League Of Legends

No, those are the only ones. They also have a link on their front page trying to get people to follow them on twitter but they don't offer anything for it. They could really drive some more followers if they offered a skin for it.

Anyone watch any of the NA LCS week 1? All the big 4 teams kind of sucked this week. Cloud 9 had a perfect 5-0 week and they beat all the big 4 teams except CLG, which they play next week. It's kind of crazy to see Cloud 9, Vulcan & Coast in the top 4 at the moment. C9's playstyle was enjoyable to watch, although they are actually just copying the korean meta basically, yet it's working. Lots of aggression, fast tower pushes, overpowered champions etc etc. They seem to pick Kennen, Ryze, Jayce, Khazix, Zed & Zac 100% of the time if they aren't banned out.

EU LCS week 1 just starting up today, will probably check out a few of those games.

I haven't seen him in action, but I would assume if top vs. AP teemo, Teemo gonna win, right?

eh it really depends, aatrox has a dive and a slow, and his ult gives some atk range. So ap teemo is generally pretty squish I would say tanky / on hit teemo would do a bit better. Aatrox can blow some people up in lane.

Doubtful. Teemo has problems against top laners that can jump on him and Aatrox's has a knockup on it as well. He also has a ranged poke that can poke back at Teemo. But I see some immediate nerfs coming Aatrox's way. He's entirely too strong.

Edit: beaten

He solos baron with wriggles botrk spirit visage, so that alone will probably get him nerfs.

Aatrox has the same weaknesses Trynd, Yi, Fiora have, in that he's a melee carry. He will absolutely destroy people if he isn't CC'd/kited, just like the other melee ADCs will. His dive has built in CC and a shortish cooldown so that's a nice boost, and if you build enough lifesteal his W stance is just terrifying. As far as melee ADC goes, he's probably the most viable alongside Trynd right now.

Edit: Nunu solo's baron at 15 minutes now so dunno if that alone warrants nerfs or not

I have been counterpicking toplane aatrox with trundle and I consistently dominate him. I start dorans shield and lifesteal quints and am very aggresive at level 1-2. With the dorans passive, the -5 to basic attacks masteries, and my Q, aatrox can't even come close to trading with me. Rush ninja tabi, then botrk, ???, profit.

Sidian_sl said:

Anyone watch any of the NA LCS week 1? All the big 4 teams kind of sucked this week. Cloud 9 had a perfect 5-0 week and they beat all the big 4 teams except CLG, which they play next week. It's kind of crazy to see Cloud 9, Vulcan & Coast in the top 4 at the moment. C9's playstyle was enjoyable to watch, although they are actually just copying the korean meta basically, yet it's working. Lots of aggression, fast tower pushes, overpowered champions etc etc. They seem to pick Kennen, Ryze, Jayce, Khazix, Zed & Zac 100% of the time if they aren't banned out.

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I didn't get to watch much of the matches past the first day yet, but glad to see Cloud9 (formally quantic, formally oRb, etc..) are doing so well. They steamrolled the qualifier tournament but was afraid that might have been a fluke and/or shitty competition. They've always been considered an 'almost there' team by the big teams, as they are a regular scrim partner for most of the top NA teams and their members have always been high on the soloQ ladder. They just hadn't ever kept a stable roster long enough to get some offline tournament cohesion.

I do agree they are copying the korean champion meta, but not necessarily the playstyle/strategy. They very much prefer playing a solo queue style game if allowed to, where they each try hard to win their lane either by themselves or with a single jungle gank to start the snowball early and just try to rapidly snowball the game off that early lead. Luckily, it's worked so far, but if given a team that can stall them out and keep things even till late game team synergy is more important, they may lose some of the momentum they have going. Similar to when Gambit Gaming was unbeatable for a bit in Season 2, until CLGEU's stall tactic showed a chink in the armor and then they lost their 'aura' of invincibility and started losing some matches more often, or Curse for the first 6-7 weeks of the last LCS split when they hardly lost to anyone. C9 is riding on momentum right now, I think, but they should hopefully be a top 4 NA team in the long run.

I must say though, Meteos has been playing like he's suddenly the best jungler in NA, especially when he gets Zac. He had gone a bunch of tournament games in a row (mostly from the qualifier but also first two games of week 1) without dying at all, I believe, and carrying quite a few of them single handedly.

Until the qualifier tournament, Lemonnation had been holding onto the #1 ranked solo queue spot for a very long time, playing pretty much only support in solo queue.. an impressive feat by itself, imo.

Balls has also been remarkably better on this team then he was back on Fear, straight dominating most people in top lane. I think I recall a very impressive Rumble game from him in the qualifier.

The crazy thing is, I think either Dignitas, CLG or Curse is legitimately the worst team in the LCS, along with Velocity (VES), right now. Both CLG and Curse need to get more practice time with their roster changes, but that's always a viable excuse for those teams so who knows how long it'll take, if it ever works out. If either of them live up to even half the potential their roster changes suggest, then Dignitas might be the weakest team along with VES, which shows just how much the competition has improved in NA the last few months (a very good thing, imo).

Ya, I am not quite sure how I feel about C9 yet. Mainly because they have a Curse type of feeling about them, for me anyway. I hope they stay doing well though and I am happy to see more competition. Unless something crazy happens I see it being C9/TSM at the top followed by the rest with Dig/CLG being at the bottom.

After actually getting to watch a couple of CLG's games, it really is showing how rusty/uncomfortable that bigfatlp and chauster are in their current roles. Nientonsoh is already very solid, and Link is still great. But, Bigfatlp let daydreamin, on blitzcrank, steal a dragon over the wall (no fight at dragon at all) with his Q by mistiming his smite that badly for the last hit. He also has a poor sense of timing between farming his jungle and showing up to hold a lane/prevent a gank. Once he's team fighting, his mechanics are still solid, but he's weak at the overall strategy of jungling on a pro level. In that same game against Coast, Chauster seemed to forget he was a squishy support and baited himself multiple times with his own Thresh hooks. He'd land a hook and immediately go in, as if he was a tank (jungler) but get blown up before his team could follow up since he was just a little too far up when he even threw the hook. Them thinking their mechanics would just carry them through was very old school thinking and also very typical CLG arrogance, heh.

HotshotGG was doing an interview in which in came up and his arrogance certainly showed as you mentioned. He basically said jungle is easy as fuck and isn't mechanically demanding so will be easy for LP to pick up and that Nien will do well cause of his mechanics already being very good. We shall see how stuff plays out but I would really like to see Dlift go to a good team. I think if somebody like Curse picked up Dlift to replace that garbage that is Cop that would be a pretty terrifying bot lane to have Dlift/Edward.

You'd still have Voyboy who hasn't won a lane outside of that tryndamere game in the last 6 weeks of competition and Saint going on tilt to contend with. Curse isn't a good team, Edward just made a cash grab.

Yea.. and I have a feeling that if Cop continues to be passive even when he's fed with Edward now, he won't be able to blame it on a weak support anymore. IF that happens, AND CLG doesn't live up to the expectations and become a top 3 team, I think that's a very possible scenario. Dlift and Saint still talk to each other, it was one of their conversations about their team's weaknesses that basically led to Elementz being benched/let go. I think they both enjoyed playing together in the allstars as well. They both are a little jealous, tired and/or fed up with being in TSM's shadow in NA and also not being relevant at all internationally. Dlift, Edward, Saint, Voyboy and Nyjacky would likely be a very legit team. At that point, Saint or Nyjacky is the weakest link, which isn't too shabby. I see a lot of parallels between the current NA teams and what Lebron/Wade/Bosh did in joining forces on the Miami Heat, the LoL players just don't have the balls to do that until it's gone on for far too long, heheh

I say it again and again, but anything that makes the NA scene better overall so we stop getting roflstomped by asian teams is perfectly fine with me. Cloud9 coming and kicking so much ass is a breath of fresh air. The old guard has to step their game up and evolve.


edit:

Commander Vimeseh_sl said:

You'd still have Voyboy who hasn't won a lane outside of that tryndamere game in the last 6 weeks of competition and Saint going on tilt to contend with. Curse isn't a good team, Edward just made a cash grab.

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I don't think that's fair to Voyboy, most of the time they were throwing him into 1v2s due to their weak support/adc combo. Beating him down over and over may have demoralized him, but get him some confidence back and he'd be right up there as the number 2/3 top laner in NA. Saint does go on tilt and often blames others for his own mistakes, but he's still a very good player. Same deal though, he needs some confidence/momentum and he'll start playing amazing again. Adding Dlift would let them stomp a team like VES just on raw skill at least.

Voy's strength was assassins, specifically ap mobility assassins. When those got nerfed he started losing 1v1 lanes. His 2v1 isn't actually that bad with him tending to farm better then the opposing 2v1. Even with better farm though, Voy requires snowball on the champs he is good at to have an effect on the game while he is downright pedestrian with the tanky/low snowball but still high value top laners. You'll notice a lot of the teams have actually been 2v1ng Jacky if they can't get a 2v2 against cops lane. Because they know Voy is weak/playing badly at the moment.

A good example is he lost 1v1 to a Kennen (I think Cris's) as Jayce which is understandable because Jayce does have matchup problems with the Rat. However he lost the lane to the point where Jacky had to rotate up so it didn't snowball out of control. Then later that day he plays Kennen against Dyrus on Jayce and just gets absolutely woodshedded. Its like he doesn't have a grasp on the current strong picks and their relative power levels in lane.

Saint is who he's always been. A sub par mechanical jungle with an elite strategic understanding of the game. He makes plays that either look amazing and dominant because his team follows up well and he played it well or the plays implode horrifically because the team missed/didn't agree with his call or his weak mechanics can't pull off what he thinks should happen. Very binary from Saint, and never any in between.

So, Janna is like the best blue stealing champion ever at level 1. I love supporting with her and since everybody gives smiteless blue leashes now, you go over to the enemy blue, put your explorer ward down, get your tornado and just wait. At level 1 if you let it charge up fully (3 seconds) it does 135 damage and the range on it is so long that you always feel very safe.

I've definitely screwed over a few junglers this weekend by doing that, plus it's amazing to be level 2 immediately with blue buff as Janna bot lane.

Only downsides to it is that it can be kind of risky since you have to get the explorer ward down. You might lose 1 cs (but if you actually steal blue it doesn't matter). You also have to start with Tornado, which might not be the best opening skill with her depending on the enemy support/adc.

edit.

This assumes you are Blue side. Probably not worth it if you are red side because you'd be very far away from your lane. I guess you could do this for red buff on purple side if you know the enemy might start red.