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Taciturn Tactician posted:Is Meteos really an upgrade? I feel like it's been a while since there was a game where I really went "Yeah Meteos kicked rear end!" like it used to be back in earlier seasons.
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Jan 27, 2015 00:57
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Firebert posted:C9 really needed a Maokai (was disabled for week 1 I assume), a Lulu or a Kayle for that comp to work. Zed and Kassadin don't give a poo poo about Sion or Rek'sai, they can just blink right past him to blow up Hai and Sneaky. Not that Hai/Balls/Meteos played well at all, but that comp seemed doomed to begin with. And yet C9 looked decent at Worlds, if prone to nerves, and really solid at IEM San Jose. Balls and Hai were pulling their weight, Meteos was playing appropriate champions and doing hella work and Sneaky and Lemon looked on point as always. Meanwhile TSM got 2-0'd by a fresh Challenger team playing gimmick comps that TSM should've been able to deal with, prepped or not. I wonder/hope if some of this weekend was C9 being badly out of practice for lack of scrim partners and TSM prepping extra hard for them. After all, TSM promptly lost to a mediocre-looking Team 8, and looked exactly like they did at San Jose.
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Jan 27, 2015 02:28
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It's weird how swingy LoL teams are, at least in the West. Is this something that happens in other electronic sports games? As a spectator I'm getting fed up with veteran teams constantly showing their asses. It makes for awful, frustrating games. I realize that patching makes mastery of LoL a moving target, but god drat, Balls looks like he hasn't played a game of League since last summer.
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Jan 27, 2015 03:25
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Flameingblack posted:He's farm-focuses, with an emphasis on getting objectives and putting Balls ahead. Balls has been lackluster recently and more teams have become objective focused, so he's lost a lot of momentum. It's the Faker effect in Korea, where if you have one guy dominating for so long, eventually people will play against him long enough they find out the little tricks he does and nullify them in other ways, even if they can't match him mechanically. The jungle changes matter more than just the champion pool, as well. If you're a jungler that lives on smart invading and camp steals, you now have fewer opportunities to do so. Yes, being successful will leave them further behind but longer spawn times leave you possibly doing nothing for 30-40 seconds as you check cleared camps. It is probably just my own confirmation bias, but at present I feel like there are less jungler on jungler interactions outside of lanes. Meteos is excellent at them.
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Jan 27, 2015 03:29
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I dont know what to say if you dont think Meteos would be an upgrade to Santorin. Meteos can play like every jungle in every meta + some weird off meta picks. The only junglers I'd want over Meteos are Korean.
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Jan 27, 2015 03:43
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Jerkface posted:I dont know what to say if you dont think Meteos would be an upgrade to Santorin. Meteos can play like every jungle in every meta + some weird off meta picks. The only junglers I'd want over Meteos are Korean. I might also take Impaler in a pinch but yeah, Meteos is mosdef one of the very best junglers in NA. If he 'went down' in effectiveness it's because Balls was absolutely ghastly this week.
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Jan 27, 2015 03:49
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It's really hard to look good as a jungler when both solo laners are playing like trash.
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Jan 27, 2015 03:56
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The thing is Cloud 9 is probably one of the teams that are most focused on -being- a team in the NA circuit, so they either look like masters of their art or absolute trash in all lanes with basically no middle ground.
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Jan 27, 2015 04:16
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Typical Pubbie posted:It's weird how swingy LoL teams are, at least in the West. Not just! My boys Invictus over in China were 6-0 until they got swept by the 0-6 Vici this weekend.
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Jan 27, 2015 04:40
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Jonny Angel posted:Not just! My boys Invictus over in China were 6-0 until they got swept by the 0-6 Vici this weekend. And let's not forget the preseason in Korea and how CJ Entus fared in that, compared to how they've done so far in the regular season.
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Jan 27, 2015 04:44
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Or how KT Arrows had the greatest story of heroic triumph in Champions Summer and then got promptly 3-0'd by a team they already beat in the Summer playoffs.
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Jan 27, 2015 04:47
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AdjectiveNoun posted:And let's not forget the preseason in Korea and how CJ Entus fared in that, compared to how they've done so far in the regular season.
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Jan 27, 2015 05:14
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Flameingblack posted:To be fair, GE beat them back down where they belonged and showed everyone exactly what they're still weak at. GE is this season's Samsung What do they still lack? I won't be able to see that game for a while, so I'm curious to hear what weakness got exploited.
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Jan 27, 2015 07:30
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The biggest mystery on C9 for me is Balls, because he was the best top in NA for so long, able to play every champ including the ones Dyrus couldn't like Nidalee. I don't think C9's starve top strategy helped him out much in the 2nd half of least season through worlds, but he shouldn't look as bad as he did this weekend. Hai is a lost cause IMO, you just have to believe in the shot call magic and hope he gets Zed so he can just dive the enemy ADC every teamfight. Once Balls gets back in order, and I don't think he was ever one to have motivation issues, C9 should start winning because Hai can play around a strong 4 man squad.
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Jan 27, 2015 07:50
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Westrice stole his soul when he solo'd him
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Jan 27, 2015 08:12
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henkman posted:Westrice stole his soul when he solo'd him ...This is probably the explanation really. Losing a 1v1 to Westrice must be soulcrushing.
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Jan 27, 2015 08:39
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Mejai's Soulstealer should really be Shang Tsung's Soulstealer.
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Jan 27, 2015 08:50
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Jonny Angel posted:What do they still lack? I won't be able to see that game for a while, so I'm curious to hear what weakness got exploited. Game 1: CJ Entus, and specifically Shy made it apparent they didn't think that Gnar was a threat, and went as far as saying why they didn't think it was a threat (Shy's split-pushing Mundo) and on top of that, said that Gnar was a champion that Shy didn't enjoy or play. CJ Entus goes through ban phase on blue side without banning Gnar and GE Tigers use Mundo as their last ban, and from there it was pretty apparent that CJ Entus had lost before the first champion was drafted. GE Tigers first two picks were Gnar/Jarvin and CJ Entus put Shy on Rumble. Smeb and Lee punished the hell out of Shy and got an early 4 kills without giving any deaths up and it was GG from there. Ambition couldn't stop the bleeding from Shy and Space/Coco only went even in lane and couldn't do a goddamn thing about a superfed Gnar because they ran Ezreal mid. Game 2:  Who did CJ Entus think they were going to catch in that Team Comp with Jarvin/Rumble/Oriana CJ Entus are still a very strong team right now, Space and Coco look amazing which is something I never thought I'd say. But CJ Entus didn't adjust at all in pick/ban phase and lost both games because of it. RealFoxy fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Jan 27, 2015 |
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Jan 27, 2015 09:02
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Hai is Regi 2.0 plus a fancy earring and less twitter drama.
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Jan 27, 2015 09:13
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Balls picking up Morg top could do wonders for C9's comps; she's a pseudo Rumble/Liss that also allows Hai to play Zed without forcing a full AD comp
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Jan 27, 2015 09:40
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archduke.iago posted:Balls picking up Morg top could do wonders for C9's comps; she's a pseudo Rumble/Liss that also allows Hai to play Zed without forcing a full AD comp Balls plays both Rumble and Liss (and his Rumble is considered pretty good I think) so his champ pool isn't stopping C9 from running an AD mid.
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Jan 27, 2015 15:38
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Crazy Larry posted:Balls plays both Rumble and Liss (and his Rumble is considered pretty good I think) so his champ pool isn't stopping C9 from running an AD mid. The only decent AD mid at the moment is Zed (though I guess they could try double ADC with Corki mid), but double AP is currently meta because it makes your ADC more valuable. Also Balls looked pretty drat good on Lissandra at IEM and Hai played a much, much better Ori there than he did this last weekend. Seriously go watch the C9 v. UOL or Alliance games from IEM and then C9 v. TSM or Gravity, it's insane how different they look, and it makes me believe that "we didn't get any good practice," probably because of the visa issues, is actually probably a big deal. Edit: Also, what did happen to Maokai? He's not listed as disabled on patch 5.1 and I don't recall any major balance changes to him from 4.20 to 5.1, right? Is it just that he doesn't lane well against Lissandra/Gnar? Lightning Knight fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Jan 27, 2015 |
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Jan 27, 2015 15:42
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Lightning Knight posted:The only decent AD mid at the moment is Zed (though I guess they could try double ADC with Corki mid), but double AP is currently meta because it makes your ADC more valuable. Also Balls looked pretty drat good on Lissandra at IEM and Hai played a much, much better Ori there than he did this last weekend. Seriously go watch the C9 v. UOL or Alliance games from IEM and then C9 v. TSM or Gravity, it's insane how different they look, and it makes me believe that "we didn't get any good practice," probably because of the visa issues, is actually probably a big deal. I recall being sort of underwhelmed by Balls' Lissandra when I first watched IEM, but looking back at it he had some really good games. Mostly I just wanted to point out that Balls is perfectly capable of playing AP toplaners that are currently in meta, and looking at past performance those might actually be the champs he should be prioritizing.
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Jan 27, 2015 15:52
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Jonny Angel posted:Not just! My boys Invictus over in China were 6-0 until they got swept by the 0-6 Vici this weekend. SKT T1 K won Champions and Worlds in S3, and swept Champions winter this time last year, and now that team basically doesn't exist. It's crazy how volatile competitive gaming is. To whomever was asking - Balls plays an excellent Rumble. 11-0 in 2013 Summer Split. I'm pretty sure his Rumble is what helped them win against White this last Worlds also? (e: yep, he was on Rumble to force the tie, and NWS banned that out in the tiebreaker) Unfortunately for him, Rumble is probably a champion to deprioritize this season, at least in the current meta. One of the reasons he was so strong last season was being able to have a Guise and Sorc Boots, and be able to TP to dragon pit to win the objective. That power spike is so minimized now due to the way dragon fits into objectives. By the way, this is the reason I like Pastrytime. The casting isn't actually very good, but the enthusiasm and the importance of the game make me laugh. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRAoZJolrYI
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Jan 27, 2015 16:11
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Crazy Larry posted:Balls plays both Rumble and Liss (and his Rumble is considered pretty good I think) so his champ pool isn't stopping C9 from running an AD mid. Point being, teams ban Rumble/Liss against C9, and his Sion/Gnar were both incredebly underwhelming. Lightning Knight posted:The only decent AD mid at the moment is Zed (though I guess they could try double ADC with Corki mid), but double AP is currently meta because it makes your ADC more valuable. Also Balls looked pretty drat good on Lissandra at IEM and Hai played a much, much better Ori there than he did this last weekend. Seriously go watch the C9 v. UOL or Alliance games from IEM and then C9 v. TSM or Gravity, it's insane how different they look, and it makes me believe that "we didn't get any good practice," probably because of the visa issues, is actually probably a big deal. Zed is one of the few champtions Hai can actually play, and is valuable in that sense. I suppose they could put him on Lulu and try for a "Protect the Sneaky" comp, but I don't think Lemon is a good enough support to make it happen. Maokai was specifically disabled for Week 1
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Jan 27, 2015 16:18
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balls plays rumble liss and the usual tank tops, his champ pool is neither large or exciting.
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Jan 27, 2015 16:34
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balls being banned out is obviously c9's biggest obstacle to overcome. Meteos and hai play every champion in the game and you cant really ban out their botlane either.
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Jan 27, 2015 17:02
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Slaapaav posted:balls being banned out is obviously c9's biggest obstacle to overcome. Meteos and hai play every champion in the game and you cant really ban out their botlane either. it would appear you have upset someone greatly
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Jan 27, 2015 17:15
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Luna Was Here posted:it would appear you have upset someone greatly i said rape in the context of video game discussion on the internet. i am a shameless monster
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Jan 27, 2015 17:19
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Slaapaav posted:balls being banned out is obviously c9's biggest obstacle to overcome. Meteos and hai play every champion in the game and you cant really ban out their botlane either. Counterpoint: You don't need to ban Hai out when he's perfectly willing to pick Fizz or Talon and just feed terribly all game without any other prodding. Hai's positioning was pretty suspect and both TSM and Gravity took full advantage of catching Hai a billion times and instagibbing him to start fights. But yeah, week 1 was Cloud 9's solo lanes finding ways to lose games. TSM also outpicked them, but that loss to Gravity was just throwing away every advantage because they couldn't figure out how to fight a team with four dive champions (admittedly, this is also from Lemon almost always blowing Janna's ult way too early on just Vi and leaving plenty of chances for everyone else on Gravity to get in) even with a completely starved Kassadin because even if they protected Kog, Orianna would die at the start of every fight and Sion would usually be way too late getting involved to matter.
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Jan 27, 2015 17:21
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Slaapaav posted:i said rape in the context of video game discussion on the internet. i am a shameless monster are you one of those 12 year olds who says "haha you got RAPED" when you kill someone?
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Jan 27, 2015 17:21
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no i just got mad when someone told me i was not allowed to use that word when talking about video games. I got mad because i felt this was a very arbritary rule
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Jan 27, 2015 17:25
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Slaapaav posted:no i just got mad when someone told me i was not allowed to use that word when talking about video games. I got mad because i felt this was a very arbritary rule I think that's an "arbitrary" rule that most people are perfectly ok with and like! C9's problems are obviously fixable as they're only 6 weeks off of IEM, but I think it's fair to say that other teams have either a) caught up to where C9 was with regard to S5 or b) straight up adapted better. I also think it's possible to pick comfortably and win games without having to be strictly "on meta" as long as you're accounting for it.
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Jan 27, 2015 17:38
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Lightning Knight posted:And yet C9 looked decent at Worlds, if prone to nerves, and really solid at IEM San Jose. Balls and Hai were pulling their weight Hai looked absolutely dreadful at words on anything that wasn't Zed.
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Jan 27, 2015 18:14
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Firebert posted:Hai looked absolutely dreadful at words on anything that wasn't Zed. That isn't true, Hai did pretty well on Syndra. Unfortunately for him Syndra got nerfed out of the meta right before the beginning of the season.  Edit: That unfortunately seems to be a common theme for Hai, a lot of the champions he was really good at mid - Kha, Gragas, Lulu, Soraka, etc. - have been nerfed out of the meta or are no longer played mid. It's fair to say he hasn't adapted well but on the other hand six weeks ago he played Orianna competently - not amazingly but not horribly - at IEM, so clearly something changed. Lightning Knight fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Jan 27, 2015 |
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Jan 27, 2015 18:51
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Lightning Knight posted:That isn't true, Hai did pretty well on Syndra. Unfortunately for him Syndra got nerfed out of the meta right before the beginning of the season. Part of being a professional player in this crazy game is basically adapting your champion pool to incorporate the OP picks on every single patch in a very short amount of time and then practicing those things in solo queue and in scrimmages dozens and dozens of times before a competitive match. That requires a ton of time, practice, effort, and theory-crafting. Not doing that is akin to being bad at your job. When someone says "oh so and so has a shallow champion pool" that means they are basically bad at their job and a hindrance to their team's draft, composition, strategy, and execution. Most of the old guard of players who were only good at 1 or 2 picks have fallen out of the pro scene, and most of the people who replaced them are very deep players of a lot of picks, you basically have to be to succeed at a high level in any of the major leagues. When I was watching the most recent SKT match on LCK this past week, they were talking about Faker, and he had something like 11 different champions that he's never lost a competitive match on, and he doesn't even bring a lot of those out regularly, and he might not even be the best mid laner on his team this season with how well Easyhoon is playing. Like that's the kind of champion pool you should be striving for if you are a pro in this game, especially in the mid lane, which has generally the largest pool of picks on every patch.
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Jan 27, 2015 19:01
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Who could have predicted C9 wouldn't perform as good during the first half of the split, the data just isn't there.
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Jan 27, 2015 19:02
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Invalid Validation posted:Who could have predicted C9 wouldn't perform as good during the first half of the split, the data just isn't there. C9 had never lost a day one game before last week, so, uh, yes?
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Jan 27, 2015 19:54
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There's also such a thing as having a bad week. I know two points make a line, but a couple of bad games inside of a now two year history of excellent performance isn't heralding anything unless the trend continues. I mean, I caught up on the thread after this weekend and from Friday to Sunday the consensus on Santorin went from one of the weaker NA junglers, to top 3, to "shows promise if he's allowed to develop" in 36 hours. We as a fan base are somehow even more prone to hyperbole than sports fans. I know I'm guilty of that. One of the neat things is the amount of information we have on individuals, but one of the caveats is some of the "stats" team or league wide are still up in the air for how valuable they actually are.
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Jan 27, 2015 20:10
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Savage Cracker posted:Hai is Regi 2.0 plus a fancy earring and less twitter drama. I agree with this, actually. There was a time when Hai was an absolutely dominant laner and a great teamfighter but he's fallen off pretty far.
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Jan 27, 2015 21:36
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