What NA teams should do.

Loboros·Mar 19, 2016·3 votes·1,548 views

It is really annoying, watching teams draft Koreans and Europeans and then under performing. Instead of grabbing the most skilled, get great players with great communication. Not only would that make games go better, but you could watch them stream and have fun together. But look at TSM, both s5 and s6. Huge Egos clashing this season, and lustboy last season. Yet, c9 in season 4 was amazing. They had a team of all NA talent, and even beat a korean team. That is the best thing that has happened for NA during a worlds with real competition. Teams should try to find some real, new NA talent.

17 Comments

TurquoiseYoshiMar 19, 20163 votes

This problem is even worse for China.

FowusMar 19, 20161 votes

{quoted}

This problem is even worse for China.

LGD

OmaGa4Mar 19, 20161 votes

What talent? In NA? Are you [zombie-nunu-hearts] ?

LoborosMar 29, 20161 votes

With 300 million people in the US, im certain there are good players. We just have to find the,.

LankPantsMar 19, 20161 votes

HotshotGG's already spelt this out, for American teams to be competitive they need to not play in America.

The NALCS is just very weak. There's no real competitive learning to be done there. If an NA team wants to actually be good they need to find a way to move away from NA and play in a more competitive league. CLG NA did try this in S2 and they were arguably the best NA team at the time, they just couldn't come anywhere near competing with the Koreans, CLG EU or M5.

iamleburkMar 19, 20161 votes

I disagree. NA has seen massive improvement this split. This isn't china, these teams (at least ones not named TSM) have figured out how to integrate the imports and invest a lot of money into sports psychologists and building communication. This is where the west has an advantage imo, we have done a lot of studies and have a lot of faith in certain intangibles like psychology and mentality, it's a very different environment than the one Chinese billionaires support.

IMT, C9, NRG, TL, and CLG are all pretty good right now, and they are much better than the top 5 teams last split. NA improved, and are probably better than China at this point. They took their imports and used them correctly, only CLG (got bad imports) and TSM (too stupid to coach imports) seem to be exceptions here. Even the bottom teams like Renegades, Dignitoss and Echo Fox seem to understand how to handle imports.

Agreed that NA teams need more international experience. Imo this is riot's fault, they gimped the LCS teams by restricting international play and that's just making the gap between Korea and LCS keep growing and growing.

LankPantsMar 20, 20162 votes

I disagree. NA has seen massive improvement this split. This isn't china, these teams (at least ones not named TSM) have figured out how to integrate the imports and invest a lot of money into sports psychologists and building communication.

You can disagree if you'd like, but personally I don't see it. NA this year looks just like NA last year going into MSI, one top tier team who crushed the region, a bunch of mid tier teams squabbling amongst themselves but never challenging the top team and some pure garbage at the bottom.

How do I think they'll go internationally? Right now I think NA will place firmly between Taiwan and China. I have not seen anything to suggest they're better than that.

Realistically this doesn't even matter right now. Every region is so far behind Korea that even the absolute gutter trash teams from Korea like Sbenu would give teams like Immortals and H2K a run for their money.

I honestly think that if you want to be competitive this season you need to be playing in the LCK. The other leagues are just terrible compared to it.

iamleburkMar 20, 20161 votes

NA this year looks a lot better than NA last year going into MSI. C9, IMT, and arguably CLG/TL/NRG all look to be world class... Last year there was maybe a single world class team in NA from the entire year. And the mid tier NA teams improved drastically as well. Current CLG vs last split's C9, current TL vs TIP, NRG vs old TL, it's just a step above. and it's undeniable that the top two right now (C9 and IMT) are miles ahead of the top two last season (TSM and CLG/C9 depending on the split).

I think top of Taiwan is only slightly better than NA. Taiwan tends to have unique style that sometimes works really well, and other times falls flat. Don't forget that both CLG and Pain beat Flash Wolves at worlds. They also beat KOO. Taiwan has always been an interesting but inconsistent region. NA improved this split, Taiwan seems to have stayed the same, so I doubt that would change much.

Oh and btw, Taiwanese region absolutely has no depth at all. Once you get pass the top like 3 teams, the skill drops off HARD. I think it was one of the LMS analysts who said something like "Our 1st through 3rd teams will give IMT and H2K a challenge, the others would be wiped away by Renegades". Like it drops from world class to barely NA challenger level.

Okay I agree that Korea is miles ahead of the rest, but you're exaggerating. Sbenu isn't going to shit on H2K or IMT, that's just silly. I agree that the top 6-7 of Korea are also the top 6-7 in the world (only CJ is debatable).

The way the regions always went was Korea>CN/EU>NA/TW>WC but China had a big fall. I still think EU is very good and if any team region would pull an upset off a top 7 korean team, it would be a European one. That or Taiwan, haven't been following them this split, and tbh they don't get enough challenges in their region for me to really be a good judge of those teams. It would still be an upset imo, but still

LankPantsMar 20, 20161 votes

NA this year looks a lot better than NA last year going into MSI. C9, IMT, and arguably CLG/TL/NRG all look to be world class... Last year there was maybe a single world class team in NA from the entire year. And the mid tier NA teams improved drastically as well. Current CLG vs last split's C9, current TL vs TIP, NRG vs old TL, it's just a step above. and it's undeniable that the top two right now (C9 and IMT) are miles ahead of the top two last season (TSM and CLG/C9 depending on the split).

Yep, that's what people were saying last year as well.

Okay I agree that Korea is miles ahead of the rest, but you're exaggerating. Sbenu isn't going to shit on H2K or IMT, that's just silly. I agree that the top 6-7 of Korea are also the top 6-7 in the world (only CJ is debatable).

Maybe not Sbenu, because they're really not great. But look at what happened to SKT after they went undefeated at IEM, they came back and lost their first game to a low tier team. most of the low tier teams in KR are as good as high tier western teams.

iamleburkMar 20, 20161 votes

I don't remember anyone saying that last year, and i certainly wasn't saying it. I'm going off observation, NA seemed to have improved from last split.

I think Afreeca or Kondu would be mid tier in LCS. And SKT is a very good team, it's not like we expected any team to challenge them, especially with the other teams at the event. Them dropping a game to Afreeca was because they fucked up, but again, it was only one game. Afreeca would be equal or better than every non-SKT team at IEM. Because G2, H2K, C9, and IMT were not at IEM.

Ale non è maleMar 20, 20161 votes

{quoted}

You can disagree if you'd like, but personally I don't see it. NA this year looks just like NA last year going into MSI, one top tier team who crushed the region, a bunch of mid tier teams squabbling amongst themselves but never challenging the top team and some pure garbage at the bottom.

That's not actually the case. TSM was hyped far more than what IMT are before MSI, and the rest of NA behind the #1 team is much better this season than last season when NA frankly sucked superbad and TSM shined more because they had even less competition Na is not super bad anymore, at worse they are "just" bad

How do I think they'll go internationally? Right now I think NA will place firmly between Taiwan and China. I have not seen anything to suggest they're better than that.

I have not seen anything that suggest NA would place above China either, tbh, unless they can use at the best the talent they have, which they are not doing for various reasons except partitally IMT, right now they would be the worst of the major regions NA teams got styled on mechanically by Chinese teams and don't have the EU macro to make up for it, so NA is seriously disadvantaged in the match-up vs Chinese teams, if anything they have better chances vs Taiwan or even an eventually struggling EU team

iamleburkMar 19, 20161 votes

Lol no. TSM is a coaching problem, the coach and owner are too retarded to figure out how to tell their dumbass team to listen to Yellowstar. NA you are almost required to have imports at this point. Only CLG has lackluster ones. IMT, C9, NRG, TL, even REN and FOX are almost entirely centered around their imports. NA players suck man, they get carried by the imports 90% of the team.

C9 Scott Free Mar 19, 20161 votes

NA has talented players but we pay for college which means we can'.t focus on gaming or anything other than school which means are talent pool is really thin when it comes to people who are willing to take the E sports risk

Imperial RedMar 19, 20161 votes

It's the problem Team Ember wants to try and solve. Teams would rather import talented players from other regions than work to nurture talent in NA.

XantakMar 19, 20161 votes

To be fair, LGD is riding a 4 game win streak, and MaRin has been performing really well.

TallyZrgMar 24, 20161 votes

I definitely agree with you here.

There have been lots of studies done around "superstar teams" and they have found that if you have too many stars the team performs worse due to clashing egos. However they found that this is only true if the task the team is doing demands team work as a cohesive unit (LoL falls into this category).

The study says it is better for a team to have a couple of super stars which are backed up by exceptional players. You have clear leaders and communication increases exponentially among the team.

There was another study done with chickens where scientists separated chickens into two groups, average chickens and elite chickens to see if production of eggs would be affected using values from a mixture of elite and average chickens as a baseline. They found no change from the average chicken group, but when they looked at elite chicken group they found that they had killed eachother off until there was only 2-3 left due to the chickens trying to exert dominance.

Conclusion: Superstar teams do exponentially worse than non-superstar teams when the team needs to work as a cohesive unit. This conclusion can also be found in nature.

YCitizenSnipsYMar 29, 20161 votes

NA doesn't have the talent available to run a domestic team successfully internationally. Thats why these washed up EU/KR players beat out others for starting roster positions on the teams. Honestly it doesn't matter though, in season 5 worlds OG and C9 were the only teams from the west without a korean player in the roster. C9 didn't make it out of groups and OG got smoked by SKT.