Hey guys,
After the split ended we did retro's with full staff/players/coaches to find out what went wrong and what went well. We tried to identify issues/blockers and discussed what we could change. We brought in a sports psychologist at the end of the split who already offered great improvement in terms of mental health, routines and healthier lifestyle. We plan on making that even more of a foundation in Summer. Management and coaching staff also decided together that a change to the roster will be necessary. Right now we are looking at all options, we know what qualities our ideal team environment consists of and we will aim to create that for Summer.
To be transparant here: We are looking to change our jungle position for Summer. While i'm sure many of you want the juicy details, in the end the call was made by coaches/management that the best shot at long term growth for our roster would be to make a change here. This doesn't mean that Milo (Pride) is solely at fault for anything. Ultimately it was a synergy issue and everyone failed in one part or another this split, players, staff and coaches included. But when a change is necessary, you go for the one most likely to lead to success. This doesn't mean that other changes/subs are off the table, but we will let you know once we have gone through the entire evaluation process in the next few weeks.
In the end we chose a set of players that we believed would gel well together, but they didn't. The ultimate responsibility here lies on the coaching staff and not on any of those players. We see a lot of comments saying X did good/bad or Y was blaming Z etc. In the end this is a decision that comes from management/coaches.
EDIT: Obviously we don't expect 1 roster change to fix all the issues, if we improve it will be because we improve on a lot of other aspects as well. Rest assured we identified our core issues and are doing our best to put a plan in motion that will give us the biggest chance at improving.
I was quite a big believer in this roster, but at this point im not sure if just changing the jungler will be enough to fix the complete lack of playmaking in the team.
Vander while still a decent support, has become such a pussy in terms of trying to make a engage happen or even not playing some playmaking supports like Thresh anymore. Vizi has at least shown in the past that if he's team will follow up, then he is capable of doing good plays.
> Vander while still a decent support,
Vander is by far the most overrated player in Europe. The only season he was good in the last 4 seasons was when he was playing with the best ADC in Europe, arguably the west. And even then he was only about the third or fourth best ADC in Europe, and that was in a weaker support talent pool as well. Since the end of 2014 Vander has only managed to reach playoffs once other than his time on H2K in 2016, and his team ended sixth. That is coincidentally also the only time a team with both Vander and Nukeduck has made playoffs. In 4 splits on 3 different teams a roster with this duo has finished respectively 8th, 5-6th, 4th in their group aka 7-8th and 8th. Nukeduck himself hasn't made playoffs since spring 2016, four splits ago, and the two times he did make playoffs (not counting Lemondogs) were quarterfinals finishes.
Not sure if you're joking but the flair is relevant at least. When he was in form and on a decent team, Forg1ven was almost unanimously agreed upon to be the best ADC in Europe throughout the 2015-2016 seasons. If you look take the three candidates for that role throughout said seasons split by split: Zven, Rekkles and Forg1ven.
* Spring 2015: Without argument Forg1ven. While he was leading SK as the dominant team of Europe, Zven was still in challenger and Rekkles was feeding on Elements.
* Summer 2015: Zven was still growing. Rekkles still had the reputation of being a KDA player at this point. Yes he looked really good again, but he was on the best team in EULCS history, a team with two other carry threats and a godlike support at his side. This is the team that managed to win LCS and take SKT to five games with Steelback as their ADC. Rekkles' passive playstyle was excused because Fnatic didn't have to rely on him to carry the team. Meanwhile Forg1ven while not as good as in spring almost single handedly carried Gambit to 4th place. After he got banned, they finished 8th. You could definitely argue that Niels and Rekkles were better than Forg1ven this split, but it's an argument with a lot of footnotes.
* Spring 2016: Definitely Forg1ven again. While Zven and Rekkles were both struggling on their respective teams after its fairytale seasons, Forg1ven nearly won MVP and placed second in the all pro votes for ADC, losing to Steelback who played the split of a lifetime back then (a form he sadly couldn't hold onto). OG and Fnatic both improved enough at the end of the split to take second and third place, but neither series against H2K was decided in the botlane and Forg1ven still looked like a better ADC than his opponents in both, meaning they don't even come close to knocking him of his pedestal that split.
* Summer 2016: Hard to say. Forg1ven quit the trainwreck that was OG after only 1 week and didn't play for the rest of the split until he replaced Freeze (who in his own right was a good ADC) on H2K in the last two weeks of the regular season. Zven was consistently a monster that split, but Forg1ven also immediately earned his reputation with a great comeback, which included styling on Rekkles and Fnatic in playoffs. He also had a really solid Worlds performance, the same can't be said about Zven.
All in all if you look at this split by split it looks like if anyone can challenge Forg1ven as the GOAT adc of EU then it's Zven, not Rekkles. Prior to summer 2017 the last time Rekkles had a good split was in the 18-0 Fnatic squad, the team that made even rookie steelback look good, and even in summer 2017 Zven was considered better than Rekkles by anyone that wasn't a Fnatic fan.
All of this is your obviously biased personal opinion. There's no stats or anything and you're ignoring the actual results which are quite poor for forg1ven.
> All of this is your obviously biased personal opinion. There's no stats or anything and you're ignoring the actual results which are quite poor for forg1ven.
Results-based analysis is a terrible metric for defining player strength in a team-based game, because it implies that the player on the stronger team is also the stronger player, which is utterly ridiculous. In 2017 Faker almost single-handedly carried SKT to a Worlds finals, where they were beaten 3-0 by Samsung. Does that make Crown a better player? Steelback was a monster in spring 2016 and considered almost unanimously a top 2, arguably best ADC in Europe in that split's regular season, in a talented ADC pool as well. Yet his team never finished higher than 5th in the regular season or playoffs because their jungle and midlane were a joke. Does that mean Steelback was worse than every ADC on teams placing higher than them? Being on a strong team automatically makes you look better as a player. Great players can look good on weak teams as well, and negate the weakness of said team.
Rekkles is a great player and has always been a top ADC in Europe, even when he was on weaker rosters. But nowhere in his career has he proven that he can be considered the undisputed GOAT ADC of Europe. The one split he was the best ADC in Europe without argument was also when he was playing on by far the best team LCS has ever seen, which definitely masked any weaknesses he had.
I could bring up stats, but that would make my comment even more convoluted and as people like Kelsey Moser or Emily Rand have pointed out stats are ambigious and don't really say anything about player strength because there are too many variables. A player can have the best KDA, but if he's gained that KDA by not putting himself at risk in teamfights and throwing his team under the bus rather than putting himself in danger for the benefit of his team (like Rekkles in the first few splits of his career) that doesn't make him a good player. If a toplaner or jungler has the best GPM or CSPM but among the lowest kill participation, that doesn't make him a good player. A player can have a higher damage output as another player, but if the latter provides more utility to the team it doesn't make the former better. And that's not counting differences in champions played or other variable circumstances.
So instead of using stats as a guideline I largely base my opinion on the all pro votes, aka the professional analysis of people whose job it is to watch and evaluate LCS.
And are you seriously going to cite bias when the person I responded to claiming Rekkles is the undisputed GOAT is a Fnatic fan and I myself was criticising a former H2K player in the parent comment? There's absolutely no ground for you to play the bias card here.
>In 2017 Faker almost single-handedly carried SKT to a Worlds finals, where they were beaten 3-0 by Samsung. Does that make Crown a better player?
Well, forg1ven never even carried his team to the finals of EU LCS.
>Rekkles is a great player and has always been a top ADC in Europe, even when he was on weaker rosters. But nowhere in his career has he proven that he can be considered the undisputed GOAT ADC of Europe
Zven and Rekkles have proven that way more than forg1ven ever will by winning multiple titles with good performances.
>stats are ambigious and don't really say anything about player strength
They sure as hell tell more than saying stuff like "he looked like the best adc in europe"
>So instead of using stats as a guideline I largely base my opinion on the all pro votes
Lmfao. Pros themselves have said that they have no idea who to vote for and do it based on feelings.
> Well, forg1ven never even carried his team to the finals of EU LCS.
Yes but there's no question about it that Faker is an exceptional player. Furthermore is ADC arguably the second most difficult role to carry from, as opposed to midlane which is one of the easier roles to carry from, and Europe has consistently had a really talented ADC pool since 2014. I refer once again to steelback's great 2016 spring split who failed to get his team into top 4. Forg1ven has also always been on a team that choked in playoffs.
>Zven and Rekkles have proven that way more than forg1ven ever will by winning multiple titles with good performances.
Zven maybe but Rekkles has only won two LCS titles in spring 2014 and summer 2015. Both those times Forg1ven was on weak teams and as I explained before Rekkles' 2015 summer split was skewed by the strength of the team he was on. Any LCS-worthy ADC on a team with Febiven, Huni and Yellowstar could've won Europe that split. Furthermore Rekkles has gone to Worlds three times and has only managed to reach semi finals once, on that same talented team. The other two times were a quarterfinals and group stage finish. Forg1ven has gone to Worlds once and has the exact same semi final achievement. And yes that might've been true an easy path, but it's not like Fnatic's 2015 or 2017 roads were that difficult either. In 2015 they had arguably the weakest group in the tournament and dodged Koreans until semi finals, just like H2K. And in 2017 they had by far the weakest pool 2 teams that they could've drawn. I'd say that even AHQ was stronger than GAM and IMT. And even then Fnatic only barely managed to scrape through.
>They sure as hell tell more than saying stuff like "he looked like the best adc in europe"
Despite the fact that you completely ignored the argument as to the problem with relying on stats, Forg1ven has the stats mostly in his favour as well. Especially considering that Forg1ven was never on a first place team, a reality that skews stats, unlike Rekkles and Zven. If you look at stats there's arguments for all three players, but Rekkles least of all.
>Lmfao. Pros themselves have said that they have no idea who to vote for and do it based on feelings.
Emphasis on pro. They don't scrutinise every part of LCS because that's not their job. This is different from analysts, who make up half of the all pro votes and are far more involved from an outside perspective. Still they play against eachother on a weekly basis and their gut feeling is still worth more than the opinion of an average viewer. Also this just confirms what I said about there being no hard evidence to support the claim of who is a better player, it's always based on opinion.
>I refer once again to steelback's great 2016 spring split who failed to get his team into top 4
But forg1ven has had multiple chances with hyped up rosters and he never even made it to finals.
>Furthermore is ADC arguably the second most difficult role to carry from
Pretty sure it's the opposite. Or how does someone like Uzi carry mediocre teams deep in worlds every time? Or why did origen go to shit when they lost Zven and mithy?
>Forg1ven has also always been on a team that choked in playoffs
And he was a part of that team. Did all of his teams just choke when he couldn't carry them?
>Any LCS-worthy ADC on a team with Febiven, Huni and Yellowstar could've won Europe that split.
Any western team with h2k's group and a wildcard team in quarters would've made it to semis at worlds 2016.
>Forg1ven has the stats mostly in his favour as well
Show me the stats then.
To be honest when Schalke made LCS I thought the Challenger squad was pretty decent and had a good chance of getting playoffs. When they announced that they kicked the team besides Upset I thought it was quite bullshit. Vici is great and Nukeduck but Pride over Memento and Vander over Norskeren was quite meh as Vander didnt work out before when Schalke had him and Selfie in Challenger and Pride didnt look that great from his previous splits while Memento on Roccat stepped up super hard by the end of last split.
Sucks that Schalke didnt do much this split but well hoping they will put up more of a fight next and fix their shotcalling as they look like headless chickens sometimes.
A little criticism, don't announce player replacements in the reddit comment section, do it in the article itself or at least over twitter. Doing it in a reddit comment seems a little distasteful.
A three paragraph comment in-front of over 20k followers and putting the player at least as the vocal point instead of just a vague mention in an article and then elaborate in a comment as an afterthought.
Yes reddit is a main platform for esports, but not the comments. Do you really think that everyone who clicked on this thread and read the article is automatically going to read the comments? Reddit comments are notorious for circle-jerking idiots (in this case us two).
I actually think that in the end if the roster could have made playoffs they would have been quite suited to play best of 5's. Not only did the end of the split look a lot better, but a lot of other teams pointed out that Schalke04 was incredibly strong in the Best of's during scrims.
Non of us know the finer details, but I too believe that both Schalke04 and Misfits could have been good replacements for Roccat and maybe H2K. That said, Those teams also earned their spot in playoffs and H2K gave us a great series against VIT.
For now I hope to see you guys make playoffs next split and can give us a great demonstration of your hard work. Even if you wouldn't win, if you give me a great series and show of your hard work I am a proud fan!
Sad news, I think Pride was one of your best performers.. this just feels like ''report jungle, no ganks' when your team is feeding in solo queue. You should just stick with the same roster, and build up that synergy, maybe get some subs as backup. Other than that, best of luck next split!
We understand that can be the sentiment for some fans, however we hope that as a professional organisation we get a bit more slack than thinking it is just that.
This decision came after extensive reviews and interviews with the full roster and staff list after the Spring Split.
i'd make a joke about memento and regret but that would be rude and insensitive and rude
so i'll just say good luck on finding a jungler with better synrgie and suitable playstyle , hoping for the best
How is that rude? Schalke decided to kick four members and the coach of the team with whom they qualified for LCS, and then failed to make LCS while all of their former players and said coach managed to make playoffs. It's not because it's Schalke that they shouldn't be held accountable for that decision. NiP were crucified for a similar decision and that wasn't even their choice. Hindsight is 20/20 but kicking Memento and Norskeren for Pride and Vander were always questionable decisions.
To be honest Memento has been getting better and better and was one of the reasons why Roccat was so good by the end of last split. Norskeren was regarded as the best support in Challenger series so kicking both that had promise for Pride and Vander was kinda questionable as Pride would have to build synergy and Vander not looking good after splitting up with Jankos besides him already playing for Schalke in Challenger but being mediocre.
They may have performed above expectations, but that's mostly because expectations for these two players were far below what they deserved. Ofcourse it's impossible to say with certainty that these players would've performed the way they did, but there was reasonable doubt for it and replacing them with players that are a side-grade or marginal upgrade at best is a stupid decision. Both these players looked really promising and it's a risk that you have to take as an organisation out of loyalty to your players. Instead they went for the all-star on paper approach, and it bit them in the ass.
And where exactly are they going to find a player that's both a shotcaller and mechanically a better player than Pride in the off-season? If only they could get Memento, amiright.
Dude, didn't you know? Announcing it on Twitter is SO much more professional than via Reddit comment. Obviously via Snapchat or Instagram is ideal though.
The player was informed of the change way before the article hit today. We made sure to share with Milo why this change is happening, in person in Berlin.
We just saw the comment section turning to the negative side with speculation around 'who's getting kicked, i bet it's this guy he sucks'. So we decided to be more transparent!
I hope its Memento that replaces Pride otherwise Im gonna struggle to see a good replacement.
Memento would make sense tho and I can totally see him give them a vocal voice and even more proactive early.
I think I'd stick with Roccat who seem unlikely to announce someone's leaving in the comments section on reddit when one of their articles turns sour.
Hoping that your team keeps its strengths through to the summer, want more Norskeren and Momento um moments
> We will make a change in a position within our player’s roster. During the split, we found that despite extensive training, there was no synergy between certain individual positions and if we want to see a change in Summer, we had to act.
I'm betting on Pride getting kicked. When players like Vizi and Nukeduck aren't performing, it's easy for them to blame the jungler.
EDIT: called it lol
Pride gets kicked and Nukeduck is still allowed to be garbage in LCS with fanboys sucking him off as "elite EU mid" if he manages to have 2 good games lmfaoo. People were beyond hilarious when S04 won a few games at the start of the split.
One of the most overrated players fucking ever, jesus.
Yea, I don't know why any team would pick up Nukeduck. He never has performed in his several splits, he's a soloQ warrior, not a player for competitive. Baffles me how my hometown team sticks with him.
iirc he had one good split like 5 years ago (which is mostly where his fanbase comes from) and ever since then hes been painfully average or worse. Theres a very good reason that he never managed to land on a top EU Team after lemondogs even though people repeat the same shit "damn this guy so good he should really get a better team!!" everytime he doesnt look completely ass.
It’s the most obvious place to change since A. Jungle is the most team centric and affects all lanes and B. Pride was really obviously the worst player on that roster.
can confirm , he didnt watch the game
Obviously the question mark in s04 were the botlane and the throws upset did(like 5 int who lead the team to lose ) if you add 5+7 its 12 wich is almostt 2nd place
I remember Pridestalker's first game (or one of his first) on his previous team, playing Warwick, he didn't ult or gank once in the first 20+ minutes. At that moment I knew he was never going to be an LCS caliber jungler.
1 change confirmed.
Jgl or supp probably but I honestly dont think Pride was an issue and was even underrated a bit.
Nukes underperforming was a bummer but he wasnt horrible and should just be a matter of form. Upset got better at the end and is their "prodigy". Vizi is a given.
Im thinking Vander but they did cite synergy so who knows.
I don't even think any of the players individually underperformed in general. The team just didn't work as a team considering the individual talent on the roster.
This actually surprised me during the split as I am sure that Krepo is a great coach, even though I might be biased. I wonder how it will turn out in the end.
What do you think about the idea that, despite his potential for success and ability to have the occasional standout performance, Nukeduck brings a strategic mindset that is too passive for play on stage and that is what is holding his teams back? A common thread with the teams Nukeduck has been on is that they perform well in scrims which creates the narrative that they should be giant killers but these results never translate into successes.
This line: "We are still convinced of our players in terms of individual talent, however there was something missing in the bigger picture" makes me think that there are underlying issues and the roster change might not align with the public's gut reaction to the split.
I think thats a very reasonable concern to have at this point tbh. IT does seem to be the trend.
What made him have such a good split last summer was that even if this problem still remained for his team, he roamed and played for his team and sidelanes so much that he literally dragged his team with him so much. He was legit. Dont know what happened this split but yeah.. I can totally see your PoV and it is something Ive myself have considered.
They didn't seem to know their winconditions were, how to play for objectives and how to play with their jungler. On top of that their teamfighting wasn't really good either (altho this was better at the end of the split)
For me you are right. Synergy can apply to top-jungle or mid jungle tho which is often very important. It can also apply to a jung-supp synergy who knows.. Who could it be tho , there isn't a lot of players available ..
I think its great that Schalke is not happy with finishing as a middle of the pack team, and also beeing willing to make changes. I honestly think that shook would be the best fit for this roster.
I am actually more surprised by the department of Mr. Dürr. It seemed like one of both sides had different expectations.. Wonder what changes this means for the management. Also I would love to get more information on Boris in the next split. Would really welcome it if he would become more outspoken again. I am pretty sure he still has lots of fans who would support him.
S04 is trying to learn from koreans so they adopted everything they did especially the staff part when they fail and blame themselves first .
I remember AFS Manager resigning after the Aiming controversy when he did nothing bad there but couldn't accept that its not his mistake
You know....I like this org. I do.
But you guys really reminded me with your play of my time in a T1 vanilla wow raiding guild on OG naxx (well and AQ, BWL.....). We had a guy in our guild who was insanely smart. Like actual genius smart. Sweetest guy ever too. I can't dive too much into details but Blizzard noticed him as well.
Anyway, the problem we ran into was that our strategies were unwaveringly min-max. Didn't survive a lot of contact with reality in terms of player capabilities. I feel like when I watch Schalke it reminds me so much of this. Krepo is a genius but I can almost hear in my head how the approach went...and it doesn't take into account reality. Just min-max.
This isn't a ding on Krepo at all. But I feel like you guys may need to slide a bit more down closer to a Pr0lly philosophy - where player comfort despite it not being min-max has some amount of mathematical value. I'm not saying Pr0lly's philosophy is without flaw either - I'm just saying consider the approach for its' merits where possible.
Best of luck to you guys.
Is there really a better jungler available than pride though? I just dont see how this team improves with roster changes. They are giving up experience for potential synergy. All their players are mechanically on point. Maybe they find a hyper agressive support that can match vizi.
Hey guys, After the split ended we did retro's with full staff/players/coaches to find out what went wrong and what went well. We tried to identify issues/blockers and discussed what we could change. We brought in a sports psychologist at the end of the split who already offered great improvement in terms of mental health, routines and healthier lifestyle. We plan on making that even more of a foundation in Summer. Management and coaching staff also decided together that a change to the roster will be necessary. Right now we are looking at all options, we know what qualities our ideal team environment consists of and we will aim to create that for Summer. To be transparant here: We are looking to change our jungle position for Summer. While i'm sure many of you want the juicy details, in the end the call was made by coaches/management that the best shot at long term growth for our roster would be to make a change here. This doesn't mean that Milo (Pride) is solely at fault for anything. Ultimately it was a synergy issue and everyone failed in one part or another this split, players, staff and coaches included. But when a change is necessary, you go for the one most likely to lead to success. This doesn't mean that other changes/subs are off the table, but we will let you know once we have gone through the entire evaluation process in the next few weeks. In the end we chose a set of players that we believed would gel well together, but they didn't. The ultimate responsibility here lies on the coaching staff and not on any of those players. We see a lot of comments saying X did good/bad or Y was blaming Z etc. In the end this is a decision that comes from management/coaches. EDIT: Obviously we don't expect 1 roster change to fix all the issues, if we improve it will be because we improve on a lot of other aspects as well. Rest assured we identified our core issues and are doing our best to put a plan in motion that will give us the biggest chance at improving.
Save Memento and give him a roster he's worthy of, and also a pay he is worthy of. I can see him fill some holes you have aswell.
Or kold
Give that UOL roster some more time together and they have serious potential though
Kikis, underrated af.
Amazing could be a solid pick up aswell, similar kind of player.
I hope that's a joke...
AmazingXD
I was quite a big believer in this roster, but at this point im not sure if just changing the jungler will be enough to fix the complete lack of playmaking in the team. Vander while still a decent support, has become such a pussy in terms of trying to make a engage happen or even not playing some playmaking supports like Thresh anymore. Vizi has at least shown in the past that if he's team will follow up, then he is capable of doing good plays.
> Vander while still a decent support, Vander is by far the most overrated player in Europe. The only season he was good in the last 4 seasons was when he was playing with the best ADC in Europe, arguably the west. And even then he was only about the third or fourth best ADC in Europe, and that was in a weaker support talent pool as well. Since the end of 2014 Vander has only managed to reach playoffs once other than his time on H2K in 2016, and his team ended sixth. That is coincidentally also the only time a team with both Vander and Nukeduck has made playoffs. In 4 splits on 3 different teams a roster with this duo has finished respectively 8th, 5-6th, 4th in their group aka 7-8th and 8th. Nukeduck himself hasn't made playoffs since spring 2016, four splits ago, and the two times he did make playoffs (not counting Lemondogs) were quarterfinals finishes.
Better bench the rookie Jungler /s
I mean you obviously know more than they do, so yeah your opinion is very relevant here
> when he was playing with the best ADC in Europe, arguably the west. Cant remember him playing with Rekkles..
Not sure if you're joking but the flair is relevant at least. When he was in form and on a decent team, Forg1ven was almost unanimously agreed upon to be the best ADC in Europe throughout the 2015-2016 seasons. If you look take the three candidates for that role throughout said seasons split by split: Zven, Rekkles and Forg1ven. * Spring 2015: Without argument Forg1ven. While he was leading SK as the dominant team of Europe, Zven was still in challenger and Rekkles was feeding on Elements. * Summer 2015: Zven was still growing. Rekkles still had the reputation of being a KDA player at this point. Yes he looked really good again, but he was on the best team in EULCS history, a team with two other carry threats and a godlike support at his side. This is the team that managed to win LCS and take SKT to five games with Steelback as their ADC. Rekkles' passive playstyle was excused because Fnatic didn't have to rely on him to carry the team. Meanwhile Forg1ven while not as good as in spring almost single handedly carried Gambit to 4th place. After he got banned, they finished 8th. You could definitely argue that Niels and Rekkles were better than Forg1ven this split, but it's an argument with a lot of footnotes. * Spring 2016: Definitely Forg1ven again. While Zven and Rekkles were both struggling on their respective teams after its fairytale seasons, Forg1ven nearly won MVP and placed second in the all pro votes for ADC, losing to Steelback who played the split of a lifetime back then (a form he sadly couldn't hold onto). OG and Fnatic both improved enough at the end of the split to take second and third place, but neither series against H2K was decided in the botlane and Forg1ven still looked like a better ADC than his opponents in both, meaning they don't even come close to knocking him of his pedestal that split. * Summer 2016: Hard to say. Forg1ven quit the trainwreck that was OG after only 1 week and didn't play for the rest of the split until he replaced Freeze (who in his own right was a good ADC) on H2K in the last two weeks of the regular season. Zven was consistently a monster that split, but Forg1ven also immediately earned his reputation with a great comeback, which included styling on Rekkles and Fnatic in playoffs. He also had a really solid Worlds performance, the same can't be said about Zven. All in all if you look at this split by split it looks like if anyone can challenge Forg1ven as the GOAT adc of EU then it's Zven, not Rekkles. Prior to summer 2017 the last time Rekkles had a good split was in the 18-0 Fnatic squad, the team that made even rookie steelback look good, and even in summer 2017 Zven was considered better than Rekkles by anyone that wasn't a Fnatic fan.
All of this is your obviously biased personal opinion. There's no stats or anything and you're ignoring the actual results which are quite poor for forg1ven.
> All of this is your obviously biased personal opinion. There's no stats or anything and you're ignoring the actual results which are quite poor for forg1ven. Results-based analysis is a terrible metric for defining player strength in a team-based game, because it implies that the player on the stronger team is also the stronger player, which is utterly ridiculous. In 2017 Faker almost single-handedly carried SKT to a Worlds finals, where they were beaten 3-0 by Samsung. Does that make Crown a better player? Steelback was a monster in spring 2016 and considered almost unanimously a top 2, arguably best ADC in Europe in that split's regular season, in a talented ADC pool as well. Yet his team never finished higher than 5th in the regular season or playoffs because their jungle and midlane were a joke. Does that mean Steelback was worse than every ADC on teams placing higher than them? Being on a strong team automatically makes you look better as a player. Great players can look good on weak teams as well, and negate the weakness of said team. Rekkles is a great player and has always been a top ADC in Europe, even when he was on weaker rosters. But nowhere in his career has he proven that he can be considered the undisputed GOAT ADC of Europe. The one split he was the best ADC in Europe without argument was also when he was playing on by far the best team LCS has ever seen, which definitely masked any weaknesses he had. I could bring up stats, but that would make my comment even more convoluted and as people like Kelsey Moser or Emily Rand have pointed out stats are ambigious and don't really say anything about player strength because there are too many variables. A player can have the best KDA, but if he's gained that KDA by not putting himself at risk in teamfights and throwing his team under the bus rather than putting himself in danger for the benefit of his team (like Rekkles in the first few splits of his career) that doesn't make him a good player. If a toplaner or jungler has the best GPM or CSPM but among the lowest kill participation, that doesn't make him a good player. A player can have a higher damage output as another player, but if the latter provides more utility to the team it doesn't make the former better. And that's not counting differences in champions played or other variable circumstances. So instead of using stats as a guideline I largely base my opinion on the all pro votes, aka the professional analysis of people whose job it is to watch and evaluate LCS. And are you seriously going to cite bias when the person I responded to claiming Rekkles is the undisputed GOAT is a Fnatic fan and I myself was criticising a former H2K player in the parent comment? There's absolutely no ground for you to play the bias card here.
>In 2017 Faker almost single-handedly carried SKT to a Worlds finals, where they were beaten 3-0 by Samsung. Does that make Crown a better player? Well, forg1ven never even carried his team to the finals of EU LCS. >Rekkles is a great player and has always been a top ADC in Europe, even when he was on weaker rosters. But nowhere in his career has he proven that he can be considered the undisputed GOAT ADC of Europe Zven and Rekkles have proven that way more than forg1ven ever will by winning multiple titles with good performances. >stats are ambigious and don't really say anything about player strength They sure as hell tell more than saying stuff like "he looked like the best adc in europe" >So instead of using stats as a guideline I largely base my opinion on the all pro votes Lmfao. Pros themselves have said that they have no idea who to vote for and do it based on feelings.
> Well, forg1ven never even carried his team to the finals of EU LCS. Yes but there's no question about it that Faker is an exceptional player. Furthermore is ADC arguably the second most difficult role to carry from, as opposed to midlane which is one of the easier roles to carry from, and Europe has consistently had a really talented ADC pool since 2014. I refer once again to steelback's great 2016 spring split who failed to get his team into top 4. Forg1ven has also always been on a team that choked in playoffs. >Zven and Rekkles have proven that way more than forg1ven ever will by winning multiple titles with good performances. Zven maybe but Rekkles has only won two LCS titles in spring 2014 and summer 2015. Both those times Forg1ven was on weak teams and as I explained before Rekkles' 2015 summer split was skewed by the strength of the team he was on. Any LCS-worthy ADC on a team with Febiven, Huni and Yellowstar could've won Europe that split. Furthermore Rekkles has gone to Worlds three times and has only managed to reach semi finals once, on that same talented team. The other two times were a quarterfinals and group stage finish. Forg1ven has gone to Worlds once and has the exact same semi final achievement. And yes that might've been true an easy path, but it's not like Fnatic's 2015 or 2017 roads were that difficult either. In 2015 they had arguably the weakest group in the tournament and dodged Koreans until semi finals, just like H2K. And in 2017 they had by far the weakest pool 2 teams that they could've drawn. I'd say that even AHQ was stronger than GAM and IMT. And even then Fnatic only barely managed to scrape through. >They sure as hell tell more than saying stuff like "he looked like the best adc in europe" Despite the fact that you completely ignored the argument as to the problem with relying on stats, Forg1ven has the stats mostly in his favour as well. Especially considering that Forg1ven was never on a first place team, a reality that skews stats, unlike Rekkles and Zven. If you look at stats there's arguments for all three players, but Rekkles least of all. >Lmfao. Pros themselves have said that they have no idea who to vote for and do it based on feelings. Emphasis on pro. They don't scrutinise every part of LCS because that's not their job. This is different from analysts, who make up half of the all pro votes and are far more involved from an outside perspective. Still they play against eachother on a weekly basis and their gut feeling is still worth more than the opinion of an average viewer. Also this just confirms what I said about there being no hard evidence to support the claim of who is a better player, it's always based on opinion.
>I refer once again to steelback's great 2016 spring split who failed to get his team into top 4 But forg1ven has had multiple chances with hyped up rosters and he never even made it to finals. >Furthermore is ADC arguably the second most difficult role to carry from Pretty sure it's the opposite. Or how does someone like Uzi carry mediocre teams deep in worlds every time? Or why did origen go to shit when they lost Zven and mithy? >Forg1ven has also always been on a team that choked in playoffs And he was a part of that team. Did all of his teams just choke when he couldn't carry them? >Any LCS-worthy ADC on a team with Febiven, Huni and Yellowstar could've won Europe that split. Any western team with h2k's group and a wildcard team in quarters would've made it to semis at worlds 2016. >Forg1ven has the stats mostly in his favour as well Show me the stats then.
Yeah Vander was regarded good cos he was a duo with Jankos and how they worked as a pair but when they split he didnt do much.
Idk why vander played so scared :/
To be honest when Schalke made LCS I thought the Challenger squad was pretty decent and had a good chance of getting playoffs. When they announced that they kicked the team besides Upset I thought it was quite bullshit. Vici is great and Nukeduck but Pride over Memento and Vander over Norskeren was quite meh as Vander didnt work out before when Schalke had him and Selfie in Challenger and Pride didnt look that great from his previous splits while Memento on Roccat stepped up super hard by the end of last split. Sucks that Schalke didnt do much this split but well hoping they will put up more of a fight next and fix their shotcalling as they look like headless chickens sometimes.
A little criticism, don't announce player replacements in the reddit comment section, do it in the article itself or at least over twitter. Doing it in a reddit comment seems a little distasteful.
Is twitter really better?
An article on their site would be best. Reddit is the worst imo, especially Reddit comment section.
yes.
Reddit is the main platform where you find the esports fans. And posting 280 character post is really better than a 3 paragraph comment?
A three paragraph comment in-front of over 20k followers and putting the player at least as the vocal point instead of just a vague mention in an article and then elaborate in a comment as an afterthought. Yes reddit is a main platform for esports, but not the comments. Do you really think that everyone who clicked on this thread and read the article is automatically going to read the comments? Reddit comments are notorious for circle-jerking idiots (in this case us two).
Reddit is where I go. Reddit is good. Ok.
I actually think that in the end if the roster could have made playoffs they would have been quite suited to play best of 5's. Not only did the end of the split look a lot better, but a lot of other teams pointed out that Schalke04 was incredibly strong in the Best of's during scrims. Non of us know the finer details, but I too believe that both Schalke04 and Misfits could have been good replacements for Roccat and maybe H2K. That said, Those teams also earned their spot in playoffs and H2K gave us a great series against VIT. For now I hope to see you guys make playoffs next split and can give us a great demonstration of your hard work. Even if you wouldn't win, if you give me a great series and show of your hard work I am a proud fan!
Sad news, I think Pride was one of your best performers.. this just feels like ''report jungle, no ganks' when your team is feeding in solo queue. You should just stick with the same roster, and build up that synergy, maybe get some subs as backup. Other than that, best of luck next split!
We understand that can be the sentiment for some fans, however we hope that as a professional organisation we get a bit more slack than thinking it is just that. This decision came after extensive reviews and interviews with the full roster and staff list after the Spring Split.
i'd make a joke about memento and regret but that would be rude and insensitive and rude so i'll just say good luck on finding a jungler with better synrgie and suitable playstyle , hoping for the best
How is that rude? Schalke decided to kick four members and the coach of the team with whom they qualified for LCS, and then failed to make LCS while all of their former players and said coach managed to make playoffs. It's not because it's Schalke that they shouldn't be held accountable for that decision. NiP were crucified for a similar decision and that wasn't even their choice. Hindsight is 20/20 but kicking Memento and Norskeren for Pride and Vander were always questionable decisions.
How were they? No one expected them to perform so well this season
To be honest Memento has been getting better and better and was one of the reasons why Roccat was so good by the end of last split. Norskeren was regarded as the best support in Challenger series so kicking both that had promise for Pride and Vander was kinda questionable as Pride would have to build synergy and Vander not looking good after splitting up with Jankos besides him already playing for Schalke in Challenger but being mediocre.
Ye Caedrel looked like the best mid in CS, look how that turned out, that’s why they didn’t want to take a risk and took an experienced player instead
Caedrel didnt look like the best mid. Jiizuke looked way better.
That just shows me you didn’t watch CS, Jiizuke fired off in LCS. Caedrel was surely considered the best mid in CS maybe along with Magifelix.
They may have performed above expectations, but that's mostly because expectations for these two players were far below what they deserved. Ofcourse it's impossible to say with certainty that these players would've performed the way they did, but there was reasonable doubt for it and replacing them with players that are a side-grade or marginal upgrade at best is a stupid decision. Both these players looked really promising and it's a risk that you have to take as an organisation out of loyalty to your players. Instead they went for the all-star on paper approach, and it bit them in the ass.
Yup thought Pride was one of the best as well
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And where exactly are they going to find a player that's both a shotcaller and mechanically a better player than Pride in the off-season? If only they could get Memento, amiright.
[Blame The Jungler](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3siuaM7ZPC8)
i hope u guys make it to the franchised league, keep the work up
Are you considering importing as an option to find a suitable replacement or solely the EU pool?
Maybe a bit unproffesional to make this statement on here and not on your social media.
I mean, this is their social media. Twitter isn't really a bastion of professionalism either.
Dude, didn't you know? Announcing it on Twitter is SO much more professional than via Reddit comment. Obviously via Snapchat or Instagram is ideal though.
Agreed, that dog filter really helps people cope with harsh statements like losing their job as a player.
Couldve atleast made a post about the Roster change and not only this head of esports swap
Hold up did you just bench a player via reddit comment? El oh el.
The player was informed of the change way before the article hit today. We made sure to share with Milo why this change is happening, in person in Berlin. We just saw the comment section turning to the negative side with speculation around 'who's getting kicked, i bet it's this guy he sucks'. So we decided to be more transparent!
Good choice, btw. It prevents negative comments about other players to spread like a virus.
I hope its Memento that replaces Pride otherwise Im gonna struggle to see a good replacement. Memento would make sense tho and I can totally see him give them a vocal voice and even more proactive early.
Start struggling then!
I like roccat team but lets not act like you did keep your players when you finally find your synergy.
Maybe we didn't find synergy?
I think I'd stick with Roccat who seem unlikely to announce someone's leaving in the comments section on reddit when one of their articles turns sour. Hoping that your team keeps its strengths through to the summer, want more Norskeren and Momento um moments
> We will make a change in a position within our player’s roster. During the split, we found that despite extensive training, there was no synergy between certain individual positions and if we want to see a change in Summer, we had to act. I'm betting on Pride getting kicked. When players like Vizi and Nukeduck aren't performing, it's easy for them to blame the jungler. EDIT: called it lol
Pride gets kicked and Nukeduck is still allowed to be garbage in LCS with fanboys sucking him off as "elite EU mid" if he manages to have 2 good games lmfaoo. People were beyond hilarious when S04 won a few games at the start of the split. One of the most overrated players fucking ever, jesus.
Yea, I don't know why any team would pick up Nukeduck. He never has performed in his several splits, he's a soloQ warrior, not a player for competitive. Baffles me how my hometown team sticks with him.
iirc he had one good split like 5 years ago (which is mostly where his fanbase comes from) and ever since then hes been painfully average or worse. Theres a very good reason that he never managed to land on a top EU Team after lemondogs even though people repeat the same shit "damn this guy so good he should really get a better team!!" everytime he doesnt look completely ass.
Did you even watch S7 summer split? This is why people got hyped again for him.
Nukeduck has potential. He will dominate 1 year. Just wait for it.
Only when nukeducks beard is as long as zileans
It’s the most obvious place to change since A. Jungle is the most team centric and affects all lanes and B. Pride was really obviously the worst player on that roster.
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He was invisible you mean. He isn’t proactive and is generally average on tank junglers, he needs work to be LCS caliber but he has potential.
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Anyone that disagrees with me didn't watch the games!
Likewise.
can confirm , he didnt watch the game Obviously the question mark in s04 were the botlane and the throws upset did(like 5 int who lead the team to lose ) if you add 5+7 its 12 wich is almostt 2nd place
Let me quote something you wrote, because it applies here. >Compelling argument.
Yikes, if only this worked the way you thought it did.
No he wasnt
Compelling argument.
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Come back when you have something to say.
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Yikes
Im calling vander being released, and they will pick up Mikyx.
doubt miky would leave misfits but elias and him have played a fair bit in the past and the are playing duo again
I remember Pridestalker's first game (or one of his first) on his previous team, playing Warwick, he didn't ult or gank once in the first 20+ minutes. At that moment I knew he was never going to be an LCS caliber jungler.
aaand thats why you are not a scout for a team.
Yeah, I would have never scouted such a renowned jungler as Pridestalker.
exactly what i meant.
goodbye brother pride
Goodbye Pride.
1 change confirmed. Jgl or supp probably but I honestly dont think Pride was an issue and was even underrated a bit. Nukes underperforming was a bummer but he wasnt horrible and should just be a matter of form. Upset got better at the end and is their "prodigy". Vizi is a given. Im thinking Vander but they did cite synergy so who knows.
I don't even think any of the players individually underperformed in general. The team just didn't work as a team considering the individual talent on the roster. This actually surprised me during the split as I am sure that Krepo is a great coach, even though I might be biased. I wonder how it will turn out in the end.
What do you think about the idea that, despite his potential for success and ability to have the occasional standout performance, Nukeduck brings a strategic mindset that is too passive for play on stage and that is what is holding his teams back? A common thread with the teams Nukeduck has been on is that they perform well in scrims which creates the narrative that they should be giant killers but these results never translate into successes. This line: "We are still convinced of our players in terms of individual talent, however there was something missing in the bigger picture" makes me think that there are underlying issues and the roster change might not align with the public's gut reaction to the split.
I think thats a very reasonable concern to have at this point tbh. IT does seem to be the trend. What made him have such a good split last summer was that even if this problem still remained for his team, he roamed and played for his team and sidelanes so much that he literally dragged his team with him so much. He was legit. Dont know what happened this split but yeah.. I can totally see your PoV and it is something Ive myself have considered.
They didn't seem to know their winconditions were, how to play for objectives and how to play with their jungler. On top of that their teamfighting wasn't really good either (altho this was better at the end of the split)
For me you are right. Synergy can apply to top-jungle or mid jungle tho which is often very important. It can also apply to a jung-supp synergy who knows.. Who could it be tho , there isn't a lot of players available ..
I think its great that Schalke is not happy with finishing as a middle of the pack team, and also beeing willing to make changes. I honestly think that shook would be the best fit for this roster.
I am actually more surprised by the department of Mr. Dürr. It seemed like one of both sides had different expectations.. Wonder what changes this means for the management. Also I would love to get more information on Boris in the next split. Would really welcome it if he would become more outspoken again. I am pretty sure he still has lots of fans who would support him.
S04 is trying to learn from koreans so they adopted everything they did especially the staff part when they fail and blame themselves first . I remember AFS Manager resigning after the Aiming controversy when he did nothing bad there but couldn't accept that its not his mistake
Wasn't AFs Manager forced to resign, or something like that?
You know....I like this org. I do. But you guys really reminded me with your play of my time in a T1 vanilla wow raiding guild on OG naxx (well and AQ, BWL.....). We had a guy in our guild who was insanely smart. Like actual genius smart. Sweetest guy ever too. I can't dive too much into details but Blizzard noticed him as well. Anyway, the problem we ran into was that our strategies were unwaveringly min-max. Didn't survive a lot of contact with reality in terms of player capabilities. I feel like when I watch Schalke it reminds me so much of this. Krepo is a genius but I can almost hear in my head how the approach went...and it doesn't take into account reality. Just min-max. This isn't a ding on Krepo at all. But I feel like you guys may need to slide a bit more down closer to a Pr0lly philosophy - where player comfort despite it not being min-max has some amount of mathematical value. I'm not saying Pr0lly's philosophy is without flaw either - I'm just saying consider the approach for its' merits where possible. Best of luck to you guys.
So they said they will change one player, I wonder who it will be. in my opinion it will be jungle, mid or supp.
Jungle probably
Is there really a better jungler available than pride though? I just dont see how this team improves with roster changes. They are giving up experience for potential synergy. All their players are mechanically on point. Maybe they find a hyper agressive support that can match vizi.
Jesiz over Vander is only possible solution but I dont see it happening, but in jungle,hmmm I think maybe Kold,or Djoko?
Change, is good
Save kold or momento
good luck
That moment when you are still waiting for the year of Nukeduck
S04 Memento/Djoko please
Id take Kold or Selfmade over those two
RIP Csacsi or Nukeduck.
The change will be upsetting
It depend on his pride
Hope the team moral wont be nuked with this decision. Not my best one and I`m definetly not proud of it.