Don't think Cloud 9 and TSM are all good here after Sunday

TurquoiseYoshi·Jun 14, 2015·5 votes·1,269 views

Cloud 9 beat the worst team in the NA LCS (that isn't using subs right now). TSM barely beat a team with two subs and an untested comp.

23 Comments

DracidJun 15, 20154 votes

its more of the fact that most other teams have improved while TSM and C9 have just stayed the same. In TSMs case, after MSI, they are trying to fix some things and change how they communicate which is going to take some time. Once the end of the split comes, I think they'll be back on top of their game. C9s reason is going to take a bit longer. It's their shot calling. Hai wasn't the most mechanical player but he was atop notch shot caller. This isn't something someone is going to pick up right away. I expect it to take them until next season to work this out.

TurquoiseYoshiJun 15, 20152 votes

Cloud 9 has definitely gotten worse since Hai left. TSM has just hit a brick wall in improvement.

DracidJun 15, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Cloud 9 has definitely gotten worse since Hai left. TSM has just hit a brick wall in improvement.

again its not so much TSM has hit a brick wall, its theyre trying to do things differently so they can improve in the long run. Its not going to change them over night. takes time. MSI proved how weak theyre communicating was. In one of their videos on their channel they described a lot of the changes they wanted to make to that. For example Bjerg and Santorin communicate 100x more then Santorin does with any of the other lanes. Things like that.

LuggJun 15, 20153 votes

Teams have figured out TSM. Just keep Bjerg from snowballing and you win. While that is easier said than done, it works. This weekend Dyrus had his best game of the year (IMHO) and they still lost the game.

C9 is going to get better as the split goes on. They just have to adjust to their new mid and they will be ok.

The problem is that from top to bottom, NA is pretty weak. So they are never fully ready for international play.

DracidJun 15, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Teams have figured out TSM. Just keep Bjerg from snowballing and you win. While that is easier said than done, it works. This weekend Dyrus had his best game of the year (IMHO) and they still lost the game.

C9 is going to get better as the split goes on. They just have to adjust to their new mid and they will be ok.

The problem is that from top to bottom, NA is pretty weak. So they are never fully ready for international play.

eh disagree with your "keep bjerg from snowballing" thing. Bjerg hasn't lost a laning phase yet so im not really sure what you're talking about. Hasn't even come close to having a negative K/D ratio yet this split either. TSM havnt been losing because Bjerg gets behind or something like that. They've been losing because their shotcalling and teamfighting have been bad. Their midgame this split is the worst its ever been. Take their first game against C9 for instance. Caught by enemy blue buff 3 times and destroyed because of rumble ulti. They didn't learn from their mistake.

Has nothing to do with Bjerg getting behind in lane because he hasn't been behind in lane at all this split

LuggJun 15, 20152 votes

Let me clarify. I agree that you can't expect to win lane from Bjerg, he is one of the best at CSing on the planet. You just have to keep jungle pressure on him and not let him get any free kills. If you keep him from getting fed, he has a much smaller impact on the game.

I think their biggest problem right now is Santorum. He was great the first split, but hasn't really done anything since then. I don't know if other teams have him figured out now, or if it's something else.

DracidJun 15, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Let me clarify. I agree that you can't expect to win lane from Bjerg, he is one of the best at CSing on the planet. You just have to keep jungle pressure on him and not let him get any free kills. If you keep him from getting fed, he has a much smaller impact on the game.

I think their biggest problem right now is Santorum. He was great the first split, but hasn't really done anything since then. I don't know if other teams have him figured out now, or if it's something else.

he was 7/1/6 in the loss to Dig. with 45 more CS then the highest person on Dig. he was fed. The problem has nothing to do with Bjerg solo performance. He has the ability to have an impact in literally every game he has played so far. The problem comes in the mid game. The shot calling and decision making has been weird. The only death he had in the loss to Dig he just dove into the team randomly and got blown up and it ended up being the killing blow for them. They loss the game right after. They've kept jungle pressure on him but he still comes out big regardless.

Santorin isn't even the problem right now. I agree his game has been off but its far from their biggest problem

The big problem is their mid game shot calling. Their loss to Cloud 9, TSM would have the advantage in a lot of engages but the second Bjerg got even to half hp, it seemed like he would tell the team to back off even though he still had a healthy front line in front of him. He was playing viktor so he had plenty of range to attack from. Like I already said, theyre changing the way they communicate to eachother and it seems to be messing up the system they used before that made them so dominant. But overall its a good thing. The system they used before got them crushed at MSI so it had to change. Theyre just going through growing pains right now.

No individual player is at fault with their performance right now. I hated Santorin after his beyond lackluster performance at MSI, but right now he's not the problem. Its just the team communication overall

LuggJun 15, 20151 votes

I think they need a new coach and a new strategy. They will never do good in international play by leaving Dyrus on his own top. Good teams will just send 3 people top and kill him over and over until they are fed. That's exactly what happened at MSI. If teams start to do that, Santorum should have a tent up top. That way they waste resources top and mid and bot have free reign to go ham.

That's my take anyway.

DracidJun 15, 20152 votes

{quoted}

I think they need a new coach and a new strategy. They will never do good in international play by leaving Dyrus on his own top. Good teams will just send 3 people top and kill him over and over until they are fed. That's exactly what happened at MSI. If teams start to do that, Santorum should have a tent up top. That way they waste resources top and mid and bot have free reign to go ham.

That's my take anyway.

that's one thing they've improved on already though. They've helped Dyrus more in the last 6 games then they have in forever. As for a coach, im not jumping the gun on that. Loco knows the problem and he has been trying to fix it since MSI. The big problem is the same problem the majority of NA teams have. NA plays too passively. You have Korea and China that lead the world in aggressive play. Now Fnatic and some of the other top EU teams have adapted so far this split and are playing aggressive as well. Meanwhile NA just sits on the back burner and does a slow control game but as we've seen everytime and worlds and most recently MSI, that play style wont work against the aggression of the other regions. Can't fault Loco for it when literally all of NA has the same problem haha

EDIT: This also goes back to my last point. Theyre trying to improve communication overall. Bjerg and Santorin would communicate a lot. The other 2 lanes not so much. Turtle has lustboy but then Dyrus has no one. That's one positive to take away. Dyrus seems to be speaking up more with Santorin. In some of the highlight vids they showed after some of the games, you could actually hear Dyrus contributing to the shot calling which you didn't really hear so much before

LuggJun 16, 20152 votes

That's a great point on the passive play style in NA. That is why EU is able to contend with the Chinese and Koreans, they have lots of aggressive teams to play against. If NA doesn't fix things soon, they will be passed up by one of the smaller regions as well.

OshGoshBoGoshJun 15, 20151 votes

In professional play, anything can happen. Also in C9's defense their new mid is just beginning to catch his stride. Following the Zed ult nerf Incarnation hasn't been the same. I don't know how much you followed his Zed performance, but he is pretty stellar. From here on in I think C9 will be a tough opponent for teams to play against since Incarnation has confidence coming off of an aggressive play-style win. In his solo/duo queue history he was always pretty darn aggressive. The main reason they have been losing team fights this split is due to engages without carries close enough to truly contribute to the carnage since C9 Hai used to really lead the engages.

TSM is a little out of sync with their objective and map rotation, but their team fighting has been solid all split.

To rule them out this early I think would be a mistake, these two teams have some of the top rated carries in the NA LCS.

TurquoiseYoshiJun 15, 20151 votes

I'm not ruling them out, I'm just saying that all of their troubles haven't been solved by Sunday's wins.

TheGrandAllianceJun 15, 20151 votes

Indeed... and throw CLG in the mix as well.

TurquoiseYoshiJun 15, 20152 votes

CLG did pretty well this weekend. They annihilated Gravity, and beat Enemy despite Innox (and Otter at points) literally playing like a god.

VixanysJun 16, 20151 votes

Its all moot because CLG will get to the playoffs and throw again...or can we finally call it choking?

TheGrandAllianceJun 17, 20152 votes

{quoted}

CLG did pretty well this weekend. They annihilated Gravity, and beat Enemy despite Innox (and Otter at points) literally playing like a god.

The CLG match took way too long... 40+ min vs a NOOB LCS team is absolutely ridiculous. CLG will never stand against Koreans if they take this long to win in the first place (and give enemy team so many chances to win as well).

JarOfHeartsJun 15, 20151 votes

Top teams in NA are TSM and TL. C9 lost a shotcaller and meteos is learning. I think C9 will be fine in this split they will finish 4-3 maybe 2-1 if they get everything moving again. TSM I can't really defend they have been having issues with play styles again loco i don't think picked a good team comp Saturday (against dig) Not blaming all of it on loco, Only person that did well that games was bjerg so nothing special there they just had a really bad day do i think TSM is best NA team yes do i think they can win worlds no. The only western team to have a shot at worlds atm is Fnatic and that would be a major upset.

PoisonedTeaJun 15, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Top teams in NA are TSM and TL. C9 lost a shotcaller and meteos is learning. I think C9 will be fine in this split they will finish 4-3 maybe 2-1 if they get everything moving again. TSM I can't really defend they have been having issues with play styles again loco i don't think picked a good team comp Saturday (against dig) Not blaming all of it on loco, Only person that did well that games was bjerg so nothing special there they just had a really bad day do i think TSM is best NA team yes do i think they can win worlds no. The only western team to have a shot at worlds atm is Fnatic and that would be a major upset.

bjergsen got caught is why they lost Saturday, Regardless of the score line Bjergsen didn't play well this weekend. He was likely the worst drop in skill of all the members this weekend.

TurquoiseYoshiJun 15, 20151 votes

Origen may have a chance; they have quite a few Worlds veterans and the newcomers are playing great as well. I can believe that Origen lost to Roccat because of Amazing's sickness or whatever was going on with him. Along that same line you never know what team could upset the tops of the standings. Currently for Worlds it's looking like it'll be EU: Fnatic H2K Origen/UOL and NA: TSM TL CLG/GV/TIP. If Gravity is the one out of those three who gets in, I could see them picking up a few wins with their "Korean-styled" Jungler named Move.

Earl EulrichJun 16, 20151 votes

they lost to Roccat because they really underestimated them...and to be fair, I also wouldn´t have thought that Roccat would be able to play an aggressive game after spending most of last split just trying to turtle to 40min at least.

LstrikeJun 16, 20151 votes

The reason they lost against Dig was because of 2 reasons.

Bjerg underestimated Shiptur's Kog damage and forgot to Zhonyas
Wildturtle gave up his life too easily. Both carries dead, the other 3 could stop Dig's 4 with Kog's siege.

Both are result of poor shotcalling. As soon as tutle got caught, they should have disengaged with Ekko's W and fought at base. Up until that team fight, it was even.