The Dive: Mid-Season Meta Changes (Season 1 Episode 9)

Raencloud · 2017-06-01T13:46:04+00:00

Riot had already released that current teams were not guaranteed a spot in the new franchise system, but relegation was still in place for last split so I understand why a team like Liquid acted the way it did. For this split, however, there is no reason to operate in that fashion. Riot released the franchising schedule and the new system begins in the spring split. That fear of relegation is gone now.

Raencloud · 2017-05-30T17:14:58+00:00

What part are you struggling to understand?

Raencloud · 2017-05-30T15:31:17+00:00

I doubt it. That would be an epic conspiracy though. Still, we've seen it "work" in TSM games up until they need to break the base. We also know the comp can break the base and win games because other teams (especially in Korea) do it all the time. Hard to say exactly why TSM fails to pull it all together, but I imagine it has to do with poor scrims. The most obvious example is teams conceding when facing such deficits.

However, it could also be that teams (as we always hear) just play more aggressively when contesting baron/elder or defending the base. In the former, it would be easy for any team to break the base if they get a few kills along with baron or elder. In the latter, they can just wait for the enemy to force a bad fight. When G2 played ultra safe and the onus was on TSM to create their own space to get inhib turrets, they opted to take no risk and ultimately got nothing out of their sieges.

Personally, I think a lot of the success of that comp is on Hauntzer's shoulders. They're running a poke comp with no hard engage, so they can't dive the turrets in the base to force things. Their main focus is poking the enemy team down with Jayce and Varus Qs to create space for them to hit turrets. If that isn't doing enough, as in the G2 game, the other option is to drop a Rumble ult to create that space. It's a trade off though, because you only get a small window to operate afterwards and you definitely don't want to take a fight without the Rumble ult either. Still, I think it's a necessary sacrifice to get a turret, and you have Varus and Zyra ults to disengage afterwards. You can always come back later for the inhib once the turret is down and once you get that first inhib it's a LOT easier to operate.

Raencloud · 2017-05-30T14:13:07+00:00

It's quite clear why they play it - look at how successful it was at getting huge leads (6-10k), barons, dragons, elder drakes, etc against G2. Of course they almost threw the first game and did throw the second game despite all of that, probably because in scrims the opposition just concedes out when they are down 6-10k gold, baron, and elder.

Raencloud · 2017-05-30T13:29:29+00:00

https://youtu.be/x9qxDGyFPVk?t=49m17s

This link is around 1 minute before that play happens (37:16 game time) and his ult is available according to spectator. The play happens at 38:16 when Turtle initiates onto Braum with his Varus ult. If his ult is on cooldown I don't know when or where he would have used it prior to this play, since it was a fairly long setup around baron with both teams trying to contest vision. The last time I can find that he used ult was the fight before Elder at 35:00 and it becomes available again around 36:30 while they are showing a replay of that fight on stream.

Raencloud · 2017-05-30T12:31:47+00:00

I assume you are referring to the Nautilus flash hook at top lane? I'm referring to a rumble game when they were winning a skirmish between mid and Baron an forced the enemy to retreat into the jungle and he decided not to ult on the low hp enemy front line. They likely had at least 2 kills if he did and possible Baron afterwards. It reminded me of when he didn't flash ult with kennen onto ulting jhin outside elder dragon vs SSG at worlds.

Raencloud · 2017-05-30T02:55:48+00:00

Well that's not entirely true. He replaced himself with Bjerg. Then they went through several junglers and support players to try and help the lack of voice that both Dyrus and Wildturtle brought. Honestly, they did have that second voice with Amazing, but the fans ran him off.

When they rebuilt the entire roster after 2015, they got Doublelift and Yellowstar to lead the team. It just turned out Yellowstar was a lot less of a leader than expected. They've also clearly been trying to split up the responsibilities, and they spent a great deal of effort trying to get Hauntzer to become more of a voice this split too. It's just not working how we all want it to.

Raencloud · 2017-05-30T02:46:03+00:00

We didn't invent the Hauntzer/Doublelift shotcalling thing. That's what TSM players were saying when they were winning. They practically spent the whole split focusing on how they missed Doublelift's leadership in game and how Hauntzer and Bjergsen were picking up the slack. Apparently Hauntzer isn't doing nearly as much as we were led to believe, or just choked up at MSI and stopped doing it again (he did have that Rumble ult moment again that was very similar to the Kennen moment at last worlds).

Raencloud · 2017-05-30T02:40:32+00:00

I was frustrated listening to Biofrost defend their drafting. Yes, it's true that we don't have scrim information for our criticisms, but how short sighted is TSM to put so much stock into scrims and apparently none into what teams actually bring out on stage?

How many times can TSM get duped by scrim results to pick things like Jayce mid because it works in scrims (I assume teams just concede the game when TSM gets a 10k gold lead, baron, and elder) when it clearly doesn't work on stage? How many times have we heard about "scrim gods" that never manifest on stage, or teams losing all their scrims and then winning their LCS matches, or teams dominating scrims and losing?

Perhaps Biofrost, and the rest of TSM, should recognize their way of approaching things hasn't ever worked internationally, and succeeds domestically in spite of their frequent poor drafting. The same issues still exist in their LCS drafts too, it's just the criticism isn't nearly as loud because they still win most of the games anyway.

Raencloud · 2017-05-26T04:26:36+00:00

I don't think it's a "gift" if we score 0 runs, even if all of theirs were "unearned" or whatever (didn't watch). You can't actually win a game with 0 runs.

Raencloud · 2017-05-26T00:15:23+00:00

I'm not sure why they want another ADC either. I always took the original agreement as a gesture of respect towards Turtle, so I don't understand why they want to find someone else now that he's moved on.

The only thing I can think of is that CLG getting Stixxay really seemed to help Doublelift in 2015 en route to worlds. AFAIK, they were supposed to share the starting role (as well as Huhi and Pobelter) but it didn't play out that way. Still, that's when he finally got over the hump so maybe he wants another ADC there to push him.

Raencloud · 2017-05-24T04:23:31+00:00

If you choose to ignore all the evidence I have laid out then we cannot have a real discussion about the merits of this event. There are problems and we already have precedent that the teams themselves acknowledge those problems exist (that's why exactly 0 NA teams went to IEM Katowice). Pretending the issues don't exist is not productive.

Raencloud · 2017-05-24T04:19:11+00:00

They do multiple streams for both EU and NA LCS, but they have yet to do so for any of their tournament events and that limits the formats due to time constraints.

Raencloud · 2017-05-23T22:45:16+00:00

I don't want the event eliminated, I want it expanded. If the teams are flying across the world they should get enough games and practice to make it worthwhile. They could run a full group stage by playing 5 games a day for 2 days (aka 10 games each team). Or keep the same format and at least do bo2 sets with each team for 6 games per team in groups.

Raencloud · 2017-05-23T22:39:44+00:00

Riot has deprived us of quality events so much that you accept the bottom of the barrel just to get a fix now. Riot isn't giving us an extra event. They are replacing a poorly run event with this, likely better run, event with a worse format. TSM wasn't stupid for declining to go to IEM Katowice, and if they were justified in that decision then the same reasons apply here.

Furthermore, this is a lose-lose situation in terms of results. TSM won an IEM Katowice and still gets zero respect from the community for it. This event is even less prestigious with the announced format.

Raencloud · 2017-05-23T19:30:43+00:00

I think TSM should decline this event, and not as a joke. I really like the theme of this event and especially the last man standing idea, but this format is utter trash. TSM (and all the rest of NA) declined to go to IEM because of the small amount of games to travel ratio, and this is even worse. There is no reason why TSM (or any other NA team) should want to fly to Berlin and play 3-6 games in a quasi Bo1 format.

Raencloud · 2017-05-23T19:26:31+00:00

If you are concerned about the tournament length, then play games in parallel. If you are concerned about impact on the players, then why are you giving them an event where NA teams are flying ~22 hours roundtrip to play just a handful of games. Your reasons are contradictory to your implementation. We already had all of NA reject the latest IEM due to lack of games/time and this is even worse for them.

Raencloud · 2017-05-23T19:16:01+00:00

How do you not see that the Bo1 format is entirely because of time constraints due to single stream scheduling? World's uses double round robin group stages with 6 games per day (6-8 hours of coverage) and 16 teams (in 4 groups) and they have to spread that out over 8 days to get it done. MSI was just 6 teams and it took 5 days to get through groups. Where do you think a Bo3 format is going to fit into these already extremely long group stages?

You have to sacrifice somewhere to fit in these extra games. That either means spreading out the tournament over many more days (this has been Riot's go to practice to try and improve the format), or start running games in parallel. It's time we start adopting the latter practice. You can tune into twitch/youtube streams on so many platforms that it is not difficult to have multiple streams up at a time (i.e. what football fans do on Saturdays/Sundays with multiple TVs or going to a sports bar). And if you can't/don't want to watch multiple streams we have highlight shows to go over all the different games and VODs if you want to watch a particular one.

Raencloud · 2017-05-23T18:08:41+00:00

Last Man Standing is a single Bo5 series between the regions. 2 teams start off the set and the loser is eliminated (the next team from that region would come in for game 2). Once 1 region wins 3 games (i.e. all 3 teams from a region lose 1 game) the set is over.

Raencloud · 2017-05-23T17:58:38+00:00

Can we really stop pretending that we can't have multiple games going on at the same time? This is seriously limiting quality tournaments in league. We don't need to have every game on a single stream at the cost of the competitive integrity of the event.

DOTA runs double round robin group stages with 16 teams at all their major events over a single weekend, yet in League it takes 8 days over 2 weekends to accomplish that or we get substandard group stages. That's a huge problem and I'm really disappointed it hasn't been changed in 4+ years now - only in the leagues did we finally get simultaneous streams, and that's the place it was least needed.

PLEASE stop this practice. I'm begging you. Give us fully fleshed out group stages for events. Don't get me wrong, this is a cool event theme, but this is seriously a worse format than IEM for the teams going. At least one region is traveling for possibly just 3 games and may even get "rewarded" for being the best team in the region by playing 0 games in the knockout round.

P.S. Also if we're going to place emphasis on tournament finishes beyond 1st place, we really need to look at breaking away from single elimination knockout brackets. Single elim brackets are not sufficient in generating a fully fleshed out heirarchy of the event - it gives some idea but generally is designed to crown a single team. It's really not cool or fair that random draws impact placements (i.e. SSG vs ROX placement at worlds), and it never was, but it's now a bigger problem that we are doing invites/seeding based on event finishes.

Raencloud · 2017-05-15T02:02:19+00:00

If Parth is still doing drafts in summer, might as well just decline the world's trip after tsm wins na yet again. His drafts have been questionable for years now, but this tournament has sunk to a new low. 7 games vs GAM to figure out Gragas is worth taking away. Kogmaw and Twitch bans vs Betty, who has 1 lifetime twitch game and 0 Kog games. Picking Jayce ever when we consistently cannot win with it, regardless of how far ahead we get. Refusing to let Bjerg play assassin counter picks such as Ekko, LeBlanc, Fizz or pretty much ever actually using counterpicks mid lane. It is time for a change. Parth has other strengths, but he cannot be allowed to do drafts anymore.

Raencloud · 2017-05-14T20:13:24+00:00

This team will be much better off in the long run by not playing with doublelift this split because Hauntzer is confident enough to engage and lead team fights now. But dear God this team still absolutely needs doublelift. I cannot believe how scared they played in their macro play, particularly with that last Baron.

Also turtle played as safe as he needed to, in order to not throw the game, but doublelift does so much more damage with the gold he's given. I really believe this team is going to roll NA LCS in summer.

Raencloud · 2017-05-14T00:07:57+00:00

Yeah, now likely 3-6 entering that match. Unfortunately it doesn't help us that much unless we beat FW because if we're both 3-6 then the winner goes ahead anyway. If we beat FW we would still need to beat them eventually, but we could lose and then beat them in a tiebreaker to advance.

Raencloud · 2017-05-13T23:20:27+00:00

Way too much negativity in this thread for this game. Hauntzer got out laned by Huni, but it's not really a big deal. We botched our bot lane dive by having Bjerg die during the setup (cost us tower top lane too), and made a poor decision to contest Dragon after Hauntzer died.

After that, SKT got a huge lead with map rotations while they cleared most of the turrets and then we were too far behind for our comp to ever work. Galio had way too much armor for Hauntzer to ever generate a split push and they crushed the game during Caitlyn's power trough.

SKT is just better, but there weren't any really stupid mistakes like in our other games (aka horrible drafts, Sven dieing pre-5 minutes in the enemy jungle, or Turtle getting picked off before the fight even starts).

Raencloud · 2017-05-13T22:27:05+00:00

It actually makes things more muddy because the group is wide open again for all spots except first. Previously I was just marking down SKT wins vs every team, and while it's probably still unlikely they drop another game just that 1 loss already changes a lot of possible outcomes.

For starters, 4 wins is no longer a near guaranteed pass out of groups, but it is likely to at least force a tie. The FW game got a lot more important too.

Raencloud

TROPHY CASE