(1:55:11 AM) ahallucinogenic: it's ok drench
(1:55:21 AM) ahallucinogenic: it's perfectly normal for young children to walk in on their parents making love
(1:55:31 AM) Drench394: i can't wait
(1:55:11 AM) ahallucinogenic: it's ok drench
(1:55:21 AM) ahallucinogenic: it's perfectly normal for young children to walk in on their parents making love
(1:55:31 AM) Drench394: i can't wait
It doesn't mean nothing, but it means a lot less for a couple of reasons:
1. There's a real difference in prestige between a Riot event and others even if the others use much of the same talent.
2. Even more importantly IEMs use a somewhat strange qualification method where it is not at all the case the top teams from each region will go.
3. Sorta related to #1 is the timing of each event. IEM San Jose tends to be a bunch of teams that are just having fun because they're not even sure of their rosters for the coming season. IEM Katewice has tended to have teams that are still much more focused on how they're going to do in their respective leagues. MSI and Worlds come at a time when teams have their set rosters (pretty much) and can prepare for the tournament at hand more than just in the week preceding (G2 aside).
I'd love to do some sort of study to see if my wild hypothesis has any truth: going to Katowice is actually bad for teams in their domestic leagues.
Yes, you get exposed to international play and that can be helpful, but you end up having to spend a lot of time to play in it that could otherwise be used to (a) practice more for the league and (b) rest your team a bit mid-split to avoid burnout. In the middle of a season, spending 2 days traveling as well as the jet lag, etc. over a two week period is just kind of rough. Particularly for a game where focus is a huge part of things.
And any hype gained is quickly spent. You win IEM (like TSM) and people are hyped but then if you don't win your domestic league (or struggle in the season!) you feel a let down. And even if you do win it, if you don't win MSI after, you're now old news and whatever you did there is more important.
I think TSM just vastly underprepared or something for MSI last year. I mean, you could argue that the competition was a bit low at the time, but even for a low bar against international teams (obv SKT and EDG, a more hyped FNC, and a pretty hot AHQ IIRC) they still underperformed far more than they should have.
2011 scummies winner (BTS help) and participant;
coming back to Mafia...slowly. Keep an eye for me as a mod.
Also keep an eye for setup review requests.
I don't think so. Their team wasn't terrific last year and the only thing that really made their MSI performance seem out of place was their IEM finish. The competition in Spring NA LCS was super low and everyone they faced at MSI (obviously) were also winners of their respective leagues.
Think about how MUCH better NA was this split compared to last year's spring, particularly by playoff time. Liquid, who finished 4th this year and 3rd last year is leaps and bounds better than last year. CLG is far better, TSM by playoffs looked to have gelled pretty well (though I think they still look shakier than their 2nd place finish would indicate), Immortals despite the surprise and decisive loss in playoffs still looks top notch, even C9 looks just as good as last year's C9 if not better (they're just facing better competition).
The 6th place team in the playoffs seems relatively similar: Gravity last year vs. NRG, but otherwise I think the top teams in NA are far stronger than their 2015 counterparts.
