It's time again! Welcome everyone to Season 2 of the Gigabyte StarsWar League! With over $31,000 in prizes and some of the top teams in Asia, this event will be a stunning event!
ESV TV will be bringing you 100% coverage of this event at great times for all you NA viewers that don't want to stay up all night to watch the matches. Your casters for this event will be the returning RAPiD and the official debut of the famed Starcraft II caster Orb!
There will be a total of 12 teams competing for the chance to play for the LIVE offline finals in Shanghai, China with $25,000 going to the winning team!
Where to Watch
Schedule
Wednesday, Apr 10 10:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00) - Playoffs Team WE vs. iG
On January 05 2013 07:28 Vindexus wrote: Wow really good group of teams.
What is Orb's LoL experience like?
He's been playing since pretty much forever. I'll ask him when exactly (I know he has about 400 ranked games from Season 1 in his profile) but I know he has several thousand games logged and takes it in a very competitive sense, so I think he will do fine !
I'm really glad that I'll have something good to watch after Champions Winter ends. I was afraid I was going to have to rot my brain on NA/EU Season Three.
ESL Asia will be covering the event live at China/Korea timezones. ESV TV will be covering at NA timezones (and EU with recasts). So no issues and all viewers will be happy and able to see this!
iG should definitely not be 4th in that poll. Certainly not behind T1 and TPS. TPS is a fresh team, and I'm not going to bet on their performance in their first event ever. T1 didn't look convincing in their SWL Hero Arena Bo5 against PE, and PE is definitively a second-tier Chinese team--on a level below iG.
Noticed while updating the tournament calendar that the schedule doesn't correspond with the one on Chinese websites for the 2nd and 3rd day - http://match.replays.net/tournament/325/ (click on 'B组' for the other group)
On January 07 2013 19:08 Chexx wrote: When will be the Korean/China times?
You mean for the actual games or for the ESV re-cast?
ESV is re-streaming these. The actual games (and consequently, the live NeoTV broadcast) happens 13 hours prior, from what it looks like (so 19:00 KST on the 10th, 15th, and 17th).
On January 07 2013 19:08 Chexx wrote: When will be the Korean/China times?
You mean for the actual games or for the ESV re-cast?
ESV is re-streaming these. The actual games (and consequently, the live NeoTV broadcast) happens 13 hours prior, from what it looks like (so 19:00 KST on the 10th, 15th, and 17th).
On January 07 2013 21:14 Vlanitak wrote: I believe in the power of Colalin to carry TPS through all but WE and PE is going to take 3rd in group B
Honestly don't know much about PE, what's their story? Never heard of them before now.
Positive Energy used to be the World Elite B-team (World Elite i-Rocks) but now they're rebranded to something else.
They said Riot enforced them to do so since Riot don't allow two team with the same name participate in the s3 series. However I have not hear any news about this issue in foreign websites.
On January 07 2013 21:14 Vlanitak wrote: I believe in the power of Colalin to carry TPS through all but WE and PE is going to take 3rd in group B
Honestly don't know much about PE, what's their story? Never heard of them before now.
Positive Energy used to be the World Elite B-team (World Elite i-Rocks) but now they're rebranded to something else.
They said Riot enforced them to do so since Riot don't allow two team with the same name participate in the s3 series. However I have not hear any news about this issue in foreign websites.
That's sort of awkward, given the state of iG's B-team that was only formed fairly recently, lol.
On January 07 2013 21:14 Vlanitak wrote: I believe in the power of Colalin to carry TPS through all but WE and PE is going to take 3rd in group B
Honestly don't know much about PE, what's their story? Never heard of them before now.
Positive Energy used to be the World Elite B-team (World Elite i-Rocks) but now they're rebranded to something else.
They said Riot enforced them to do so since Riot don't allow two team with the same name participate in the s3 series. However I have not hear any news about this issue in foreign websites.
That's sort of awkward, given the state of iG's B-team that was only formed fairly recently, lol.
On January 07 2013 21:14 Vlanitak wrote: I believe in the power of Colalin to carry TPS through all but WE and PE is going to take 3rd in group B
Honestly don't know much about PE, what's their story? Never heard of them before now.
Positive Energy used to be the World Elite B-team (World Elite i-Rocks) but now they're rebranded to something else.
They said Riot enforced them to do so since Riot don't allow two team with the same name participate in the s3 series. However I have not hear any news about this issue in foreign websites.
That's sort of awkward, given the state of iG's B-team that was only formed fairly recently, lol.
and the korean Teams
A lot of the Korean teams have been around long enough to be able to find individual sponsors though. iG 2 is so new that they haven't really done anything yet.
On January 08 2013 18:46 dooraven wrote: I thought the S3 Championship series was only NA and EUW, if it applies to Asia then how come we've never heard of anything about the qualifiers. o_o
Maybe it's only been posting on Asian sites like GArena and stuff? Idk, I was wondering that myself.
On January 10 2013 16:55 TheYango wrote: For those that want to watch this when it happens, I believe the game is scheduled to start on the NeoTV and Garena Taiwan streams in 2 hours.
On January 10 2013 16:55 TheYango wrote: For those that want to watch this when it happens, I believe the game is scheduled to start on the NeoTV and Garena Taiwan streams in 2 hours.
On January 10 2013 16:55 TheYango wrote: For those that want to watch this when it happens, I believe the game is scheduled to start on the NeoTV and Garena Taiwan streams in 2 hours.
On January 10 2013 19:57 Doctorbeat wrote: GodJJ lives up to his name, Gods can't die.
5-0-8 and GG. Also, Ez only with BT+LW as damage items.
And Cait went BT>PD, which is a bit questionable imo. Still don't understand why no Nunu support.
They're heavily reliant on shutting down the constant dps from ryze/irelia/ez/ls - a very high damage comp (as evidenced by how much damage they output even with tanky builds), they probably felt they needed the aoe cc
asian understanding of team comps is much more advanced tbh, in the NA scene at least, we see a lot of the idea that nunu/cait is just a binary auto-pick thing with zero thought behind it ~_~ pretty sure nunu would've done much worse than sona in that game.
Yeah...but TPA team comp to good. Ez can't get away from Kha/Olaf, quite enjoyable to watch actually. Not really understanding the blitz pick though being completely ignored in team fights really hurting TPA now. Then again blitz lands a pull and leads to an end game fight.
Good show from both Taipei teams today. Nothing terribly unexpected I guess (TPS was going to be a wild card going in and they performed up to snuff). Sort of funny that the most lopsided set of group B got played first.
I just finished game 1 of TPS v T1 and here are some of my thoughts + Show Spoiler +
- Warmogs first major item for both Shen and Khazix on T1. hi Yango - T1 really pulled a few CJ-esque donk move. Like Reapered getting pincered, gets Stand United and decides to run back into an unknown number of Snipers? That's really poor judgment. Still don't get how pro Korean teams (no less) make such blunders. - GodJJ is pretty solid on Ez. Great kiting. - Looking at Irelia again, she went Sunfire into Mogs. ON IRELIA. Riot plz. NA teams need to get with the times. Mogs is so good atm. Yango's not blowing smoke here. - Lulu best support atm. Bar none.
I 100% agree with the Mog's thing; destroyed a game as Khazix after building Mog's for survivability after BT. I was reading some analysis thing yesterday about how Randuin's is also crazy good for survivability; even better than Mog. I suppose the price tag wards a lot of a people off, however.
On January 11 2013 05:55 WaveofShadow wrote: I 100% agree with the Mog's thing; destroyed a game as Khazix after building Mog's for survivability after BT. I was reading some analysis thing yesterday about how Randuin's is also crazy good for survivability; even better than Mog. I suppose the price tag wards a lot of a people off, however.
Had a long talk with yanger yesterday about the armor items (many, there's so many of them now. ;_; ) With Randuin, it's basically slot efficient, not cost-efficient. Meaning it's not an item you rush but one you round off as your 6th. The active nerf was a pretty big hit that if you want armor and hp, Sunfire is a better option for early game. Sunfire's cost atm is such a bargain.
On January 11 2013 05:55 WaveofShadow wrote: I 100% agree with the Mog's thing; destroyed a game as Khazix after building Mog's for survivability after BT. I was reading some analysis thing yesterday about how Randuin's is also crazy good for survivability; even better than Mog. I suppose the price tag wards a lot of a people off, however.
Had a long talk with yanger yesterday about the armor items (many, there's so many of them now. ;_; ) With Randuin, it's basically slot efficient, not cost-efficient. Meaning it's not an item you rush but one you round off as your 6th. The active nerf was a pretty big hit that if you want armor and hp, Sunfire is a better option for early game. Sunfire's cost atm is such a bargain.
Warden's mail and Giants belt are both pretty lovely items to buy with no intention of upgrading, too. Nobody says you have to finish an item immediately after starting it!
So we found out today that the replays for the Korea tournament realm that we received are not currently functioning with LoL. They worked in the previous season and everything looked fine but at the moment we cannot get the replays to open at all.
With the unreliability of tournament realm replays we will do another solution where we have a dedicated observer record the games and broadcast that to prevent future issues (and will use the actual replays when they start functioning).
I am sorry for this but there was no other good options and we did not want to present you a sub-par event in any way. We will have these worked out, and until then you can see English VOD's at: http://www.twitch.tv/eslasia/b/355680917.
We will resume with the new system on Day 2 with all the problems sorted out, and again I am very sorry!
On January 11 2013 09:35 paddyz wrote: It makes me sad every time I see Orb or diamond associated with LOL, you guys and SC2 could have gone so well together.
npnpnp, we're happy to have him. We'll take gud care of them, no worries~
On January 15 2013 21:04 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote: This caster doesn't know that "invulnerable" and "invincible" mean the same thing -.-
We got it. You don't like the casters. No need to repeat yourself again and again and again.
Pretty sloppy game all-around. Amumu failed to make profit out of his early advantage, and Mima just dominated the game mid- to lategame. AD Ez had very little impact, if any at all - should probably either have gone AP or gone for a different build.
On January 15 2013 21:04 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote: This caster doesn't know that "invulnerable" and "invincible" mean the same thing -.-
We got it. You don't like the casters. No need to repeat yourself again and again and again.
Pretty sloppy game all-around. Amumu failed to make profit out of his early advantage, and Mima just dominated the game mid- to lategame. AD Ez had very little impact, if any at all - should probably either have gone AP or gone for a different build.
I agree on the amumu. He had so much resources early, but opted for more gp10 instead of getting core items :/
On January 16 2013 01:18 T0fuuu wrote: Could you please update opening post with vods? I looked at the esv twitch page and cant see anything and eslasia only has some of the games.
Thanks for bringing us these games !
We did not cover Day 1, that's why no VODS.
Also we are uploading all the video files for today and it's taking quite a long time, will start an hour late today, 7PM EST.
On January 16 2013 11:16 Chexx wrote: you should really start the reddit thread way before. Not just one hour before the stream starts.
Normally do 4. Had technical issues today so did not want to make it until I was dead sure.
I see. that is understandable.
ESV will be conducting rebroadcasts the day after each match starting at 6 PM EST.
my last suggestion would be dont say "the day after each match" I still have no Idea when the regular match is. Instead say every tuesdays and thursday at 6 PM EST.
Just watching the rebroadcast. Why is it so blurry or whatever its called. Its like watching through milk glass. Also not a fan of the overlay. It should be less noticable.
Orb's commentary is entertaining though.
edit: Also ingame sounds are too low while ingame music is too loud.
Has SKT T1 lost their shine lately, or does AG play really well? I've had such high hopes for SKT T1, but after they got devastated by TPS and now play pretty poorly vs. a second-tier-at-best chinese team, I don't think they could even make it into OGN anytime soon.
On January 17 2013 20:33 Caphe wrote: What server is this? Does SKT has some kind of lag or something？
Tuesday they said the games were played on the Taiwanese Tournament realm, if I remember correctly - supposedly the most balanced in ping, as everyone is below 100, or something.
Damn SKT got massacred. 11-0 second game, 21 minute surrender.
On January 17 2013 20:22 TheYango wrote: Looks like I was wrong predicting AG to be the weakest team in group A.
Though I did think SKT was the 2nd weakest.
Meh SKT has always been a "get carried by Reapered or die" team; Mightily has just shown himself to be very weak, and their bot lane has shown great inflexibility transitioning smoothly from laning into midgame, and any team that has a semblance of midgame coordination like AG here can abuse it.
Cologne was just SKT stomping a bunch of weak teams, I personally don't think it was indicative of strength on SKT's part.
On January 17 2013 20:33 Caphe wrote: What server is this? Does SKT has some kind of lag or something？
Tuesday they said the games were played on the Taiwanese Tournament realm, if I remember correctly - supposedly the most balanced in ping, as everyone is below 100, or something.
Damn SKT got massacred. 11-0 second game, 21 minute surrender.
Oh, thank you. I just want to eliminate lag/ping before regconize AG as a good team. Seems like lag/ping has nothing to do with the AG smash SKT1 in the 2nd game
On January 17 2013 20:22 TheYango wrote: Looks like I was wrong predicting AG to be the weakest team in group A.
Though I did think SKT was the 2nd weakest.
Meh SKT has always been a "get carried by Reapered or die" team; Mightily has just shown himself to be very weak, and their bot lane has shown great inflexibility transitioning smoothly from laning into midgame, and any team that has a semblance of midgame coordination like AG here can abuse it.
Cologne was just SKT stomping a bunch of weak teams, I personally don't think it was indicative of strength on SKT's part.
They qualified against OP and CJ and beat fnatic in Cologne, not too bad by itself, considering OP was still fairly good at that point and fnatic had been on an incredible run. High hopes were surely justified, but it seems they failed to develop from there. In fact, the team doesn't seem to trust either Mightily or Raven on anything really impactful, and Reapered/H0R0 seem so invested in this "we must 2v5" mindset that they take stupid risks and pay for it. Also, huge weakness in picking today - doubly sad considering it's probably been Reapered making those picks.
I thought/hoped they'd at least be able to compete with AG, NaJin Shield and possibly new-formed TPS, but by now they look like the weakest team in the whole tournament - LGD at least put up a fight.
How quick are korean organizations about dumping a team? Any chance for the SKT T1 team if they fail to make it into OGN Spring?
On January 17 2013 20:22 TheYango wrote: Looks like I was wrong predicting AG to be the weakest team in group A.
Though I did think SKT was the 2nd weakest.
Meh SKT has always been a "get carried by Reapered or die" team; Mightily has just shown himself to be very weak, and their bot lane has shown great inflexibility transitioning smoothly from laning into midgame, and any team that has a semblance of midgame coordination like AG here can abuse it.
Cologne was just SKT stomping a bunch of weak teams, I personally don't think it was indicative of strength on SKT's part.
I sort of agree, but at the same time they fought PE to a pretty close 3-2 in the StarsWar Hero Arena, and PE is still a team that I'd say is a tier up on AG.
On January 17 2013 20:50 DragoonTT wrote: They qualified against OP and CJ and beat fnatic in Cologne, not too bad by itself, considering OP was still fairly good at that point and fnatic had been on an incredible run. High hopes were surely justified, but it seems they failed to develop from there. In fact, the team doesn't seem to trust either Mightily or Raven on anything really impactful, and Reapered/H0R0 seem so invested in this "we must 2v5" mindset that they take stupid risks and pay for it. Also, huge weakness in picking today - doubly sad considering it's probably been Reapered making those picks.
I think you're overvaluing their victory over fnatic in Cologne.
Keep in mind that to all teams present except CJ, SKT1 was an unknown quantity at Cologne, which dramatically improves their chances of doing well in such a setting.
All teams present here are going to be much more knowledgeable about SKT1 and how they operate--meaning their general strategy will be much more tailored toward hitting the points where T1 is vulnerable (e.g. when PE played T1 in SWL Hero Arena, their jungler basically just camped the shit out of Reapered knowing the other two lanes were probably going to win anyway).
On January 17 2013 20:22 TheYango wrote: Looks like I was wrong predicting AG to be the weakest team in group A.
Though I did think SKT was the 2nd weakest.
Meh SKT has always been a "get carried by Reapered or die" team; Mightily has just shown himself to be very weak, and their bot lane has shown great inflexibility transitioning smoothly from laning into midgame, and any team that has a semblance of midgame coordination like AG here can abuse it.
Cologne was just SKT stomping a bunch of weak teams, I personally don't think it was indicative of strength on SKT's part.
I sort of agree, but at the same time they fought PE to a pretty close 3-2 in the StarsWar Hero Arena, and PE is still a team that I'd say is a tier up on AG.
On January 17 2013 20:50 DragoonTT wrote: They qualified against OP and CJ and beat fnatic in Cologne, not too bad by itself, considering OP was still fairly good at that point and fnatic had been on an incredible run. High hopes were surely justified, but it seems they failed to develop from there. In fact, the team doesn't seem to trust either Mightily or Raven on anything really impactful, and Reapered/H0R0 seem so invested in this "we must 2v5" mindset that they take stupid risks and pay for it. Also, huge weakness in picking today - doubly sad considering it's probably been Reapered making those picks.
I think you're overvaluing their victory over fnatic in Cologne.
Keep in mind that to all teams present except CJ, SKT1 was an unknown quantity at Cologne, which dramatically improves their chances of doing well in such a setting.
All teams present here are going to be much more knowledgeable about SKT1 and how they operate--meaning their general strategy will be much more tailored toward hitting the points where T1 is vulnerable (e.g. when PE played T1 in SWL Hero Arena, their jungler basically just camped the shit out of Reapered knowing the other two lanes were probably going to win anyway).
Funny enough, fnatic won the first game against SKT fairly handily, and then lost during the finals while arguably having much more material on their hands, and it's not like SKT played something terribly outlandish except maybe during the first game. I'm not saying this makes SKT a better team than fnatic, just that it justified hoping SKT could make it into the top tier of Korean LoL teams.
In SWL now (in contrast to the Arena series), games didn't come down to teams knowing SKT better. SKT just straight up messed up - picked bad team comps, made bad calls, got outplayed. They look way worse than they did a month ago. Anyone who had seen the Arena series by SKT and AG (the week before) would probably have guessed for an easy 2-0 for SKT today, considering how MVP stomped AG in december, but they improved, while SKT didn't.
On January 17 2013 22:02 ihasaKAROT wrote: Well it helps if you are the only ranged AD in the game and you can just away at will and spam a field of slows..
On January 17 2013 22:02 ihasaKAROT wrote: Well it helps if you are the only ranged AD in the game and you can just away at will and spam a field of slows..
with 5sec cooldown flash
To be fair, Lee Sin has two of those, too. Depending on certain circumstances, but two of them.
On January 17 2013 22:09 skykh wrote: League of bruisers proof it again
4 bruiser+ 1 ap >the meta
This is the first game I've seen this work. Why are you crying just because the meta changed? Not to mention Pantheon is an assassin and Lee was built and and played like one
iG played very well; WE made a few errors that they just never recovered from (notably the failed pick attempt on amumu at ig's blue that turned into an ig 4-1); exciting game for sure, esp with unorthodox team comp also is this xiaoxiao ap thing a mainstay now?? curious.
On January 17 2013 22:12 Carnivorous Sheep wrote: iG played very well; WE made a few errors that they just never recovered from (notably the failed pick attempt on amumu at ig's blue that turned into an ig 4-1); exciting game for sure, esp with unorthodox team comp also is this xiaoxiao ap thing a mainstay now?? curious.
Don't think so about XiaoXiao - or iG might find themselves punished by the tournament organizer, considering how they wanted the players to join lobby in top-jungle-mid-ad-support order.
Could be a way to overcome his love of risky plays and questionable positioning, though. Make him play ultra-long range characters like Xerath and Lux all the time.
On January 17 2013 22:18 Kavas wrote: Feels like WeiXiao should have bought a BotRK instead of I.E or maybe forgone the BT altogether and rushed other items.
WE lacked threat in their team comp and build. Literally almost everyone built to be a punching bag.
Well, thats the meta now. League of WARMOG.
Anyway, WE lost the the first game cos they made some big mistake(the mumu turns into reverse 4-0 is one of them) not the team comp. The thing about iG team comp is, it works but only if you have advantage early game and some large mistake from your opponent. I still dont think 4 bruiser+1AP can beat a normal team comp if both team make normally.
It was interesting seeing how in a lot of fights, Wx was either too timid or too aggressive. It's a very fine line to walk with the amount of dive/assassination present from iG, and even the best player in the world can't always get it right. Maybe something that will improve with time? S3 meta sucks yo T_T
On January 17 2013 22:26 Caphe wrote: Support Rumble, dont think i'll live to see the day.
Or XiaoXiao plays another role again.
WE drop out seconds before the game starts. Wondering whether they had a good reason or just bought time to discuss the setup in case rumble really goes to support....
On January 17 2013 22:18 Kavas wrote: Feels like WeiXiao should have bought a BotRK instead of I.E or maybe forgone the BT altogether and rushed other items.
WE lacked threat in their team comp and build. Literally almost everyone built to be a punching bag.
Well, thats the meta now. League of WARMOG.
Anyway, WE lost the the first game cos they made some big mistake(the mumu turns into reverse 4-0 is one of them) not the team comp. The thing about iG team comp is, it works but only if you have advantage early game and some large mistake from your opponent. I still dont think 4 bruiser+1AP can beat a normal team comp if both team make normally.
Arguably iG forced WE into the situation however I feel WE severely lacked damage. Singed hardly does DPS with his build, same for jarvan and elise. Misaya could have been a factor but he got shut down really hard.
On January 17 2013 22:26 Caphe wrote: Support Rumble, dont think i'll live to see the day.
Or XiaoXiao plays another role again.
WE drop out seconds before the game starts. Wondering whether they had a good reason or just bought time to discuss the setup in case rumble really goes to support....
Nah, they drop out cos one of the Chinese streamer dropped and they are still waiting for them now.
On January 17 2013 22:26 Caphe wrote: Support Rumble, dont think i'll live to see the day.
Or XiaoXiao plays another role again.
WE drop out seconds before the game starts. Wondering whether they had a good reason or just bought time to discuss the setup in case rumble really goes to support....
Nah, they drop out cos one of the Chinese streamer dropped and they are still waiting for them now.
Ya heard that too, but when the game dropped one of the WE players was missing so i assumed one of them had issues
Finally back on track, no support Rumble either. I like WE's comp very much - hard not to give the win to Cait/Nunu.
I like how these junglers are fucking over their 1v2 laners. Both of them go to help "defend" the tower every time it pushes up then end up wave-clearing it because they're junglers and can. The 1v2 laners end up with zero cs at any point. It completely screwed over WE's kayle last game.
Allocation of farm really needs to be more thought out in this game. Giving all the farm to whoever wave-clears the fastest is such a bad system.
On January 17 2013 22:59 TheLink wrote: I like how these junglers are fucking over their 1v2 laners. Both of them go to help "defend" the tower every time it pushes up then end up wave-clearing it because they're junglers and can. The 1v2 laners end up with zero cs at any point. It completely screwed over WE's kayle last game.
Allocation of farm really needs to be more thought out in this game. Giving all the farm to whoever wave-clears the fastest is such a bad system.
But preventing that early turret damage is arguably pretty important - taking the first turret also led to a free dragon pickup.
It's not like they're waveclearing it in center lane, they're getting shit off of the tower and also preventing the tower dive.
No matter what you do, when you're sending your "top" laner into a 1v2 lane, they are not getting much farm early. Perhaps they've decided that the best way to deal with it is simply prioritize the jungler farm above the 1v2 laner's farm.
Got to love TL's League of legends OPs:-) Always updated with all the information there: results, standings, schedule, streams, vods - simply everything :-))
On January 18 2013 00:26 M2 wrote: Got to love TL's League of legends OPs:-) Always updated with all the information there: results, standings, schedule, streams, vods - simply everything :-))
yeah ,compared to the sc2 side whenever i wanna find the details it always send me to liquidpedia and wasted another 10 secs worth of loading....
That 1-1 goes a long way toward iG making it out of the group. Snipers is the wild card of group A still (their win against SKT looked good, but isn't particularly indicative of anything) who have upset potential, but other than that I don't think any of the other 3 teams are good enough to take a game against WE unless they get extremely lucky or have some iG-level cheese ready.
On January 18 2013 00:26 M2 wrote: Got to love TL's League of legends OPs:-) Always updated with all the information there: results, standings, schedule, streams, vods - simply everything :-))
yeah ,compared to the sc2 side whenever i wanna find the details it always send me to liquidpedia and wasted another 10 secs worth of loading....
first world problems...
lineup of teams looks amazing and i'm looking forward to watching the rest of this tourney.
Skt look like a completely different team to the one that took out iem. No synergy, poor ward coverage, outpicked and comprehensively outplayed by AG there. 11-0.
On January 18 2013 10:51 dooraven wrote: Guessing Diamond is pretty happy with the amount of viewers, 9k for a rebroadcast is pretty sweet.
I'm glad it's going this well. The games are pretty fun to watch, and it shows that these teams do have draw within the non-asian communities even with the relative low exposure issue
On January 18 2013 11:19 ketchup wrote: Yes, they seem to be using the Chinese vod with english commentary for the rebroadcast.
Also, Elise support probably going start rolling on NA in around 2-3 weeks. Haha.
If only the NA community was more keen on watching non-NA scene. l0l
I dunno. I feel it's inevitable as NA pros seem more willing(although no where near what you'd expect!) to keep up with the non-NA scene and also stream-scrim to test such things. This should trickle down! Plus Elise seems to be regarded as a fun champion so it makes the idea easier to follow through with.
On January 18 2013 11:19 ketchup wrote: Yes, they seem to be using the Chinese vod with english commentary for the rebroadcast.
Also, Elise support probably going start rolling on NA in around 2-3 weeks. Haha.
If only the NA community was more keen on watching non-NA scene. l0l
I'm getting flamed still for going thirster wisper warmogs on adc's. makes me laugh my ass off.
On January 18 2013 11:29 foxmeep wrote: Has Orb played a lot of LoL? He's actually quite a reasonable caster.
Hes been playing a ton of lol I've watched him stream up on the sidebar there. He was terrible at first but hes really but the effort into playing it a ton even before casting a single event. Hes got a ton of casting experience from old school sc2 days from casting low key Korean tournaments that were always better quality then any other constant event.
Edit: spoilered because the rebroadcast is coming soon + Show Spoiler +
I absolutely love watching iG games, they are like the group of friends that jokes about breaking the meta. Cept they break it. and they are a top tier team. this time it was: Olaf, Mumu, Ryze, Pantheon and TF
Interested Asian and European fans watched the eslasia broadcast earlier today, and interested Americans probably checked the VODs by now.
Also, the names today aren't too appealing - LGD disappointed up to now, and AG's only achievement is beating SKT T1 in their last match. MVP White isn't recognized as a Korean top team and kinda lost their luster after the OGN group phase. iG is always good for some fun, but the general attitude seems to be "second-rate chinese team" because they're not WE.
On January 23 2013 07:23 DragoonTT wrote: Interested Asian and European fans watched the eslasia broadcast earlier today, and interested Americans probably checked the VODs by now.
Also, the names today aren't too appealing - LGD disappointed up to now, and AG's only achievement is beating SKT T1 in their last match. MVP White isn't recognized as a Korean top team and kinda lost their luster after the OGN group phase. iG is always good for some fun, but the general attitude seems to be "second-rate chinese team" because they're not WE.
LGD's honestly performing a lot worse than I expected.
Their level should be about that of PE/MVP White based on past achievement, but they're not performing to that level.
On January 23 2013 08:32 czylu wrote: who is this caster? he's really bad. He missed the lee sin dragon steal and he said randuins is less tanky then warmogs -.-
RAPiD, I think it's his first time solo, so mistakes will happen. He has casted A LOT of stuff though and is pretty good, but this is a new experience for him. Also he is not controlling the camera.
On January 23 2013 09:54 SeeDLiNg wrote: Tuesday Thursday at 6-9 EST are the only days I have class... They should have consulted with me before making this schedule.
11 minutes in 10k gold lead for iG. Yesterday in the last match between GSG and Najin Shield they picked no AD carry either. Maybe meta shift in Asia ^^
On January 24 2013 20:59 NeoIllusions wrote: Wow, wtf, that was game 2? d'oh I guess pushing 1-1 vs a much more experienced team is a win for TPS. But still, da throwz...
Anyone recap game 1 of TPS v iG for me? :O
Game 1 was pretty one sided from what I remember. Jungle Elise got ahead early and put a ton of pressure allowing TPS to take down most of the turrets early on. Game went out of iG's reach pretty quickly.
Throws aside, I'm pretty impressed by TPS Ohreal as he was hitting some pretty nice bandage toss and ult's throughout the game.
On January 24 2013 20:59 NeoIllusions wrote: Wow, wtf, that was game 2? d'oh I guess pushing 1-1 vs a much more experienced team is a win for TPS. But still, da throwz...
Anyone recap game 1 of TPS v iG for me? :O
Game 1 was pretty one sided from what I remember. Jungle Elise got ahead early and put a ton of pressure allowing TPS to take down most of the turrets early on. Game went out of iG's reach pretty quickly.
Throws aside, I'm pretty impressed by TPS Ohreal as he was hitting some pretty nice bandage toss and ult's throughout the game.
OhReal had some nasty Amumu ults (4-5 people in some midgame wipes). Pretty impressed. Not impressed with Zonda though. Didn't have an impact all game.
Man. TPS really impressed me thus far by going toe for toe with IG. In fact, I would say they are already in better shape than IG. I'd predict that they will get out of the group as the 3rd seed after WE and NJShield.
On January 25 2013 04:27 FindMeInKenya wrote: Man. TPS really impressed me thus far by going toe for toe with IG. In fact, I would say they are already in better shape than IG. I'd predict that they will get out of the group as the 3rd seed after WE and NJShield.
The 1-1 actually may have worked in iG's favor, tbh, because it puts pressure on TPS to 1-1 or better against WE. T1 or AG should be easy 2-0s for either team, so it comes down to how they do vs. Shield and WE. iG already 1-1ed against WE and has a good track record against Shield in the past. It's not going to be easy for TPS to do better than them.
TPS really needed to 2-0 it if they wanted to close out their playoff spot.
On January 25 2013 07:05 KissBlade wrote: I work during the rebroadcast but any chance I can catch these games somewhere later? I'm really interested in the TPS vs IG. =)
I don't know much about the old AHQ iteration because I didn't follow non-TPA Taiwanese teams that closely. The current one is basically a merging of two mid-tier Taiwanese teams, Corsair and SteelSeries-WIE. Relative to other Taiwanese teams, they're quite good, but they're still a step below TPA/TPS.
Their coach also was/is a caster for Garena Taiwan (not sure if he still is, but he was at Worlds).
On January 31 2013 18:02 TheYango wrote: I don't know much about the old AHQ iteration because I didn't follow non-TPA Taiwanese teams that closely. The current one is basically a merging of two mid-tier Taiwanese teams, Corsair and SteelSeries-WIE. Relative to other Taiwanese teams, they're quite good, but they're still a step below TPA/TPS.
Their coach also was/is a caster for Garena Taiwan (not sure if he still is, but he was at Worlds).
Thank you. Is ahq something like an organization or company?
On January 31 2013 18:02 TheYango wrote: I don't know much about the old AHQ iteration because I didn't follow non-TPA Taiwanese teams that closely. The current one is basically a merging of two mid-tier Taiwanese teams, Corsair and SteelSeries-WIE. Relative to other Taiwanese teams, they're quite good, but they're still a step below TPA/TPS.
Their coach also was/is a caster for Garena Taiwan (not sure if he still is, but he was at Worlds).
Thank you. Is ahq something like an organization or company?
IIRC they're a service/PC parts/accessories distributor.
Royal probably needs to take at least 1 game if they want to advance.
Looks like their role swap wasn't just a one-game thing.
This is probably stronger overall (though I think it's a waste to have Uzi playing something other than AD--his AD is legitimately top 3 in the world, and while Tabe's used to be up there, he's been playing support for far too long now), but I don't expect them to do well in the short term. Probably won't advance from groups unless they get used to their new roles fast.
It's no good, Royal isn't going to win in this state.
I guess this is moving one step back to move 2 steps forward, but it's still frustrating to see them like this, especially since Uzi clearly isn't used to playing AP at all.
On the plus side, it looks like Tabe still has some of his edge when it comes to AD.
On January 31 2013 20:34 TheYango wrote: Royal probably needs to take at least 1 game if they want to advance.
Looks like their role swap wasn't just a one-game thing.
This is probably stronger overall (though I think it's a waste to have Uzi playing something other than AD--his AD is legitimately top 3 in the world, and while Tabe's used to be up there, he's been playing support for far too long now), but I don't expect them to do well in the short term. Probably won't advance from groups unless they get used to their new roles fast.
On January 31 2013 20:34 TheYango wrote: Royal probably needs to take at least 1 game if they want to advance.
Looks like their role swap wasn't just a one-game thing.
This is probably stronger overall (though I think it's a waste to have Uzi playing something other than AD--his AD is legitimately top 3 in the world, and while Tabe's used to be up there, he's been playing support for far too long now), but I don't expect them to do well in the short term. Probably won't advance from groups unless they get used to their new roles fast.
Hi Yango, not sure if you watched the TPA vs SGS game from GPL but something that's beginning to really catch my eye is TPA's ward placements. Between this game and SGS they seem to always be able to ward at the right places and react properly so that they can ride out the disadvantages early game and take control at the 20-30 min mark.
Thing is I'm nowhere near good enough to understand how they do it... if possible could you shred some light? because I feel like it's one of their strengths and I have no idea how they plan it.
Where have you two guys have been? People play Elise support for ages already. Elise support is just like Zyra support minus the ult but more survivality.
On January 31 2013 22:07 Caphe wrote: Where have you two guys have been? People play Elise support for ages already. Elise support is just like Zyra support minus the ult but more survivality.
i know that it has been played for a long time but being a university student doesnt allow me to watch asian matches every day lol I just said that I happened to catch one today since I'm home today.
I think both teams are ok with the re-game, WE was ahead but TPS had the momentum after that baron steal. Hope that their internet can whole up. I dont think I can take another 30 mins pause one more time.
World Elite's basically roaming as 5 now and TPS now not getting to pick off people the way they had been earlier. TPS not having a good time anymore.
And holy shit, WX surviving Khazix by a hair, just-arrived sona heal from a nearly OOM sona and a final Q worth of lifesteal. Lives with under 50 health from the last tick of ignite.
Caomei splitpushing on singed but Nunu Twitch gank him and actually manage to lock him down and get him killed by forcing him to retreat into the jungle instead of back up lane ... into a collapsing volibear + khazix.
Rest of WE was split off and pushing bottom lane, and TPS immediately takes baron off the back of the Singed shutdown kill - killing it so fast that WE can't even get there.
And holy shit, TPS starts pushing together bottom, and engages into a fight... and somehow, in a 5v5 with baron, TPS gets aced and only takes Clearlove's Xin down, leaving 3 people on WE with 10% health or left... and WX nearly full health. No resets for TPS's khazix hurts.
Good game, WE just a little bit more decisive with their teamfighting and coordination. Caomei an absolute beast, always fun to watch that guy play. TPS look like they have some potential, certainly a team to watch.
On February 01 2013 00:27 Chexx wrote: yeah twitch seems so futile later stages into the game with no escape. You need just somebody like Singed to hardengage on him.
Miss Fortune also does not have escape but is viable, kog maw as well, I dont think this is the main issue
On February 01 2013 08:06 -orb- wrote: Day 7 starting with some awesome teams guys! TPA vs Royal and TPS vs WE.
If any of you have constructive criticism/comments on my casting please reply with it or send me a PM
your casting is pretty good i'd listen to you over vast majority of casters
yango how do you feel about royal's role switching? glad tabe is on adc?
He's gutted at the decision. Not saying it's the wrong decision but it's obviously hurting Royal atm. It's a whopping 4 player rotation on positions. Uzi's skills are vastly wasted on AP, instead of AD. Mro is a terribad support. Just follows Tabe around mindlessly. etc, etc.
On February 01 2013 08:22 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
On February 01 2013 08:06 -orb- wrote: Day 7 starting with some awesome teams guys! TPA vs Royal and TPS vs WE.
If any of you have constructive criticism/comments on my casting please reply with it or send me a PM
your casting is pretty good i'd listen to you over vast majority of casters
yango how do you feel about royal's role switching? glad tabe is on adc?
He's gutted at the decision. Not saying it's the wrong decision but it's obviously hurting Royal atm. It's a whopping 4 player rotation on positions. Uzi's skills are vastly wasted on AP, instead of AD. Mro is a terribad support. Just follows Tabe around mindlessly. etc, etc.
On February 01 2013 08:22 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
On February 01 2013 08:06 -orb- wrote: Day 7 starting with some awesome teams guys! TPA vs Royal and TPS vs WE.
If any of you have constructive criticism/comments on my casting please reply with it or send me a PM
your casting is pretty good i'd listen to you over vast majority of casters
yango how do you feel about royal's role switching? glad tabe is on adc?
He's gutted at the decision. Not saying it's the wrong decision but it's obviously hurting Royal atm. It's a whopping 4 player rotation on positions. Uzi's skills are vastly wasted on AP, instead of AD. Mro is a terribad support. Just follows Tabe around mindlessly. etc, etc.
poor yango ;_;
royal's laning looked really good though vs tpa
Mostly because with Uzi playing a solo and Tabe on AD they can win 2 lanes instead of one.
The problem is now the opposite of what they had before, which is that they totally fall apart after laning.
On February 01 2013 08:22 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
On February 01 2013 08:06 -orb- wrote: Day 7 starting with some awesome teams guys! TPA vs Royal and TPS vs WE.
If any of you have constructive criticism/comments on my casting please reply with it or send me a PM
your casting is pretty good i'd listen to you over vast majority of casters
yango how do you feel about royal's role switching? glad tabe is on adc?
He's gutted at the decision. Not saying it's the wrong decision but it's obviously hurting Royal atm. It's a whopping 4 player rotation on positions. Uzi's skills are vastly wasted on AP, instead of AD. Mro is a terribad support. Just follows Tabe around mindlessly. etc, etc.
poor yango ;_;
royal's laning looked really good though vs tpa
too bad bebe is king. But srsly, bebe, wtf. He's never looked dis gud. A few mistake item builds by ballz and Stanley but easily overlooked. First time Kha'zix by Toyz and just to show you have faceroll scyther is.
edit: also is that really an issue of role switching or is that just a consequence of poor communication? give them some time and maybe it will improve i personally think this new role setup is promising ;o
On February 01 2013 08:44 Carnivorous Sheep wrote: why di dthey ban veigar lol
edit: also is that really an issue of role switching or is that just a consequence of poor communication? give them some time and maybe it will improve i personally think this new role setup is promising ;o
It'll probably be more successful than their old setup. I'm just irked as it feels like a band-aid solution for Royal's problems as a team.
Uzi will be a good AP with time, but as an AD he could compete with the best after only having been playing professionally for 3 months.
On February 01 2013 08:48 Sermokala wrote: oouch jarvan ulting into an enemies mf ult. Not exactly the best idea I've ever seen.
gunblade jax is a thing again?
It's not bad, just really squishy~ unless you get extremely fed, you'll have a lull wehre you'll do shit tons of damage, but you can't really take much in terms of punishment. The reason triforce jax was so popular before, was it had a nice linear power and defense curve. hexdrinker/phage/etc, offered nice offense, along with decent defense.
Hey everyone just a quick update. The tournament resumes this week but with the LCS super week coming up it seems like a REALLY bad time to try and fit in a NA cast. So we will be doing our own super week next week with 4 days of action!
Of course ESL Asia will have the live cast, but for all the NA viewers that can't stay up we have you all set for next week!
On February 26 2013 12:10 NeoIllusions wrote: Second series for SWL after the Lunar New year is none other than NaJin Shield vs WE.
Locodoco vs Weixiao sup? Gonna have to pray for Loco here, hue...
As a we fan, I think we may lose because they may not start to train after holiday, and they need to prepare strategies for Gleague grand final.
That's very true. G-League Finals is in a week or so and that's obviously a bigger priority than SWL, which is still in the earlier stages.
That said, I still think WE's the favorite against Shield. Bot lane is going to be exciting as fuck to watch.
Because I start to play and watch Lol since s2 final, I don't know how good locodoco is. But based on kid and weixiao interview the only Korean adc they give credit to is cpt jack.
And PE vs Royal is the most amazing match(3rd and 4th team after ig and we) recently. There is a rumor said that Uzi will leave Royal. In China, Uzi is considered the second best adc in the world after weixiao. In the past Royal can easily stomp PE, but after the position change we don't know what will happen. And with a coach added to PE will they improve ?
On February 26 2013 14:37 niukasu1990 wrote: And PE vs Royal is the most amazing match(3rd and 4th team after ig and we) recently.
That's a questionable ranking, I mean iG just got crushed by OMG last week. Also worth noting their recent loss to Spider in the LPL qualifier which forced them into the 2nd round robin. Everything below WE is variable-land in China.
On February 26 2013 14:37 niukasu1990 wrote: And PE vs Royal is the most amazing match(3rd and 4th team after ig and we) recently.
That's a questionable ranking, I mean iG just got crushed by OMG last week. Also worth noting their recent loss to Spider in the LPL qualifier which forced them into the 2nd round robin. Everything below WE is variable-land in China.
My favourite team is IG since their streaming are extremely funny(especially xiaoxiao). So i may be biased. When they got crushed by omg, pdd and kid were not playing. They lose to spider in a bo1, and spider is very well prepared.
On February 26 2013 20:05 Doctorbeat wrote: Shield is playing really damn good. Expession is incredible, and Loco certainly isn't disappointing, even though he missed a few ults.
He got outcsed, hasnt landed a lot of ults and his getting caught just now put WE back into the game. Honestly not impressed. Let's see if Expession can carry hard enough.
On February 26 2013 20:05 Doctorbeat wrote: Shield is playing really damn good. Expession is incredible, and Loco certainly isn't disappointing, even though he missed a few ults.
He got outcsed, hasnt landed a lot of ults and his getting caught just now put WE back into the game. Honestly not impressed. Let's see if Expession can carry hard enough.
Those max range ultis were kinda gamble, if loco hit them he would have been hero of the day, too bad.
On February 26 2013 20:05 Doctorbeat wrote: Shield is playing really damn good. Expession is incredible, and Loco certainly isn't disappointing, even though he missed a few ults.
He got outcsed, hasnt landed a lot of ults and his getting caught just now put WE back into the game. Honestly not impressed. Let's see if Expession can carry hard enough.
Apparently not. I don't think Loco played that bad honestly, considering he's just now getting back in his old position and in a new team.
Shield definitely looks like it will be a solid team in KR at least. Should be able to give competition to the likes of Azubu and KT.
Max range Varus ults are actually really hard to hit. Travel time is so slow, people will just walk out of them. You really need to have them at 1k range and walking towards you if you want to hit it.
Sheild played well there - their inexperience showed in the end though but still for a fresh roster that game was pretty good. Loco probably needs to improve a bit more but there is tons of potential there.
Pretty impressed by yellowoout on his first match.
On February 26 2013 20:19 ChaoSbringer wrote: Max range Varus ults are actually really hard to hit. Travel time is so slow, people will just walk out of them. You really need to have them at 1k range and walking towards you if you want to hit it.
90% of twitch chat would disagree with you, its so glorious.
When WE did not use some trolling champion(nami,Vlad mid, Kog'maw adc(WX had not used it for 1 year)),they return to a better form. And locodoco play pretty bad.
Really a bad call by Najin to take on loco so soon after he switches roles again. He's underperforming and it shows. Luckily maknoon's praise for Expession is showing to be true, and the rest of Najin Shield isn't that bad.
The thresh is playing a bit poorly this match as well but I think it's a poor pick with such an inexperienced combo to begin with.
Apparently that was AG's third string team. (Their main couldn't make it or something so they had all sub players ...) Also loco didn't look that bad. He got baited by his jungler into bad fights at times or his support.
As we all known, Sword just won OGN winter. For Royal Club, it just finished the roster change. The highest elo player in Chinese ladder(Top player Godlike, known for his Renekton) just join the team along with a famous mid play White(previous ig mid) and their adc Uzi is considered to be the best ADC after weixiao in the world, with a experienced support player Tabe(previous ig adc). I think the final score may be 1:1.
On March 05 2013 22:56 Fwmeh wrote: I wish I could watch, but it has so much downtime, and I cannot listen during the downtime due to the music, so I always miss when it actually starts.
Game 2 postoned due to the skillshot bug. Personally it's why I love the recast method, we can cut out all the bullshit.
Ok it's like 9AM here and the OP is randomly breaking when I try to change it. So I don't feel like fighting with it atm as I have to be up in a couple hours.
Today at 6PM EST we will be doing WE vs. Najin Shield and Najin Sword vs. Royal.
Sneaking off to kill minions in order to deny enemy push? Really clever move by expression I'm growing more towards him the more I watch him. New shield is good, like really good O.O
On March 06 2013 09:37 Fusilero wrote: Sneaking off to kill minions in order to deny enemy push? Really clever move by expression I'm growing more towards him the more I watch him. New shield is good, like really good O.O
because of this move, he is separated from his team and do nothing in the next team fight
Looking over the points in each group, it seems group 1 standings are more or less settled. WE is locked in 1st, iG needs to throw vs SKT (who haven't even won a game in the group yet) to not qualify second, and Shield needs to 2-0 all 3 remaining matches to pass Snipers.
In group B, TPA is locked for 1st unless Sword more or less sweeps everyone (or if the super unlikely scenario of TPA gets 2-0ed by Sword and White AND PE 2-0s Sword happens). 2nd/3rd get a bit sloppy here. PE is very likely to qualify 2nd or 3rd, which one depends more on Sword's performance than theirs (their only remaining match is vs. Sword while Sword has to play everyone). White is 3rd now by points, but they have almost no chance of actually qualifying because their remaining 2 matches are against two difficult teams (TPA and Sword), so they're almost guaranteed to get passed by Royal and/or Sword (Royal and Sword still haven't gotten their 3 "freewin" points from playing LGD yet).
Royal's chance of advancing rests almost entirely on their final game against Sword. If they finish their match vs. Sword 2-0, and clean up LGD with a straightforward 2-0, then they end with 8 points, meaning that PE needs to 2-0 Sword to pass them (unlikely). If PE 1-1s Sword it will go to tiebreakers, but with the noticeable improvement from their new lineup, Royal will likely win against PE if it comes down to a tiebreaker. If Sword wins the 2nd game, then Royal's chances are basically gone (their only hope then is Sword losing matches against teams they are ostensibly better than).
On March 08 2013 04:05 nosliw wrote: Yeah, not sure what happened to tpa
They're currently in a slump, lost 0-2 to a show match against AHQ, had to play from behind against KLH to barely get a win in GPL.
There was a face book page post from their support player a few days ago generally indicating they are unable to consistently be aggressive/pressure in S3.
Orb wearing the old EG jersey. Bringing back some not so good memories. I wouldn't want to keep that jersey if I were him.
Its funny to see the more different the asian meta gets the more it stays the same now with the rest of the world. Even they are now useing renekton and threatening nasus jungle.
Expession performing well in this competition, even better than his showing in OGN The Champions Winter Season in my opinion. The only top laner he didn't manage to stomp was PDD.
Hey guys we were not able to get in the games last night to record them, as for whatever reason they limited the observer slots to 2, so not cast. Our only option was to cast someone else's vod with it muted (ie: no game sounds). That sucks, so just check out ESL Asia for today's VOD's.
Sorry to do this again but their appears to be some bug with the Korean tournament realm where games don't work with more than 4 observers (has anyone ever heard of this even?) so we could not record last nights games. The tournament organizers sent us VOD's to work with, but we can't download them (and everyone in China that recorded it is asleep) -_____-.
So no cast today, likely with MLG/LCS just do a bigger week next week. Sorry again
I really like these casters. I am not sure if I like them more than the ogn (english) casters but about the same, that means my 2 sets of favorite LoL casters (:
gj guys keep it up! The Vods are so high quality and free, so nice. I Can't even remember (ok I can), but it's so long ago, when I last time saaw WE fighting.
On March 21 2013 21:44 RiZu wrote: Holy Najin sword nice outplay.
Just as you said that...
Yeah, guess that just for the first blood. Najin Sword seemed to be out of shape and TPA looking on form today, especially Maknoon. I guess the Kennen pick took away Maknoon counter to Shen.
Oh man WE v TPA and iG v Najin Shield, that's a pretty stacked line-up. Unfortunately I wasn't able to watch much of the group stages but I'm definitively gonna keep up with if from here on.
On March 22 2013 00:27 onlywonderboy wrote: Oh man WE v TPA and iG v Najin Shield, that's a pretty stacked line-up. Unfortunately I wasn't able to watch much of the group stages but I'm definitively gonna keep up with if from here on.
I think this is the most stacked bracket out of any tournament we've seen so far.
Team WE: Reigning IPL5 champions, by far the strongest team in their region, undefeated (set-wise) since S2 World Finals Azubu Taipei Assassins: Reigning World Finals champions, by far the strongest team in their region (18-0 in the GPL) Invictus Gaming: The second strongest team in their region Najin Sword: Reigning OGN champions
I'm copy/pasting from the email I got. We will get the ESV schedule out tomorrow.
Playoffs Top two teams of each group advance to winner bracket Third place team of each group advance to loser bracket Double elimination bracket Bracket stage matches are best of three before WB and LB finals WB final and LB final are best of fine Winners of WB and LB advance to Grandfinal
WE vs TPA 28th March 20:00KST 1st game: WE vs TPA 2nd game: TPA vs WE 3rd game: WE's chioce
NJ SWD vs iG 26th March 20:00KST 1st game:NJ SWD vs iG 2nd game:iG vs NJ SWD 3rd game:NJ SWD's chioce
PE vs (loser of WEvsTPA) 3rd April 20:00KST 1stgame: PE vs(loser of WEvsTPA) 2rd game: (loser of WEvsTPA) vs PE 3rd game: (loser of WEvsTPA)'s chioce
TPS vs (loser of SWDvsIG) 27th March 20:00KST 1stgame: TPS vs (loser of SWDvsIG) 2rd game: (loser of SWDvsIG) vs TPS 3rd game: (loser of SWDvsIG)'s choice
haven't seen asian lol in a while, but from what I have seen this week, I think IG and WE are top 3 in the world. They definitely seem stronger then european teams imo. Am I alone in this assesement? -
On March 26 2013 21:41 AA.spoon wrote: haven't seen asian lol in a while, but from what I have seen this week, I think IG and WE are top 3 in the world. They definitely seem stronger then european teams imo. Am I alone in this assesement? -
No, the Chinese have historically been the king of Mobas
Eh... as a region, Korea is still unparalleled. CN has WE and iG, TW has TPA. But the rest of the CN/TW is rather mediocre. Compare this to Korea who can offer Blaze/Frost, Sword, KT B as their best and still have leftover teams like Shield, KT A, LG-IM, and SKT T1
the whole game, NJSW seemed to be playing scared/not normal self... they barely did any ganking/dives, didnt push towers to gain an edge... nothing they do of the norm came out.. almost looked like old CLG.EU sitting in lane farming trying to get to late game safely, but unable to deal with the aggressive pressure from IG, and just kept falling behind till they lost...
SSONG got shit on by Zz1tai, hard. From there, Sword has little to no map control. Game 1 was just a clinic by iG on how to keep Sword's carries at bay. Game 2, iG trolls and gives away a freebie ace to Sword but Zz1tai was 50+ CS ahead of SSONG that it didn't impact the game at all.
P.S. iLLuSioN builds Hec like I do. I feel vindicated.
Did anyone else feel like Zz1tai tested the waters with his Diana, then decided it would be safe to pick a weak laner like Karthus after realizing how much better he was than the opposing mid-laner? That kid is scary, if iG upgrades their bottom lane they might become the strongest team in the world.
On March 26 2013 22:08 Letmelose wrote: Did anyone else feel like Zz1tai tested the waters with his Diana, then decided it would be safe to pick a weak laner like Karthus after realizing how much better he was than the opposing mid-laner? That kid is scary, if iG upgrades their bottom lane they might become the strongest team in the world.
lol, I dunno about testing the waters but his Karthus Lay Waste and Walls were pretty much spot on. He went Abyssal instead of Nashor's on Diana too. /shrug
On March 26 2013 22:08 Letmelose wrote: Did anyone else feel like Zz1tai tested the waters with his Diana, then decided it would be safe to pick a weak laner like Karthus after realizing how much better he was than the opposing mid-laner? That kid is scary, if iG upgrades their bottom lane they might become the strongest team in the world.
lol, I dunno about testing the waters but his Karthus Lay Waste and Walls were pretty much spot on. He went Abyssal instead of Nashor's on Diana too. /shrug
Imagine if iG has Uzi... :O hi yanger
I think XiaoXiao is by far the weakest member of the team, he would hold Uzi back. The moment they get a world-class support, they might even surpass Team WE. Uzi joining iG with an elite support like Fzzf would break the competitive scene. He needs to stay in his shitty team so that the rest of the world doesn't end up quitting their jobs.
On March 26 2013 21:46 NeoIllusions wrote: Eh... as a region, Korea is still unparalleled. CN has WE and iG, TW has TPA. But the rest of the CN/TW is rather mediocre. Compare this to Korea who can offer Blaze/Frost, Sword, KT B as their best and still have leftover teams like Shield, KT A, LG-IM, and SKT T1
I wont say that. I think Royal and OMG is as good as Blaze/Frost, Sword or KTB
On paper, I agree that XiaoXiao is by far their weakest but Yango says that he's the iG captain. So it goes beyond simply replacing player X with player Y who is better at that role. :< iG has so much potential... I'm glad they upset Sword.
On March 26 2013 21:46 NeoIllusions wrote: Eh... as a region, Korea is still unparalleled. CN has WE and iG, TW has TPA. But the rest of the CN/TW is rather mediocre. Compare this to Korea who can offer Blaze/Frost, Sword, KT B as their best and still have leftover teams like Shield, KT A, LG-IM, and SKT T1
I wont say that. I think Royal and OMG is as good as Blaze/Frost, Sword or KTB
eh, Royal's roster continues to be shaky. They ought to fix that first and foremost. OMG I haven't really watched before. Recommend me a VOD of them?
On March 26 2013 22:08 Letmelose wrote: Did anyone else feel like Zz1tai tested the waters with his Diana, then decided it would be safe to pick a weak laner like Karthus after realizing how much better he was than the opposing mid-laner? That kid is scary, if iG upgrades their bottom lane they might become the strongest team in the world.
lol, I dunno about testing the waters but his Karthus Lay Waste and Walls were pretty much spot on. He went Abyssal instead of Nashor's on Diana too. /shrug
Imagine if iG has Uzi... :O hi yanger
I think XiaoXiao is by far the weakest member of the team, he would hold Uzi back. The moment they get a world-class support, they might even surpass Team WE. Uzi joining iG with an elite support like Fzzf would break the competitive scene. He needs to stay in his shitty team so that the rest of the world doesn't end up quitting their jobs.
Actually, xiaoxiao is the caller of IG. IG's tactics was invented by him.
On March 26 2013 21:46 NeoIllusions wrote: Eh... as a region, Korea is still unparalleled. CN has WE and iG, TW has TPA. But the rest of the CN/TW is rather mediocre. Compare this to Korea who can offer Blaze/Frost, Sword, KT B as their best and still have leftover teams like Shield, KT A, LG-IM, and SKT T1
I wont say that. I think Royal and OMG is as good as Blaze/Frost, Sword or KTB
eh, Royal's roster continues to be shaky. They ought to fix that first and foremost. OMG I haven't really watched before. Recommend me a VOD of them?
I think Royal's roster will be stable since LPL has already started, and after a short period of time, it may not be as good as iG or WE, but Royal can reach the level of Blaze/frost, sword and KT B.
On March 26 2013 21:46 NeoIllusions wrote: Eh... as a region, Korea is still unparalleled. CN has WE and iG, TW has TPA. But the rest of the CN/TW is rather mediocre. Compare this to Korea who can offer Blaze/Frost, Sword, KT B as their best and still have leftover teams like Shield, KT A, LG-IM, and SKT T1
I wont say that. I think Royal and OMG is as good as Blaze/Frost, Sword or KTB
I would say Royal Club and OMG are more at the level of MVP Ozone (managed to knock out teams such as Positive Energy and OMG in Chinese tournaments in the past) than the likes of KT Rolster B and CJ Entus Blaze. This is the first time a premier team from Korea has participated in a Chinese tournament, and it certainly has been a humbling experience.
However, I wouldn't base all these assumptions on a couple of matches in a non-LAN setting. Azubu Blaze has a 3-0 record over iG in online tournaments, MVP Ozone has a 5-0 record over TPA in online tournaments. It says very little about the relative strength of these teams, but the Chinese scene definately has the bragging rights for now.
On March 26 2013 22:08 Letmelose wrote: Did anyone else feel like Zz1tai tested the waters with his Diana, then decided it would be safe to pick a weak laner like Karthus after realizing how much better he was than the opposing mid-laner? That kid is scary, if iG upgrades their bottom lane they might become the strongest team in the world.
lol, I dunno about testing the waters but his Karthus Lay Waste and Walls were pretty much spot on. He went Abyssal instead of Nashor's on Diana too. /shrug
Imagine if iG has Uzi... :O hi yanger
I think XiaoXiao is by far the weakest member of the team, he would hold Uzi back. The moment they get a world-class support, they might even surpass Team WE. Uzi joining iG with an elite support like Fzzf would break the competitive scene. He needs to stay in his shitty team so that the rest of the world doesn't end up quitting their jobs.
Actually, xiaoxiao is the caller of IG. IG's tactics was invented by him.
Mechanically speaking, I think he is very subpar, and prevents iG from having a killer bottom lane. Perhaps he would serve better as a coach, and if a mechanically sound player with shot-calling experience such as Mistake could replace him, iG would become monstrously strong. It's just my opinion on the team.
On March 26 2013 21:46 NeoIllusions wrote: Eh... as a region, Korea is still unparalleled. CN has WE and iG, TW has TPA. But the rest of the CN/TW is rather mediocre. Compare this to Korea who can offer Blaze/Frost, Sword, KT B as their best and still have leftover teams like Shield, KT A, LG-IM, and SKT T1
I wont say that. I think Royal and OMG is as good as Blaze/Frost, Sword or KTB
I would say Royal Club and OMG are more at the level of MVP Ozone (managed to knock out teams such as Positive Energy and OMG in Chinese tournaments in the past) than the likes of KT Rolster B and CJ Entus Blaze. This is the first time a premier team from Korea has participated in a Chinese tournament, and it certainly has been a humbling experience.
However, I wouldn't base all these assumptions on a couple of matches in a non-LAN setting. Azubu Blaze has a 3-0 record over iG in online tournaments, MVP Ozone has a 5-0 record over TPA in online tournaments. It says very little about the relative strength of these teams, but the Chinese scene definately has the bragging rights for now.
I totally agree with u. Like SWL, I really don't think IG WE Najin Sword prepare because of OGN and LPL. They are using the same strategy. They are just using the basic mechanic skill and understanding and cooperation. Maybe only TPA TPS take it serious. But I don't think the level of a team can be judged by a LAN settings game either. The only way to know which team is better to play at least 10game in a short period of time. For example, when weixiao castes the ogn winter final, he stated that we vs Najin sword was 50:50 and they always practice together at that time. I think that is convincing.
On March 26 2013 21:46 NeoIllusions wrote: Eh... as a region, Korea is still unparalleled. CN has WE and iG, TW has TPA. But the rest of the CN/TW is rather mediocre. Compare this to Korea who can offer Blaze/Frost, Sword, KT B as their best and still have leftover teams like Shield, KT A, LG-IM, and SKT T1
I wont say that. I think Royal and OMG is as good as Blaze/Frost, Sword or KTB
I would say Royal Club and OMG are more at the level of MVP Ozone (managed to knock out teams such as Positive Energy and OMG in Chinese tournaments in the past) than the likes of KT Rolster B and CJ Entus Blaze. This is the first time a premier team from Korea has participated in a Chinese tournament, and it certainly has been a humbling experience.
However, I wouldn't base all these assumptions on a couple of matches in a non-LAN setting. Azubu Blaze has a 3-0 record over iG in online tournaments, MVP Ozone has a 5-0 record over TPA in online tournaments. It says very little about the relative strength of these teams, but the Chinese scene definately has the bragging rights for now.
I totally agree with u. Like SWL, I really don't think IG WE Najin Sword prepare because of OGN and LPL. They are using the same strategy. They are just using the basic mechanic skill and understanding and cooperation. Maybe only TPA TPS take it serious. But I don't think the level of a team can be judged by a LAN settings game either. The only way to know which team is better to play at least 10game in a short period of time. For example, when weixiao castes the ogn winter final, he stated that we vs Najin sword was 50:50 and they always practice together at that time. I think that is convincing.
I'm not sure if scrims are the best way to judge a team either, because I've heard Reapered commentating back when he was in Azubu Blaze, and he claimed that they would scrim against TPA, and they'd lose maybe once every one hundred games or so. Practice games are just practice games, no matter how many games there are.
There's just not enough cross-regional play right now, so we have to assume a lot on the few LAN and online tournaments that comes along. Based on the results of SWL S2 alone, we could assume that the top two teams in China are better than the top two teams in Korea (iG > NJS), the top 5~6 teams of China (Positive Energy, Royal Club) are comparable with the top 6~8 teams of Korea (MVP Ozone). However, these assumptions would become more accurate once we have more cross-regional games in a LAN setting. Since Riot made that next to impossible, us Koreans will have to wait our turn until the S3 World Championships. Maybe Najin Sword is pulling off what Taipei Assassins did, and are dicking around pretending to be weak in online tournaments to induce overconfidence in their enemies.
On March 26 2013 22:08 Letmelose wrote: Did anyone else feel like Zz1tai tested the waters with his Diana, then decided it would be safe to pick a weak laner like Karthus after realizing how much better he was than the opposing mid-laner? That kid is scary, if iG upgrades their bottom lane they might become the strongest team in the world.
lol, I dunno about testing the waters but his Karthus Lay Waste and Walls were pretty much spot on. He went Abyssal instead of Nashor's on Diana too. /shrug
Imagine if iG has Uzi... :O hi yanger
I think XiaoXiao is by far the weakest member of the team, he would hold Uzi back. The moment they get a world-class support, they might even surpass Team WE. Uzi joining iG with an elite support like Fzzf would break the competitive scene. He needs to stay in his shitty team so that the rest of the world doesn't end up quitting their jobs.
If there's a weak link on iG it's Illusion, not XiaoXiao. He has less stand-out *bad* plays, but in general, his play is just less inspired.
Though I don't believe any of iG's weaknesses lie in individual ability on any player. It's more their general teamplay/map movement/objective control.
On March 26 2013 22:08 Letmelose wrote: Did anyone else feel like Zz1tai tested the waters with his Diana, then decided it would be safe to pick a weak laner like Karthus after realizing how much better he was than the opposing mid-laner? That kid is scary, if iG upgrades their bottom lane they might become the strongest team in the world.
lol, I dunno about testing the waters but his Karthus Lay Waste and Walls were pretty much spot on. He went Abyssal instead of Nashor's on Diana too. /shrug
Imagine if iG has Uzi... :O hi yanger
I think XiaoXiao is by far the weakest member of the team, he would hold Uzi back. The moment they get a world-class support, they might even surpass Team WE. Uzi joining iG with an elite support like Fzzf would break the competitive scene. He needs to stay in his shitty team so that the rest of the world doesn't end up quitting their jobs.
If there's a weak link on iG it's Illusion, not XiaoXiao. He has less stand-out *bad* plays, but in general, his play is just less inspired.
Though I don't believe any of iG's weaknesses lie in individual ability on any player. It's more their general teamplay/map movement/objective control.
You've seen more of the team, so I wouldn't question that statement. I base my judgement soley on the few iG matches and some streams, and my uninformed impression is that their bottom lane doesn't quite pack the punch I expect from an elite Chinese team. I shudder at the thought of an iG team that has a bottom lane strength of say... Royal Club. I would lose hope. XiaoXiao brings me hope, that's all.
Or to put things another way. I've never been overly amazed by iG's team coordination as a whole. However, I was very impressed by their individual skills, their laning capacities, especially so for Zz1tai and PDD. That sharp contrast between seeing Zz1tai just pure manhandle one of the best mid-laners in Korea with his skills, then seeing what XiaoXiao... it's like the most noticable thing to a novice viewer.
On March 26 2013 21:46 NeoIllusions wrote: Eh... as a region, Korea is still unparalleled. CN has WE and iG, TW has TPA. But the rest of the CN/TW is rather mediocre. Compare this to Korea who can offer Blaze/Frost, Sword, KT B as their best and still have leftover teams like Shield, KT A, LG-IM, and SKT T1
I wont say that. I think Royal and OMG is as good as Blaze/Frost, Sword or KTB
I would say Royal Club and OMG are more at the level of MVP Ozone (managed to knock out teams such as Positive Energy and OMG in Chinese tournaments in the past) than the likes of KT Rolster B and CJ Entus Blaze. This is the first time a premier team from Korea has participated in a Chinese tournament, and it certainly has been a humbling experience.
However, I wouldn't base all these assumptions on a couple of matches in a non-LAN setting. Azubu Blaze has a 3-0 record over iG in online tournaments, MVP Ozone has a 5-0 record over TPA in online tournaments. It says very little about the relative strength of these teams, but the Chinese scene definately has the bragging rights for now.
I totally agree with u. Like SWL, I really don't think IG WE Najin Sword prepare because of OGN and LPL. They are using the same strategy. They are just using the basic mechanic skill and understanding and cooperation. Maybe only TPA TPS take it serious. But I don't think the level of a team can be judged by a LAN settings game either. The only way to know which team is better to play at least 10game in a short period of time. For example, when weixiao castes the ogn winter final, he stated that we vs Najin sword was 50:50 and they always practice together at that time. I think that is convincing.
I'm not sure if scrims are the best way to judge a team either, because I've heard Reapered commentating back when he was in Azubu Blaze, and he claimed that they would scrim against TPA, and they'd lose maybe once every one hundred games or so. Practice games are just practice games, no matter how many games there are.
There's just not enough cross-regional play right now, so we have to assume a lot on the few LAN and online tournaments that comes along. Based on the results of SWL S2 alone, we could assume that the top two teams in China are better than the top two teams in Korea (iG > NJS), the top 5~6 teams of China (Positive Energy, Royal Club) are comparable with the top 6~8 teams of Korea (MVP Ozone). However, these assumptions would become more accurate once we have more cross-regional games in a LAN setting. Since Riot made that next to impossible, us Koreans will have to wait our turn until the S3 World Championships. Maybe Najin Sword is pulling off what Taipei Assassins did, and are dicking around pretending to be weak in online tournaments to induce overconfidence in their enemies.
I think theres too much assumption being made over too little info... Also isnt SWL in held in china? and matches played on the chinese server?, wouldnt the chinese teams have an edge over Taiwan/korean teams just based on that alone? with lag issues/pings etc potentially? If thats the case, cant say that TEAM A is better then TEAM B, when TEAM B has to play with a handicap.
I guess in essence it goes same for Lan setting, and the "home field" advantage, but they do try to limit that as much as possible via sound proof headsets/booths in Lan...
In short... we will see, I think most of the top asian teams are just that.. At the top of the world, with no way to really measure who is #1, until we gain more results in an EQUAL setting.
On March 26 2013 21:46 NeoIllusions wrote: Eh... as a region, Korea is still unparalleled. CN has WE and iG, TW has TPA. But the rest of the CN/TW is rather mediocre. Compare this to Korea who can offer Blaze/Frost, Sword, KT B as their best and still have leftover teams like Shield, KT A, LG-IM, and SKT T1
I wont say that. I think Royal and OMG is as good as Blaze/Frost, Sword or KTB
I would say Royal Club and OMG are more at the level of MVP Ozone (managed to knock out teams such as Positive Energy and OMG in Chinese tournaments in the past) than the likes of KT Rolster B and CJ Entus Blaze. This is the first time a premier team from Korea has participated in a Chinese tournament, and it certainly has been a humbling experience.
However, I wouldn't base all these assumptions on a couple of matches in a non-LAN setting. Azubu Blaze has a 3-0 record over iG in online tournaments, MVP Ozone has a 5-0 record over TPA in online tournaments. It says very little about the relative strength of these teams, but the Chinese scene definately has the bragging rights for now.
I totally agree with u. Like SWL, I really don't think IG WE Najin Sword prepare because of OGN and LPL. They are using the same strategy. They are just using the basic mechanic skill and understanding and cooperation. Maybe only TPA TPS take it serious. But I don't think the level of a team can be judged by a LAN settings game either. The only way to know which team is better to play at least 10game in a short period of time. For example, when weixiao castes the ogn winter final, he stated that we vs Najin sword was 50:50 and they always practice together at that time. I think that is convincing.
I'm not sure if scrims are the best way to judge a team either, because I've heard Reapered commentating back when he was in Azubu Blaze, and he claimed that they would scrim against TPA, and they'd lose maybe once every one hundred games or so. Practice games are just practice games, no matter how many games there are.
There's just not enough cross-regional play right now, so we have to assume a lot on the few LAN and online tournaments that comes along. Based on the results of SWL S2 alone, we could assume that the top two teams in China are better than the top two teams in Korea (iG > NJS), the top 5~6 teams of China (Positive Energy, Royal Club) are comparable with the top 6~8 teams of Korea (MVP Ozone). However, these assumptions would become more accurate once we have more cross-regional games in a LAN setting. Since Riot made that next to impossible, us Koreans will have to wait our turn until the S3 World Championships. Maybe Najin Sword is pulling off what Taipei Assassins did, and are dicking around pretending to be weak in online tournaments to induce overconfidence in their enemies.
I think theres too much assumption being made over too little info... Also isnt SWL in held in china? and matches played on the chinese server?, wouldnt the chinese teams have an edge over Taiwan/korean teams just based on that alone? with lag issues/pings etc potentially? If thats the case, cant say that TEAM A is better then TEAM B, when TEAM B has to play with a handicap.
I guess in essence it goes same for Lan setting, and the "home field" advantage, but they do try to limit that as much as possible via sound proof headsets/booths in Lan...
In short... we will see, I think most of the top asian teams are just that.. At the top of the world, with no way to really measure who is #1, until we gain more results in an EQUAL setting.
To be quite honest, many people will draw such conclusions whether it is accurate or not. I've stated before that online games fail to represent the relative strengths of the teams involved compared to games done in LAN settings. However, if online tournaments with really buggy graphics for the players and bad pings are the only measurestick we have to compare the relative strengths of the Asian scene, an inaccurate assessment will have to do for now.
LAN tournaments are really unfair when comparing the relative strengths of each scenes also, the negative influences just happen to be not as obvious to the viewer (in online tournaments you can actually see on screen professionals struggling with heavy lag issues). The obvious homefield advantage (players are often affected by heavily biased crowds), the issue of jet-lag in many cases, and the general situation of foreign teams having to play under unfamiliar circumstances may influence the in-game performance of players almost as much as technical difficulties faced during online tournaments. There are no equal settings, but we judge teams by their LAN performances because at least under LAN settings nothing can DIRECTLY interfere in-game situations (unless you are World Elite about to knock out CLG EU).
Plus we have to consider the likelihood of the "home team" winning of a competition held in their region is more likely because of the numbers involved. A tournament hosted in Europe will most likely have a better representation of the European teams than for any other region. Likewise, SWL S2 will most likely be won by a Chinese team too, partly because the Chinese scene has been represented the best in this tournament. Judgements will be drawn regardless of the numerous factors involved, and we have to deal with that. I'd love for all the very best Chinese, Korean and Taiwanese teams to compete in a neutral venue to see which region is truly the best, but we all know that is never going to happen.
On March 28 2013 04:04 Letmelose wrote: Plus we have to consider the likelihood of the "home team" winning of a competition held in their region is more likely because of the numbers involved. A tournament hosted in Europe will most likely have a better representation of the European teams than for any other region. Likewise, SWL S2 will most likely be won by a Chinese team too, partly because the Chinese scene has been represented the best in this tournament. Judgements will be drawn regardless of the numerous factors involved, and we have to deal with that. I'd love for all the very best Chinese, Korean and Taiwanese teams to compete in a neutral venue to see which region is truly the best, but we all know that is never going to happen.
Unfortunately... this does not seem to be the case with American tournaments.
American teams have historically lost to European and Asian teams even with a home field advantage.
Assuming season 3 world finals will be in the US again, that'll be the closest we get to a "neutral venue" for Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese teams. As far as I can tell, the American crowd generally doesn't favor a particular Asian region over another.
On March 26 2013 21:46 NeoIllusions wrote: Eh... as a region, Korea is still unparalleled. CN has WE and iG, TW has TPA. But the rest of the CN/TW is rather mediocre. Compare this to Korea who can offer Blaze/Frost, Sword, KT B as their best and still have leftover teams like Shield, KT A, LG-IM, and SKT T1
I wont say that. I think Royal and OMG is as good as Blaze/Frost, Sword or KTB
I would say Royal Club and OMG are more at the level of MVP Ozone (managed to knock out teams such as Positive Energy and OMG in Chinese tournaments in the past) than the likes of KT Rolster B and CJ Entus Blaze. This is the first time a premier team from Korea has participated in a Chinese tournament, and it certainly has been a humbling experience.
However, I wouldn't base all these assumptions on a couple of matches in a non-LAN setting. Azubu Blaze has a 3-0 record over iG in online tournaments, MVP Ozone has a 5-0 record over TPA in online tournaments. It says very little about the relative strength of these teams, but the Chinese scene definately has the bragging rights for now.
I totally agree with u. Like SWL, I really don't think IG WE Najin Sword prepare because of OGN and LPL. They are using the same strategy. They are just using the basic mechanic skill and understanding and cooperation. Maybe only TPA TPS take it serious. But I don't think the level of a team can be judged by a LAN settings game either. The only way to know which team is better to play at least 10game in a short period of time. For example, when weixiao castes the ogn winter final, he stated that we vs Najin sword was 50:50 and they always practice together at that time. I think that is convincing.
I'm not sure if scrims are the best way to judge a team either, because I've heard Reapered commentating back when he was in Azubu Blaze, and he claimed that they would scrim against TPA, and they'd lose maybe once every one hundred games or so. Practice games are just practice games, no matter how many games there are.
There's just not enough cross-regional play right now, so we have to assume a lot on the few LAN and online tournaments that comes along. Based on the results of SWL S2 alone, we could assume that the top two teams in China are better than the top two teams in Korea (iG > NJS), the top 5~6 teams of China (Positive Energy, Royal Club) are comparable with the top 6~8 teams of Korea (MVP Ozone). However, these assumptions would become more accurate once we have more cross-regional games in a LAN setting. Since Riot made that next to impossible, us Koreans will have to wait our turn until the S3 World Championships. Maybe Najin Sword is pulling off what Taipei Assassins did, and are dicking around pretending to be weak in online tournaments to induce overconfidence in their enemies.
I think theres too much assumption being made over too little info... Also isnt SWL in held in china? and matches played on the chinese server?, wouldnt the chinese teams have an edge over Taiwan/korean teams just based on that alone? with lag issues/pings etc potentially? If thats the case, cant say that TEAM A is better then TEAM B, when TEAM B has to play with a handicap.
I guess in essence it goes same for Lan setting, and the "home field" advantage, but they do try to limit that as much as possible via sound proof headsets/booths in Lan...
In short... we will see, I think most of the top asian teams are just that.. At the top of the world, with no way to really measure who is #1, until we gain more results in an EQUAL setting.
It is on TW server, which is equal for Korean and Chinese teams
On March 26 2013 21:46 NeoIllusions wrote: Eh... as a region, Korea is still unparalleled. CN has WE and iG, TW has TPA. But the rest of the CN/TW is rather mediocre. Compare this to Korea who can offer Blaze/Frost, Sword, KT B as their best and still have leftover teams like Shield, KT A, LG-IM, and SKT T1
I wont say that. I think Royal and OMG is as good as Blaze/Frost, Sword or KTB
I would say Royal Club and OMG are more at the level of MVP Ozone (managed to knock out teams such as Positive Energy and OMG in Chinese tournaments in the past) than the likes of KT Rolster B and CJ Entus Blaze. This is the first time a premier team from Korea has participated in a Chinese tournament, and it certainly has been a humbling experience.
However, I wouldn't base all these assumptions on a couple of matches in a non-LAN setting. Azubu Blaze has a 3-0 record over iG in online tournaments, MVP Ozone has a 5-0 record over TPA in online tournaments. It says very little about the relative strength of these teams, but the Chinese scene definately has the bragging rights for now.
I totally agree with u. Like SWL, I really don't think IG WE Najin Sword prepare because of OGN and LPL. They are using the same strategy. They are just using the basic mechanic skill and understanding and cooperation. Maybe only TPA TPS take it serious. But I don't think the level of a team can be judged by a LAN settings game either. The only way to know which team is better to play at least 10game in a short period of time. For example, when weixiao castes the ogn winter final, he stated that we vs Najin sword was 50:50 and they always practice together at that time. I think that is convincing.
I'm not sure if scrims are the best way to judge a team either, because I've heard Reapered commentating back when he was in Azubu Blaze, and he claimed that they would scrim against TPA, and they'd lose maybe once every one hundred games or so. Practice games are just practice games, no matter how many games there are.
There's just not enough cross-regional play right now, so we have to assume a lot on the few LAN and online tournaments that comes along. Based on the results of SWL S2 alone, we could assume that the top two teams in China are better than the top two teams in Korea (iG > NJS), the top 5~6 teams of China (Positive Energy, Royal Club) are comparable with the top 6~8 teams of Korea (MVP Ozone). However, these assumptions would become more accurate once we have more cross-regional games in a LAN setting. Since Riot made that next to impossible, us Koreans will have to wait our turn until the S3 World Championships. Maybe Najin Sword is pulling off what Taipei Assassins did, and are dicking around pretending to be weak in online tournaments to induce overconfidence in their enemies.
I think theres too much assumption being made over too little info... Also isnt SWL in held in china? and matches played on the chinese server?, wouldnt the chinese teams have an edge over Taiwan/korean teams just based on that alone? with lag issues/pings etc potentially? If thats the case, cant say that TEAM A is better then TEAM B, when TEAM B has to play with a handicap.
I guess in essence it goes same for Lan setting, and the "home field" advantage, but they do try to limit that as much as possible via sound proof headsets/booths in Lan...
In short... we will see, I think most of the top asian teams are just that.. At the top of the world, with no way to really measure who is #1, until we gain more results in an EQUAL setting.
It is on TW server, which is equal for Korean and Chinese teams
It is indeed played on the Taiwanese server, which is more beneficial towards the Chinese teams. If you take a look at the loading screen before the games, the ping ranges from from 50~80 for Korean players and is in the 20~40 for the Chinese players. Even counting the obvious disadvantage Korean players had with ping issues, numerous players have complaints of technical issues with sprites, and played these games without having visual effects that they take for granted. Granted, all of this is a minor issue in the grand scope of things, but some Korean players have blamed their poor performances on the numerous technical difficulties they had.
On March 26 2013 21:46 NeoIllusions wrote: Eh... as a region, Korea is still unparalleled. CN has WE and iG, TW has TPA. But the rest of the CN/TW is rather mediocre. Compare this to Korea who can offer Blaze/Frost, Sword, KT B as their best and still have leftover teams like Shield, KT A, LG-IM, and SKT T1
I wont say that. I think Royal and OMG is as good as Blaze/Frost, Sword or KTB
I would say Royal Club and OMG are more at the level of MVP Ozone (managed to knock out teams such as Positive Energy and OMG in Chinese tournaments in the past) than the likes of KT Rolster B and CJ Entus Blaze. This is the first time a premier team from Korea has participated in a Chinese tournament, and it certainly has been a humbling experience.
However, I wouldn't base all these assumptions on a couple of matches in a non-LAN setting. Azubu Blaze has a 3-0 record over iG in online tournaments, MVP Ozone has a 5-0 record over TPA in online tournaments. It says very little about the relative strength of these teams, but the Chinese scene definately has the bragging rights for now.
I totally agree with u. Like SWL, I really don't think IG WE Najin Sword prepare because of OGN and LPL. They are using the same strategy. They are just using the basic mechanic skill and understanding and cooperation. Maybe only TPA TPS take it serious. But I don't think the level of a team can be judged by a LAN settings game either. The only way to know which team is better to play at least 10game in a short period of time. For example, when weixiao castes the ogn winter final, he stated that we vs Najin sword was 50:50 and they always practice together at that time. I think that is convincing.
I'm not sure if scrims are the best way to judge a team either, because I've heard Reapered commentating back when he was in Azubu Blaze, and he claimed that they would scrim against TPA, and they'd lose maybe once every one hundred games or so. Practice games are just practice games, no matter how many games there are.
There's just not enough cross-regional play right now, so we have to assume a lot on the few LAN and online tournaments that comes along. Based on the results of SWL S2 alone, we could assume that the top two teams in China are better than the top two teams in Korea (iG > NJS), the top 5~6 teams of China (Positive Energy, Royal Club) are comparable with the top 6~8 teams of Korea (MVP Ozone). However, these assumptions would become more accurate once we have more cross-regional games in a LAN setting. Since Riot made that next to impossible, us Koreans will have to wait our turn until the S3 World Championships. Maybe Najin Sword is pulling off what Taipei Assassins did, and are dicking around pretending to be weak in online tournaments to induce overconfidence in their enemies.
I think theres too much assumption being made over too little info... Also isnt SWL in held in china? and matches played on the chinese server?, wouldnt the chinese teams have an edge over Taiwan/korean teams just based on that alone? with lag issues/pings etc potentially? If thats the case, cant say that TEAM A is better then TEAM B, when TEAM B has to play with a handicap.
I guess in essence it goes same for Lan setting, and the "home field" advantage, but they do try to limit that as much as possible via sound proof headsets/booths in Lan...
In short... we will see, I think most of the top asian teams are just that.. At the top of the world, with no way to really measure who is #1, until we gain more results in an EQUAL setting.
It is on TW server, which is equal for Korean and Chinese teams
It is indeed played on the Taiwanese server, which is more beneficial towards the Chinese teams. If you take a look at the loading screen before the games, the ping ranges from from 50~80 for Korean players and is in the 20~40 for the Chinese players. Even counting the obvious disadvantage Korean players had with ping issues, numerous players have complaints of technical issues with sprites, and played these games without having visual effects that they take for granted. Granted, all of this is a minor issue in the grand scope of things, but some Korean players have blamed their poor performances on the numerous technical difficulties they had.
Yes, TW means Taiwan. It is hard for me to believe that the ping is only 20-40 for Chinese, maybe they are using extremely good VPN . I think 20-40 is for Taiwanese. For the visual effect, do u mean that match between Royal and Sword? I do think riot and garena should work on it
On March 26 2013 21:46 NeoIllusions wrote: Eh... as a region, Korea is still unparalleled. CN has WE and iG, TW has TPA. But the rest of the CN/TW is rather mediocre. Compare this to Korea who can offer Blaze/Frost, Sword, KT B as their best and still have leftover teams like Shield, KT A, LG-IM, and SKT T1
I wont say that. I think Royal and OMG is as good as Blaze/Frost, Sword or KTB
I would say Royal Club and OMG are more at the level of MVP Ozone (managed to knock out teams such as Positive Energy and OMG in Chinese tournaments in the past) than the likes of KT Rolster B and CJ Entus Blaze. This is the first time a premier team from Korea has participated in a Chinese tournament, and it certainly has been a humbling experience.
However, I wouldn't base all these assumptions on a couple of matches in a non-LAN setting. Azubu Blaze has a 3-0 record over iG in online tournaments, MVP Ozone has a 5-0 record over TPA in online tournaments. It says very little about the relative strength of these teams, but the Chinese scene definately has the bragging rights for now.
I totally agree with u. Like SWL, I really don't think IG WE Najin Sword prepare because of OGN and LPL. They are using the same strategy. They are just using the basic mechanic skill and understanding and cooperation. Maybe only TPA TPS take it serious. But I don't think the level of a team can be judged by a LAN settings game either. The only way to know which team is better to play at least 10game in a short period of time. For example, when weixiao castes the ogn winter final, he stated that we vs Najin sword was 50:50 and they always practice together at that time. I think that is convincing.
I'm not sure if scrims are the best way to judge a team either, because I've heard Reapered commentating back when he was in Azubu Blaze, and he claimed that they would scrim against TPA, and they'd lose maybe once every one hundred games or so. Practice games are just practice games, no matter how many games there are.
There's just not enough cross-regional play right now, so we have to assume a lot on the few LAN and online tournaments that comes along. Based on the results of SWL S2 alone, we could assume that the top two teams in China are better than the top two teams in Korea (iG > NJS), the top 5~6 teams of China (Positive Energy, Royal Club) are comparable with the top 6~8 teams of Korea (MVP Ozone). However, these assumptions would become more accurate once we have more cross-regional games in a LAN setting. Since Riot made that next to impossible, us Koreans will have to wait our turn until the S3 World Championships. Maybe Najin Sword is pulling off what Taipei Assassins did, and are dicking around pretending to be weak in online tournaments to induce overconfidence in their enemies.
I think theres too much assumption being made over too little info... Also isnt SWL in held in china? and matches played on the chinese server?, wouldnt the chinese teams have an edge over Taiwan/korean teams just based on that alone? with lag issues/pings etc potentially? If thats the case, cant say that TEAM A is better then TEAM B, when TEAM B has to play with a handicap.
I guess in essence it goes same for Lan setting, and the "home field" advantage, but they do try to limit that as much as possible via sound proof headsets/booths in Lan...
In short... we will see, I think most of the top asian teams are just that.. At the top of the world, with no way to really measure who is #1, until we gain more results in an EQUAL setting.
It is on TW server, which is equal for Korean and Chinese teams
It is indeed played on the Taiwanese server, which is more beneficial towards the Chinese teams. If you take a look at the loading screen before the games, the ping ranges from from 50~80 for Korean players and is in the 20~40 for the Chinese players. Even counting the obvious disadvantage Korean players had with ping issues, numerous players have complaints of technical issues with sprites, and played these games without having visual effects that they take for granted. Granted, all of this is a minor issue in the grand scope of things, but some Korean players have blamed their poor performances on the numerous technical difficulties they had.
Yes, TW means Taiwan. It is hard for me to believe that the ping is only 20-40 for Chinese, maybe they are using extremely good VPN . I think 20-40 is for Taiwanese. For the visual effect, do u mean that match between Royal and Sword? I do think riot and garena should work on it
I can't don't remember the exact numbers, I do remember noticing some differences between Korean and Chinese teams when the loading screen would pop up, just before the game starts. The ping numbers for Korean teams would generally be twice as high as those for the Chinese teams, and I literally would never see a Korean team with a better ping than a Chinese team for whatever reasons. Perhaps you would like to check the numbers yourself by looking at past VODs.
Ouch, Lilballz hit his ult as Alistar way too late in that fight near WE"s mid inner tower; Clearlove flanked v.well as Hecarim. Sudden 3k gold lead for WE and mid inhib.
These games kind of remind me of the time flash/jd played in bw.Everyone expected super awesome slugfests but in the end most of the games were pretty boring .
On March 28 2013 21:59 nafta wrote: These games kind of remind me of the time flash/jd played in bw.Everyone expected super awesome slugfests but in the end most of the games were pretty boring .
that one time JD used EMP on the whole virtual stage was kinda cool tho
On March 28 2013 21:49 Caphe wrote: This game is much better than the 1st game.
I don't know, it's over at the same timeframe.
Lol, you are to idolizing WE. They are good but godlike. Plzzzz
Not at all, I actually think TPA is holding back. They've been sneaky in S2 as well since thye don't need to make an effort in GPL. But there's no damn way you win against WE when they have Kog and Karthus and you're losing the early game, would be absurd.
WE have major flaws in the early game speculated even by lower tier LPL teams but their teamfighting and objective awareness is just unrivaled at the moment. I expected TPA to cause more trouble but in this game they reached the point of no return as early as 10mins, gold is not everything.
On March 28 2013 22:06 lefty wrote: lilballz hasn't been impressive at all
Yeah. TPA might want to stop that cow jungle . Karthus/Kog still a golden combo in late game. TPA made alot of mistake esp that dive top lane by Lilballz and Toyz give Wx a double kill. Wx was behind Bebe at that time but that double kill really let him catch up.
I really hope teams like OMG new PE new Royal can participate in more international tournaments like battle royal or enter the dragon, they are as good as top tier team in Korea but IG and WE just grab every chances. Hope we and IG can stop participate in too many tournament and give some chance to omg PE and royal
TPS vs (loser of SWDvsIG) 27th March 20:00KST 1stgame: TPS vs (loser of SWDvsIG) 2rd game: (loser of SWDvsIG) vs TPS 3rd game: (loser of SWDvsIG)'s choice
TPS vs (loser of SWDvsIG) 27th March 20:00KST 1stgame: TPS vs (loser of SWDvsIG) 2rd game: (loser of SWDvsIG) vs TPS 3rd game: (loser of SWDvsIG)'s choice
On March 26 2013 21:46 NeoIllusions wrote: Eh... as a region, Korea is still unparalleled. CN has WE and iG, TW has TPA. But the rest of the CN/TW is rather mediocre. Compare this to Korea who can offer Blaze/Frost, Sword, KT B as their best and still have leftover teams like Shield, KT A, LG-IM, and SKT T1
I wont say that. I think Royal and OMG is as good as Blaze/Frost, Sword or KTB
eh, Royal's roster continues to be shaky. They ought to fix that first and foremost. OMG I haven't really watched before. Recommend me a VOD of them?
Quote from todayLPL PDD pre-game interview. 'OMG never lose when OMG in blue side in IG-OMG practice game.' 'If the ranking of WE is 1, OMG is -1, because OMG is too good'
On March 26 2013 21:46 NeoIllusions wrote: Eh... as a region, Korea is still unparalleled. CN has WE and iG, TW has TPA. But the rest of the CN/TW is rather mediocre. Compare this to Korea who can offer Blaze/Frost, Sword, KT B as their best and still have leftover teams like Shield, KT A, LG-IM, and SKT T1
I wont say that. I think Royal and OMG is as good as Blaze/Frost, Sword or KTB
eh, Royal's roster continues to be shaky. They ought to fix that first and foremost. OMG I haven't really watched before. Recommend me a VOD of them?
Quote from todayLPL PDD pre-game interview. 'OMG never lose when OMG in blue side in IG-OMG practice game.' 'If the ranking of WE is 1, OMG is -1, because OMG is too good'
PE's jungler misses a ridiculous amount of jarvan combos, but they win the game anyway because they have better players overall despite worse game plan. Toyz seems to have some map awareness problems and is overaggressive. TPA's bot lane not very strong.
Damn van manner is not scared of toyz. Damn wtf happened to China I remember it being WE + the occasional iG now OMG, royal and PE have come out of nowhere and are so damn scary.
On April 04 2013 08:33 zulu_nation8 wrote: PE's jungler misses a ridiculous amount of jarvan combos, but they win the game anyway because they have better players overall despite worse game plan. Toyz seems to have some map awareness problems and is overaggressive. TPA's bot lane not very strong.
TPA's botlane was a disaster in the first game despite TF's successful ganks. Varus just died first every team fight after the lane phase and basically doing nothing. TPA is standing still after their S2 victory while other teams move forward. I don't even consider TPA as top Asian team anymore.
On April 04 2013 08:33 zulu_nation8 wrote: PE's jungler misses a ridiculous amount of jarvan combos, but they win the game anyway because they have better players overall despite worse game plan. Toyz seems to have some map awareness problems and is overaggressive. TPA's bot lane not very strong.
TPA's botlane was a disaster in the first game despite TF's successful ganks. Varus just died first every team fight after the lane phase and basically doing nothing. TPA is standing still after their S2 victory while other teams move forward. I don't even consider TPA as top Asian team anymore.
tbh, they are just playing like soloQ
no clear goal in each game
pick the main, win the lane, and lose the game. heck they even cant win the lane anymore
I haven't seen too many of PE's games, but I think Jayce mid is very powerful. He has tremendous presence, can farm from behind, hard to die to ganks, and can stay in lane forever and keep chipping away at enemy tower. When he is farmed, which he will be every game, a team that has good push built around a farmed jayce is unstoppable mid game.
On April 09 2013 18:37 Diamond wrote: WE vs iG tonight. However the NA restream won't be until Wed as the silly spectator bug means we need to wait for VOD's.
Ahhh damn . Any ideas where we can watch it anyway?
Edit: Nvm I saw the list of streams on the leaguepedia page, I'll just try those
Damn, I missed the first game, just catch a highlights of it. Look like a very good game with iG come from behind and take the first game. iG looks like they really know how to handle WE.
Hes doing fine really, they just get behind in farm slowly, giving WE just that little edge itemwise in teamfights. Game 3 was actually completely even teamfightwise, but WE just had that 1 more small item per person that got them the win.
edit after g4: iG really needs to make moves and force objectives, they played right into the tactic of WE there. WE are the better farmers, they are good in lategame and usually are weak in rushed objectives. iG just made it a farmgame for lategame in games 3 and 4. WE played good but they didnt have to do anything special to win. Just farm, wait, win.
Najin Sword vs. PE will start in less than 1 hour (check the Reddit for the countdown).
Please note the match will be broadcasted live on a different channel tonight (exceptional and only for this match) : http://www.twitch.tv/national_esl1/
On April 10 2013 21:20 Letmelose wrote: Maknoon did well. I'm not sure if PE is playing like crap, or if Najin Sword is on the upswing.
Aluka is playing terrible as usual, PE can't win against any team with a world class top laner.
How did they defeat TPA?
I'm actually not sure whether TPA is in a massive slump or they just don't care about anything other than GPL at the moment.
My personal feeling is that it's a combination of: - Stanley's weak 1v2 being exposed further in S3 than S2 - Common mid champion pool focused on assassins/gankers that Toyz isn't suited for - Loss of Mistake
Why do people think maknoon is a great toplaner? Every time I see him play he gets outlaned. Now he is even losing vs IG.Kid who is an adc player. Maknoon definately can't compete with expression, shy or other korean toplaners. I like the jayce+khazix combo from IG. Good poke.
On April 16 2013 20:28 AA.spoon wrote: Why do people think maknoon is a great toplaner? Every time I see him play he gets outlaned. Now he is even losing vs IG.Kid who is an adc player. Maknoon definately can't compete with expression, shy or other korean toplaners. I like the jayce+khazix combo from IG. Good poke.
Najin Sword focuses a lot of their plays based on Maknoon. He certainly is capable of carrying the game by himself, but if you watch a lot of their games you'll often notice how Watch babysits the top lane. Maknoon is a top class player, and has been for quite some time, but there are superior top-laners as of now. Maknoon himself admitted that Expession is individually more talented than himself. I personally rate Shy, Ssumday, and Flame ahead of Maknoon currently, and that's just counting the Korean scene.
On April 16 2013 20:28 AA.spoon wrote: Why do people think maknoon is a great toplaner? Every time I see him play he gets outlaned. Now he is even losing vs IG.Kid who is an adc player. Maknoon definately can't compete with expression, shy or other korean toplaners. I like the jayce+khazix combo from IG. Good poke.
Because he speaks English in public and Ssumday, PDD, Expression, etc. don't. Same goes for Locodoco and Reapered. Don't get me wrong, they're all great players but that one single fact is what differentiates them in the eyes of the western viewers from others that are at least as skilled
On April 16 2013 20:28 AA.spoon wrote: Why do people think maknoon is a great toplaner? Every time I see him play he gets outlaned. Now he is even losing vs IG.Kid who is an adc player. Maknoon definately can't compete with expression, shy or other korean toplaners. I like the jayce+khazix combo from IG. Good poke.
Because he speaks English in public and Ssumday, PDD, Expression, etc. don't. Same goes for Locodoco and Reapered. Don't get me wrong, they're all great players but that one single fact is what differentiates them in the eyes of the western viewers from others that are at least as skilled
thats right. Nobody else knows how to represent themself.
On April 16 2013 20:28 AA.spoon wrote: Why do people think maknoon is a great toplaner? Every time I see him play he gets outlaned. Now he is even losing vs IG.Kid who is an adc player. Maknoon definately can't compete with expression, shy or other korean toplaners. I like the jayce+khazix combo from IG. Good poke.
Because he speaks English in public and Ssumday, PDD, Expression, etc. don't. Same goes for Locodoco and Reapered. Don't get me wrong, they're all great players but that one single fact is what differentiates them in the eyes of the western viewers from others that are at least as skilled
Oh that explains it for loco too.
I love IG. They always come up with some cheesy/uncommon strat. now they are playing pantheon, a champion that in my experience is useless 20+min in the game. Curious what will happen.
On April 16 2013 20:28 AA.spoon wrote: Why do people think maknoon is a great toplaner? Every time I see him play he gets outlaned. Now he is even losing vs IG.Kid who is an adc player. Maknoon definately can't compete with expression, shy or other korean toplaners. I like the jayce+khazix combo from IG. Good poke.
Najin Sword focuses a lot of their plays based on Maknoon. He certainly is capable of carrying the game by himself, but if you watch a lot of their games you'll often notice how Watch babysits the top lane. Maknoon is a top class player, and has been for quite some time, but there are superior top-laners as of now. Maknoon himself admitted that Expession is individually more talented than himself. I personally rate Shy, Ssumday, and Flame ahead of Maknoon currently, and that's just counting the Korean scene.
How can you put Flame ahead of Reapered. Blaze hasn't been the same since that change.
On April 16 2013 20:28 AA.spoon wrote: Why do people think maknoon is a great toplaner? Every time I see him play he gets outlaned. Now he is even losing vs IG.Kid who is an adc player. Maknoon definately can't compete with expression, shy or other korean toplaners. I like the jayce+khazix combo from IG. Good poke.
Najin Sword focuses a lot of their plays based on Maknoon. He certainly is capable of carrying the game by himself, but if you watch a lot of their games you'll often notice how Watch babysits the top lane. Maknoon is a top class player, and has been for quite some time, but there are superior top-laners as of now. Maknoon himself admitted that Expession is individually more talented than himself. I personally rate Shy, Ssumday, and Flame ahead of Maknoon currently, and that's just counting the Korean scene.
How can you put Flame ahead of Reapered. Blaze hasn't been the same since that change.
For the very simple reason that Flame has a vastly superior laning phase than Reapered. You could argue that Reapered has more to offer than his laning ability due to his multi-faceted talents, but as a top-laner, there is little doubt for me that Flame is one of the strongest in his position at the moment. CJ Entus Blaze's fall from grace is due to their weak bottom lane and lackluster performances from Helios, which Reapered made up for by popularizing two versus one lane swaps, and basically telling Helios what to do. His individual strengths as a top laner, however, is inferior to Flame in my eyes.
Reapered's strengths as a top-laner is overrated by a lot of people since he won IEM Cologne in my eyes. Long-friggin'-panda did pretty good in that tournament as a top laner, and he is defunct from the professional scene as of today. His strengths lie elsewhere, and that's why CJ Entus Blaze never reached the heights back when Reapered was part of the team.
On April 16 2013 20:28 AA.spoon wrote: Why do people think maknoon is a great toplaner? Every time I see him play he gets outlaned. Now he is even losing vs IG.Kid who is an adc player. Maknoon definately can't compete with expression, shy or other korean toplaners. I like the jayce+khazix combo from IG. Good poke.
Najin Sword focuses a lot of their plays based on Maknoon. He certainly is capable of carrying the game by himself, but if you watch a lot of their games you'll often notice how Watch babysits the top lane. Maknoon is a top class player, and has been for quite some time, but there are superior top-laners as of now. Maknoon himself admitted that Expession is individually more talented than himself. I personally rate Shy, Ssumday, and Flame ahead of Maknoon currently, and that's just counting the Korean scene.
How can you put Flame ahead of Reapered. Blaze hasn't been the same since that change.
For the very simple reason that Flame has a vastly superior laning phase than Reapered. You could argue that Reapered has more to offer than his laning ability due to his multi-faceted talents, but as a top-laner, there is little doubt for me that Flame is one of the strongest in his position at the moment. CJ Entus Blaze's fall from grace is due to their weak bottom lane and lackluster performances from Helios, which Reapered made up for by popularizing two versus one lane swaps, and basically telling Helios what to do. His individual strengths as a top laner, however, is inferior to Flame in my eyes.
Reapered's strengths as a top-laner is overrated by a lot of people since he won IEM Cologne in my eyes. Long-friggin'-panda did pretty good in that tournament as a top laner, and he is defunct from the professional scene as of today. His strengths lie elsewhere, and that's why CJ Entus Blaze never reached the heights back when Reapered was part of the team.
I remembered one night I was watching zzitai's stream, Helios talked to zzitai and told him he was not as good as before. It seemed that he noticed his problem but he can't improve it.
So I finally caught up on this season thru IG v WE upper bracket games. Just gotta watch Sword beat PE then get smashed by IG and I will be ready for the grand finals. Looking forward to that.
On April 16 2013 20:28 AA.spoon wrote: Why do people think maknoon is a great toplaner? Every time I see him play he gets outlaned. Now he is even losing vs IG.Kid who is an adc player. Maknoon definately can't compete with expression, shy or other korean toplaners. I like the jayce+khazix combo from IG. Good poke.
Najin Sword focuses a lot of their plays based on Maknoon. He certainly is capable of carrying the game by himself, but if you watch a lot of their games you'll often notice how Watch babysits the top lane. Maknoon is a top class player, and has been for quite some time, but there are superior top-laners as of now. Maknoon himself admitted that Expession is individually more talented than himself. I personally rate Shy, Ssumday, and Flame ahead of Maknoon currently, and that's just counting the Korean scene.
How can you put Flame ahead of Reapered. Blaze hasn't been the same since that change.
For the very simple reason that Flame has a vastly superior laning phase than Reapered. You could argue that Reapered has more to offer than his laning ability due to his multi-faceted talents, but as a top-laner, there is little doubt for me that Flame is one of the strongest in his position at the moment. CJ Entus Blaze's fall from grace is due to their weak bottom lane and lackluster performances from Helios, which Reapered made up for by popularizing two versus one lane swaps, and basically telling Helios what to do. His individual strengths as a top laner, however, is inferior to Flame in my eyes.
Reapered's strengths as a top-laner is overrated by a lot of people since he won IEM Cologne in my eyes. Long-friggin'-panda did pretty good in that tournament as a top laner, and he is defunct from the professional scene as of today. His strengths lie elsewhere, and that's why CJ Entus Blaze never reached the heights back when Reapered was part of the team.
I remembered one night I was watching zzitai's stream, Helios talked to zzitai and told him he was not as good as before. It seemed that he noticed his problem but he can't improve it.
On April 16 2013 20:28 AA.spoon wrote: Why do people think maknoon is a great toplaner? Every time I see him play he gets outlaned. Now he is even losing vs IG.Kid who is an adc player. Maknoon definately can't compete with expression, shy or other korean toplaners. I like the jayce+khazix combo from IG. Good poke.
Najin Sword focuses a lot of their plays based on Maknoon. He certainly is capable of carrying the game by himself, but if you watch a lot of their games you'll often notice how Watch babysits the top lane. Maknoon is a top class player, and has been for quite some time, but there are superior top-laners as of now. Maknoon himself admitted that Expession is individually more talented than himself. I personally rate Shy, Ssumday, and Flame ahead of Maknoon currently, and that's just counting the Korean scene.
How can you put Flame ahead of Reapered. Blaze hasn't been the same since that change.
For the very simple reason that Flame has a vastly superior laning phase than Reapered. You could argue that Reapered has more to offer than his laning ability due to his multi-faceted talents, but as a top-laner, there is little doubt for me that Flame is one of the strongest in his position at the moment. CJ Entus Blaze's fall from grace is due to their weak bottom lane and lackluster performances from Helios, which Reapered made up for by popularizing two versus one lane swaps, and basically telling Helios what to do. His individual strengths as a top laner, however, is inferior to Flame in my eyes.
Reapered's strengths as a top-laner is overrated by a lot of people since he won IEM Cologne in my eyes. Long-friggin'-panda did pretty good in that tournament as a top laner, and he is defunct from the professional scene as of today. His strengths lie elsewhere, and that's why CJ Entus Blaze never reached the heights back when Reapered was part of the team.
I remembered one night I was watching zzitai's stream, Helios talked to zzitai and told him he was not as good as before. It seemed that he noticed his problem but he can't improve it.
I didn't follow any of the LoL expept EU these last months. I'm hyped as fuck for this but at the same i hope they aren't as good as everybody say, it would be good for Europe with the all-stars incoming.
WE run Ez + Blitz mid vs Malphite. WE steal blue buff and give theirs to Jayce, who gets more farm bot vs Varus + Lulu compared to Malphite, but loses tower at 5:30.
First blood to Zz1tai's Malphite with a three-man gank top!
Wtf is iG's jungler doing? Let WE steal baron 2 times. If iG wasn't in such a commanding lead, he would be kicking himself right now. Nice 1st game from iG, the score is 1-1 now though. iG go go go!
On April 23 2013 20:06 Mensol wrote: im not sure if misaya is only good with tf or slumping hard in S3.
Sorta hard to look good when all notable chinese matches is against zzitai.
I'd be so pissed if I was WX; it's like the most anti-ADC comp iG has right now.
i thought misaya was the best chinese mid laner, seems like im wrong
another baron steal? -__-
Misaya is pretty good though, but WE pretty isolated, and most of their "famous" matches are just constantly against iG; so yeah if you compare him to Zzitai, it's hard to look "good". But, don't let that fool you, he's still one of the premier midlaners in the world.
On April 23 2013 20:06 Mensol wrote: im not sure if misaya is only good with tf or slumping hard in S3.
Sorta hard to look good when all notable chinese matches is against zzitai.
I'd be so pissed if I was WX; it's like the most anti-ADC comp iG has right now.
i thought misaya was the best chinese mid laner, seems like im wrong
another baron steal? -__-
baron was not important at that point, death timers were already too big. dunno what elise was trying to achieve there t.t
I don't think anyone disagrees with the fact that Baron didn't matter at that point, but it's still such a silly objective to lose when you're that far ahead.
On April 23 2013 20:06 Mensol wrote: im not sure if misaya is only good with tf or slumping hard in S3.
Sorta hard to look good when all notable chinese matches is against zzitai.
I'd be so pissed if I was WX; it's like the most anti-ADC comp iG has right now.
i thought misaya was the best chinese mid laner, seems like im wrong
another baron steal? -__-
baron was not important at that point, death timers were already too big. dunno what elise was trying to achieve there t.t
What? The 1st baron is very important. The only reason this game last that long is because of Elise stealing the 1st baron. iG still play quite good after that. But if somehow they screwed up, WE might have come back right there. The 2nd Baron was not that important, I'll give you that.
If iG secure the first baron, the game should end like 10 mins earlier.
On April 23 2013 20:06 Mensol wrote: im not sure if misaya is only good with tf or slumping hard in S3.
Sorta hard to look good when all notable chinese matches is against zzitai.
I'd be so pissed if I was WX; it's like the most anti-ADC comp iG has right now.
i thought misaya was the best chinese mid laner, seems like im wrong
another baron steal? -__-
baron was not important at that point, death timers were already too big. dunno what elise was trying to achieve there t.t
What? The 1st baron is very important. The only reason this game last that long is because of Elise stealing the 1st baron. iG still play quite good after that. But if somehow they screwed up, WE might have come back right there. The 2nd Baron was not that important, I'll give you that.
If iG secure the first baron, the game should end like 10 mins earlier.
Ehhhh; considering comp, and gold difference. It was highly unlikely that WE had any real chance of comeback despite the steal. Definitely extended the game like ~5 minutes, but iG still continued the steam roll on WE.
On April 23 2013 20:06 Mensol wrote: im not sure if misaya is only good with tf or slumping hard in S3.
Sorta hard to look good when all notable chinese matches is against zzitai.
I'd be so pissed if I was WX; it's like the most anti-ADC comp iG has right now.
i thought misaya was the best chinese mid laner, seems like im wrong
another baron steal? -__-
baron was not important at that point, death timers were already too big. dunno what elise was trying to achieve there t.t
What? The 1st baron is very important. The only reason this game last that long is because of Elise stealing the 1st baron. iG still play quite good after that. But if somehow they screwed up, WE might have come back right there. The 2nd Baron was not that important, I'll give you that.
If iG secure the first baron, the game should end like 10 mins earlier.
Ehhhh; considering comp, and gold difference. It was highly unlikely that WE had any real chance of comeback despite the steal. Definitely extended the game like ~5 minutes, but iG still continued the steam roll on WE.
Yeah.Thats true, but definately matter. Just put DiG in iG's shoe last game after the 1st baron steal, they might have thrown the game, lol.
On April 23 2013 20:06 Mensol wrote: im not sure if misaya is only good with tf or slumping hard in S3.
Sorta hard to look good when all notable chinese matches is against zzitai.
I'd be so pissed if I was WX; it's like the most anti-ADC comp iG has right now.
i thought misaya was the best chinese mid laner, seems like im wrong
another baron steal? -__-
baron was not important at that point, death timers were already too big. dunno what elise was trying to achieve there t.t
What? The 1st baron is very important. The only reason this game last that long is because of Elise stealing the 1st baron. iG still play quite good after that. But if somehow they screwed up, WE might have come back right there. The 2nd Baron was not that important, I'll give you that.
If iG secure the first baron, the game should end like 10 mins earlier.
Dunno. In the aftermath of the first baron steal iG got 3 ppl (4 with elise) and mid inhib I think. Seems like an ok trade. But I was talking about the second baron, and stealing it was not important when you risk losing the game 4v5 immediately after.
On April 23 2013 20:06 Mensol wrote: im not sure if misaya is only good with tf or slumping hard in S3.
Sorta hard to look good when all notable chinese matches is against zzitai.
I'd be so pissed if I was WX; it's like the most anti-ADC comp iG has right now.
i thought misaya was the best chinese mid laner, seems like im wrong
another baron steal? -__-
baron was not important at that point, death timers were already too big. dunno what elise was trying to achieve there t.t
What? The 1st baron is very important. The only reason this game last that long is because of Elise stealing the 1st baron. iG still play quite good after that. But if somehow they screwed up, WE might have come back right there. The 2nd Baron was not that important, I'll give you that.
If iG secure the first baron, the game should end like 10 mins earlier.
Dunno. In the aftermath of the first baron steal iG got 3 ppl (4 with elise) and mid inhib I think. Seems like an ok trade. But I was talking about the second baron, and stealing it was not important when you risk losing the game 4v5 immediately after.
Depends... WE probably thought they could maybe hold a 4v5 (with baron), better than 5v5 without baron.
On April 23 2013 20:42 ihasaKAROT wrote: so Zzitai just did that
How come when I do that it always backfires :D
edit: clearlove what are u doooing maaan. cant solo blue :/ what did he use his second smite on?
cl started ward at lvl 1 to smite steal blue from jayce, he didnt do it, cl got screwed, not much magic there, he used 2nd smite on blue and still couldnt kill it, eve takes too much damage, 3 pots not enough.
On April 23 2013 20:57 ihasaKAROT wrote: For how good WE are looking, iG is ahead in gold by alot somehow. WE even got drake...
Jayce, and Kha, main reason for this. Kha got free farm, and Jayce was dumping on Misaya pretty hard in 1v1 lane; was forcing misaya off of creeps for cs.
Don't know why iG didn't ban Shen if they want to go for an all-in mid game team comp. That Trist save from Shen at mid and turn around to get 2 kills for free is the turning point of this game. After that iG just panic and lose the game. Also, WE is always big on Sona, I've never seen a series with WE while Sona isnt picked.
On April 23 2013 21:07 Caphe wrote: I will bet on WE this game, iG has passed their mid-game power time.
No joke; I think # of bluesides determine WE:IG match up wins/loses.
Wait, can someone go over why people think blue side is better?
lvl1 advantage baronadvantage smurfs were blue
don't forget first pick/ban; considering how willing people are lane switching, counterpicking doesn't hold the advantage it use to; thus making 2nd pick/ban less favorable in comparison to first pick/ban. But, there's no clear empirical evidence of this yet; since Riot has Blue strictly attached to first pick/ban status.
On April 23 2013 22:14 HazMat wrote: For how much people hype the Chinese scene, this game looks no way different than the NA LCS.
Well yeah except any NA LCS team would have lost this 20 minutes ago by playing over-agressive against a Noct/TF composition. And the dive would have been only 3 players diving why the rest watch what's happening since they don't listen to shots.
iG played this game like they hold a large grudge against WE. I mean the push mid only to win is kind of silly. But that did bring some entertainment so whatever!
For Wx's jump: He was too confident that he can clean up? Cos Hec and Kha was very low at that point. Turn out he was very very wrong.
I play on the Chinese servers, but I ve never seen Heal taken as a summoners so often - any idea why they are tonight? Surely the standard flash / ignite / tp / ghost is the way to go?
On April 23 2013 22:52 Heartscry wrote: I play on the Chinese servers, but I ve never seen Heal taken as a summoners so often - any idea why they are tonight? Surely the standard flash / ignite / tp / ghost is the way to go?
He uses it on Tristana alot vs heavy poke to be able to either jumpheal low allies or baitjumpheal a fight.
On April 23 2013 22:52 Heartscry wrote: I play on the Chinese servers, but I ve never seen Heal taken as a summoners so often - any idea why they are tonight? Surely the standard flash / ignite / tp / ghost is the way to go?
Advice: Chinese server sucks. Play else where if you can For the Heal, its a pro games, so you can't really compare them to soloQ. They may have special things in mind. Also, after this game expect lots more heal are summoner on CN server.
On April 23 2013 22:52 Heartscry wrote: I play on the Chinese servers, but I ve never seen Heal taken as a summoners so often - any idea why they are tonight? Surely the standard flash / ignite / tp / ghost is the way to go?
Advice: Chinese server sucks. Play else where if you can For the Heal, its a pro games, so you can't really compare them to soloQ. They may have special things in mind. Also, after this game expect lots more heal are summoner on CN server.
In full agreement with you about the Chinese server, it is absolute garbage. Largely consists of sub 100 cs ADCs with Garen as their support. Ping was too poor to play on EuW.
Thanks to you and the other poster with regard to why they picked Heal, can see the logic but really not fond of it.
What a crazy series. WE must be kicking themselves so hard now, since iG won a very similar game in recent Chinese LCS. Overall iG just played better, if it was not for blue side advantage, iG would have closed this game quite a while ago with that raid boss Malphite.
Meanwhile WE had very flashy moments throughout all the series, iG this time seemed a much better team especially at pressuring objectives and taking them, meanwhile WE relied a bit more on the slight teamfight superiority overall. Last game was really crazy but i can't get over Caomei's performance which was really underwhelming to say the least, his presence in the last fight showed how far behind he was compared to any of the iG members, he basically was just a meatshield with no damage whatsoever, and in the last teamfight he wasn't even in the right position to try and be a distraction, since he got kinda separated from his team and after using his ult he did basically nothing. Too bad i'd say, but apart from that very close games!
Amazing series. Very fun to watch, it's a real pleasure to see these two teams battle, no doubt they are both Top 5 teams in the world. Game 5 was sick. I love seeing Ezreal being played, such a flexible AD. Zzitai malphite was great. PDD is always a joy to watch. Gah, really enjoyed this.
I hate to criticize anybody's skill, but for me it appears that IG has a weaker support and jungler but a much stronger top, and both teams have good AD/AP.
All in all I thought this tournament was fucking great. The regular season was fun to watch and the playoffs were very interesting, seeing the IG/WE games in particular. It is awesome to have a league where KR/Chinese/TW teams play each other, very fun storylines.
It's easy to call XiaoXiao weak... but at the same time I think he's a really smart player who gets more flak for doing crazy shit. He's incredibly adaptive, like in the game5, he took speedsong at level 2 sona because they were doing a silly amount of laneswapping between top and mid. His crescendo in that final teamfight of the final game also WON THE GAME.
(And after that fight, if he/they had let Fzzf take down the inhibitor OR let him recall, the super minions/lulu harass&distraction adding onto Shen could have potentially slowed down IG's ability to force down the nexus off that one fight. But they couldn't afford to let someone stronger stay behind, either.)
I think most people realise Illusion is the weakest link and not XiaoXiao. It's just XiaoXiao sets himself up so nicely for jokes so what you gonna do.
Both are weak links. Its hard to watch Game 3 (the 2nd played game) and seeing XiaoXiao getting picked repeatedly to buy WE huge amounts of room on the map that they should never have gotten. And that's a pretty common theme with him, he gets caught a lot, frequently either dying or blowing ult/flash to save himself before fights.
On April 24 2013 04:40 Numy wrote: I think most people realise Illusion is the weakest link and not XiaoXiao. It's just XiaoXiao sets himself up so nicely for jokes so what you gonna do.
what? Illusion's Hecarim was really instrumental to iG's wins.
Also after watching these games, I can't believe iG's manager and coach didn't get selected for All Stars. In my opinion, iG had the better team comps and strategies throughout the series.
iG gives WE their first tournament loss since Worlds, and their first loss in a Chinese tournament since August 2011.
On April 24 2013 06:55 caelym wrote: Also after watching these games, I can't believe iG's manager and coach didn't get selected for All Stars. In my opinion, iG had the better team comps and strategies throughout the series.
Chinese all-stars are a total landslide for WE totally irrespective of their performance.
On April 24 2013 06:57 TheYango wrote: iG gives WE their first tournament loss since Worlds, and their first loss in a Chinese tournament since August 2011.
On April 24 2013 06:55 caelym wrote: Also after watching these games, I can't believe iG's manager and coach didn't get selected for All Stars. In my opinion, iG had the better team comps and strategies throughout the series.
Chinese all-stars are a total landslide for WE totally irrespective of their performance.
quite sad; losing on blue side; unacceptable. shamfurrr display.
It was bound to happen though; their games are always so fucking close.
On April 24 2013 04:40 Numy wrote: I think most people realise Illusion is the weakest link and not XiaoXiao. It's just XiaoXiao sets himself up so nicely for jokes so what you gonna do.
what? Illusion's Hecarim was really instrumental to iG's wins.
Also after watching these games, I can't believe iG's manager and coach didn't get selected for All Stars. In my opinion, iG had the better team comps and strategies throughout the series.
chinese all-star selection is more than fan-voting
they will also count in MVP points in LPL, and other factors. (i heard expert voting, media voting stuff, not sure about that)
On April 24 2013 22:35 allen_ami wrote: u rly cant blame caomei for his performance in the last game
he was the one being sacrificed by team decisions, several early lane switch ending up lvl2 rumble vs lvl4 malphite and so on.
and later shen needs split pushing, which makes caomei the 4th priority on the team considering the farm.
there is no need to doubt his individual skills, he is no HSGG
He got underleveled because he and his team misplayed the switches. They weren't sacrificing anything, they wanted him vs malphite but got outplayed during the switches and lost out on way too many waves.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/2E0ZH.png)
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vs. ![[image loading]](http://leaguepedia.com/images/a/a8/IGlogo_std.png)
iG![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Fq2vc.png)
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