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Is NA > EU in the Next Professional Season?

Freshi·12/7/2015, 11:51:05 PM·4 votes·2,476 views

Is NA > EU in the next 2016 Spring/Summer Split?

So far in the outrageous professional League of Legends offseason, multiple teams have sold their LCS spots and dozens of professional players have transferred to different regions. By most standards, the biggest roster move this offseason came from Fnatic. Jungler Kim "Reignover" Ui-jin, Top Laner and former EU Spring Split MVP Heo "Huni" Seung-hoon, and most importantly the former captain of Fnatic, Support Bora "YellOwStaR" Kim left Fnatic. All three of these players were vital to Fnatic's Semifinal World Championship run and Fnatic's undefeated 18-0 regular season. Also, those three players have all announced they will be moving to North America, Huni and Reginover being signed to Team Immortal and YellOwStaR being signed to TSM. On top of those EU LCS champions, star jungler from SK Gaming Dennis "Svenskeren" Johnsen also went to NA. Europe wasn't the only region who was willing to make some big trades, LCK mid laner from Jin-Air Green Wings, Lee "GBM" Chang-suk decided to move to North America to be a part in the newly organized LCS team NRG.

With the rumours of EU not being able to pay their players enough to match other region’s offers, more EU stars have left to go to NA and other regions. I remember of course how last year 4 out of 5 Fnatic players left, somehow rebuilding around YellOwStaR was successful. This next split however I’m in doubt that Fnatic will be a dominant force around the world. Of course I’m not saying saying EU sucks now because they still have star players on Origen and H2K. I’m definitely not saying that EU Solo Q players suck because I’m just talking about professional play.

With the enormous offseason, NA teams like NRG, Team Immortal and of course TSM, have obtained very skilled players from all around the world trying to make super squads that not only will win the NA LCS, but put NA, as a region, on the map for being a great region to compete in. More EU players are being offered money that EU teams can't compete with which is why great players are leaving to pursue new dreams and more cash.

For the past few seasons, NA has consistently been embarrassed by EU. C9 and TSM have been completely dismantled when playing Fnatic and after NA’s 10-0 group stage on week 2 at the S5 World Championships more people in the Riot Games twitch chat have spammed “EU > NA” more than ever. Even though I’m begging for the day that I see “NA > EU” for the first time in years, I wrote this post as unbiased as I could write it. Thank you for reading all of this, it means a lot.

I’m so freaking hyped for this season...

Freshi

[slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

76 Comments

WalkingInACircle12/8/2015, 2:03:02 AM2 votes

NA has many hopefuls but Origen is definitely the strongest team in the West right now.

Ale non è male12/8/2015, 10:49:39 AM2 votes

Far too soon to say EU rosters aren't known yet, and every NA team but TSM/C9 has possible flaws in their rosters that could hinder their development of teams with stars into a World Class team Also, we don't even know yet what will be the meta at the start of the season, nevermind imagine the meta from here throughot the entire season (example sOAZ can go from bottom tier Western LCS top laner with s4 worlds meta to be as good as the best Koreans player in the world on S5 Worlds meta)

I think the discriminating factor will be how these potential "flaws" in the roster of various NA teams will perform in the end and how much replacements wil be eventually needed, looking at NA talent pool situation in certain roles which is pretty critical

Example, NRG, they look pretty strong on paper, but if KonKwon proves to be a big weakness, can they replace him with a capable player?

EU has been ahead of NA 4 seasons out of 5 (with S4 EU shooting theirsevles in the foot and leaving spots open to grab for NA in S4) because if some problem happened, the teams could find a somewhat decent replacement for the short terrm and then look to upgrade in the subsequent split (example Fnatic taking Steelback in suimmer who was not good but not bad enough to make them lose in Spring, and then upgrading to rekkles in Summer), NA and hasn't developped a competitive underground to costantly pump out local talent ready to be grabbed by LCS teams that would need it unlike EU (that's why Riot decided to indtroduce Open Qualifier, in meantime screwing a bit EU competitive scene) The best team NA has ever had and probably the only World Class caliber team NA ever had was S4 C9 that was an All-American team , so the problem for NA hasn't been assembling teams with their top talent, but the fact that if something ever happened to their top talent they had no way to replace it with local players, but they had to rely on imports that for any reason could not work well

This is the season where NA and EU start closer each other, NA has maybe even higher potential if everything tuns out in the best possile way, but i'd pick for now EU because with the unavoidable problems that some teams will have in both regions, EU has higher regenerative and recovering potential than NA

YCitizenSnipsY12/8/2015, 4:05:12 AM1 votes

Doesn't matter if NA is better than EU or vice versa, there are both absolute dogshit compared to KR> Which is really sad if you step back an look at how many things have been don to hurt the KR scene. Both regions proved they will never be better than KR unless their region is put at a further disadvantage and more KR talent is exported.

SSShutTheDuckUp12/9/2015, 6:28:59 PM1 votes

Well, if you ask which region has better teams - until the WORDS 2016 it will be EU. When the results are speaking opinions don't matter.

Then again watching NA is more exiting. You almost never know which team is gonna win, because (most) teams are equally good.