Pro Team roster changes

On April 10 2016 21:58 karazax wrote:
https://twitter.com/Tempo_Storm/status/718997331102851072

New roster is: Erho, Tomster, Kaeyoh, Goku, Zixz

Interesting they let Srey go because he was allegedly too abrasive with team mates and then pick up Erho who was just let go from Naventic for the same reason.

On April 10 2016 21:58 karazax wrote:
Interesting they let Srey go because he was allegedly too abrasive with team mates and then pick up Erho who was just let go from Naventic for the same reason.

On April 12 2016 15:37 Morfildur wrote:
ESports managers are usually very young with little previous management experience, so it's not surprising when they don't get the people aspect right.

From the outside it looks like teams try to solve toxicity by "stop it or else", which rarely works. I really wonder if any team ever tried to work on the root of the problem together, maybe even got a psychologist involved. Psychological difficulties like poor anger management are very hard to fix, but once you get to the root of the problem they can be controlled and you end up with a more stable roster.

On April 13 2016 00:42 MotherFox wrote:


The only example I know offhand of a sports psychologist being hired for this kind of thing was for Iidra in sc2? But he posted laster saying that the psychologist they hired was confused at why a video game would be considered a sport, so it sounded like it wasn't that helpful.

All this said, I do think people have a capacity to learn from their errors. I just hope that whoever is calling the shots at Tempo with regard to managing the players' attitudes learns from their mistakes, and doesn't just go along thinking they got rotten luck with negative attitudes several times in a row. The longer you are not proactive about this kind of thing, the longer it will go on.

ALSO, Zoia's reasoning that "it wouldn't make sense to have a contract for 2 months, so we just didn't pay the players" sounds suupppper sketchy to me. If waiting for the contract renewal period was important enough to not pay players, then it should be important enough for the players to not play games for the org while they are not being paid. Even if this kind of thing is standard in the pro-scene, I'd be up in arms about it as a player. Not getting paid for time doing your profession is really dumb.

On May 02 2016 23:40 karazax wrote:
I don't know who they can roster change for this late in the season that would improve them enough to bother. Next season seems very likely though. It really isn't the same game as it was when C9 won Blizzcon due to many patch changes, and the meta shifts have not been kind to them. Some of their players seem to have limited hero pools and that really restricts their draft options.

On May 02 2016 23:49 SC2John wrote:


I'm not sure it's a problem with draft only. Even their mechanics are looking questionable lately, and I think that's a factor of team tensions and miscommunication. Arthelon and DunkTrain in particular are struggling the most.

Saw a few threads here and on reddit; also some discussions in-game general chat about the C9 games in HGC. Lot of misconceptions about why they lost, their drafting, the relative strength of their team vs asian teams.

So here are a few of my thoughts on the matter. I'll go over the games quickly then talk about C9's drafting and style of playing.

They played 3 series vs EDG (chinese), mYi (european), and eStar (chinese).

vs EDG

The first game was on EDG's map sky temple. EDG had a really solid comp for that map, while c9 played an incredibly fragile one. The reason they lost was a slight misplay by Arthelon on thrall when he didnt get the value needed at bot temple. The shift of momentum lost them the advantage that their comp needed. However overall c9 played a lot better than EDG, both mechanically and in rotations. EDG had simply too many get out of jail cards (tyrael, uther, falstad).

Game two was a decisive victory for c9 on their map temple of doom with a strat that caught EDG completely off guard (murky). Again it was a very technical comp that allowed for almost no mistakes. The fights were incredibly close in terms of outcome, although c9 played a comp that was a lot harder to execute. Just look at how low every single one of c9's members was at the end of some of the fights. Spreading the damage so cleanly among themselves when not having a healer isnt easy. Especially vs double jaina (aba).

In game three (the chen game) they got somewhat outdrafted (EDG map and 2nd pick) and had to adapt. C9's comp was very fragile and incredibly hard to play vs a stun heavy comp. They played amazingly and made some incredible chen/falstad plays. The amount of technical play needed to make chen/fal/tass work to isolate muradin really showed their skill. The chen gamble was paying off, contesting hard the thrall solo lane top. Unfortunately Chen/iDream did throw a bit at some point and EDG's comp was just solid overall to capitalize once c9's deaths became stacked.

vs mYi

They got outdrafted in game one with targeted bans to their falstad/zera, while also allowing mYi the power of thrall + greymane. To top it off they chose an incredibly technical tass+aba comp. Needless to say the artanis (power of blind + heavy melee lineup for mYi) was a gamble and didn't work out.
They spread themselves too thin in draft trying to deny tass to grey/thrall, while also securing their own aba-centric strat. However the rest of the games where they managed to secure their falstad and force their draft they won.

vs eStar

The drafting was very complex in g1 and they had to make some concessions ending up with a comp that gave room for no mistakes. By this point they were exhausted and half way into the game they started losing steam.
By the time game 2 was played c9 was too tilted.

Now let's talk about drafts.

You might ask why c9 appears to get outdrafted a lot.
It's due to their hero pool and the overlap between their players and heroes. There are two ways to deny the enemy picks either by banning or securing them yourself.

C9 generally focused on crippling their enemies' warrior lineup (ETC ban was most common) because of how hard uther + ETC is to deal with (not to mention tyrael in there). However, because their draft focuses on securing falstad + muradin, they rarely took away thrall + greymane from their opponents. This is because they are most comfortable with playing a more technical style and being patient. They like the flexibility of heroes like falstad and tassadar over "go hard comps" like thrall + tyrael or poke hard comps that center around li ming. Their style revolves around forcing positional plays with gust. When falstad is not available they still like muradin, tass, or zera as tools to create position and space for picks. Although they can hold their own in dirty fights, they don't like gambling on li ming resets as a fighting win condition. They also don't like compositions that require big setups like maw/mosh, vp/mosh, sundering/mosh.

By the time they adapted in g1 vs estar and chose muradin + greymane, instead of muradin + falstad in first pick round, they were too tired to play outside of their comfort zone. You can see vs estar that by only having greymane and falstad as playmakers, they weren't able to secure those needed li ming kills in g1 - although some were incredibly close. g1 is a good example of how when the enemy has a more flexible comp in terms of win condition (they can win fights OR push with sylv and force c9 out of the temples) then c9 can't capitalize on their rotational plays. Compare g1 vs estar on sky temple to g1 vs EDG on sky temple, where zera pushing top pulled falstad back home, allowing c9 for a 5v4 engage shortly after.

Focusing on securing muradin over the midliners early in a draft creates a lot of restrictions on the possible permutations for your comp overall.

The big problem that c9 has right now is in hero/role allocation.

k1 is arguably the best ranged assassin in NA, but his hero pool is very limited at the moment. He primarily only plays falstad with valla as a backup. Although he dislikes li ming, it's a hero that he should add to his pool, freeing arth to play a midliner rather than have li ming + valla/falstad whenever c9 does grab li ming. Lunara has been shown a lot in the NA scene but in globals the damage is just not burst enough to make th cut. I'd like to see k1 (and maybe arth) also pick up zagara more.

The next issue is support. Dunk plays an incredible support when he's in a passive/defensive role. He's solid at staying alive and healthy in the backline, but other styles of support are just not his forte. Whenever he plays tyrande, it's a very safe backline style, and not aggressive enough to secure picks or to pressure (think of Bakery's tyrande). k1 has shown at blizzcon that he can play a stellar tyrande, but that would leave dunk on something like tass and the permutations of tyrande + 2nd support are limited and rarely fit the draft - even more so because you'd need a ranged assassin either way, so in those cases they place arth on tyrande. Kharazim is out of the question for dunk vs the asian teams in terms of mechanics.

Speaking of Arth on second support: I was very disappointed in his performance on tyrande and tassadar throughout the tournament. I think arth needs to step up his game. His style of tass is still backdated to before the scaling patch when tass could midline at all stages of the game. As it is right now tass players have to stay healthy pre 13/16 and then be very aggressive in the later stages of the game. It was a big misplay for him to die on sky temple vs eStar g1 in the early game, and then not frontline enough (to save falstad in one instance) in the late game.

Warrior picks are also fairly problematic - c9 has too strong of a bias for Muradin with weak backup plans. In the NA scene enemy teams fear Caff's muradin so much that they target ban that hero often, opening up a lot more options for falstad + zera with stitches/johanna/leo to simply body the enemies in lane early game. In the global scene we see the asian teams placing a lot more emphasis on securing solid midliners and letting the warrior picks sort themselves out. Korea has shown they are comfortable in throwing a lot of warriors into the frey - including leap sonya.

I think Arth showed very questionable plays in most games. His ranged assassins (valla, li ming) were often at risk, while his support plays (tass, tyrande) made his team struggle - not to mention force barrier on tass? It's clear to me that c9 is still unsure on how to utilize arth consistently and it's preventing them from running double midliner (2 of either sonya, thrall, and greymane) because of the lack of synergy between him and dream in a lot of fights.

While most deaths by the other members can be scratched off to cc lockdown (e.g most of caff's deaths on xul) or rotational plays by the enemy, arth's death were primarily avoidable with better positioning or use of skills. Compare k1's valla to arth's or compare dunk's tass to arth's.
Imagine if Arth had played better in g1 vs EDG, avoiding the set vs mYi and keeping c9 fresh for the winner's match-up, maybe things would have been a lot more different.

(TL;DR)
To sum it up C9 needs to diversify their hero pool better and find the correct overlap for their players. Caff and k1 should explore other heroes for their roles, while iDream and Arth should practice more midliner synergies. Dunk needs to master solo tyrande play. All of this will lead to more options for draft which will strengthen their choices considerably.

MVP Black has shown that when you diversify the hero pool of each player enough it doesn't matter if the enemy cripples your warrior, midline or support choices: there are still plenty of ways out in the draft. As it stands C9's draft pivots around too few key heroes (Falstad, Muradin, Zeratul).

On June 10 2016 15:00 ETisME wrote:
Both hots and lotv didn't get as popular as I hoped. Imo they suffer way too much from slow actions.

Sc2 still doesn't have the voice packs and skins
Hots is only finally getting its much needed improvement for ranked mode.

Let's hope overwatch doesn't suffer the same

On June 11 2016 04:44 Thax wrote:


How are you surprised? It's Blizzard's thing. They support their games way after release. Besides SC2 is going all in on mission packs and other micro transactions, which apparently are doing quite well, and D3 is still a solid seller in the back catalogue.

On June 18 2016 03:47 Cyanocyst wrote:
Finally I don't think Overwatch will really make it as an eSport. FPS games make for poor spectator sports as you're only getting a fraction of the action at once. Quake 1v1's were probably the best fps in terms of spectating.

On June 18 2016 03:47 Cyanocyst wrote:
Finally I don't think Overwatch will really make it as an eSport. FPS games make for poor spectator sports as you're only getting a fraction of the action at once. Quake 1v1's were probably the best fps in terms of spectating.

On June 23 2016 12:52 Wuster wrote:
Guess this is the inevitable grab for the C9 players. Despite their slump they are still some of the most mechanically strong players.

Unfortunate that Fury's dirty laundry got aired it like this, although he started down that road. Not sure what I think about McIntyre's situation. Sounds like he knew they were considering changes for a while. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing, on one hand honesty and not being blindsided by the org, on the other hand... Is it really something you can back down from after broaching the subject? (Ie isn't his release basically a done deal after that?). Of course the post was s little vague so maybe I'm misinterpreting the situation.

On August 13 2016 18:57 Larkin wrote:
It's a sick pickup, Roflcopter was GFE's weakest link and you could tell Fan wasn't fat or bald enough for Naventic.

On August 14 2016 03:58 Foxxan wrote:

how so?

On August 14 2016 18:30 Larkin wrote:


How so to which part?

On August 14 2016 21:51 Ramiz1989 wrote:

"Weakest link" part obviously, since the second one makes sense.

Good move by Fan in my opinion, he is really likable and he is actually quite good, no point in wasting your talent on a team with 2 brothers that will always play the blame game when they start to fall apart.

On August 14 2016 18:30 Larkin wrote:


How so to which part?

On August 14 2016 23:00 Foxxan wrote:

To the last part where Fan couldnt play at his 100%. Curious how one could tell and how good is he then exactly? Top best player?

On August 15 2016 07:06 Foxxan wrote:
"fat or bald enough"
I thought it meant he wasnt bald in team naventic but might be bald enough in another team, but reading it now again and thinking about it more - might be very wrong especially the "enough" part.

On August 15 2016 07:34 Foxxan wrote:
Aha, i actually thought the meaning was bold until now.
At the same time i looked at the word "fat" as something as "big in terms of the game".
Sry for the confusion.

On September 03 2016 04:14 Immersion_ wrote:
Retiring ahead of what is quite possibly a once in a lifetime opportunity (Blizzcon) is extremely odd.

On September 01 2016 18:29 NKB wrote:
I'm not surprised that the TL roster is changing, I am surprised that Cris is leaving though.

On September 03 2016 18:58 Ej_ wrote:

there are speculations that the Durans might be rejoining Liquid

On September 27 2016 00:21 SC2John wrote:
Gee, I wonder which double regional champions without a sponsor they're looking to pick up.....

On October 01 2016 13:29 Larkin wrote:
John prophet confirmed

no other way he could have known that!

There is no juicy drama here, boys.

But here's what happened in a nutshell.

I made sure to let everyone know that I want this team to take more of a casual approach to the tournament. However, when we did qualify and things got more serious, we could not agree on the level of commitment we want to make as a team, mostly because of me wanting to focus on my stream. Since some members of the team strongly expressed their pursuit for HGC, it was clear to me there are more complications here than I expected. I coulda been a douche and just rake in the $$ while forcing a bad practice schedule and toxic team environment, but that's not me. This is best decision for all.

Good luck to the team going forward.

On June 07 2017 04:48 Immersion_ wrote:
What's the mystery announcement there karazax?

On June 07 2017 10:50 Larkin wrote:
Rich is gonna join Black as a support main playing exclusively Li Li

On June 07 2017 13:31 EsportsJohn wrote:


It's really awkward that you kind of called this....