After watching LCS I ask myself: Can NA compete playing like this? Answer: NO

fountainAFK·Jun 11, 2019·2 votes·1,993 views

I recently watched TL vs CLG (Week 2 Day 2). And I saw so many mistakes that you expect maybe from a silver or plat game, but not from "NA's best".

Take for instance this scene:

Team Liquid clearly see Lux throw E in the bush On this image we see that TL has clear vision showing Lux throwing her bubble into the bush. They have SECONDS to play around this but.... seconds later...

Team Liquid moves so they all get hit by it Somehow all three of them get hit by Lux bubble? The ingame timer when lux first throws her E is 26:12, the timer when they walk in 26:16.

I understand why some NA players complains about Lux on this board, your best players walk into the spells just laying there and be like "this is too strong it hits our whole team every time".

This game had multiple other scenes where TL made mistakes like this that I don't expect from a pro team. TL stand so bad two of them get hit by a lux stun once, from far distance (so both could have dodged), and there isn't even a choke point there, nor are they slowed or pressured from the sides. This is not something you expect from challenger. This is mechanics and positioning you expect from high plat or low/mid diamond.

I doubt teams like this would even qualify if they were playing like this in EUW. And this has nothing to do with "not being used to the patch", lux stuff are very old and has stayed the same for long. I don't think NA looks promising this season if stuff keeps on going on like this. I don't wanna complain on your every team but watching LCS this year hasn't been that great, gameplay to me looks in general poor.

Maybe NA can improve or maybe I'm wrong and they are better than I believe. But NA gameplay seems to be like this, bunch of mechanical/positional misstakes and then a games that goes on for way too long, an NA team that has a great lead ends the game at minute 35-40 or so, on Korea, EUW or China when a good team has a decent lead the game is over at 20-26 min.

I think NA needs to fix stuff like what I mentioned in this post or they can just forget any dream of competing internationally. Getting 3 people hit by a lux bubble just laying there is an new all time low IMO.

EDIT: I write lux Q in the images, the correct thing is "lux E"

9 Comments

GeminiRuneJun 11, 20192 votes

I guess we can still just rub off the amount of foolishness going on in the LCK right now, huh?

fountainAFKJun 11, 20191 votes

{quoted}

I guess we can still just rub off the amount of foolishness going on in the LCK right now, huh?

Other regions makes mistakes too, but at least they win international events some of the times.

What happened in this TL game was actually massive. To have one challenger player "missclick" into a Lux bubble that is just laying there is a big "WHAT" moment. It's a big "whoopsie" that just shouldn't happen. But to have 3 pro players clicking into the same bubble at the same moment is more than that.

It shows a lack of "mechanical skills" and "positional understanding" by this team. This shows something deeply troubling that is much worse than trying to foolishly dive someone and failing.

Then we have that time when Lux hit a double stun from far away in mid. Also a big "what" moment, if TL positioned less bad it would have been a single hit or if they had better mechanics it would been 0 hits.

You expect a challenger to not miss half the cs. Just as you expect them to not walk into a bubble that is just laying on the ground, TL should be able to dodge a bubble that is just laying there. If they walk into it the reason should be clear like "I can probably secure a kill by taking some damage and walking this way". Dodging a missed spell is very low level core mechanics, sort of like last hitting at this level, and it should be on point.

But all three players of TL just take the spell and for no reason. NA LCS just shows bad positional play and mechanics you don't expect to see at this level.

I think NA need to "step it up" and stop with excuses at some point. These TL mistakes are horrible and shouldn't happened, a good coach would probably scold these players for playing like this over and over so they realise how big this is.

GeminiRuneJun 11, 20191 votes

I live in the now. If someone wants to criticize a team's mistakes and pin that on the whole region based on historical metrics, I'm damn well gonna find that bull shit if the same errors, if not worse, exist elsewhere presently.

As for your comment: do I just need to link the clip of the team fight between SKT and Afreeca from the other day that frontpaged Reddit? If you want to nitpick poor execution, positioning and scatterbrained actions, then there's plenty of games from LCK alone where I can shoot at. Oh but they can compete cause irrelevant plot armor right? No. Give me a break.

ChompyWulfJun 12, 20191 votes

The only thing I will comment on is a tendency of top teams other than NA teams to rebound from early split mishaps to go deep in Worlds. Gotta keep doing that regularly though for that history to matter.

Overall, I would just say it's still very early in Summer to make judgements on any teams. Hell, as of right now most teams have only had 2 matches.

III BAKURYU III Jun 12, 20191 votes

You need to calm down......... OK! You act like NA gets bent over at every International event or something..... Ok, nvm Well, at least we have Cloud 9 to die for our sins.

Legend TitanJun 24, 20191 votes

I believe if you look closely at the 2nd image the lux E is hidden within the pixel brush. Maybe they could have seen it go in or missed that moment, seeing as there is a lot more going on in that moment as well. Either way at that point they cannot see the lux E and have no wards in that bush and are focusing on the baron. Understandable misplay in a high pressure situation. Also high level players should be able to dodge skill shots but high level players should also be able to hit skill shots and predict dodges.

ChaosReynJun 24, 20191 votes

Lux's E is hidden when it's sitting in the bush. They probably assumed she detonated it after making sure people weren't in the bush. Not that it explains away their stupidity, but in all fairness, it is technically hidden, and NA is all about what they think they know, more than what they know.

BigBellBruteJun 24, 20191 votes

So far only one team from each of NA and EU has proven it can compete in international events this year.
One ended MSI second, the other first.

All the teams in every major region that went to MSI have had at least a little difficulty coming off MSI. LQ dropped two it should not have, G2 one, IG a couple. SKT well they're having all kinds of trouble and Flash Wolves are in a world of hurt right now.

As for EU, from what I've seen, they're quite a bit like NA. They have a couple teams that should be doing better given their roster but aren't. They have a couple of teams that are awful. And their awful teams are even worse than ours. I doubt Excel could beat one of our better academy teams at this point. They have the super team in G2 and Fnatic looks good too. But the rest look similar to what we have.

ModPrandineJun 12, 2019

That was just one game, and it was against CLG, a team that is known to pull off upset wins when you least expect it (side note: I actually predicted CLG to win that game because of it). You also have to keep in mind that it hasn't been that long since MSI (where they placed 2nd to EUs G2) so naturally they may not be at 100% form this early in the split. Yes they made mistakes but what team in any region doesn't?

I know it's fun and cool to bash NA about anything and everything, and sure if TL continues to falter as the split goes on then sure, more criticism should be thrown their way, but judging NA as a whole based on one bad game by the MSI reps early on in the split just seems very foolish and closed-minded if you ask me.