How do Esports scout for players?

Sorzai·May 17, 2017·2 votes·3,745 views

Just as the title states,

I am wondering how E-Sports teams scout for upcoming talent? what metrics do they use to determine a player's value? HOW do you find the next faker?

7 Comments

Miror BMay 17, 20171 votes

Challenger tier is where most talent gets "looked at", or in the case of players like biofrost LCS teams will actively "farm" challenger teams for players they think could help them.

SorzaiMay 17, 20171 votes

it's understandable that lcs teams will 'farm' challenger teams. I would disagree that they would throw together some ragtag team of challenger tier players or sign an already placed challenger tier team in hopes of finding a right fit.

Miror BMay 18, 20172 votes

While teams will never use entire challenger-tier player teams on their own rosters (aside from CLG, who did just that and had their sister team make the NACS), signing parts of teams can often result in some immediate success. Renegades did so and avoided being relegated, TL did and looked decent for a while (until they got rid of dardoch and chose to randomly keep Matt on the roster instead of promoting painless), even fan-favorite TSM did it by acquiring Biofrost. Fielding entire challenger teams for LCS teams is super risky, fielding them for the NACS can often pay off huge by at the very least having "trade bait" with which to acquire better talent.

Zane ZephyrMay 17, 20171 votes

Pretty sure they check streams and such of challenger players

vAgueeeMay 18, 20171 votes

Depends on the team, it is honestly up to how the coach runs things as well. When I wanted to sign challenger talent for NACS OQ teams I always went with what would mesh well quickly.

III BAKURYU III May 18, 20171 votes

I personally have no official answer but I can say the whole " Scouting for players" does/should goes into work ethic and commitment to getting better, not so much as just individual skill more so than team skill; can you work well with a team, can you sacrifice X for X instead. That's my thought process on the matter. The rest is pretty self told, you need to pretty much be in challenger if not and you're not in challenger say for example Diamond or so you better have friends in high places to get you on a team or even think about E-Sports/LCS/Pro team.

Pippen The ShortMay 18, 20171 votes

Most of what I've seen, from the Fnatic documentary and the Liquid and other stuff, it appears that teams hold large invite tournaments and you play 2 or 3 games with a set group and then they mix up the teams and weed out some people and do that until they get down to a handful of people who they bring in to mingle and play with the team and then find someone who fits with the team. It appears that most of the scrutiny is on player attitude and mentality and not so much on raw skill and ability.

Misfits actually had a post about tryouts in the Team Recruitment page maybe last September or something. They got about 60 Diamond 1+ players to tryout and apparently they did something similar as above.