NA summer split

woodvsmurph·Jun 1, 2017·1 votes·388 views

apologies for poor sentence structure - it's really late and i don't care to capitalize and punctuate perfectly.

p1 - good analysis in the dive - agree they will stay around the same as spring split unless some major roster issues happen; have faith in inori and you should have a solid split - hopefully no more infighting or issues among the teammates

flyquest - turtle could be the magic pickup that fits just perfectly; however, it might also be 1 too many agro players and cause them to have 0 lanes they can look to if things go badly when they play aggressive early. Regardless, turtle should enjoy playing on this team. Personally, if they click I see them having more consistent success against teams they are better than while it won't make a difference vs teams better than them in the long run; maybe a game or two stolen off better teams, but that's it.

tsm - top 2 as usual; will they learn how to compete internationally again though?

liquid - like they say, goldenglue's korean endeavor is hardly going to turn him into the new best mid in NA; Piglet is back to adc and will continue being somewhere less than best in NA, and you wonder how long until the roster changes will start again in an attempt to salvage this team so they get where everyone had expected them to be at the start of last split

clg - grabbed dardoch. he's more aggressive and will be the INITIATOR of more plays early on - perhaps this will help. regardless, they traded away consistency and team-focused supportive jungler in xmithie for a higher solo carry potential. perhaps he can salvage the often feeding overly-aggressive bot lane. speaking of which, why are those 2 still on the team? I feel like you are relying on aphro's laurels rather than his current performance and stixxay is clearly not the best adc aphro has ever played with as he once claimed. Here's to another mediocre split - unless dardoch ends up being the perfect complement to the rest of the team somehow.

immortals - despite what they say, i have faith in xmithie. this is a team that gives him options to play towards - toplane flame can play more carries and more aggressive knowing xmithie will have his back or he can sit back on a tank and let xmithie snowball the bot lane that steadily improved from one of the worst to a very solid duo. if these guys want to make it back to their former glory though, pobelter has to step up his playmaking. we've seen and heard from solo queue and scrims he has the talent, it's time to show it on stage - or else find someone else who can. I personally hope the former.

envy - ninja never impressed me, but pirean is probably not much of a step up - perhaps in consistency and getting picked off less. seraph had stepped up his game from when he first came over to play for clg, but lately he has backslid and is an equally a liability as ninja was. if he could get back to being a rock in top lane, maybe they can manage better than near the bottom of the barrel

c9 - top 2 unless the lower teams really step it up; perhaps if tsm is shaken enough from their international performances recently and c9 can take their game 1 step further they will retake the NA crown

5 Comments

III BAKURYU III Jun 1, 20171 votes

CLG - One bad split from Stixxay and people tend to put him in the dirt and Aphromoo did have a garbage split no doubt himself. Let's not forget that meta shifts means something, I mean people still are defending Piglet because of the meta shifts and he's doing just as much if not a little worse than Stixxay but more so around 5 splits of being mediocre. CLG/Stixxay had a pretty good split around the same time with the new meta that's coming up, they also went to MSI and did well 2nd and had overall a good showing at Worlds with him also( ROOKIE) maybe TSM can do better with an already 4-6 year pro D-Lift, BJergsen and nope. Also the NA talent pool is how do I say this GARBAGE unless CLG picks up Korean, Korean, Korean, Korean like the rest of the NA teams are they will be middle tier, but a team that is built around NA talent pool tends to get overlooked.

woodvsmurphJun 5, 20171 votes

I don't excuse piglet - i've been a critic about much of his play from the first split he came to NA. Lacking the ability to adapt to what his TEAM needs and blaming others for his apparent inability to adapt for more than one game here and there. I could say more, but that's not what I posted about - it is a separate discussion. Stixxay and aphro? Their last split at worlds stixxay looked good for 2 reasons:

aphro's lucky counter-engages when ganked let them get early kills on the enemy jungle or bot lane when ganked and placed in 2v3 scenarios. And it was largely luck - sure some was calculated in the latter half of such a play, but they hardly planned to get 3v2'd when overextended which is clear if you look at how they play when the gank first begins.
Clg had 1 strategy back then if huhi didn't get one of his (at the time) 3 carry champs - protect the stixxay comp and snowball bot early. What adc doesn't look good if their entire team sacrifices some of THEIR lane in order to feed the adc? To give the adc peeling, healing, shielding, and buying time for them from 4 members on the team.

What went wrong? The better teams figured this out and shut it down - punishing solo laners harder for sacrificing to put their eggs in the stixxay/adc basket. This made top/mid/jg look bad on clg when it was really an issue with bot lane just as much as it was with those other roles. Furthermore, teams looked to party in the bot lane and just beat clg at their own game - if stixxay and aphro fell behind early, chances are clg would lose. What about this season? Xmithie is much better - even at carry junglers like graves, kha, rengar than people gave him credit for. His problems spring split largely came from: getting 2 or 3 man invaded while his team just kinda watched and didn't communicate danger fast enough, sacrificing HIS life to save stixxay and aphro from being horribly overextended because THEY were making a bad play and losing 2v2 while also about to get ganked by enemy jungle or laner. I will be the first to say aphro can be the best support in NA by far when playing at his best; however, he is inconsistent, drafts some very poor supports sometimes which lack the utility/damage/engage/peeling/whatever his team needs based on their comp and the enemy comp, and he plays too arrogantly much of the time. Like clearly when you are having an off game and your top or mid is winning, you shouldn't continue a 2v2 trade to the point you have to blow sums or get your jungler to suicide to save you because you don't recognize by the time you've lost half your hp that you are going to lose the 2v2. But he and stixxay do this regularly - and not just spring split. If you want the support who can go just above par most games, godlike in a few, and feeding so much the rest of his team winning means nothing in a few more, take aphro. If you want consistently above par, never quite godlike, but never feeding so hard his teammates' successes mean nothing, take someone else. Stixxay has been overhyped from his first split. He's good, but not top tier in NA. And all the overhyping combined with the feeding of his ego and playing with someone like aphro who let's overconfidence get the best of him more than other top NA supports has just made stixxay worse. I'm not saying they both NEED to be traded or dropped out of lcs. But they both need a reality check to realize THEY are much of the problem clg has been having lately. Perhaps their teammates have only themselves to blame - trying to win worlds off the back of a support and a rookie adc, but perhaps it is time they move past that and start evaluating themselves instead of looking to lay the blame on a changing meta or a top tier supportive jungler.

III BAKURYU III Jun 5, 20171 votes

" What adc doesn't look good if their entire team sacrifices some of THEIR lane in order to feed the adc"?

And yet it's subscribed in our brains to do so in solo Q and in the LCS. The ADC is the weakest/needs the most resources, while top can get 1 cloth armor, mid gets every blue and jungle does what ever they want( shacks head back and fourth style) lol. Stixxay and Huhi were the new kids among 4 year pro players, what veteran leadership wouldn't make them feel at home and made them feel viable to the core of CLG?
Yeah, Stixxay/Aphromoo were garbage I'v said that, Darshan wasn't that great either with the meta shifted, and while Stixxay might had a "over hyped" split, maybe we can say that for Rekkles or Sneaky etc for players that come in 1 split are good but just are a cog in a wheel but if not that's not a team that's the old CLG with D-Lift.

Point is yes, CLG had 1-2 strategies in their first 2 splits together but Huhi's champion is growing and CLG are still moving along, Huhi played 5 unique champions in 5 games so far this split, that's improvement.

I'm not saying Xmithie was 100% the problem in game but he could have voiced his opinions and Aphromoo disagreed in either case who was right and who was wrong we will never know.
OR WILL WE IMT 2-0 CLG 2-0 ........ 3 weeks away June 23rd on PPV

This may very well be Aphromoo's last split, send off either out of Worlds looking in or in Worlds before retiring.

woodvsmurphJun 7, 20171 votes

Huhi was a liability last year although his willingness and ability to roam and snowball bot often made up for some of it. This year, he's been great. He still has the roaming potential to get his side lanes ahead, but he can play more champs and be a true carry himself on more than just 3 champs. I am glad to see his improvement and absolutely think clg should keep him. Furthermore, his willingness to roam and snowball teammates should pair nicely with the aggression of Dardoch - rather than seeing dardoch left out to dry by passive or losing laners. Are stixxay and aphro bottom tier in NA? Not by a long shot. But they have played too aggressive to allow their team to carry or help them when they are losing. And they were not nearly playing well enough to compete with the best in NA much less internationally for all of spring split at least. Xmithie was much less the problem than aphro and stixxay all spring split. Sure there were some sub-par games, but most of the times he failed to perform were actually the fault of a teammate(s) losing lane hard and xmithie either dying for their sins when he tried to save them OR dying because the enemy laner(s) would back up their jungler on invades and xmithie didn't get backup AND didn't get the advanced warning to LEAVE the jungle camp so he could avoid dying 1v2 or 1v3. If your jungler is getting invaded, you need to ping that stuff out - this isn't bronze. Sure darshan isn't the same as on his team coast days; however, he has played average to above average in almost every game. He hasn't repeatedly (in one game) forced bad plays toplane 1v1 and fed.

III BAKURYU III Jun 7, 20171 votes

If Huhi keeps on improving I think CLG should honestly make the team around him in the future(now) idk, maybe they will but only once Dardoch settles in with the team. Heard in a vine that the early game was Xmithie's shotcalling and the mid/late was Aphromoo's - take that was a pinch of salt tho. I will say also CLG's early game in most games was this

Darshan invade, Darshan is spotted, Darshan stays until literally the enemy top, jungle and mid are around him right after the jungle camps would spawn. CLG would do that more than once in Spring split.

Very similar SSG - CLG are in my opinion ( not in talent, we all know Koreans are like 60x better so don't bit my head off from that comparisons) but if you remembered SSG during 2016 were a fast - feed or reward team, especially in the regional tournament where they earned a spot at Wolrds. Everyone on the team would die early, constantly and would lose a decent amount of games. Ambition early on in his career wasn't a good mid by any means( most of what you have said about Stixxay can be contributed to how Ambition would play early on in his years; plays too aggressive, dies constantly in lane, was a huge liability to his team etc.

Overall Yes, I actually agree with you in you professional tone that Stixxay and Aphromoo were huge problems on CLG 100% them no, 50% between them(Moo,Stix) the other 3 players being their fault, Yeah I can dig 50% Stixxay/Aphromoo and the other 50% being between the remaining players on CLG.