On April 09 2012 11:28 BlackMagister wrote: Seems like CLG would have done better to ban Ashe instead of Galio. Is Galio really that scarry with flash ult compared to arrow engage? It's also not like CLG was running a double AP comp. Or ban Vlad of course.
I think they have a mental block or some kind of shit that makes them perform worse vs ashe, even with shitty arrows. I don't think I've ever seen them win a tourney game against ashe.
On April 09 2012 11:26 TheLink wrote: I just had the most awesome thought suggested to me.
Promote to counter Anivia, can't wave-clear this. Lets you shove to contest her blues and pressure inhibs she's trying to hold.
Dear god I hope this happens.
Main problem I see is that you give up so much lane control not having a combat/defensive summoner in lane. Who takes promote without losing their lane as a result? Promote can't help you in lane.
Even better, get smite so when anivia goes to take blue you can ward + smite steal it.
Sick games, so crazy sets TSM and CLG. Congrats TSM, that commitment to hard teamwork and heavy scrimming really paid off. Also Dyrus played ridiculously well all tourney long. GG wp TSM
1) Easter is a terrible time to throw a major tournament. Seriously. Wtf. I was away all weekend without Internet, so I huddled around my phone like crazy and relied on the Internet's greatest community (TeamLiquid) to keep me up-to-date on how all the games were going. I must say, I'm so happy that LoL live reporting is more like BW than SC2. It's great to be able to use the live report thread to actually know how the games are going in a play-by-play. I must say though with how epic the Saturday games were I was so jealous to not be able to watch alongside everyone else live.
2) LoL is really coming-of-age. Games felt (at least by reading them) that they were really balanced on a razer's edge. Games seemed to be decided during picks and bans a lot more than ever before. I don't know. Maybe I'm imagining it, but it just felt like champion select meant so much. There was so much strategy in bans than ever before. Especially against teams like CLG and Dignitas. It really mattered who teams picked. Gone, seemingly, are the days when a team like EPIK would go on tilt and just do "everyone play what they want" games with Heimer AP mid, etc. It only means great things for the game when champion select becomes a more and more important part of the game, and teams feel that they really need to earn every tiny advantage they can to make it count.
3) Supports being clutch... or maybe Janna's just OP. Xspecial, L0cust, and Chauster had great tournaments showcasing some really clutch play. Xspecial and Chauster especially were instrumental in their team's early-tournament dominance. It's great to see the supports being so clutch and also for the community for noticing how important they are to their teams.
4) Save the Kog, save the World. Everyone's favorite new mini-game! It seemed to be the theme of the first two days. Dignitas even turned the community on it's head with their innovative Lulu, Soraka, Kog comp, which they played to perfection. CLG had no answer for it. Perhaps no team was more dominant in their wins than CLG this weekend. However, Dignitas thoroughly flummoxed them with their turtle comp. Again, it says so much about this game and its future that we have the ability to find such brilliant comps still and get to watch the impact it makes on tournaments and on ban/pick strategies.
5) The almost story, CLG's dominance. Barring two games at the end of a long, long weekend, and two games against the new best comp in the world (see #4), CLG was the most dominant team at the tournament for the vast majority of the weekend. They were just dismissing teams with ruthless efficiency. Korea is clearly making a huge difference in CLG's development, and that can only mean good things for their fans and the community hoping for better, deeper games. While they all have derp moments, Jijinivia, Chauster Logic Gaming and his Janna, Doublevayne (or Vaynelift?), SV's Shyvana, and HotshotNidaleeGG (still ban-worthy) all made great stories and great entertainment. They showed a wide variety of strats that are very tough to ban out. Their split-push comp and poke comp being the most ruthlessly efficient. A couple other breaks and they're the story of the weekend, but sometimes, you can't stand in front of the freight train of destiny...
6) Resurgence, Redemption, Baylife A few weeks ago, TSM was in shambles. At least it appeared that way. TheOddOne's skin was falling off, the team was bickering incessantly during scrims, TRM left the team, the team lost more than ten consecutive scrims and was embarrassed at Hannover. Instead of folding up and giving up, the Baylife Bros doubled down on their mission and set themselves up for success. They replaced TRM with Dyrus, which gave them another, desperately needed chill personality (but also one that was as motivated as any of them to improve and practice and learn), they picked up Jonas, the TSM cook, life coach, and savior, and they set a new schedule designed to keep them fresh and focused while still improving.
IPL4 was their testing ground. They had no excuses. They had good showings in scrims, they were back to full form physically, they had started to really gel with Dyrus, they had the coach and a lot of time invested in the gaming house. Most importantly of all they had a very favorable bracket, at least on paper. If they washed out of IPL4, TSM was going to be in a full blown tailspin. Yet, if they could manage a strong showing, they could possibly ride that momentum to future success.
A lot was on the line. We know the way the story ends. The Baylife Boys won and got the monkey off their back. They proved that their new approach had the chance to succeed. They showed just how much they could improve in such a short time. A team that looked dead with an out-of-date jungler, overly aggressive and prideful mid-lane, and a green as can be top lane suddenly showed new life across the board.
And really, that is truly the best part of the story of TSM's victory and resurgence. This was a team victory. No one player was responsible for this victory, instead it was a revolving door of clutch plays from the whole team. On day 1 it was Chaox and TOO putting the team on their broad shoulders. Then Dyrus and Regi carried the way. Xspecial was a rock throughout the tournament, even as Chaox struggled in the later stages of the tournament. Yet, even when things seemed bleakest, nobody quit on this team. When Dyrus got camped top or Doublelift's Graves took Chaox' Ashe to the woodshed, the team did not fold. Perhaps they dropped games, but each player on TSM faced adversity over the weekend and endured.
For a team that has struggled to shed the old dogma of "win lane, win game", TSM showed amazing team fighting over the weekend. No longer was TSM the "follow the flash-ulting-Kennen team" or the "jungle babysit mid" team. Instead they showed incredible versatility. TOO kept Dyrus afloat through tough matchups and Regi truly went beast mode for most of the tournament, CS'ing like a fiend and playing incredibly solid. The team made great calls and succeeded because of it.
Does this win make TSM the best team in the world? No. It's not clear if they were really the best team at this tournament. TSM still needs to prove that they can hold their own against top-tier EU teams like CLG.eu and M5. Not only that but Dignitas and CLG showed that it's not just TSM improving in the NA scene. And that's why LoL is so great to watch right now, at least for me. I suppose I didn't say anything about the fans, who were supposedly amazing this weekend. I'll never forget watching GSL finals at Blizzcon last year. The energy of the crowd is intoxicating. I hope that kind of enthusiasm carries on to future events. It makes the product more dynamic and makes the games even more hype.
I cannot wait for the next event.
(PS: As I mentioned, I did not get to watch many of the games except on my cell-phone. These are just my opinions of what I'll remember from the tournament. If you have differing opinions some or all of these points please feel free to have that discussion with me. Also, if I messed up any facts in this post then my apologies, I'll fix if you let me know!)
On April 09 2012 13:43 Takkara wrote:they picked up Jonas, the TSM cook, life coach, and savior, and they set a new schedule designed to keep them fresh and focused while still improving.
Maybe even more than Dyrus instead of TRM, we can see TSM really needed this coach, at least for a practice schedule.
Does anyone have a link to a finals-inclusive list of IPL4's champion selection/winrate? I missed a lot of matches, but I feel that bot lane AD selection was fairly conservative. Kog'Maw and Corki seemed to dominate, with Vayne/Urgot popping up occasionally, Cait/Ashe coming up to support or deny poke/splitpush, and Graves to bully Ashe in the last game - were there any Tristana/Miss Fortune (or, heh, AD Kennen) sightings? I was wondering if MF would be wheeled out to help against the Dignitas Lulu/Soraka comp (or the prevalence of Mundo/Vlad picks), but it was banned out instead.
Jungler-wise, Shyvana/Mundo/Udyr dominated - it's really not the environment for any slower junglers at the moment.
I enjoyed the last two games more than I'd anticipated - Dyrus' Vlad was a pleasure to watch, and TSM were uncharacteristically patient and not taking any opportunities to throw (compared to questionable engages from aAa in some of the group matches).
Being a sub 1000 elo scrub I probably shouldn't comment, but did anybody else find Hotshot's Olaf build seems very unusual? I think he went shurelia's first or something along those lines.
EPT
