League Of Legends

Yasuo is someone I ban pretty regularly for two reason....When hes on my team he goes 0/20, and when hes on the other team, he goes 20/0. Guaranteed. Every. Fucking. Time.

Instant, knee jerk reaction from IEM (still ongoing).

Flame is still good.
Reignover is still good.

And that's all I've got to say about those 2 new teams.

Yea, I've only watched a few of the matches, mostly IMT games. Their bot lane is having a rocky start, but the rest of the team is looking solid. Dardoch is still great, flame is definitely not 'over the hill' or anything, and pobelter is still doing great.
I still think they are a top 3 team in NA for this next split. Most of the games I watched were against some stiff competition (SSG), so that may have made the bot lane look worse then they are. But, even against SSG the other 3 looked respectable, which is a good sign going into the NA LCS. If you can hold your own against a good korean team, NA teams will be easy in comparison.

Top lane will be interesting this split, with Looper, Impact and Flame all forcing others to up their game. It looks like a mostly tank top meta right now, though, so it'll be hard for any top player to be completely worthless.

I didn't see as many TL games, but yea reignover is obviously good on his own, doesn't need Huni. He helped TL get some early leads, but their cohesion as a team still needs some work right now. Have a feeling they are going to continue to be a very streaky and emotional team. When they are confident and winning, they will crush people, but then if things don't go their way they will fall apart. I think Dardoch got too much of the blame for their team problems, when it was just as much locodoco's fault for being a whiny little bitch of a coach. They are both equally to blame, imo. In other words, it was 40% dardoch, 40% loco and 20% piglet contributing to the problems.

Isn't NA LCS going to be like 90% Korean imports this season? Figured it had finally become the Korean amateur league.

So, I somehow missed that locodoco left TL to go run some a challenger team (gold coin united) with fenix and madlife. This changes my opinion on TL a bit, though I don't know much about their new coach, Dlim. At the very least, the household shouldn't be so toxic, which should hopefully improve piglet's performance at least. I think they are gonna be a big wildcard for next split. The talent is there on paper, if the synergy and cohesion comes together. They could be a top 3 or a bottom 3 team and I wouldn't be too surprised.

For some reason, maybe just my own renewed interest in league, I'm more excited for this split then I have for last two. Or maybe it's all the 'famous' korean players that I know coming over, interested to see how they all do. Flame, looper, etc.. I realize most of them aren't the best in korea like they used to be, but I don't follow LCK super closely and it takes a bit for me to notice how good a new player is from there.

I'm really curious if competitive OW will have the longevity of something like League. I rarely play League anymore, but still love watching it. Despite liking OW a lot I have a very tough time watching the competitive matches, it's just not very compelling to me.

uhh.. no it's not. OW is on the way up, league is on the way down, and blizzard pays him like triple what Riot does. Saw an interview with Monte where he said he made as much in like a month working for blizzard at their big tournament (worlds or blizzcon? don't remember) as he did in like a year working for Riot.
Now, that number was probably fudged a bit because he was getting paid more for a bigger tournament versus a salary or something, but it's clear they paid enough he was willing to learn a whole new game.

Enzee said:

uhh.. no it's not. OW is on the way up, league is on the way down, and blizzard pays him like triple what Riot does. Saw an interview with Monte where he said he made as much in like a month working for blizzard at their big tournament (worlds or blizzcon? don't remember) as he did in like a year working for Riot.
Now, that number was probably fudged a bit because he was getting paid more for a bigger tournament versus a salary or something, but it's clear they paid enough he was willing to learn a whole new game.

Click to expand...

Monte never worked directly for Riot. He worked for OGN. He just did individual tournaments that were Riot sponsored. He likely had a chance to get hired by Riot at some point in-time and then burned his bridges.

Good-riddance. Honestly never saw what people saw in Monte. DOA was great but Monte has already been a complete disaster.

Then he probably meant per tournament he was being paid triple. I didn't look into the specifics, I was just surprised to see him doing an OW tournament so I watched part of the interview about why.

I don't have a problem with Monte, except that he loves korea so much (but I can understand that at least), but his analysis has always been great. I fucking HATE Papasmithy though. He always seems to angry or disgusted by something, but trying to hide it a bit. He just comes across like a complete asshole and douche to me. Too arrogant.

Can't stand Papasmithy. I always thought Monte was a bit fruity, I made a comment about his huge rings back in the day. I did like he called them on their bullshit though and advocated for caster rights more than casters could because of their employment status. And the whole banning and forced sale of Renegades with little warning and very little tranparency or proof to refute was a bit shady. I think they were trying to be PC around a transgender and got a bit heavy handed.

Of all the complaints about Monte, that was not where I was expecting you to go.
To me, he is like the secretary of the boss. Just because he was casting for Korea, he acted like he was better than others. When most of his analysis boiled down to - have I seen a korean do this before? Yes? Great work. No? This is shit!
Doa will be missed though.

I play overwatch, but I can't watch it. I can't play league, but I watch it. /shrug Maybe Blizzard gets their shit together though and figure out how to stream it?

I didn't think I'd be excited about this season in LCS with wildturtle. But, the further we've gotten from worlds the more I want to see competitive.

I am curious how good Link will be splitting midlane with Goldenglue. If he returns to form, I think Liquid might be really good.

In honor of ESPN putting TSM as the 4th best team in NA, I'm putting down my end of season predictions.

TSM
TL
C9
P1
CLG
IMT
DIG
FLY
FOX
NV

Still a year away, but the Korean migration to NA should raise the talent of the region as a whole. Huni and Reignover brought the region up a peg, But arrow, chaser, ssumday, looper, flame, lira, and ryu should more really make scrims more productive for the teams.

edit: ohhh, i finally got the transgender comment. that went over my head before... mb!

Can someone explain to me what happened with cloud9 and flyquest? I thought Hai was a part owner of cloud9 or something, and that both Lemonnation and Hai were trying to get out of playing. Now, they have put 3/5ths of the original lineup back together on flyquest, which was cloud9 challenger, but cloud9 organization can't have two teams in LCS so they sold that spot. From the outside, it seems like Hai and Lemon either wanted to prove they could still bring a challenger team up to LCS or just didn't like the C9 org or team anymore.

I liked Monte when he wasn't casting, didn't much care for his actual casting though. Honestly he seems a little better in OW but still not the biggest fan. I really enjoy a lot of the newer casters honestly, I still love Kobe #1 but I enjoy Krepo, Zirene, and Pulse is probably my 2nd fave after Kobe. I realize Pulse is memetastic but hell if I don't love his casting. I feel like Froskurinn is a better version of Monte/Papasmithy at casting but worse on the desk.

Oh I didn't think of his talk shows and such, I've barely seen any of that but would agree. I was mostly thinking of his analysis desk and also pushing for better treatment / openness for teams and casters and such.

Enzee said:

Can someone explain to me what happened with cloud9 and flyquest? I thought Hai was a part owner of cloud9 or something, and that both Lemonnation and Hai were trying to get out of playing. Now, they have put 3/5ths of the original lineup back together on flyquest, which was cloud9 challenger, but cloud9 organization can't have two teams in LCS so they sold that spot. From the outside, it seems like Hai and Lemon either wanted to prove they could still bring a challenger team up to LCS or just didn't like the C9 org or team anymore.

Click to expand...

I think it was part "lets show them we are still good" and a matter of seeing how much money players were making now. Hai probably got a good chunk for leaving C9. And the members probably got another huge chunk from the sell. (I think I saw 700k went to the players)

Lemon i think got back into playing, because he was yanked as coach and replaced by bubbadub and then repeared. I was hoping meteos would join the team for the almost C9 replia, but he's gone back to streaming. I don't see FlyQuest going anywhere with Moon as their jungler and low-mechanical players at every position. But their shotcalling should be pretty good. and if clg can win with the power of friendship, maybe so can Flyquest...?