LoL eSports Discussion

[Tamuz]

Yeah... I'm a night owl in WA, but the schedule even grates with me, I can't imagine eastcoasters

[dramonic]

It's not great, but hey, at least I'm not that European guy who has to be up at 4am to watch his team play!

[Tamuz]

Waking at 5 am isn't a huge diff from waking at 6 on a weekday. Staying up til 1:30 on a weekday is. Harumph.

[Bub Bidderskins]

Gambit so good, although Vulcun got waaaaaayyy too greedy that game. They only had to go even early and win, but they took too many risks earlier when their comp didn't even need to.

[Tamuz]

That may just be Gambit reading Vulcan. They are aggressive as fuck, a smart team can use that.

[Bub Bidderskins]

That may just be Gambit reading Vulcan. They are aggressive as fuck, a smart team can use that.

That, too. Gambit could win this thing, they really could.

And also, Korea so over-rated. Watching this makes me really think C9 might just be the best team in the world. I know it's too early, but I couldn't help but think that C9 could have closed out against Ozone and wouldn't have made the early mistakes against Gambit. Could they be this year's TPA? As a red-blooded American, I sure hope so.

[Tamuz]

A seeded team won't be this year's TPA.

Teams that could have the TPA story are, what? GG.EU and Mineski, and they are not real deals.

But again, we're seeing the WEAKEST qualifiers from the Asian regions vs the BEST qualifiers from EU. If all regions were equal (big if) Fnatic should stomp the round robin.


Kobe's eye contact is so far off the camera (and on the prompter) its bad.

[TheIrishPope]

I am so in love with Telecom

[Tamuz]

Nobody has said it... but I think Zuna's been crap so far. He has some nice highlights, but his general play has been weak relative to the bot lanes he's faced, which has really hurt Vulcan.

[zoraster]

are these guys just too cool to act happy when they win? i show more emotion when i win a game of mindsweeper.

[GreyICE]

Nobody has said it... but I think Zuna's been crap so far. He has some nice highlights, but his general play has been weak relative to the bot lanes he's faced, which has really hurt Vulcan.

You mean against Imp/Mata, Puszu/Yellowstar, and Genja/Voidle he's looked pretty weak?

Zuna is definitely their weakest lane, and he's way too aggressive, but in terms of how bad he's doing... he's not really.

[Tamuz]

And relative to Jgree/w/e. Even go back to LCS, Double on Trist, lolol I expect to be down 40 cs when I play Trist and I was up 20 against Zuna. (A later DoubleTrist game they went even).

But his play and the picks on SychoSquid has put all the pressure on Man and Xmithie to make the early/mid plays that win the game. In LCS Zuna's lane had gone up on Cloud 9 and TSM. The Vulcan Supp + AD can not be this weak, but they're playing down.

[BROseidon]

But again, we're seeing the WEAKEST qualifiers from the Asian regions vs the BEST qualifiers from EU. If all regions were equal (big if) Fnatic should stomp the round robin.

Except because of the way the qualifiers work this isn't really true.

OMG and SKT T1 won the most recent seasons in their leagues, but didn't get byes because of the fact that performances from like 9 months ago matter. It's sort of like baseball; the scariest team in the playoffs is not the one with the best record, but the one that's hot going at the end of the regular season.

[Tamuz]

It just changes the scale of strength / time, and it's based on Riot's theoretical metrics to measure team strengths.

As it goes we don't really have much more to use. But the set up of the tournament says we are seeing the weakest teams, and the Asian region have more stronger teams still held out than EU/NA.

[Bub Bidderskins]

A seeded team won't be this year's TPA.

Teams that could have the TPA story are, what? GG.EU and Mineski, and they are not real deals.

But again, we're seeing the WEAKEST qualifiers from the Asian regions vs the BEST qualifiers from EU. If all regions were equal (big if) Fnatic should stomp the round robin.


Kobe's eye contact is so far off the camera (and on the prompter) its bad.

I think most would argue that Najin is actually the weakest qualifier from Asia. Based off their performance in OGN summer, Ozone is probably the second best Korean team in the tournament (and definitely top 4 if not 2 or 3 in all of Korea) The 1st and 3rd EU seed have beaten them, while the 3rd NA seed gave them problems. So the worst EU team to make beat the middle Korean team to make it (whether you go by seeds or recent OGN performance).

And the TPA story is not the story of a massive underdog winning. Its the story of a team that dominated their region but was not given the respect they deserved because of a perceived weakness in their region. That is exactly the case with Cloud 9, and I think they have a real shot at pulling a TPA. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Meteos will outplay Dandy and Hai will outplay Dade in a hypothetical matchup between C9 and Ozone. As for SKT1, Hai can't deal with Faker, but the rest of the team can, and SKT looks more like a team of Faker + 4 than a world champion. OMG is a total wild card, but C9 has dealt with earlier aggression before and come back. Gambit looked fucking good, but Meteos would not have made the same mistakes Smithie did against them, and Vulcun crushed Fnatic but C9 is a better team than Vulcun.

I'm not predicting that it

will

happen. I don't even think C9 is the most likely winner. I'm just throwing it out there.

[Bub Bidderskins]

On another note, I don't like how group-stage teams get to play at least 8 games while teams with byes could flame out in 2. TSM going out so quick was really disappointing last year, even if they deserved it. Next year I hope that they expand the tournament to 16 teams with 4 groups of 4 and play double round robin. That way every team is guaranteed 6 games, and we'll get to know every team better.

That's really just a minor gripe, though. Other than that, Worlds has been absolutely amazing.

[Tamuz]

We can argue which teams are the best in their regions until the cows come home, but it's simplest to accept seeding and not reevaluate until outcomes are set.

C9 got/gets global respect, I can see them winning, but they aren't massive underdogs by seed nor respect. Anyways Gambit Fnatic fun, then sleep.

[BROseidon]

but it's simplest to accept seeding and not reevaluate until outcomes are set

Except plenty of sports don't do this, and the different regions having different systems means that we need to draw different parallels.

NA/EU is a lot like football. Because the relevant season was so short, the seeding coincided with current team strength pretty solidly.

China and Korea play out more like baseball. Because the measured duration is so long, the overall "best record" can (and often does) get decided early, and by the time that team reaches the playoffs, they'd have become weaker. That's what's happened with NJ Sword and to a lesser extent Ozone. SKT T1 is the "hot" team coming in, which means that they're the team to be more afraid. of.

Hell, even tennis, which SEEDS TEAMS BASED ON RANKINGS, doesn't follow the seeds to the letter in terms of expected strength because of how rankings in tennis work (tournament points that last a year from each tournament+delays on when seeding happens vs when a tournament happens).

[zoraster]

NCAA basketball?

[BROseidon]

I don't actually know how that works because basketball bores me >.>

[zoraster]

64 teams (basically) are seeded into four regions by a committee based on how strong a committee think the teams are

[BROseidon]

So it's actually just arbitrary.

[zoraster]

no.

[Tamuz]

A 16 has never beaten a 1, so no its not arbitrary

But really its just annoying as fuck on this site. Instead of having a conversation about a thing and how it is, we first have to debate how everyone would like a thing to be.
Its like if I made a thread about nyan cat, and instead of talking about nyan cat I had to debate that the standard definition of cat applied. There are seedings, if you don't like them fine, but discussing reality those seeds reflect how the format of this tournament and its sub-tournaments measure strength. That is the metric that exists, its the metric we have to use.

[mykonian]

xpeke vs ozone was epic. The amount of spells he dodged, just amazing.