This is a weekly article series that will go over just some thoughts, ideas, predictions...whatever I’m feeling for the week. It may be anything from current champion ratings to the pro’s state of mind. This week's landing page can be found HERE
Watching the first game of last weekend (TL vs. CLG) got me thinking. Sometimes it seems as if games go into an ultra conservative mode. Where one team or the other, or both, end up just playing by the book. Slowly farming or taking objectives with the least risk possible. Now, that’s just fine, if my career was based on winning league games, I’d probably play to win, whatever that win condition was...but, it has me wondering about the sport in general. Not just esports either. Think about any sport, I wonder if players or organizations are encouraged to change up their style of play in order to make it more entertaining for the fans. Because let's be real, it’s a business. The more entertainment it provides, the higher value it is. What do you think? I’m not saying sports are rigged (they could be, too much money involved) but are players incentivized in some way? Does that affect our balance changes on champions?
Echo Fox took down 100 in the first game last weekend. Everyone was excited about the Yasuo lock-in from Huni. He essentially did his job, absorbing pressure, and letting his team get fed on their own. This got me thinking again about how strong players really are. There’s no question on Huni being one of the best top laners in the world, but casters and analysts brought up the second day game, where C9’s Licorice picked Lucian against Huni. Everyone said things like “oh, picking Lucian against the Lucian king” red flags, blah blah. Honestly Licorice played really well. It wasn’t Huni beating him, it was Fox’ whole team that beat him. Huni had something around 30%+ time from his jungler, Dardoch. A massively higher number than Dardoch’s normal time spent up top. So to even remotely say that Huni outplayed Licorice, is just a falsehood. You’ve got one of the best Top laners in the world, requiring his jungle to camp a rookie...nice job guys. I’m not even fanboying here (since I’m on the Clutch bandwagon), it’s just silly to analyze it that way. Did Fox outplay the pick? Absolutely. Did Huni outplay Licorice? Not in my opinion. Is Huni better than Licorice? Maybe, hopefully we’ll see more of the matchup.
Man, it’s really surprising to see how strong Zoe is/can be in pro play. Mainly because these are pros right? They should EXPECT that if you can’t see a Zoe on the map, you’re likely in danger. That being said, we actually got to see both sides of the coin this weekend. A Zoe played when the enemy team had poor vision, and a Zoe played against an enemy with good vision. You can imagine the difference if you’ve played the champion before. Basically she can utilize terrain to fire her CC (sleepy trouble bubble) enormous distances, as it increases based on the amount of terrain it passes through at once. Essentially she’s a burst mage that relies on using large distances to her advantage. This is pretty tough to do if you dont have vision of the enemy. Otherwise, all your spells are getting tossed into the fog of war, with nothing but a prayer they will land. When you do have vision control, the only real effort it takes to land skill shots is to understand your spell ranges. Pretty easy for a pro. This champion has the potential to completely delete anyone on the map, given the opportunity.
Watch Febiven obliterate Hauntzer after he just walks into ‘sleep trouble bubble’ off to the left of the main fight.
Full Game
There has been a lot of conversation on the format changes for this season. Swapping to Best of 1’s was decided on for a lot of reasons. Mainly to allow fans/viewers to watch all the teams play without forcing people to sit through hours just for one team. Honestly I’m loving the format. For the aforementioned reason but also for something more subtle... I notice that this format really allows anyone in the league to have a shot. Look at the standings, it’s crazy. Last week a top team went down to a bottom team. In theory you’d expect the top teams to come out on top for playoffs no matter what...but will that be the case? It’s possible some lower tier teams end up in playoffs above top tier teams, solely because they were able to pull out some single victories at the right time. Now, the playoffs should be in Best of 3 format, and the best team should take the victory...but it should continue to be a really interesting show up until then.
Over the past year, Riot’s lore team has realy stepped up their game. Recently they made a post reiterating their dedication to continuing that improvment. What that means for players is more lore! Not to mention just basic corrections to canon, or filling in holes that didnt exist in the first place. I haven’t been keeping up with all of the additions to the lore site like I’d like to, but everything I have read through or viewed, has been top notch. I just read through the short on Noxus, really interesting.
There are likely a million reasons on why Riot chooses to buff or nerf champs, items, runes, etc. and I can’t claim to know anything about game development, but it does seem that certain champions remain in a state of OPness for too long (overpowered). Example numero uno right now...Tristana. We see her in most pro games in the LCS, and she’s a very common pick in all ELOs from what I can see. Playing against her, is quite frankly obnoxious. I don’t mind champions being extremely strong. Such as Zoe, she’s incredibly strong, but has essentially zero escape and is basically a glass cannon. Talking about the ADC position, most ADCs have some weakness. Maybe they are horrible in lane, but incredible team fighters. Maybe they are super weak early game, but scale into monsters in the late game. Then we have Tristana, who currently is very strong in ALL stages of the game AND has an escape which also works as a chase mechanic. Luckily it sounds like she will be receiving a nerf soon that could help the situation. Check out Phy’s vid
I’ve mentioned before, I’m part of a fantasy league game with my friends for LoL. The system for fantasy built by Riot is extremely basic. Glaringly bad actually. This seems pretty silly to me. A horrible business decision by all accounts. Fantasy sports is a $7+ billion industry. Not to mention the money that can’t really be counted when it comes to fantasy itself as a marketing tool and generating buzz. I guess what I’m ranting about here...is... get your stuff together Riot, make a few improvements to the system. Let me choose players from all regions. Etc. I don’t really want to leave the Riot architecture for my fantasy leagues.
I really didn’t want to like 100 Thieves. Something about Nadeshot (the owner) just didn’t sit right with me the first time I looked into the team. I have no defense for that initial reaction. I just didn’t want to like the team at all. After the first few weeks, I started to get behind this team, it felt like a great story, and I liked some of the players already (aphromoo, mainly). I’m still excited to see what they are capable of, but it’s not looking good. They are looking really unstable and havent been having a very good couple weeks. By all accounts, they have a difficult weekend this weekend too. C9 is their first opponent, followed by FLY. Both they’ve already lost to. Let’s see how it goes.
Well, those are my ramblings for the week. Shower thoughts. Momentos. Whatever. Feel free to comment below and strike up a conversation on any of the above, or anything at all.
Source: All from Giphy.com
