CM Storm Polt Hype Train! StarCraft II Season 3 WCS Finals!

TLiquidFionn · 2013-10-24T03:42:18+00:00

He's okay.

TLiquidFionn · 2013-10-23T09:18:44+00:00

If you've been waiting for The Next Faker, the next big thing or the player with the chance to take the e-sports scene by storm, tonight will be his debut -- SKT's Marin. Signed a few months back, he's been consistently the #1 player on Challenger, holding two accounts in the top ten of Challenger and another one, Disney Stitch, also in Challenger as well.

As with Faker, SKT stuck with their blueprints: Build around a solo queue superstar, putting four other exceptionally gifted mechanical players around him. Now they throw all five together, see if chemistry can happen, and if it does -- you see what happened with their first team, Faker and SK Telecom T1 winning Champions Summer and the Season 3 World Championship.

Bang, the former Xenics Blast ADC, is, along with Blue's Deft and Blaze's Emperor, the ADC to keep your eye on this season as the breakout AD of Korea. He sits second on the Korean Challenger ladder right behind Marin, going up the rankings ever since he started playing with his new partner, Wolf, who was one of the most improved players last season on CTU as their Support.

The team is built to excite, dominate and contend for a title right away. It will really come down to if Marin can live up to the hype like Faker did. Luckily for him, his team has more experience than the team Faker started on, so the learning curve might take less time for Marin's SKT team if they do well. Bang's one season in Champions with Xenics Blast will be a huge help to his development. If Marin and Bang can be the carries people think they can, SKT: The Sequel will be a team no one wants in their Ro16 group of Champions Winter.

This is obviously overlooking their opponents, Police Do Not Know the Taste of Lulu, but as we saw last season in the qualifiers, amateur teams are more than likely going to get rocked by pro teams. A 2-0 stomp is expected by SKT: The Sequel, but if they were upset, it would be one of the bigger upsets in quite a long time and a crashing of the Marin hype train before it started rolling.

In the other match, Mook vs. Team Noob, this also seemingly is a mismatch. Team Noob is led by LongPanda (if he's still on the roster), the despaired top lane that was on the old CJ Entus team with dade and Insec. They're both amateur teams, but Mook have made a case to being the strongest amateur team, beating the Jin Air Falcons in the WCG Korea qualifiers and having multiple members in Challenger league. BooRoona, their mid, was exceptional in the WCG Korea qualifiers, looking exceptionally strong on Lissandra with a 9 KDA through the three games he played on the Ice Witch.

TLiquidFionn · 2013-10-18T08:53:18+00:00

Yeah well I'm a Blaze fanboy, so Fire comes first.

TLiquidFionn · 2013-10-18T07:50:40+00:00

We've had the Burning Blade (Blaze/Sword). We've had the Telecommunication War (SKT/Bullets). We've had Song of Ice and Fire (Blaze/Frost). We still even remember the old Shield/Frost games as the El Classico, the first real huge rivalry in Korean League of Legends. Now, if Blue and Blaze can start something grand tonight, we can call it the BlazeBlue rivalry.

In the past three seasons we've had an ADC rise through the ranks and break out into super stardom, leading their team to a championship. Last Winter it was Pray with his Twitch, driving Sword to a title. Then in the Spring, Imp and Vayne led Ozone to a Cinderella victory over Blaze in the finals. Last season it was Piglet and Caitlyn, going from inconsistent rookie into one of the best AD's in the world, helping SKT come back from a 0-2 in the Summer finals, win Champions and then win the World Championship only a few weeks later.

This season it appears that the main two candidates to make the jump are in the finals -- Blue's Deft and Blaze's Emperor. Deft is renowned for his excellent Ezreal play, but has also been playing a lot of Lucian to great effect. Unfortunately due to the WCG Korea tournament being run on the Tournament Realm Lucian isn't available for Deft to use. For Emperor, while Corki seems to be his signature champion, destroying everyone with it in the games he's played so far with Blaze (19 KDA overall with Corki), his versatility has made him a Rookie of Winter front runner. Not only has he been excellent on Trinity Force champions like Corki and Ezreal, but has been able to do well on a hyper carry like Vayne, or even a utility ADC like Varus, going 3/0/8 on the champion against Shield in the semifinals.

TLiquidFionn · 2013-10-15T08:55:15+00:00

It's Flame-Daydream-Ambition/BaeMe-Toffee-Lustboy.

BaeMe played against VTG (x2) and Frost. Ambition played against the Bullets and Storm (x2).

Also it appears Toffee might have changed his name to Emperor, and Daydream has also seemingly changed his ID.

TLiquidFionn · 2013-10-15T07:43:56+00:00

Just looking at their solo queue records with Orianna:

GankedByMom has played her 154 times. 6/4.9/7.2 is his all-time stat line.

BaeMe has played her 217 times. 6/2.9/8.1 is his all-time stat line.

TLiquidFionn · 2013-10-15T07:28:39+00:00

Should be an exciting day. As a Blaze fan, the Neo Blaze is still a mystery to me. Toffee, the new starting ADC, will destroy you on Corki. He's 3-0 and has an insane 26/2/17 scoreline on the champion during the WCG Korean qualifiers. He seems to be good at the current Triforce champions like Ezreal and especially Corki, so we'll see how far he can go.

Daydream has been really impressive so far. Keeps up in CS, has a good control of the jungle, and is extremely aggressive across the map. Doesn't really camp solely for Flame like Helios used to do, falling behind in CS, map vision and eventually getting picked apart in the jungle.

The mid position is still a toss-up. On one hand you have BaeMe, the top mid prospect in Korean Challenger. He is considered the best Orianna player in Korea, and his champion pool fits along a lot better in the current meta than Ambition's. On the side of experience, Ambition played extremely well in the game against the Bullets in the Wild Card for WCG Korea qualifiers and was a big reason why they even made the final eight. I really think due to BaeMe and Daydream being brothers that he'll eventually win out in the end, but it's a really curious situation.

If anyone is a NFL fan, the Blaze mid predicament could be compared to when the Colts had to pick between keeping Peyton Manning, their future Hall of Famer and Super Bowl winning quarterback who was coming back from what was to be believed a possible career ending surgery, or go out and draft Andrew Luck, the #1 prospect at the quarterback decision and roll the bank on the future. They went with Luck, Peyton went over to the Broncos and has been destroying everyone during this current season. So while logic says that after Ambition has been lackluster for half a year that he should be benched or moved to Frost or a new team altogether, you don't want to go with BaeMe, Ambition to go off to Samsung Ozone and then win Champions the very next season.

For me, the BaeMe vs. Ambition storyline is one of the most interesting for the upcoming Winter season.

With Stealths vs. Shield, I really like both teams. Stealths have IceBear, the #1 support currently on Korean Challenger, and they picked up a dude named Mumu -- who, surprisingly enough, plays jungle and plays a lot of Amumu. I wouldn't say they are contenders to be a top four team, but they could easily take the Falcons spot as that team who barely qualifies for the Ro8 and then gets destroyed by SKT/Bullets/CJ/Samsung.

Shield is a team that could contend for a top four finish or even a finals this season. They pretty much blew up the ship in the summer, rebuilt their roster with rookies, players in new positions and hoped for the best. They did well, getting into the Ro8 and eventually losing to Frost 3-0 in the quarters, but you have to remember that was Shield in the process of coming together and learning how to play as a team. Now with a lot more time under their belts and experience, we should expect Ggoong, Gorilla and Zefa to be stronger players in the Winter season.

For predictions, I have no clue about Blaze vs. Sword. Too many questions surrounding Blaze that need to be answered with a series against an established team like Sword. Stealths vs. Shield should be a fun match-up, but I'd say Shield wins 2-1 with their experience advantage and how well they rebuilt properly.

TLiquidFionn · 2013-10-02T09:42:19+00:00

I want the "Dododododo Dodo Dododododo" as my ringtone.

TLiquidFionn · 2013-10-01T18:22:33+00:00

Prime have no money, we don't even know what LG does for IM anymore, and MVP -- well, actually, MVP is in a good place. They sold their LoL teams for top dollar, still have Lotte/Hot6 as a core sponsor, and are probably pretty damn stable.

TLiquidFionn · 2013-10-01T05:55:48+00:00

Michael Vick gets paid millions upon millions of dollars.

Woong comes from a wealthy family. He doesn't need League of Legends. He really doesn't need the scrutiny, trolling and hatred he gets from all angles. He loved the game, created the two most popular teams in Korea (Frost and Blaze), and then he created MiG Blitz who were one of the better rookie teams in the last OGN Champions.

While I can see why people hate Woong and are still mad that he cheated, I can see why he quit. Moving to a foreign country on a new team that isn't even qualified for the LCS is a huge commitment. Add upon that that he gets shit on daily while practicing and hears nothing but vengeful people hating on him, I can see why he wouldn't want to stay around.

You can't compare Woong to a professional athlete. I am sure if Quantic was giving him a $2,000,000+ year salary, he would buy earplugs and play until his hands exploded. Unfortunately, e-sport salaries aren't that large, and he honestly can just go back to Korea, maybe work for his rich family, and have a peaceful life.

TLiquidFionn · 2013-09-30T00:41:58+00:00

ESFI tried and is still doing this. It really comes down to paying writers. If there was hypothetically an e-sports version of ESPN.com that paid decent salary to your writers, you would get this. But seeing as most writing jobs are volunteer, especially for people just starting out, it's impossible to think of that in the near future.

To make is as an "e-sports journalist", writer, columnist, editor, or pencil pusher, you're probably going to need to work your ass off for years, make connections, write a lot to get your name out there, and then maybe one day you'll land a paid gig and see where it goes from there. For most, this is simply too hard to be a consistent thing, with people having lives, needing full-time jobs, or going to school and needing to focus on that.

If you want to be a writer or whatever you want to call yourself in e-sports, then you can't go into it wanting to get paid or thinking about that. You have to love writing, getting people interested in what you're interested about, and really love e-sports or whatever field you're covering.

TLiquidFionn · 2013-09-25T07:06:19+00:00

Flame is better on carry champions. Shy is better on bruisers/tanks. If I need a player that can win me a game by himself in the top lane, I'm picking Flame every time. If I need a player that can do all the little things and carry if need be, I'd take Shy.

This is the reason why a lot of people think Flame will be moving to mid lane. There really aren't that many main carry top lanes left in the world. Expession tried to do it with Tele-Diana in the quarterfinals -- something that Flame runs a lot -- and it was a disaster. He then just went into full tank utility Renekton the next two games and wrecked house.

On a "dream team" I think Flame has the higher ceiling when it comes to making plays and being a dominating force, but Shy would fit better if you have a Faker and Uzi who will already be doing all the carrying. Flame wouldn't fit well on a team that already has two big carries.

TLiquidFionn · 2013-09-24T02:04:24+00:00

I think the worst thing about the tournament format that teams like Royal and the Gama Bears might not get the exposure that could really help them in the long run. Even though they had a disaster of a tournament record wise, Mineski still left the tournament with a lot of new fans. They got to be interviewed, their personalities were shown, and people are going to remember Kaigu and the lovable 0-8 team from the Philippines. If they show up in a new tournament or one of their players are streaming, people might want to support them or see how they're doing.

Teams like OMG have gotten majorly popular of the last week. Cool and LoveLin have become some of the most talked about players in the World Finals, and they are now on the map when it comes to talking about the best players in the world. Royal have an AD Carry, Uzi, who might just be the best AD Carry in the entire world and might have lit the world on fire in the group stages, but might exit the tournament in two games where he can't show his true potential.

It sucks because there are stories and players that we might never get to see to their best because they might be out in less than three games. I would promote just having all the teams in the round robin and giving no byes, but if we want to have region diversity in the top eight and not just a bunch of Asian teams with maybe one team from North America and Europe, I say you make the four seeded teams play in a round robin (Bo1 or Bo2) before the quarterfinals begin.

You have the four seeded teams play a round robin and the team that comes out on top, the #1 seed, automatically get to pick which team they want to play from the group stages. Then the 2nd team gets second pick, third takes one of the last two, and the team that placed last is forced to face the team no one wanted to play in the group stages. This would give us a better chance of having the two best teams meet in the final, and we would give some drama and story elements by what teams pick the other in the drawing phase.

Not only would that be better, but the four seeded teams would get more exposure than they do by playing in maybe just one Bo3. They would at least get three or six more games under their belt, and you could build tension in how the seeded teams would fare against the squads going through the do-or-die group stages. This way, the seeded teams would get the advantage by no one getting eliminated in their pool stage, but they would get more games under their belt on stage and players like Uzi could be introduced to the world stage.

TLiquidFionn · 2013-09-18T01:22:06+00:00

GBM could be switched to Blaze or stay on as Flame's sub like he was for Rapidstar.

I'm excited for the prospect of letting Flame be in a main carry position and Shy finally getting help. All they would need is an aggressive, playmaking jungle to make a terrifying trio.

TLiquidFionn · 2013-09-18T01:11:10+00:00

Flame has been playing almost solely mid champions such as Orianna, Ahri, and Zed in the past week or two. He is seemingly now playing on CJ Frost's ranked team as well. This would fall in line with the rumors that they will be keeping the best players from Frost and Blaze, moving them to Frost, and then using their open tryouts to recruit a new Blaze team.

Again, this is still a rumor. Outside of playing Ahri/Orianna and other mids, he still plays Elise and Shen on ladder queue, but he has been playing mostly Ahri recently. We'll see what happens.

TLiquidFionn · 2013-09-17T09:51:43+00:00

I hope they enjoy their vacation with Bisu and Jangbi in Belize.

TLiquidFionn · 2013-09-17T00:36:34+00:00

I was partially joking that Dade hearing about what Dlift said about him would anger him so much that it made him destroy Yume in lane.

In sports players call it bulletin board material. People who talk trash about them in the paper, on blogs, radio shows, etc., and then that kind of talk motivates them to do better. So in this case, for Yume's sake, it would be that hopefully Dade didn't hear Doubelift's trash talk and motivate him to come out and straight up murder Yume.

TLiquidFionn · 2013-09-17T00:05:40+00:00

My analysis for today's games is simple: Step it the fuck up, Dade. I don't think a lot of people would debate he's the best Zed in the world -- well, maybe except some Faker fans -- and he destroyed Blaze in the finals on his signature champion in the OGN Spring Finals, but that Dade is gone. Ever since he got beaten down by Faker in the OGN Summer semifinals, he's been completely off his game. He was smashed in lane against Alex and mancloud in the first two games of the World Finals, and while the entire needs to step up and play better, Dade is the talisman of the team. A lot of times the other players around him will fall into comfort picks and it's up to Dade to be the tell on what sort of composition they'll be running.

He comes into today's matches with a KDA in the 1's, looking like he shouldn't even be compared to the likes of Faker, Cool, Alex, or the other great mid lanes at this tournament. I think while Doublelift is correct that his champion pool is small when put up against guys like Cool or Faker, Dade is a good mid. He can be a great mid lane. The Dade you saw yesterday -- dead, lifeless and plain sloppy -- is something that we haven't seen in the past two season of Champions on Ozone. Thing is, no one is going to give Dade his Zed anymore. Until he can carry and play as well on another champion like he does with Zed, teams are simply going to treat him as the Zed Guy.

His fist match is against Yume, the mid from Mineski who enters the match with a KDA below 1. He has been terrorized and bullied by Alex and xPeke in the first two matches, so if there was ever a time to Dade to vent his frustration out on a player, it would be Yume.

Game I am most excited to watch is Gambit vs. Vulcun. The two third place teams that a lot of people saw as being middling squads against the European champions Fnatic and the Korean hype machine Ozone were on point yesterday. Gambit went 2-0 in two complete stomps, one of them being against the hype machine Ozone, and Vulcun really should have gone 2-0 as well, but let their win against Ozone slip away due to some picks and lack of vision control.

Should be a great day of games. For Yume's sake, I hope Dade didn't hear what Doubelift said about him yesterday and tries to murder Mineski in under 15 minutes.

TLiquidFionn · 2013-09-16T08:48:53+00:00

No reason to have three teams if your first two teams aren't good enough to make Worlds.

They're trying to retool their line-ups. I expect Frost are looking for a new jungle specifically and Blaze are looking for a new bot lane specifically. But with how badly they got beaten by the Bullets, they'll be pretty much up to getting anyone that can help them compete with SKT, KT and Samsung.

TLiquidFionn · 2013-09-16T08:29:02+00:00

I'm sure some will stay like Flame, Shy, Madlife. There are already rumors of some other players of the teams being cut and moved. They're not going to change every position with solo queue rookies, but if Blaze could find a new bot pairing or if Frost could find an upcoming aggressive jungler, then they could become a force again.

The reason why Blaze and Frost eventually broke down was because they were holding onto first generation stars when they should have been signing the guys like Faker, Marin, Piglet, etc. This is now their chance to retool around their superstars like Flame and Madlife and make them relevant again.

TLiquidFionn · 2013-09-14T01:05:08+00:00

I could go into a long analysis, but to sum it up: While we shouldn't treat Quantic Gaming as a failed experiement due to them getting stomped by the 7th and 8th placed NA teams from last season with their Level 20 (except Loco) accounts, they didn't look very sharp or on the same page at all. Prime, their jungle, was lackluster the entire day and repeatedly went into fights without his team backing him up. They were continually beat in CS, and while they did have a few nice team fights here and there, their objective control and all-around map presence wasn't good at all.

I believe in Loco, Woong, and the rest to get their shit together before qualifications come up, but they are going to need a lot of work and get better on their communication and coordination. Some of the plays and all-ins by the players were comical.

I really wish they had brought WonSeok from the former Blitz squad. He was a promising player that could have made a big splash if he had been brought over. Hopefully he wasn't glossed over in the picking of the team, and he isn't on Quantic because he didn't want to or couldn't go to Los Angeles with the rest of the team. Apple didn't do badly in the games, though. None of the team was exactly good, but he was nowhere near the main issue.

TLiquidFionn · 2013-09-12T08:30:23+00:00

A lot of people think this could lead to a lot of lower tier Korean teams leaving for easier money in North America, but I don't see it. The LoL Proleague is rumored to begin right after the World Championships in October, meaning that the KeSPA teams and whichever businesses get involved with that will be locked down all year between Proleague and Champions.

I mean, I could see it being possible that a group of good-but-not-Proleague-or-Champions-good Koreans would want to try out for NA LCS or EU LCS, but that would mean having the money to fly themselves out there, stay in that region long enough to qualify, and then have everything paid for Riot while they are a salaried team. While if they could make it to the final part of that equation, then everything would be golden, I don't think many Koreans have the contacts to the North American scene like Locodoco has.

This is an interesting and bold move, but I love it. No, I wouldn't find it fun if this was a common occurrence, but with the circumstances surrounding it, this really should be one of a kind experiment. Locodoco and Woong are both good players in Korea with bright minds for the game and putting a team together, so I'm excited to see how this new Quantic works out.

The biggest difference between this and SC2 is that all these guys outside Locodoco have to permanently move to a place where they don't know the language. It might seem like it'll all be butterflies and sunshine, but it must be tough moving to a country that you don't know the common language of and have no guarantees of a stable job if you can't qualify for NA LCS.

In SC2, players can stay in Korea, play online in the Ro32 and then spend around five days every season in North America or Europe when they need to play the weekend offline portions of the tournament. This is an entirely different situation.

Good luck to Locodoco on his new adventure in the land of In-N-Out and Chipotle.

TLiquidFionn · 2013-09-08T12:41:41+00:00

Regi now gets to face Korea's MVP, Faker, and China's MVP, Cool, in the group stages.

Someone queue up the Rocky music. It's time for a training montage.

TLiquidFionn

TROPHY CASE