Podcast is back! We had issues at the end and I never close the show out. That is something that will change. Other than that enjoy and let us know what to add or do more of! Please head over and ask questions and give opinions so we can add more to the show on what others think of what is currently going on in the LCS! So please come by and enjoy. If you're bored and have time...I mean...why not right?
The last time we saw this hyper carry style meta, that I do think will be the primary focus on the Jinx, Trist etc etc here are my thoughts on that subject for each team.
TSM 12-6
Doublelift coming to TSM is good and bad for reasons;
Gold, Shotcalling, and expectations.
If TSM does this triple gold share between Haunzter, Bjergsen and D-lift, where they get like 20% of the gold share, I think they will be peeled way too thin in a true carry for this upcoming meta halfway into the Split/Worlds.
Hauntzer was a 2nd shotcaller and with D-Lift coming back I doubt Hauntzer won't voice most of his opinions, which can lead to rather poor focus, with 3 potential shotcallers.
2016 Summer TSM was GREAT, however going 17-1 or 18-0 SHOULDN'T be on their minds, yes, TRY to get it but don't consume yourself in thinking you need to go 17-1 or so. The 2007 Patriots went 18-0 and never did it again since, but were still good without that desire to get that record again over the years.
Wildturtle filling in for D-Lift and the previous TSM was a tall order to fill and Turtle did it, he and TSM won NA, but failed on the International level same as D-Lift we he was on TSM. Now the ball will be in D-Lift court for him to do better than Turtle. As much pressure as we put on Turtle now needs to be 2X for D-Lift.
I just don't think TSM will be that great this split. D-Lift has looked shaky in his soloQ games, and when he was on TL.
The pressure will be too much for TSM to go 17-1 again, however will TSM win NA again, IDK.
CLG 13-5 IMT 6-12
Last split CLG were complete garbage, they died 24/7 and were around middle tier in almost every objective.
Xmithie for Dardoch was a win - win for both Immortals and CLG in my opinon. Immortals knew that with a roster containing Pobelter, Cody and Flame the communication will need time, the skill for Cody needs time and overall just needed to get fresh proven talent that isn't a toxic animal.
Xmithie had his advantages over Dardoch and vice Versa, but both were pretty even.
Even on dmg, KDA etc. However, Xmithie outwarded Dardoch and that's going to be the key for CLG when replacing Xmithie, the vision. 21% of the wards on CLG were from Xmithie alone, while Dardoch was like 15% for Immortals.
If CLG can do that and with the roster that they have they should be fine, as they are doubled in skill when it comes to Immortals' lineup.
FQ 11-7 C9 15-3
FQ felt like the fastest team in game time, while Cloud 9 felt like the slowest team in game time. Matter of fact FQ were 1st in shortest game time(35.18) while C9 were 3rd(38.16) longest, only a few secs on average of #1 DIG 38.40.
Turtle will be joining his old teammates from back in Season 2 Hai and Lemon and it may be a better place for him than say TSM. Hai has straight forward shotcalling, and doesn't care if he dies in the process to actually win/help his teams. We've seen it numerous times in the past, he'll play Mid, jungle, support, he'll Twisted Fate ult to help, roam constantly etc etc.
The issue will be the lane phase for this team. Hai has shown to be a reliability when it comes to the lane phase as well as Turtle.
Cloud 9 it's the complete opposite for lane phase, Sneaky is getting better in lane tho. Cloud 9's issue is Impact. IDK, why C9 are subbing Impact out 10-15 games constantly when Ray would either win games, but with 600 deaths or C9 loses games, either way Impact > Ray. However, that's not the issue, it's the subbing him out. Is Impact getting tired? I mean sure 40+ games can be tough but Sneaky or Jensen isn't getting subbed out, so I don't get it. Is it like he and C9 are telling people that Impact will leave soon and better give Ray time to gel in some games? Most likely but even so C9 would sub Ray in when the series is 0-0 and not say advantage C9 1-0 instead.
Got subbed in for 4 playoff games and in losing efforts in 2 of those games, Ray went 2 kills and 12 deaths, but did go 9 kills and only 7 deaths in the wins on 4 different champions.
Just CS for thought.
DIG 9-9 P1 9-9
Both will be average teams in my opinion, more so for Dignitas. DIG won like 5 of their last 6 games against the weakest teams in the standings, add in Keane had to go close to double his average stats in his career to get those wins, 4.9 kills, 8.0 assists and 361.4 cs while his career stats are 3.5 kills, 5.4 assists and 323.3 cs just to beat the 10th(NV) the 9th(TL) the 8th(EF) and the 7th(IMT)
P1 had their issues but off the rift, Inori's mom broke her leg so he left, and while doing so Meteos came in and helped P1 win 4-5 of their games, without him P1 might have been in 5th or 6th place instead of 3rd. Now Inori puts up fantastic stats and all but for the most of his career the wins just aren't there, factoring in the piss poor team a year go Inori is something like 25-29 in his career, factor in that his old teammates left, Adrian left because of he and Inori didn't like each other, only time will tell if Ryu or Arrow leaves in same fashion.
Arrow won MVP last split and while he's good he tends to play on 1 champion for like 10 games in a row, when push comes to shove and he's has to play on 3-4 different champion within 10 or so games like he did in the Playoffs I see P1 being in trouble, add in 10 total bans you can roll the dice on who will be banned out in most of those bans.
While one of the main carries on DIG is the complete opposite, Keane tends to play non meta champions every game or a new champion without getting in a roll with them so banning Ssumday's champion pool 24/7 will most likely be the cause of DIG's success.
That's way both DIG and P1 are 9-9 each because both teams have issues that teams CAN(wait to be seen) exploit.
TL 8-10
Ok, bring in GG and all is better, he played in Korea( but everyone does once or twice a year), he's going to be better, 2-3 years in his career and he figured out that all he had to do was play in Korea for 2-3 months and now both he and TL can win!
TL are 8-10 for me because on paper Reignover, Piglet and the potential of Lourlo and Matt is there, but is it?
Piglet seems like he doesn't give a s$it anymore, Reignover is still good and all but we need to think if TL sucks this year how much was it Huni carrying him oppose to being =. Matt is still meh in lane and Lourlo doesn't do anything at top, yeah, he makes decent plays from time to time but in the end it doesn't matter; Linkin Park anyone ?
NV 5-13 EF 4-14 Both NV and EF are doing things that are either the complete opposite of winning or is really old. First NV, Apollo support or Hakuho ? I understand Apollo will pretty much give you like 0 effort in making plays but when it comes to Hakuho he will do 1ST in dmg compared to the other supports, but was dead last in wards among them too in the bulk of the split. Already a mediocre bot lane add in that most of the time, any of the most worst ganks gets them both killed. Pretty much already a losing lane before the game starts. Echo Fox has a great career name in Looper, a great overaggressive jungler and a 3 year old strategy in mid. My questions for this team are
Well, that's my thought on the Split/teams. Will most likely be 100% wrong and will most likely get corrected 3 months from now from someone who always tends to do so.
Again, the grammar skills not strong with me like the force so be warned. Going to also just copy paste what I already said 3-4 days ago for EU because well you're not my mom.
Ok, so apparently there seems to be a text limit so going to paste my EU thought HERE.
Team Vitality 5TH I'll say this again, great individual talent but 0 team focus from this team. Cabochard has been a top tier player at his role for some time now and it's resulted in nothing, and the same can be said about Nukeduck, in which he had one of the most pathetic splits from a player that I'v ever seen. The newest player on this team is Vander in which he will help this team but it's not a T.E.A.M it's 5 players that run around doing nothing at the end of the day. One of the lowest kills per game team(8th) towers destroyed(8th) Dragons secured(10th) and Barons(9th) and that's all on the offensive side of the team in which you would think would be higher with Cabo and Nukeduck being very aggressive players with 0 minded on defense or team first mentality. This team is past their due in being a great team marking up like what 6 or so splits and they've looked piss poor in each split.
Mysterious Monkeys 4TH I don't know S$it about this team, very "mysterious" you could say........... Coming in similar to how UOL came in with a purpose to upset teams, the problem is this team will be facing teams that have been together some time now and will test this team with communication and exp.
Splyce 3RD Been together for a year+ but that was never the problem with this team, it's talent above all else. Wunder is constantly 1v5 or getting in positions where he should be, the bot lane of Kobbe and Mikyx is good but never that impressive, Sencux can't push out a wave to save his life adn Trashy can barely farm or survive to safe his life. The fastest team last split compared to their earlier splits 2016 Summer when they were a slow team. Decent objective focus but tends to not ward as much which in turn gives up early dragons to the enemy team. If this team can get a better jungler to replace Trashy, they could be top 2 again but until that happens, I'm placing them middle tier.
Unicorns Of Love 2ND This team were on point last year, 2nd shortest game lengths, 2nd in Kills per game, 2nd in towers destroyed, The least amount of towers lost, 1st in barons per game. However, whenever they played against G2 they got destroyed G2 and UOL were both either #1 or #2 in every category but G2 proved UOL were no match for the top tier team. Well, a split later and it's the same team from before which isn't a bad thing but you have to ask yourself can they make it back to the EU Finals? The talent is there and is was the communication in which every Unicorn were pretty much involved in every fight but tend to struggle against the split push, especially if Vizicsacsi isn't on his game and helps carry. Hylissang is a favorite of mine but he has tendencies to die constantly around 3.2 times per game over his career in which was also the average of deaths in the 2017 Spring split 0.85 Kills 3.2 Deaths 8.58 Assists with 37.31 cs per game. He gives an fantasy owner decent assist points and also CS being fairly high also but for each assists comes with a decent amount of deaths to go along with it too, maybe a 3-4th option as far as Fantasy owners.
H2K Gaming 1ST The EU Curse/Team Liquid ladies and gentlemen! 2015 Spring Split - 3RD 2015 Spring Playoffs - 3RD 2015 Summer Split -3rd 2015 Summer Playoffs -3RD 2016 Spring Split -2ND 2016 Spring Playoffs-4th 2016 Summer Split -4TH 2016 Summer Playoffs -3RD 2017 Spring Split -2ND 2017 Spring Playoffs-5th/6TH This team has talent and amazing players, Febiven has proven before that he can be one of the best in not just his role but players in the World, Jankos has been a beast in the jungle for 2 straight years as well as his Roccat years and Odoamne has been a rock up at top lane. Every player on this has the skill but more times than not they all tend to go AWOL and play solo- Q style of games. H2 WHAT H2 3RD!
GROUP A
Roccat 5TH Decent players all across the board and great effort last split but this team just looks weak. 6 out of 17 of Hjarnan's 2017 Spring Split he ended the game with 0 kills and Betsy was no better, this team has two of the most passive and non threatening players at the carry roles and that's a problem. Pretty much the CLG of EU but without Doublelift, Betsy is Link who tilts and does pretty much nothing all game and Hjarnan has decent CS per game but can't carry while the rest of the players are just "there" to fill the roles.
Fnatic 4TH Gotta say I like Jesiv and the way he has turned his career a new leaf, started off on SK as the Mid, went to NA and didn't do much there, and now on FNC as the support and I like it. Fnatic were pretty much the Middle tier team, neither good nor bad but just even. Hopefully Soaz can comeback from his hiatus of being a bottom feeder and be the 2014-16 Soaz as we all remember him being. If I have to say something negative about this team it's too damn PASSIVE! Soaz plays aggressive whenever he gets caught out but if not he's passive/aggressive while Rekkles is pretty much that KDA player that doesn't do anything to hurt his KDA, Caps ( oh, sorry I mean "baby Faker") is meh as far as being either passive or aggressive and Jesiv even as mid/support is pretty much all knowledge but passive smart. Won't take chances to win even if they are getting destroyed. " Hmm, make 1 last effort to win but possibly mess up our KDA's or just lose and keep our KDA safe, lets do the second option"
Ninjas In Pyjamas 3RD Nagne is a big name from Korea/LCK but he's not this flashy mid, he's more of a passive farm for late game, team first player which isn't bad but looking at this team it looks like it was just thrown together and hope to stick. However, both Nagne and Profit will bring EXP to this team the thing is communication. HeaQ may be an underrated player for the upcoming split as he does have a yolo style and having 2 Koreans to back you up is never a bad thing. Shook will most likely play his comfort picks like Rammus and Lee Sin to get Nagne fed as well as Profit but overall this team looks to be a fun team on the offensive side of things but objective focus and teamwork will most likely be low for this team in my opinion.
Misfits 2ND I don't know what happened to Kakao in either contract or performance but him leaving MFS hurts this team, mainly becasue of Maxlore will be the new jungler and well in my opinion he's not very good. He can get kills no doubt but he dies so it's a constant trade and more times than not it hurts him and his team. Alphari can hold his own at top, and the bot duo are good as well as PowerofEvil but ban away Ori and/or Syndra and he tends to lose.
G2 E-Sports 1ST Tough group besides Roccat for G2 but overall I have no reason to doubt this team whenever they've won EU like 3 splits in a row with Zven and Mithy who have contested most of those G2 reigns. Pretty much won EU over and over again with the same scheme, Expect split pushes, Trick camps, Perkz does his thing, Zven and Mithy push botlane to the third tower; rinse and repeat. Most of Trick's kills are from over aggressive enemy mid laners but against players like Nagne and now more experienced Caps and super passive Betsy I see Tricks' kills being a little lower this go around from before. This team may win their Group but I'm going to say they won't win Eu Finals
