Season Wrap Up: Stories of the Year

GeminiRune·Oct 23, 2016·1 votes·663 views

So I've been watching a vast majority of this entire season across most every region. With the finals on the way I thought to look back at the year as a whole and pick up what some of the stories of the teams out of each region. Good and surprising stories like:

CLG continuing consistency and not falling from grace despite the loss of their star players in exchange for a rookie and an untested talent (counting FSN) at the time.
UOL literally defying the odds. Went through a jungle shuffle in the spring and then were believed to be definitively 10th place and relegation material by the summer.
RNG emerging from the dark with just an acquisition of imports. This took them from the bottom of the barrel to a top team in the region.

Then there were the pretty bad, sad, or unfortunate ones like:

TL with their landslide of a year. To think Liquid had the opportunity to get into Worlds 2 times with how well they were performing. And now we fast forward one year. It's heart breaking to those fans but it's definitely not the worst collapse.
LZ and their "super team." What started as this 10-man roster of big name players believed to be one of the strongest teams of Korea turned out to remain almost exactly where they seem to always be. It's an incredible miracle they weren't relegated.
From TPA to JT and back to TPA. To me if they had made it to worlds, that'd be a great story on the year. Even still you just wonder what happened to them where it mattered the most. The answer is pretty obvious but still...
The fall of CJ, the fall of DIG, the ongoing fall of OMG.

These are just my personal few. What team stories throughout the season caught you off guard as a fan yourself?

7 Comments

Sagan ForeverOct 23, 20161 votes

Mine are: total collapse of fanatic, G2 playing terribly whenever they leave EU region, Immortals inability to play best of 5's(comparing 33-3 in regular season to 2-3 for b05's), Korea becoming more dominant than before, and lastly a wildcard going to the quarterfinals.

GeminiRuneOct 23, 20161 votes

I like how I completely forgot about the collapse of FNC while making this post. Now that it's mentioned I feel like it really would've done better to highlight that. Oh well.

Sagan ForeverOct 24, 20161 votes

[slayer-pantheon-thumbs] happy to help

WhiperSnapersOct 23, 20161 votes

CLG continuing consistency and not falling from grace despite the loss of their star players in exchange for a rookie and an untested talent (counting FSN) at the time.

Consistent? Did you watch the summer split? A rollercoaster of ups and downs would be a better way to describe their year.

GeminiRuneOct 23, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Consistent? Did you watch the summer split?

Actually yes I did. Pretty sure the "I watched a vast majority of the entire season" opening included that. And yeah despite a shaky start they were still able to pull themselves together to be considered a top half team. I say that's consistent in a year's perspective. It's not like FNC's story.

{quoted} A rollercoaster of ups and downs would be a better way to describe their year.

Pardon attempting to further defend CLG, but was their spring split really a roller coaster?

WhiperSnapersOct 24, 20162 votes

Actually yes I did. Pretty sure the "I watched a vast majority of the entire season" opening included that.

Sorry, I was just asking because the statement

_ "CLG continuing consistency and not falling from grace despite the loss of their star players in exchange for a rookie and an untested talent (counting FSN) at the time." _

seemed like an undeniable statement for the end of spring split/MSI, but if it was said after the summer split it would sound either like you didnt watch the split (or only watched the playoffs) or your bias wouldnt allow you to acknowledge the split. (I was giving you the benefit of the doubt by asking if you had watched instead of accusing you of a bias)

Pardon attempting to further defend CLG, but was their spring split really a roller coaster?

I was reffering to the ENTIRE year (which is the title and theme of this discussion)... They had a good spring split, I'm not taking that away from them, in fact that would be the "ups" part of the rollercoaster analogy, it cant be considered a rollercoaster if there are no ups.

And yeah despite a shaky start they were still able to pull themselves together to be considered a top half team.

It wasnt just a shaky start though... their split had a shaky middle and mediocre ending. Their poor performance during the first 2-3 weeks is excusable, but they didnt show any signs of improvement until week 5-6, that's about 2/3 of the split which is too long to ignore underperformance. They were 4th place going into playoffs and 4th place coming out of playoffs and dont forget that they lost to the team that is notorious for choking in playoffs. In terms of the rollercoaster analogy, this split would be the low point.

However it would be a pretty boring rollercoaster if it didnt go back up, fortunately this one did when the team performed well at worlds taking a game off of ROX who some regarded as the tournament favorite.

Spring/MSI ---- Summer ---- Worlds /`````````````````\................/````````````````\ (<---Rollercoaster)

GeminiRuneOct 24, 20162 votes

Convinced me. The way I could even see it is that on a scale of 10, they were like an 8-10 until post-MSI. From that very first game vs TSM, the slide started and even struggling against the likes of NRG and heart attacks against P1 pre Inori, that's like your long awaited drop of screams and dare I say it...LULs (hate that). I'd give that period more or less a 4. Ever since it's been a slow climb back up but playoffs froze it in place. And then we already know Worlds. All and all: one effective dip. That's enough for a roller coaster but at least it ends somewhat high given that group stage.

I can also understand how you may detect bias. I dislike showing bias personally even if I was just trying to be short and to the point. But to explain, every preseason I decide to follow one or two teams a bit more than the rest in each region unless they get relegated (why DIG why - they'll be back but why). This year just happened to be a CLG year given that preseason drama.