winning it all, 2 have CLG winning it all.

[zoraster]

we'll see what happens, but CLG has much more to gain by winning the finals. TSM is into worlds either way. CLG has to have TL lose in the 3rd place match to get into worlds without going through the gauntlet.

[zoraster]

i don't think any of the NA teams are appreciably stronger than Origen. They may have more success at worlds, they may beat Origen straight up, but I don't think they're obviously better.

Also worth pointing out that Worlds is a long time away and teams change a lot over that time.

And... of course it's very possible Origen won't even qualify for worlds. They need to beat Fnatic or they're going to have to go through the gauntlet, potentially having to win two games if H2K gets 3rd (UoL will have more points than Origen)

[zoraster]

Yeah I agree with that. I guess we'll at least sort out whether H2K is better than UoL

[zoraster]

who did they play in those games? because 7-3 isn't that great if they mostly played bad teams and 2-6 isn't that bad if they played fnatic, origen, and h2k. Or even gambit for a while there.

[zoraster]

also they were 2-2 with sivir against ROCCAT in the playoffs, so not terrific.

sivir wins during season: ROCCAT, CWs, Gambit, Elements

sivir losses during season: H2k, Fnatic

Wins against top 3 seeds with: Corki (Origen)

[zoraster]

An NA team winning worlds seems kind of laughable right now, but at least one should make it out of groups. I think that may have as much to do with luck of group draw as anything else though.

[zoraster]

if they draw ahq and a chinese team their days are probably numbered too.

[zoraster]

apparently worlds format (translated from chinese): https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegend ... announced/

Pretty similar to last year. Pot 1 will be the #1 seeds from china, korea, eu and na. pot 3 will have #3 seeds from EU and NA plus the two wildcards. Pot 2 will be everyone else. Every group will have a pot 1, two pot 2, and a pot 3 team.

Which I think is exactly the same as last year.

The big difference seems to be they're slightly randomizing the quarterfinals in order to remove incentives to tank in your last matches.

If you're a fan of pageantry is that the groups will be live drawn and broadcasted.

[zoraster]

LGD is #1 china seed. #2 and #3 are meaningless as both get put into pot 2.

This has a good summary: http://lol.esportspedia.com/wiki/2015_S ... ampionship

[zoraster]

sucks to be Russian. For some reason rather than being in the wild card turkey tournament, they are in the wild card chile tournament. I guess it's because it makes the numbers work out, but still!

[zoraster]

sorry

[zoraster]

you mean beating them in a best of 5 series?

[zoraster]

not a single person picked the game to only go 3 games.

[zoraster]

1 . Zoraster 37.5
2 . Voidedmafia 36.5
3 . jahudo 34.0
4 . AstralFlare 32.0
5 . Iecerint 31.5
6 . theelkspeaks 29.5
7 . BROseidon 29.5
8 . Glork 29.5
9 . Bins 27.5
10 . Animorpherv1 27.0
11 . FakeGod 27.0
12 . Gendaberry 27.0
13 . DDo 24.5
14 . quadz08 24.0
15 . pickemgenius 23.5
16 . Shanba 23.5
17 . Siveure Dttrikyp 23.5
18 . The Bulge 23.0
19 . Nexus 23.0
20 . Cabd 21.0
21 . Espeonage 20.5
22 . hiplop 19.5
23 . Bella 18.0
24 . MTD 17.5
25 . dramonic 16.0
26 . hitogoroshi 15.0
27 . Klazam 12.5

I have TL winning it all and TSM getting third, so I'm certainly not staying first.

[zoraster]

If TSM wins I think the following are the people who will win

Voidedmafia
theelkspeaks
Glork

If CLG wins I think it's very likely to be jahudo

I don't think it matters if Origen or Fnatic win for our purposes.

[zoraster]

No because only one person picked Origen and he's too far back to get close

[zoraster]

not including "Fnatic wins" there are 3 (EU Finals Game #)+3 (NA Finals Game #)+1.5 (3rd place Match #)+4.5 (NA 3rd winner)+9 points (NA Finals winner) left outstanding. The 9 comes from the NA finals, the 4.5 comes from the NA 3rd place match. Getting the number of games right fills in the rest. So they just need to make up a difference of 7 to make it. If they get the 3rd place match correct, that only means they need to get one of the games right that you didn't in terms of guessing how many games were played. I haven't seen whether you guessed the same or differently.

[zoraster]

1 . Zoraster 39.0
2 . jahudo 38.5
3 . Voidedmafia 36.5
4 . theelkspeaks 35.5
5 . Glork 35.5
6 . AstralFlare 33.5
7 . Gendaberry 33.0
8 . Iecerint 31.5
9 . BROseidon 29.5
10 . Bins 29.0
11 . Animorpherv1 28.5
12 . quadz08 28.5
13 . FakeGod 28.5
14 . pickemgenius 25.0
15 . DDo 24.5
16 . Shanba 23.5
17 . Siveure Dttrikyp 23.5
18 . The Bulge 23.0
19 . Nexus 23.0
20 . Cabd 21.0
21 . Espeonage 20.5
22 . hiplop 19.5
23 . Bella 18.0
24 . dramonic 17.5
25 . MTD 17.5
26 . hitogoroshi 15.0
27 . Klazam 12.5

[zoraster]

Aye

[zoraster]

Second pentakill in as many series for rekkles

[zoraster]

Weakness in no engage of that ketch coming out

[zoraster]

1 . Zoraster 39.0
2 . Glork 38.5
3 . jahudo 38.5
4 . Voidedmafia 36.5
5 . theelkspeaks 35.5
6 . AstralFlare 33.5
7 . Gendaberry 33.0
8 . Iecerint 31.5
9 . BROseidon 29.5
10 . Bins 29.0
11 . Animorpherv1 28.5
12 . quadz08 28.5
13 . FakeGod 28.5
14 . pickemgenius 28.0
15 . Nexus 26.0
16 . DDo 24.5
17 . Shanba 23.5
18 . Siveure Dttrikyp 23.5
19 . The Bulge 23.0
20 . Cabd 21.0
21 . Espeonage 20.5
22 . hiplop 19.5
23 . Bella 18.0
24 . dramonic 17.5
25 . MTD 17.5
26 . Klazam 15.5
27 . hitogoroshi 15.0

with 5 games picked but not the winner input.

[zoraster]

Remember when tanks were a thing?

[zoraster]

1 . Zoraster 48.0
2 . Glork 47.5
3 . jahudo 47.5
4 . Voidedmafia 45.5
5 . theelkspeaks 44.5
6 . AstralFlare 42.5
7 . Gendaberry 42.0
8 . Iecerint 40.5
9 . BROseidon 38.5
10 . Bins 38.0
11 . Animorpherv1 37.5
12 . quadz08 37.5
13 . FakeGod 37.5
14 . Nexus 35.0
15 . DDo 33.5
16 . Shanba 32.5
17 . Siveure Dttrikyp 32.5
18 . The Bulge 32.0
19 . Cabd 30.0
20 . Espeonage 29.5
21 . pickemgenius 28.0
22 . Bella 27.0
23 . dramonic 26.5
24 . MTD 26.5
25 . hitogoroshi 24.0
26 . hiplop 19.5
27 . Klazam 15.5

[zoraster]

TSM: Voided picked 4 games, Glork picked 5. One of them will win if TSM does (theel picked 5). Glork wins if it's a TSM sweep.

CLG: Jahudo wins

[zoraster]

So I put the games on our tv and my wife just wants the camera to follow gnar wherever he goes

Spoiler: Posted before

[zoraster]

1 . jahudo 56.5
2 . Zoraster 48.0
3 . Glork 47.5
4 . FakeGod 46.5
5 . Voidedmafia 45.5
6 . theelkspeaks 44.5
7 . AstralFlare 42.5
8 . Gendaberry 42.0
9 . Iecerint 40.5
10 . BROseidon 38.5
11 . Bins 38.0
12 . Animorpherv1 37.5
13 . quadz08 37.5
14 . Nexus 35.0
15 . DDo 33.5
16 . Shanba 32.5
17 . Siveure Dttrikyp 32.5
18 . The Bulge 32.0
19 . Cabd 30.0
20 . Espeonage 29.5
21 . pickemgenius 28.0
22 . Bella 27.0
23 . dramonic 26.5
24 . MTD 26.5
25 . hitogoroshi 24.0
26 . hiplop 22.5
27 . Klazam 15.5

jahudo will get a skin. i'm not sure i'm a friend with him so i'll have to add him and wait the time period first.

[zoraster]

assuming TIP beats the winner of C9/Gravity, which may or may not happen

[zoraster]

I think this is probably pretty accurate:

Source: http://www.goldper10.com/article/2271-1 ... 50823.html

Perhaps a bit bearish on C9 given their improvement and probable continuing improvement, but I don't think it's by much (Probably more of a 50/50 shot at beating Gravity, which only improves their overall chances of facing liquid by bout 2%).

[zoraster]

fixed for now

[zoraster]

the opposite, actually. Bullish is rates higher than expected. Bearish means worse than expected. A bear market is one that is performing poorly, a bull market is one that's soaring.

I probably don't give much credence to the ELO stuff across regions rather than within regions. The number of games that have been played across regions is trivial for elo purposes and out of date. More effective is where teams stack in relation to each other within a region. You can also see the weakness of its approach when playoffs start because teams that lose in playoffs will continue to be moved down while teams that weren't in playoffs will stay steady. For example, I don't believe that SK is better than UoL, but they have a higher ELO rating because UoL got 3-0ed (a sizeable ELO subtraction) while only beating ROCCAT 3-2 (a small ELO bump)

[zoraster]

but if you mess with the bull you get the horns.

[zoraster]

aww i was looking forward to watching some of these.

[zoraster]

what is it about league and suspenders?

[zoraster]

So only watched a bit, but chiefs actually kind of impress me.

[zoraster]

i wish lol esports updated their standings more than once daily.

[zoraster]

Put down your koalas

[zoraster]

Giants look pretty bad. Wish Elements or Gambit were in the gauntlet.

I'm just waiting for the c9/gravity game. C9 seems like a huge unknown.

[zoraster]

no. i wasn't awake.

[zoraster]

did you mistakenly quote me?

[zoraster]

I am very confused then. My comment was responding to myko who didn't mention either of the teams you were talking about.

[zoraster]

hai does not look great on the mummy.

[zoraster]

i know it's hindsight and all, but why did they open with mumu?

[zoraster]

I don't think that's really that cringeworthy. Origen don't get more money if they win wuick

[zoraster]

Yay for soraka!

[zoraster]

Weird to pick virus mid into soraka

[zoraster]

I'm not. She's awesome, but she's boring and she lacks the "carry support" aspect popular support picks get

[zoraster]

. C9 look awful

[zoraster]

Game 5 Velkoz

[zoraster]

Karma finally fits against this team comp.

[zoraster]

Well that was tense. like.... I know hindsight and all but it seems to me pretty obvious their first two games were flawed team comps. Soraka threw them which is fair. Can't imagine xpecial will pick soraka with a day's notice though

[zoraster]

i mean, no? that's what i'm saying.

[zoraster]

Lemon's pick bans seem to be a major source of the problem though. He even said so after the match that he thought the picks were good and he should have listened more to Bubba.

I think you probably underestimate Sneaky's chances to win lane and maybe overestimate Incarnation's. Obviously Xpecial > Lemonnation, but given the way these pro matches go the supports often aren't a huge part in deciding which ADC gets ahead (because they're often getting other people ahead). I don't think C9 have a very good chance of winning today though.

By the way, dividing the wild card tournaments into two is particularly lame when in one of them two out of three of the competitors get into the finals anyway. And it's hilarious that even after a round robin between three teams they had to play a tie-breaker to figure out who'd get into the finals.

[zoraster]

I don't think there's any chance they'll do that.

[zoraster]

Whenever I hear or see IWillDominate play or get interviewed all I can think of is Will Farrel's Voice Immodulation sketch: http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/ ... ilj/n11463 also Adam Samberg's character in Parks and Recreation.

[zoraster]

i cannot imagine they'll get draven again this series. i guess against tris or something c9 won't pick draven though.

[zoraster]

Hai should have gone banner instead of locket

[zoraster]

this is so interesting to me. So much ADC focus.

[zoraster]

awesome.

[zoraster]

I feel bad for iwilldominate.

[zoraster]

he is? all i've seen is pretty negative stuff. Not that it's easy to figure out from our perspective, but the line of reasoning goes: Liquid has probably the most talented line up. The coach's job is to make sure that a team works together to efficiently use that talent. Liquid fell at multiple points.

[zoraster]

To my eye the coaching in LCS has lagged in development toward full maturity.

[zoraster]

to be fair, gangplank isn't a juggernaut, right?

[zoraster]

if you don't mind it in spanish or portuguese.

[zoraster]

So as you can see in my signature, I'm out of town in the lead up to World's. Should I still do the world pool? it might mean that you won't see who people picked until after the first weekend.

[zoraster]

that's a good point. i'll let whoever have access to the spreadsheet

[zoraster]

it might work. i feel like there was some advantage to doing it ourselves last time but i can't remember what.

[zoraster]

yeah there was

[zoraster]

on the plus side, xmithie was probably the weakest Link left on CLG. I can't imagine this is Xmithie's fault though. If there's any blame to be laid, it almost certainly has to fall on the CLG organization.

[zoraster]

on the plus side, xmithie was probably the weakest Link left on CLG. I can't imagine this is Xmithie's fault though. If there's any blame to be laid, it almost certainly has to fall on the CLG organization.

slip or joke?

well i was making my point and then i realized there was a joke to be made. so I capitalized the L.

[zoraster]

Assuming Romania still isn't I count only 13 players (3 in NA, 10 from Europe -- 2 from TSM, 1 from C9, 5 from Origen, 2 from H2K, 3 from Fnatic) who are from the schengen area

[zoraster]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area

[zoraster]

right, except odoamne is Romanian which I don't think is part of it yet

[zoraster]

The UK

[zoraster]

That is a super tough group.. Liking clogs though

[zoraster]

C9s is as good as they could hope fo really.

[zoraster]

C9 would have wanted h2k and flash wolves in their group. That would have been their best chance.

As it stands I really don't think they can make it past IG or AHQ.

I mean their perfect group would be clg, flash wolves, h2k but they managed a group that's probably doable if unlikely. Still think they'll finish fourth. Possibly third

[zoraster]

C isn't a group of death at all... It's just two very good teams and two who wouldn't have a chance to move on in almost any group setup.

Origen isnt weaker than tsm. Who knows who will win that battle for honor

[zoraster]

what's the point of quoting yourself? To show that you knew they'd get placed in easy/hard/hard (respectively) groups? none of the teams have done

anything

to prove you right or wrong yet so it seems smug without having any cause to be.

[zoraster]

I think Jatt was fine to bring up the criticism. I think C9 was fine to defend him.

Pros and Analysts do and should have different priorities and perspectives.

[zoraster]

i doubt you're the only one. But you're wrong. Dead wrong. Analysts in all fields do so on twitter: politics, sports, religion, etc.

It's not shit talking to say "balls has had trouble in solo queue <proof>" particularly as it fits with an overall theme of balls' decline.

[zoraster]

I stand by what I said. Different perspectives, etc. theyre professionals. Part of that I'd rallying around teammates. They aren't analysts. Unprofessional is berating teammates.

[zoraster]

Who cares? they didn't ad hom him anyway did they? They ridiculed his analysis. I think they're wrong, but being professional as a pro gamer has little to do with analysts.

[zoraster]

Yes. He's pretty clearly the most influential content creator (who doesn't also work for riot) for the super vocal reddit minority, which amplifies him.

I view him like I do local sports talk radio.

[zoraster]

yeah it takes him forever to make his points, but i think that's probably intentional.

[zoraster]

I mean fnatics win was pretty great but the other two were against the second rate Asian league. Not that beating aha wasn't great, but it'll take bringing down more Chinese and Korean teams.

[zoraster]

No one is shit talking them. They're just saying it's ridiculous to make sweeping statements about the west vs. east when very little has been shown.

[zoraster]

If you can't see why myko was still right and you were wrong then you aren't paying attention. NOW an unexpected western team beat a top league eastern team. Your arguments before lessen the impact of the actual amazing result for EU (although c9 beating ahq may have been shocking too it didn't have much to say about relative league strengths or really much about later rounds.)

[zoraster]

Sure it is. If a team goes 0-6 that means before even starting every team is 2-0 ... If they split games evenly (going 1-1 against each other) every team will be 4-2

[zoraster]

I don't think it has much to do with champion selection other than the champs he's selecting are fairly aggressive champions and he has occasionally had the tendency to go aggressive and get behind when he didn't need to do so. Maybe he's been trying to live up to his "carry top laner" title a bit too much?

Anyway, keep in mind that teams generally had a day max to adjust to what was happening within their group. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the surprising trends in terms of team performance we saw recently were somewhat reversed, though that may be difficult for a team like LGD who lacks coaching support (so I've heard?).

[zoraster]

I'd say LGD and C9 are probably the most surprising. Fnatic has underperformed, but I think they should be okay going into next week and while they've looked not sharp, they haven't looked totally lost like LGD has. Origen going 3-0 is pretty surprising, but I've thought they've looked really good and in light of LGD's performance that only leaves their result against kt rolster as being really surprising.

So I've liked this world's and all, but one thing I really worry about is we're in for another fairly crushing Finals match as SKT looks much better than everyone else. That said, there should be time for teams to play themselves into good form. The opening week after some teams have been off since JULY is probably going to get a lot of teams figuring themselves out in a competitive context again.

Results by method of qualification: (excluding IWC)

Winner of Summer Split: 7-8
Championship Points: 4-5
Regional Qualifier (including both EDG and IG): 12-6

When I first started watching LoL in Worlds Season 3, I remember C9 having the top NA seed and getting a bye to the quarters. While that was nice, it seemed to me different to put a team that hadn't played in months up against a team that had just gone through a 10 game group stage.

[zoraster]

Also, shotcalling is a legitimate part of being a player. At least it is if you are a shotcaller.

[zoraster]

Nice to be able to watch these games on my big screen TV or desktop rather than my ipad mini on iffy wifi...

[zoraster]

I was in Tuscany, sitting on the patio. Great views, less great wifi signal:

[zoraster]

i want very few skins, but curling veigar, which I did not know existed until now, is one I do.

[zoraster]

I'm confused about why they're doing scheduling different today, with all the Group A games today.

Also not a big fan that the C9 games start at 4am my time...

[zoraster]

Oh also... this game is really painful. Because they're all on the same day, not a ton of time to recover from a loss like this.

[zoraster]

I suppose that makes sense, but it's not that satisfying... for one thing, Group A's teams will have from Friday to prepare for quarters (including getting there and set up) whereas Group B's will only have from Monday.

[zoraster]

they should have won that. Now they have to play Koo immediately. It just doesn't seem like a fair format.

[zoraster]

Your faith may be misplaced.

[zoraster]

i mean the last game isn't really anything. if it had been for a place advancing (or rather a chance to play off with FW for that spot) the game would undoubtedly be played differently. Still, CLG's overall performance pretty disappointing.

[zoraster]

i don't think so. they may use the quicker of the head to head wins to determine it for pick'em purposes, but i'm not sure.

Actually it looks like it counts them as both being 3rd

[zoraster]

tomorrow looks like a kind of boring day. it has EDG vs. SKT but I'm not sure either really cares about the result so much as not giving things away. After all, I imagine they'd rather play FW than KOO in a best of 5 series, so it's not a huge priority to be #1 at the moment (also the other groups have Origen and C9 at the top, which may not hold but still shows there's not a ton at stake in the 1 or 2 distinction).

[zoraster]

I may be too old to figure out snapchat.

[zoraster]

well i can't get it to work with lcsesports, which they keep pushing. i added them as a friend and nothing seemed to happen and i can't get to any "stories" they claim they're posting (are they deleted instantly?)

[zoraster]

i tried to send my first snappie (I do not know, but I assume this is the correct term for a snap chat photograph). I'm not sure it worked because I have received no confirmation from quadz.

[zoraster]

so is this happening? I still think EDG can turn it around, but...

[zoraster]

PS. I think people are figuring out how to play Darius.

[zoraster]

over 3 games. it's certainly possible that they lose them all. After all, plenty of people predicted them to go 0-6, it's not unthinkable that the other teams will recover from last week and make C9 go 0-9. Hopefully that's unlikely, but it's certainly not unthinkable.

[zoraster]

over 3 games. it's certainly possible that they lose them all. After all, plenty of people predicted them to go 0-6, it's not unthinkable that the other teams will recover from last week and make C9 go 0-9. Hopefully that's unlikely, but it's certainly not unthinkable.

Nope, since if C9 goes 0-3 they are guaranteed a tiebreak match.

Ah good point. Anyway, reasoning stands. Still perfectly possibly they lose 4 (which I think is only slightly less likely than 3 because if they lose 3 it's going to be indicative of an inability to win generally)

I don't think it's super likely, but it's at least as plausible as c9 going 3-0 to start the group

[zoraster]

Wild turtle is only a distant third person I'd replace on tsm if a reasonable alternative was found and I were in charge of tsm.

[zoraster]

Dyrus/lustboy. I'm not sure Santorum is strong but unless you can find a good jungle shot caller, I kind of doubt you'll do better. Dyrus is just kind of bad, and clearly lustboy is no longer on the same page as the rest of his team (perhaps communication issues, but I'm not in their comms so that's speculation)

[zoraster]

Yes I believe it, but also can't believe he'd be back on tsm even if he wanted to come back.

[zoraster]

I mean it depends on who you can get, but I probably wouldn't instinctively replace turtle or santorin, but dyrus and lustboy should not be back as there should be replacement level players who can develop better.

If you can get someone great at ADC, sure. But someone like Keith is replacement level at best. They should go after Freeze if they have the visas to do so (they could drop Santorin to do this). But for the most part, I'd try to see if Turtle with better threat from top and better support helps him return to form. Being an ADC in this meta where your top laner is underwhelming is something only really Sneaky has managed to do and I can't imagine there are many sneakys available.

[zoraster]

Weird that Origen may well advance farther than Fnatic. Though I actually think Fnatic has a pretty good chance against EDG.

[zoraster]

Regional spots should probably be based more on development and popularity of the regional leagues rather than actual performance.

[zoraster]

Well if you can divine from day 1 of a new season which regions are the strongest, more power to you. But I'll point out that China only managed to get EDG through groups despite many people thinking China as a region was BETTER than Korea this year, with only SKT being better than Chinese teams.

[zoraster]

I mean they kind of exclude Oceania

[zoraster]

I feel empty, waking up to no worlds.

Also, I did love this reaction:

[zoraster]

pardon?

[zoraster]

I think you're searching very hard to read anything into that. The players had a lot of other things to worry about than the specifics of how teams were drawn, which ultimately is of zero consequence to them as they can't do anything about it and the period of uncertainty lasts approximately 20 seconds.

The biggest thing to me is how much they wanted to dodge Fnatic, who they took to five games in the finals so should have on that basis been fairly confident against. Which suggests to me that Fnatic has Origen's number in scrims. Facing SKT was obviously a much worse result that they didn't seem that concerned about.

[zoraster]

I'm not really sure what he meant (just that they get more money if they finish 3rd/4th?), but whatever makes them not worry about facing SKT in the semis at this point is probably good.

The money change between 3-4 and 5-8 is nice (about 13k in euros per person), but it's probably not enough to be a sole motivator.

[zoraster]

It's not. It just wasn't highly publicized. I think everyone knew instinctively they wouldn't be matched with someone in the quarters, but not that they ALSO wouldn't be in the semis. Plus it's just harder to see when looking at the bracket.

[zoraster]

the world cup doesn't have a secondary draw though. You know from the start which group's winner/2nd place finisher you'll play if you get first or second in your group.

[zoraster]

i mean they got placed in a group with a team that pre-worlds was thought of as easily the biggest challenger to SKT. It definitely wasn't a threat to them not qualifying for the bracket stage, but it also wasn't an "easy" group in the sense that their capacity to lose a game or two was as high as it could be considering you don't really want two teams from the same region in a group.

Anyway, it's not dumb at all that they'd get easier even if you were trying to engineer it. In the NCAA tournament, for example, each side of the bracket has teams seeded 1-16, where the top team plays the 16th best team, the second top team plays the 15th, and so on. The idea is that you want the best teams to meet in the finals. This is actually VERY normal in tournaments that seed.

Also, it's not like a tough match in the quarters or semis somehow makes the teams that play in those games weaker except potentially giving away strategies.

To put it another way: wouldn't it be dumb to put the top teams against each other early on in the tournament in a way that would eliminate them? Isn't it better to give the best shot at a good finals rather than a good quarters?

[zoraster]

there are some champs that are just much better at getting pentas than others. Katarina, for example, gets 28 times the pentakills per match that Lee Sin does (Katarina gets the most at 1.15% per game in Gold+ games).

In case you're wondering, here are champions that get at least 1 per 200 games: Katarina, Yi, Jinx, Vayne, Darius, Draven, Akali, Kalista, Yasuo, Tristana.

Katarina and Yi are the two champions you should target if you want pentakills though. They get 49% and 35% more pentakills than Jinx at #3.

[zoraster]

Only half those champs have resets! Yi doesn't, right?

[zoraster]

But can DL just retire though? So bad

What? DL is still a top 3 ADC in NA. There may be personality reasons you wouldn't want him on your team, but him retiring is very unlikely to help CLG.

[zoraster]

Amazing is looking off his game

[zoraster]

i hate how riot focuses on the champion when a player does something good rather than their face cam. Like... I've seen caitlyn walk around doing nothing before. Show me the player reacting.

[zoraster]

I mean they have a chance. It doesn't seem high, but it could happen

[zoraster]

I'm not sure about competitive, but take two teams that drag games out really long and there are very few kills the first half hour and that can make for kind of a boring game vs. AHQ and SKT that like to do things early.

[zoraster]

linking to a video with no explanation.is bronze level at least summarize!

[zoraster]

did you say who they were adding? have i missed that somehow?

[zoraster]

although after watching it, i understand why you'd want to keep it unspoiled. pretty funny. if that team finds someone other than piglet I might really like them, though obviously that isn't happening.

[zoraster]

jayce adc? excellent. EDG hoping to win this early...

[zoraster]

honestly, i'm not at all surprised a team moved to triple teleport.

[zoraster]

holy cow that was nice.

[zoraster]

get it? holy cow? cow? because yellowstar, on alistar, started it?

[zoraster]

fnatic ran a Circles Comp.

[zoraster]

finally someone let both gp and mord through.

[zoraster]

Wow.

[zoraster]

^ more proof you aren't EU

[zoraster]

2 EU teams in semis will make an all Korean finals even more disappointing.

[zoraster]

Apparently SKT hasn't even lost a tier 2 tower yet at worlds.

(because for some reason people sometimes get pissy about this: yes, I did find this on reddit)

[zoraster]

No I mean sometimes if I bring something up off reddit up, someone will say something like "I saw this on reddit" in an annoyed response.

[zoraster]

I think if you take out the first week, Huni has been fine, though for the second time this season I wasn't that impressed with his Gangplank.

[zoraster]

Gragas lux and Ziggs disabled for the rest of the tournament

[zoraster]

Same bug apparently.

[zoraster]

the ban phase to go from 1 to 4 is difficult though. A team has to decide earlier whether they want to try to get 2 power picks.

[zoraster]

Blue side can never go for two, since red can last-ban and make it one.

Right, but because Red bans last, they can ALWAYS prune it to 3 and always will assuming those four are really the power picks (in reality, I think teams will test whether elise and rek are ban worthy).

Obviously Blue doesn't want to leave 3 up either with their last ban because red will just target ban leaving 3 up, assuring they get 2 power picks while Blue only gets 1

UNLESS

Blue bans GP/Mord with their last ban. The result of THIS is that Red HAS to ban one of the power picks or risk Blue taking the leftover Mord/GP pick because that leaves Red with two jungle picks and unless they want to top lane reksai just for denial (dumb), they'll only get one power pick while Blue will get two.

So I actually see 2 being left up, likely the two junglers, as somewhat likely.

All that said, I think teams are going to be willing to gamble on Reksai/Elise being up to achieve compositional goals, particularly reksai.

[zoraster]

I imagine it is lux's e and zigg's w

[zoraster]

I think of it the same way as some college teams claim to have been "national champions" in football in the 1800s. Possibly true, but with little relation to the current game.

[zoraster]

I could be totally wrong, but Fnatic Janna may be the most used worlds skin. I feel like I see it a lot, and it helps that Janna has been in the meta a lot.

[zoraster]

On the other hand, myko, it's pretty hard for teams to ban out players in this environment (though disabling gragas may alter things).

Honestly, I think looking at things from a player by player basis is missing the difficulty that face Origen.

[zoraster]

No, it's saying that the game is vastly different, almost to the point of almost not being the same game. And the competition was much, much smaller. Similar to how a season that ended 3-0 was a national championship title.

[zoraster]

It applies to every sport, but only so much.

I mean, I'm not making the argument that Fnatic didn't win Season 1, that's stupid. I'm just saying that the achievement of doing so is so, so much less. More on par with winning a Heroes of the STorm competition or something. Still cool, still part of history. Just, you know.

[zoraster]

Lemon officially stepping down. Hai may either stay jungler or transition to support. http://cloud9.gg/news/lcs-tryouts

The thing with Meteos must have been pretty bad in the end for them not to just transition Hai to support and bring back Meteos.

[zoraster]

yeah i've heard that too. still.

[zoraster]

yeah unfortunately i think origen needed to get this one, with the early baron and the pressure they had over that. I know it leaves other things up and you might have to give up reksai, but they probably need to get rid of fiora. the split push from marin made it so that origen couldn't team fight like they wanted without giving up things elsewhere.

[zoraster]

Fnatic sure threw that away. Reignover in particular

[zoraster]

Although... https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegend ... he_game_1/

[zoraster]

Is no one watching this or something?

[zoraster]

Again?

[zoraster]

i guess season 1 has EU vs. EU... but that's the last time.

still, i agree with the general sentiment.

[zoraster]

In your perfect world, who and when would SKT have played to get to the finals? Oh, and make sure you're doing it with the information available BEFORE the tournament started.

[zoraster]

[zoraster]

why do people like regi?