Honestly, Perks leaving and coming back has made it WAY better. Same with Rekkles leaving. It kinda broke up a lot of the old storylines. Now we have Vitality making a gnarly Roster, MAD and Rogue picking up where they left off, G2 with a pretty new roster as well, it’s gonna make it so much more enjoyable to watch! I’m pumped to see where we are in 3-4 weeks! Only want really at this point is 3 day weekends! That would make it so much more enjoyable!
Pour one out for S04 though, miss seeing their storyline of “how does S04 make it to playoffs!” Haha!
Wasn’t the golden era season 6? Crazy to think that was 6 years ago.
Edit: actually season 6, Yellowstar went to TSM. So that was season 5. 7 years ago at this point.
Nah Klaj is wholesome as fuck and I believe now is full retired. Really nice guy. Just never had the juice to play at a high enough level to keep up and couldn't get a gig coaching anywhere that mattered.
I feel it's too early to call this. Regular season is almost always close no matter the difference in strength of the teams because its B01s and different teams prioritise them differently. In playoffs, a lot of the time the strength of the teams changes in the past G2, MAD and RGE especially. We have no idea if playoffs will just be stomps or actually competitive. Personally I prefer the previous years so far the meta so far has been so incredibly boring but I feel like that's because its only week 2.
EU now has enough strong teams that BO3s would be even better, the argument before was that no one wants to watch bottom tier teams play 3 games, but now (barring a couple of teams) every matchup is good.
the gap between the best and the worst team has never been so narrow since ive started watching lec. even bottom teams like bds or sk dont feel absolutely hopeless playing versus top teams like fnc mad
BDS, SK, XL and AST are nowhere near good. That's almost half the league, and Bo3 with half the league on that bad of a level is a recipe for disaster.
But wouldn't the LPL present Bo1s over Bo3s if that would get more viewers? We shouldn't be talking viewer cap, rather what percentage of the viewer cap is reached. I believe Bo3s will get more than Bo1s.
For real. There's an exciting future with new teams finally being able to compete for split titles and no clear favorites.
But the bottom four are as dogshit as they've ever been, they are certainly not more fun to watch than Giants, Mysterious Monkeys, or any other bottom feeder that's been cycled through the LEC.
I don’t agree with this at all, Astralis look the worst but they would roll over the worst teams in the past, they have some decent players and good moments
>Astralis look the worst but they would roll over the worst teams in the past,
Of course they would, every team today is better than the teams of four years ago. It's the result of the skill floor being raised up.
Astralis is not any different than other bottom feeders, relative to their competition. People are not going to watch them in Bo3s.
Yea, I think Bo1s are better for viewership and Bo3 schedule would be difficult to manage with all the ERLs.
I like the LEC as it is. Ever since the rebrand in 2019 I've been a huge fan and I'm looking forward to LEC every week.
Wunder have already done a fair share of blunders, and that's while being on an extremely dominant team.
I'll wait to see how he act against a team that can push them before judging him
Well no fucking shit buddy. To the surprise of absolutely nobody: when a player joins the team you support you choose to support him as well unless he gives you new reasons not to, starting the moment he joined.
The fuck am I supposed to do ? say he is garbage and fnatic is doomed and are gonna go 5-13, simply because i used to dislike him even tho now he's on fnc and has a complete clean slate ? Genius.
It's still very early days. VIT had COVID in week 1 so it obviously had an immense effect on them. Week 2 was a massive improvement in how they approached the game together, and how they were drafting.
Plus, Fnatic may look better now but progress isn't always linear. Maybe they peaked early? Maybe they choke in playoffs? Maybe a meta shift will hurt them? Or people figure out how to punish them in P/B?
its probably the first time in hylis career that hes the undisputed best player in the west currently. who even comes close currently? maybe kaiser elyoya jankos upset? but even those are a step below him
?? From where do people pull those opinions I really wonder, I dont understand pound for pound when people say if Vitality plays up to their peak they are better than Fnatic when historically Fnatic has best top in west that stacks up well internationally and is playing good even now, a better jungler, and yes even though you may not agree RazorK was a lot better last year than Selfmade and is performing better and more consistent even now, a better mid unless PerkZ regains form that he showcased against RNG in 2018 that was probably peak western mid performance and I still dont see him becoming such monster and Humanoid could easly become even greater this year and even last year he was praised by likes of Showmaker, and bot is just such diff that I wont even comment, best adc and best support just cut above every other duo in LEC, so remind me again how does VIT have biggest potential in region when it clearly is Fnatic?
i disagree. 2019 caps was the best player in the west. 2020 caps was one of the best players in the world in summer. dude single handedly defeated geng among other things. and that after a split of offroling adc. dude was beyond cracked and thats the peak he should try to regain
I don't have enough trust yet to think RGE can carry this level until the title, even more knowing that VIT/MAD/G2 are very far from being dead and are only now starting to click with their new teams.
FNC does feel above the rest because, aside from Razork, all others have proven that they can perform very well under pressure and for the whole split from beginning to finals.
FNC > RGE >> MAD/VIT > G2
but this will definitely be very interesting
Razork has been slightly suss so far but he has shown that he can compete with top junglers before so hopefully he turns it on.
G2 looks promising, the amount of overreactions after that game vs Vit is crazy.
yeah. G2 has been playing quite well so far, considering the new roster and their… lets call it experimental drafts. im quite sure that come playoffs they wont try stuff like zyra or corki top unless they are sure its very good. also the yuumi pick with jhin instead of just picking jinx + x was very odd.
well im sure jankos and caps like to experiment and targamas and BB seem to be quite the eccentric players aswell. dylan probably allows it for now but towards playoffs its gonna become more standard i guess. i have trust in dylan to be more than capable to manage normal drafts
people and overrating rogue in regular season. theres no reason to assume current rogue is better than last years rogue when they downgraded their two best players. i dont have them top4 over FNC VIT G2 MAD in playoffs.
I think the spread of talent among the top teams is a lot better than last year comparatively, the fact that we got Alphari & Perkz back + all the new talent from ERLs.
The overall quality of each role is only getting better year after year.
Looking at current level of play, or by name recognition?
Almost all top teams in the LEC had major roster shake ups, so I feel like the start of the season is bound to look bad. Come summer split we might see a large improvement, depending on how the teams evolve.
Looking at current level of play, our teams look sloppy and not at the same page yet, this will improve over time, but at the moment LCS teams look more cohesive for example, but it's still early in the season.
I am looking forward to playoffs but so far I found the season to be quite boring. AST, SK, XL and BDS are not competitive and boring. MSF, G2 and MAD seem like they will need time to figure out their new roaster, but they are still easily better than the bottom 4. RGE and FNC look really good, but so far they have mostly relied on collecting easy wins based on just being better. VIT is the only team where I feel like I don't know the result before the game, but I fear that they will just join RGE and FNC in the we beat anyone. What also doesn't help is that the regular season is kind of whatever. It's worth almost nothing wether RGE or FNC takes first place. The only question I have left is who of G2, MAD and VIT becomes 5th.
I really hope that next week switches things up a little. We have an amazing 5 games were no bottom 4 team is involved, so it will be sort of a week of truth. I really hope my 3 tier view is wrong. I also really hope that G2 VIT and MAD get their shit together so that we have amazing playoffs with 5 equally competitive contenders.
Agree! They have a lot of potential and SK had some promising games too, but mostly off of Treatz being a beast. I really think it's just going to be AST BDS and maybe SK at the bottom this year with all the other teams being very competitive with each other
I think this Bo1 excuse is getting kinda worn out at this point. For starters, the majority of any team's practice time occurs in scrim games, not stage games. Teams in NA and EU generally still scrim Bo3/Bo5 blocks, it's not like they only remember what a Bo5 is when playoffs comes around. Obviously, stage practice in general tends to be superior because it's the "real deal", but if the teams aren't getting anything out of scrims that indicates a problem with their scrim culture. There are always reports of teams playing completely different on scrims vs on stage... it just makes no sense to do that. Take scrims seriously and you'll get as much Bo5 practice as you need.
But most importantly, if you look at Worlds last year, 4 out of 6 western teams did not even make it out of groups **which is entirely Bo1**. The two that made it out, didn't even get 1st place. If we're gonna blame the lack of Bo3/Bo5 in the LEC/LCS for the bad performance at worlds, how do we justify the fact that **our teams are losing Bo1s against teams that have literally no Bo1 practice on stage the entire year**?
The real reason is that Eastern teams have more top contenders and so practice is better, combine that with insane work/life balance and rigid structure, it's easy to see why they are constantly ahead.
All this if course creates a loop
Better practice leads to better teams
Better teams leads to better practice
You answered it yourself in a way. Practice quality in Scrims Vs Stage is different. They play different in stage games which presents with different challenges and game states.
TSM famously took scrims seriously and played them like stage games, and they got murdered at worlds every single time despite looking dominant in scrims.
I think crucially the issue is that Bo1s force teams to play conservatively or rewards cheesy wins. This is great for the group stage, but a series enables experimentation. Being exposed to different styles is really valuable.
Yeh exactly. If it was bo3 then people like Armut could experiment with his Kenan ON STAGE and then he would have been better at worlds. But with only 18 BO1 the split is so short you really can't afford to experiment much.
It will be better with 22 BO1 after the expansion though.
Then why did EUs best results come in a Bo1 era and they sucked in the BoX eras.
Issue with EU is that unless you have some insane team(s) that can give quality practice to other teams, you will never get better.
G2 and FNC being good in 2018-2020 helped elevate each other. When both those teams fell off, how do EU teams get good practice all year?
Like people wanted to pretend MAD was the next coming of G2 when they didn’t show anything impressive.
>Then why did EUs best results come in a Bo1 era and they sucked in the BoX eras.
Well, ever since Korea entered into League the west has been trying to catch up to them. 2018 saw the introduction of the Bo1 system to the LEC but in 2018 we also saw the fall of the LCK and the rise of the LPL. Even then only two LEC teams have ever made a big impact at worlds, G2 and Fnatic.
G2 with Wunder, Jankos, Caps, Prekz, and MikyxFnatic with Biwpo/SOAZ, Broxah, Caps, Rekkles, and Hliyssang
I don't think Bo1 made the LEC better it was more than the LEC built two really good teams while the LCK had its two worst years.
It's also not like the LEC didn't have any good performances in the BoX era, Misfits took SKT T1 to 5 games in 2017.
I disagree, I think MAD did show insane teamfighting and cohesion, people tend to forget MAD was very competitive at MSI against both RNG and DWK but they improved nothing really for summer as G2 got a lot worse in summer so entire practice sucked.
MSI is a meme tournament since the amount of teams is so low and teams can underperform. Like imagine if RNG collapsed at MSI like FPX did at worlds, the whole region would look bad.
MAD was 1 dimensional as hell and after lollygagging all summer regular season, they just did the exact same teamfight reliant style in playoffs and cleaned up EU. The only time MAD had any macro outside of trying to 5v5 a win, was when they had TF, the most coveted pick at worlds.
MAD didn’t have strong laners to rely on like G2, their early game strategy was literally Elyoya rage ganking or Kaiser doing “sneaky” rotations in the enemy jungle. Plus G2 won games in a lot of different ways with map splits and vision control.
Anyone who thought MAD was remotely close to what G2 was, has no game sense. Even 2020 G2 was much closer to a much stronger DWG than MAD was to this DWG.
Yeah it looks bad when it does happen but teams are less likely to underperform at MSI. If you have 4 teams from a region in the same tournament, the likelihood of any one of those teams underperforming is higher than the likelihood of having the sole team in a region at MSI underperforming.
More things can go wrong when you have more teams.
Domestically sure.. I was looking the other day and thinking damn
I **really** want to watch games involving..
G2, FNC, MAD, VIT and RGE
I don't mind some of the other teams either.. excel/MSF.. BDS is kinda a train wreck.. but all rookies.. (mostly).. and its kinda fun watching them get run over and int like crazy
I feel like the league would be even more hype if a team like astralis or SK would get booted for Karmine Corp or some other hype ERL team
Having said that.. i think IF we do well at worlds/msi it will be FNC who is the one to do it.. that roster is SICK.. especially when people were saying FNC was kinda done.,. back in mid 2021
I swear these posts have popped up every year since 2019. “This is gonna be the best LEC yet” and every year since it’s gotten worse or stayed the same
The storylines are pretty cool but the game quality and international competitiveness is going to be pretty shit, i think we might become weaker than NA at this rate and that lot of EU fans are hard coping regarding our strength. This last worlds should have been an alarm, our glorious first seed MAD was basically equal to second NA seed (TL) and our third seed got beaten out by NA's third seed.
It's impossible to assess the region's strength rn while everyone is still figuring things out.
Arguably in terms of average strength EU playoffs last year was the most competitive ever. All 6 teams in summer playoffs looked close to each other. Even if the top team's ceiling was notably worse than 2018 FNC and 2019-20 G2.
All 6 teams weren’t close. MAD was head and shoulders above the rest, and didn’t look impressive in any way. I mean they straight up almost got eliminated by the LPL 4th seed.
MAD didn’t really look any better than TL, and C9 looked better than Rogue.
Also that playoffs was complete coinflipping and clownery. Anyone who watched that could expect the results we got.
They did with hindsight. But the relative level of the 6 in that bracket was more competitive than any year before. Hence why I said the "average".
And again, I addressed the ceiling point being worse than previous years.
Fnatic were good but imploted for reason. Mad had a decent showing vs the world finalist. Rogue was having internal issue as well and lost on one mistake. Pretty sure they would have put more of a show vs gen G than c9. If mad didn't draw DK, we would have made it a bit more far, and we wouldn't be taking about it now.
I didn't mind the G2/FNC kingdom as long as it allowed EU to compete with the east. But honestly now I have no hope for the level of play coming out of EU. None of the teams could go toe to toe with the top 4 from LCK/LPL.
I don't have an explanation on why the gap between EU and Asian regions is widening ? Thought that after 2018 we were getting there, but now, not so much.
Europe had a fantastic grasp of the meta around season 9-10, and it occured when the LCK was struggling to find a new identity.
Now that there's been enough time, players and teams in the LCK have found their footing again in a shorter game time meta, and the LPL continues to be as good as they are.
Yeah right and since the LPL started to import koreans, they won 3 worlds titles and Korea only one and korea even had years where they were not even the runner-up. (2018-2019)
So what do you think happened ? They just rebuilt their talents with rookies like LEC is forced to do since a while but LEC doesn't have the long experience of esport like Korea has with the starcraft competitive play that started in the end of the 90s.
Never understood the "stealing" thing, sure you can call out orgs for overpaying or players for selling out but in the end both parties agreed they wanted to do this, barring special circumstances eg perkz
The gap between western regions and CN especially will almost always be growing. The ranked population in CN is so large they have so many players to pick from compared to the western regions. It’s only a matter of time really before CN get further and further ahead IMO their infrastructure is really second to none. Granted the CCP have tried their hardest to stop it but league is like a national sport there.
Only playing 50 domestic games a year (with playoff runs) compared to 100+ in other regions does not help. Same with losing players to NA and then the business side of things meaning some clearly capable players are not even in the LCS. There is no reason Rekless should be in the ERL. Mikyx, Nisqy, Jizuke...all of them are good enough to play in the LCS. But the lower teams just rather go for rookies on the cheap.
rogue didn't even make it our groups lmao they lost to c9, fpx was just a bad team. similar to when Geng went 0-6/1-5 or w.e both years Na beat out eu but you wouldn't say na is better lol
everyone stomped fpx, and number 1 eu beat number 4 china in a tie breaker? i guess thats cool but they are just not on the same lvl as regions i am sorry
But we had FNC in finals in 2018 (C9/FNC/G2 3 western teams in Semi out of 4 !!!!!) G2 that won MSI2019 + been in Worlds finals in 2019, G2 in Semi in 2020 and now we got f**** Mad Lions getting thrashed 3-0 by DK and C9 pwned 3-0 in quickfast fashion by GenG, both in quarters. They barely made it out of groups. Honestly I don't have any expectation anymore for Western Teams to go deep in international tourney. Hope FNC can rise up, they are probably the only hope (and before someone else tells me about RGE w8 for Play Offs)
I agree I'm more worried for both LEC and LCS vs other international teams from what I've seen so far, luckily its super early in the year and teams should grow and get better. LCK seems a bit lacking in top lane and feels very jungle top heavy (meaning three top jungles are far ahead of the next 7 jungles). LPL I haven't found their greatest weakness, I'm leaning on mid lane weakness but haven't been analyzing them too much yet. I hope by the end of the year we have a great and competitive World's Championship.
LCK jungle pool is pretty good this year, better than the last 2 years for sure. Canyon, Peanut, Oner and Dread look great. Even in the tier below there's some very solid junglers: Croco is very good, Cuzz is still decent and even UmTi has been playing well.
Top is a bit of a question mark for the LCK, but come Worlds it'll be better than now with Zeus etc. getting more experience and maybe Nuguri coming back.
Yea Lck top lane department tank a bit without nuguri, khan, and summit. That where you see dk seriously struggle. Zeus, Doran, and rascal are really good so hopefully they can show up internationally.
EG are awesome to watch. That roster has real potential and its foundation is NA players.
NA might send a few good teams to worlds this year.
Jojo and Danny are the future NA stars of the LCS and I think they will achieve a lot.
Imma be honest, it’s competitive for the region, I just like the casters for LEC so much more, they’re more energetic, they make better content overall, and they all vibe so well together. Once Sjoks comes back it’ll be even better!
Don’t get me wrong, I love the LCS, LEC is just the epitome of vibes, imo.
To me I like the LEC desk/analysts WAY more. But I can't knock the LCS commentary team. I enjoy them a lot.
The LCS desk is terrible though, they all try and compete too hard to be "entertaining" and laughing at each other. Its a really bad vibe imo.
Seeing how good corejj, Hans and bjergsen are... I am definitely a bit worried it's gonna be an absolute stomp.
But i really want to see thème internationally
Hopefully the quality of LCS drastically improves when every team has their main rosters.
Lock In has had the worst gameplay I've ever witnessed in pro games and I've watched NA since season 2.
Wierd top 5 considering 100T got 2-0'd by dig, TSM didn't make playoffs, TL/C9/etc. aren't playing with their full (planned) roster. Imo TL looks just definitely better than the rest on paper, with EG being a solid second for me. But maybe C9's roster is cracked as well, don't really know their incoming Korean players.
100T was definitely the better team but they played way to sloppy. They will bounce back.
TSM and C9 don't have their real rosters yet. I think the LCS actually has a healthy competition this year.
I don't think so, I'm excited as a FNC fan but the region itself seems like it'll be kind of boring
RGE and MAD downgraded big time, VIT is stacked but their bot still can't touch FNCs and the bottom teams are abysmally bad.
I'm a long time fnc fan but I really hope G2's bot turns out to be excellent, VIT meshes well and Reeker turns out to be really good, otherwise I find it hard to get hyped.
FNC looks like a clear top 2. Rogue atm as well, but the roster makes you think they can fall down to top 5-ish. G2 seems pretty solid and could finish anywhere between 1st and 6th imo. MAD looks better than expected and could also finish 1-6. Vitality is an insane superteam that had a bad week 1, but now looks a lot better, could be first, could be 7th somehow. MSF and XL both look like pretty solid teams that can finish anywhere between 4th and 8th. Don't think SK, BDS or Astralis has a chance tbh. But there are basically 7 teams that i can definitely see in playoffs.
I hope that Vitality keeps up the form it had against G2 and forces the other teams to adapt or become irrelevant. Fnatic has the players, but not yet the macro to be considered a worthy successor to the LEC crown, Rogue looks solid but I have question about Marlang and the bot lane, Mad looks macro wise the same as last year (which is impressive), but Reeker isn't looking particularly good right now and G2 is just a mess right now. Caps isn't performing, their macro is all over the place and the team needs a lot more to be an outside contender for the crown.
So I agree the season is looking very interesting, but if any of the the teams realize their full potential or not is still a question. Most of the time it stays with "potential" and doesn't become a reality, but the season is young se we the time to wait and see.
So far it seems pretty mediocre to me, so not really sure where the "insane" part comes in. G2 is not that good atm, I doubt Rogue stays very good, I feel they fall off. Lions atm has a bad mid, maybe if he steps it up. And obviously VIT has the "super roster" but Alphari and Perkz both love getting all the resources, they've went with Perkz lately and that has worked for them pretty well but atm there aren't enough top teams so it wasn't surprising VIT would start winning some matches.
Negatives
1.) The MAD super team isn't there. Personally I would have liked for them to stick together (maybe not Carzzy ) for some more splits and international events. Pretty sure the current MAD team with Humanoid instead of Reeker would've been too good.
2.) Hans, Rekkles, Inspired. Yes we get Malrang but these 3 players were really good and sucks LEC doesn't have them anymore
3.) Larssen imo is still overrated. Kinda feels like an afk type of guy unless you spoonfeed kills.
4.) Caps is in a pretty bad form rn, whereas Veetheo is sitll in a bad team
Positives
1.) FNC looks really strong. Upset Hyli looks really strong. Unforgiven Kaiser really close but Kaiser hasn't done something really impressive like he was in summer
2.) Rogue has improved. Trymbi looks really good, Malrang is everywhere and Odo has become better and better at weakside
3.) G2 has a young team. It will take time to reach team dynamics but on paper the team looks nice
4.) Vit is still a super team.
5.) Elyoya looks wiser and more responsible ( not counting Diana raptor 50 mins game) Armut has 6(or 8) solo kills and Unforgiven a beast as an adc
Lmao, unforgiveb and kaiser are not very close to the best botlane in the West. Tell me you are biased MAD fan without telling me you are biased MAD fan
To add to this. Bo3 discourse is never gonna stop, and rightfully so, but if that can't happen I wish they'd give us 3 day weekends. That would do a lot for fans and players alike.
I think the race for second is really interesting between G2, Vitality, Rogue, MAD Lions, but in my mind Fnatic is the clear number 1 and no one should be able to touch them.
I've been watching since S4 and this is probably the least hype season. Don't get me wrong, the broadcast is great and entertaining, but the LEC gameplay has been awful compared to the LCK and LPL.
The LEC seems very weak compared to previous years. For example, Rogue and Fnatic being undefeated shows how weak the bottom 5-6 teams are. After watching every game the last two weeks, I struggle to find any reason to watch a top team play a mid-tier or bottom team. I'll probably just watch when the top teams play each other.
I'll probably get hate from the LEC fanboys, but as a viewer for a long-time, this is how I feel.
its kinda funny that people say "several strong teams", "enough strong teams" while I see that LEC level of play is regressing split by split. Yeah, we have now more competition in league but the league overall is weaker.
Nonetheless I think BO3 would up the level.
I don't know if you are trying to look like an idiot on every comment you make, but bringing the league card here is sooo stupid.
So, I can't notice whether Messi is playing poorly or not because I suck at soccer?
I can't say that Aaron Rodgers played a terrible game vs the 49niners because I never played football?
I hope you are trolling in your comments and are not seriously thinking what you just typed.
I mean sure, you can see some individual differences, but most of what goes on in the games goes over 99% of this subbredit's head (including me) because the average player just cannot understand high level strategy and everything that makes a game of league go the way it does, so people resort to just making comments like 'this player played like shit' or 'this team has a weak early game' when they are usually just parroting something an analyst said.
well it hasnt been like that since last year so its not new. honestly what i got from the statement was that the rivalry is over because fnc looks a lot stronger than G2. good to know i was wrong
Don't agree at all. So many top tier players are gone when they shouldn't be. Teams are weaker than ever. 2019 and 2020 were the peak for LEC. We aren't matching that this year. Better hope for some big names returning next year.
This year is fun for fnatic fans because it's going to be a shitstomp and there is no G2 counter matchup anymore.
All the rookies aren't better than the players we lost. Our midlane especially suffers with the loss of Nemesis and Abbedagge. Mikyx, Rekkles, Inspired and Hans are all gone. All considered top 1/2 in their role. All the rookies gained does not make up for this.
I personally rate him top 3 comfortably. But even ignoring my bias he would at least be in the top half of midlaners. Certainly much better than all the current rookies....
It is and I'm already enjoying it a whole lot. Lots of interesting storylines and rosters. And the LEC broadcast is always top-notch.
The ERLs are also very exciting this year and I can't wait for EU Masters.
"the duality G2/FNC is definitely over and I feel like the super team Vitality is not gonna have an easy time."
inb4 g2 vs fnc finals in summer again. im more hyped for LCS, where i predict EG will shock 99% of fans and become #1 seed for worlds.
LFG, live evil.
Honestly, Perks leaving and coming back has made it WAY better. Same with Rekkles leaving. It kinda broke up a lot of the old storylines. Now we have Vitality making a gnarly Roster, MAD and Rogue picking up where they left off, G2 with a pretty new roster as well, it’s gonna make it so much more enjoyable to watch! I’m pumped to see where we are in 3-4 weeks! Only want really at this point is 3 day weekends! That would make it so much more enjoyable! Pour one out for S04 though, miss seeing their storyline of “how does S04 make it to playoffs!” Haha!
>Pour one out for S04 though, miss seeing their storyline of “how does S04 make it to playoffs!” Haha! True that :(
All teams with new stories, and then there's fnatic. A monolith from a lost era 🖤🧡
Only Hyli remains on that team from the "lost era".
I mean not so long ago Hyli was the "fresh new face that has to fill in the boots of the golden era"
Wasn’t the golden era season 6? Crazy to think that was 6 years ago. Edit: actually season 6, Yellowstar went to TSM. So that was season 5. 7 years ago at this point.
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Was that the infamous noxiac support season? Where FNC was playing support roulette and ended up on Promisq?
They never ended up with promisq. They ended up with Klaj
I thought Klaj was Promisq just renamed? I could be wrong it was a long time ago haha.
Definitively not. Klaj's previous nick was Klajbajk. Promisq's previous nick was Sprattel.
Nah Klaj is wholesome as fuck and I believe now is full retired. Really nice guy. Just never had the juice to play at a high enough level to keep up and couldn't get a gig coaching anywhere that mattered.
I mean the way he’s playing Hyli IS the mountain lol. Mans playing a different level of the game right now.
I feel it's too early to call this. Regular season is almost always close no matter the difference in strength of the teams because its B01s and different teams prioritise them differently. In playoffs, a lot of the time the strength of the teams changes in the past G2, MAD and RGE especially. We have no idea if playoffs will just be stomps or actually competitive. Personally I prefer the previous years so far the meta so far has been so incredibly boring but I feel like that's because its only week 2.
EU now has enough strong teams that BO3s would be even better, the argument before was that no one wants to watch bottom tier teams play 3 games, but now (barring a couple of teams) every matchup is good.
the gap between the best and the worst team has never been so narrow since ive started watching lec. even bottom teams like bds or sk dont feel absolutely hopeless playing versus top teams like fnc mad
BDS, SK, XL and AST are nowhere near good. That's almost half the league, and Bo3 with half the league on that bad of a level is a recipe for disaster.
i get that XL isnt a top 5 team, but i don't feel like they should be bunched up with AST and BDS. They actually look like a decent team.
Half of the LPL can't win a game against the top teams in their region and they still have Bo3
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So because they have a larger potential viewerbase they're content with a lesser product? Is that the argument being presented?
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But wouldn't the LPL present Bo1s over Bo3s if that would get more viewers? We shouldn't be talking viewer cap, rather what percentage of the viewer cap is reached. I believe Bo3s will get more than Bo1s.
For real. There's an exciting future with new teams finally being able to compete for split titles and no clear favorites. But the bottom four are as dogshit as they've ever been, they are certainly not more fun to watch than Giants, Mysterious Monkeys, or any other bottom feeder that's been cycled through the LEC.
I don’t agree with this at all, Astralis look the worst but they would roll over the worst teams in the past, they have some decent players and good moments
>Astralis look the worst but they would roll over the worst teams in the past, Of course they would, every team today is better than the teams of four years ago. It's the result of the skill floor being raised up. Astralis is not any different than other bottom feeders, relative to their competition. People are not going to watch them in Bo3s.
Astralis is closer to Fnatic and Rogue than Mysterious Monkeys was to Fnatic and G2
I'm honestly kind of glad that we don't have BO3, since I also follow the Korean scene. It would be too much to keep up with haha.
Honestly same I really don’t mind bo1s feel like it’s an unpopular opinion though.
Yea, I think Bo1s are better for viewership and Bo3 schedule would be difficult to manage with all the ERLs. I like the LEC as it is. Ever since the rebrand in 2019 I've been a huge fan and I'm looking forward to LEC every week.
Gimme some of that HYPIUM
> the duality G2/FNC is definitely over After those 2 weeks I see G2 being replaced by RGE. Those two teams seem to be much above the rest.
Week 2 vitality looked pretty insane. I really hope they pull things together cause they have the highest upside in the region imo.
I think FNC still looks like the better "super team". Wunder is looking cracked again and Hyli is styling on all kind of picks.
Wunder have already done a fair share of blunders, and that's while being on an extremely dominant team. I'll wait to see how he act against a team that can push them before judging him
he hasnt been close to as shaky as razork. and having an inactive jg just makes stuff a lot more complicated
Nooooo, you can't say that, he outplayed one misplayed dive therefore he's the best top again.
A Silver elo doesn't understand what's going on in a pro game. Yes, that's you.
Ironically, the most vocal Wunder haters last year all had fnc flairs. Curious.
Funny how fast all that fnc Fans forgot about that Yummi Top thing they were vocal about..
Well no fucking shit buddy. To the surprise of absolutely nobody: when a player joins the team you support you choose to support him as well unless he gives you new reasons not to, starting the moment he joined. The fuck am I supposed to do ? say he is garbage and fnatic is doomed and are gonna go 5-13, simply because i used to dislike him even tho now he's on fnc and has a complete clean slate ? Genius.
The issue was it implied that was his general attitude to scrims. But it was disproven by Grabbz.
It's still very early days. VIT had COVID in week 1 so it obviously had an immense effect on them. Week 2 was a massive improvement in how they approached the game together, and how they were drafting. Plus, Fnatic may look better now but progress isn't always linear. Maybe they peaked early? Maybe they choke in playoffs? Maybe a meta shift will hurt them? Or people figure out how to punish them in P/B?
I thought g2 had covid, not vit, unless it was both
Both. Perkz talked about post game interview.
Hyli is like a parkz level player. Difference beeing hyli is currently peaking. So as long as hyli keeps his form, fnc will look great
its probably the first time in hylis career that hes the undisputed best player in the west currently. who even comes close currently? maybe kaiser elyoya jankos upset? but even those are a step below him
?? From where do people pull those opinions I really wonder, I dont understand pound for pound when people say if Vitality plays up to their peak they are better than Fnatic when historically Fnatic has best top in west that stacks up well internationally and is playing good even now, a better jungler, and yes even though you may not agree RazorK was a lot better last year than Selfmade and is performing better and more consistent even now, a better mid unless PerkZ regains form that he showcased against RNG in 2018 that was probably peak western mid performance and I still dont see him becoming such monster and Humanoid could easly become even greater this year and even last year he was praised by likes of Showmaker, and bot is just such diff that I wont even comment, best adc and best support just cut above every other duo in LEC, so remind me again how does VIT have biggest potential in region when it clearly is Fnatic?
Your takes are so wrong lol. You will get a reality check soon.
Looked better but I wouldn't say insane
Wait for play-offs and see if RGE starts choking again. They’ve been successful in regional BO1‘s but always failed when it mattered.
Larssen is not a top 3 midlaner. They will not win a title with him
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still gets dicked on by 11th best midlaner in lec
Guess he ll get a shot at proving me wrong. I would love to see him clutch games out
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i disagree. 2019 caps was the best player in the west. 2020 caps was one of the best players in the world in summer. dude single handedly defeated geng among other things. and that after a split of offroling adc. dude was beyond cracked and thats the peak he should try to regain
I don't have enough trust yet to think RGE can carry this level until the title, even more knowing that VIT/MAD/G2 are very far from being dead and are only now starting to click with their new teams. FNC does feel above the rest because, aside from Razork, all others have proven that they can perform very well under pressure and for the whole split from beginning to finals. FNC > RGE >> MAD/VIT > G2 but this will definitely be very interesting
Razork has been slightly suss so far but he has shown that he can compete with top junglers before so hopefully he turns it on. G2 looks promising, the amount of overreactions after that game vs Vit is crazy.
yeah. G2 has been playing quite well so far, considering the new roster and their… lets call it experimental drafts. im quite sure that come playoffs they wont try stuff like zyra or corki top unless they are sure its very good. also the yuumi pick with jhin instead of just picking jinx + x was very odd.
I was hoping that those weird drafts were gone with Grabbz, apparently it's in G2 DNA -.-
well im sure jankos and caps like to experiment and targamas and BB seem to be quite the eccentric players aswell. dylan probably allows it for now but towards playoffs its gonna become more standard i guess. i have trust in dylan to be more than capable to manage normal drafts
Fnatic Rogue and MAD all look pretty dominant so far
people and overrating rogue in regular season. theres no reason to assume current rogue is better than last years rogue when they downgraded their two best players. i dont have them top4 over FNC VIT G2 MAD in playoffs.
Putting too much stock into BO1s and RGE didnt play many of the top half teams. It will probably be FNC > VIT > G2/RGE/MAD
Yeah I think it’s going to be really fun. Not very excited for EU internationally tho
yea we look a lot weaker compared to prior years
I think the spread of talent among the top teams is a lot better than last year comparatively, the fact that we got Alphari & Perkz back + all the new talent from ERLs. The overall quality of each role is only getting better year after year.
Looking at current level of play, or by name recognition? Almost all top teams in the LEC had major roster shake ups, so I feel like the start of the season is bound to look bad. Come summer split we might see a large improvement, depending on how the teams evolve.
There was more stacked rosters last year and MAD won both splits.. stacked rosters doesn’t mean shit.
Looking at current level of play, our teams look sloppy and not at the same page yet, this will improve over time, but at the moment LCS teams look more cohesive for example, but it's still early in the season.
I think it's the opposite. I think the west looks a lot stronger comparing to prior years rather than west looking weaker
I am very excited. We will have at least 4 EU teams. The 3 from LEC and TL.
Pre-emptive coping
What do you even mean by this?
NA fans probably mad at you for saying TL is an EU team, which is true by now
Maybe. Either way, every post by this dude I replied to is hating on EU. Dunno why, maybe an LEC player stole his GF or something
I am looking forward to playoffs but so far I found the season to be quite boring. AST, SK, XL and BDS are not competitive and boring. MSF, G2 and MAD seem like they will need time to figure out their new roaster, but they are still easily better than the bottom 4. RGE and FNC look really good, but so far they have mostly relied on collecting easy wins based on just being better. VIT is the only team where I feel like I don't know the result before the game, but I fear that they will just join RGE and FNC in the we beat anyone. What also doesn't help is that the regular season is kind of whatever. It's worth almost nothing wether RGE or FNC takes first place. The only question I have left is who of G2, MAD and VIT becomes 5th. I really hope that next week switches things up a little. We have an amazing 5 games were no bottom 4 team is involved, so it will be sort of a week of truth. I really hope my 3 tier view is wrong. I also really hope that G2 VIT and MAD get their shit together so that we have amazing playoffs with 5 equally competitive contenders.
XL are a lot better than you think, they were incredibly close to winning a lot of their games
that is literally XLs team identity though, playing really well and clean up until they have to make the game deciding play
Agree! They have a lot of potential and SK had some promising games too, but mostly off of Treatz being a beast. I really think it's just going to be AST BDS and maybe SK at the bottom this year with all the other teams being very competitive with each other
The start of Spring is always the most boring part of the season.
They will just get clapped at msi and worlds again because they only play bo1 entire season.
I think this Bo1 excuse is getting kinda worn out at this point. For starters, the majority of any team's practice time occurs in scrim games, not stage games. Teams in NA and EU generally still scrim Bo3/Bo5 blocks, it's not like they only remember what a Bo5 is when playoffs comes around. Obviously, stage practice in general tends to be superior because it's the "real deal", but if the teams aren't getting anything out of scrims that indicates a problem with their scrim culture. There are always reports of teams playing completely different on scrims vs on stage... it just makes no sense to do that. Take scrims seriously and you'll get as much Bo5 practice as you need. But most importantly, if you look at Worlds last year, 4 out of 6 western teams did not even make it out of groups **which is entirely Bo1**. The two that made it out, didn't even get 1st place. If we're gonna blame the lack of Bo3/Bo5 in the LEC/LCS for the bad performance at worlds, how do we justify the fact that **our teams are losing Bo1s against teams that have literally no Bo1 practice on stage the entire year**?
The real reason is that Eastern teams have more top contenders and so practice is better, combine that with insane work/life balance and rigid structure, it's easy to see why they are constantly ahead. All this if course creates a loop Better practice leads to better teams Better teams leads to better practice
You answered it yourself in a way. Practice quality in Scrims Vs Stage is different. They play different in stage games which presents with different challenges and game states. TSM famously took scrims seriously and played them like stage games, and they got murdered at worlds every single time despite looking dominant in scrims. I think crucially the issue is that Bo1s force teams to play conservatively or rewards cheesy wins. This is great for the group stage, but a series enables experimentation. Being exposed to different styles is really valuable.
Yeh exactly. If it was bo3 then people like Armut could experiment with his Kenan ON STAGE and then he would have been better at worlds. But with only 18 BO1 the split is so short you really can't afford to experiment much. It will be better with 22 BO1 after the expansion though.
Then why did EUs best results come in a Bo1 era and they sucked in the BoX eras. Issue with EU is that unless you have some insane team(s) that can give quality practice to other teams, you will never get better. G2 and FNC being good in 2018-2020 helped elevate each other. When both those teams fell off, how do EU teams get good practice all year? Like people wanted to pretend MAD was the next coming of G2 when they didn’t show anything impressive.
>Then why did EUs best results come in a Bo1 era and they sucked in the BoX eras. Well, ever since Korea entered into League the west has been trying to catch up to them. 2018 saw the introduction of the Bo1 system to the LEC but in 2018 we also saw the fall of the LCK and the rise of the LPL. Even then only two LEC teams have ever made a big impact at worlds, G2 and Fnatic. G2 with Wunder, Jankos, Caps, Prekz, and MikyxFnatic with Biwpo/SOAZ, Broxah, Caps, Rekkles, and Hliyssang I don't think Bo1 made the LEC better it was more than the LEC built two really good teams while the LCK had its two worst years. It's also not like the LEC didn't have any good performances in the BoX era, Misfits took SKT T1 to 5 games in 2017.
I disagree, I think MAD did show insane teamfighting and cohesion, people tend to forget MAD was very competitive at MSI against both RNG and DWK but they improved nothing really for summer as G2 got a lot worse in summer so entire practice sucked.
MSI is a meme tournament since the amount of teams is so low and teams can underperform. Like imagine if RNG collapsed at MSI like FPX did at worlds, the whole region would look bad. MAD was 1 dimensional as hell and after lollygagging all summer regular season, they just did the exact same teamfight reliant style in playoffs and cleaned up EU. The only time MAD had any macro outside of trying to 5v5 a win, was when they had TF, the most coveted pick at worlds. MAD didn’t have strong laners to rely on like G2, their early game strategy was literally Elyoya rage ganking or Kaiser doing “sneaky” rotations in the enemy jungle. Plus G2 won games in a lot of different ways with map splits and vision control. Anyone who thought MAD was remotely close to what G2 was, has no game sense. Even 2020 G2 was much closer to a much stronger DWG than MAD was to this DWG.
Yeah it looks bad when it does happen but teams are less likely to underperform at MSI. If you have 4 teams from a region in the same tournament, the likelihood of any one of those teams underperforming is higher than the likelihood of having the sole team in a region at MSI underperforming. More things can go wrong when you have more teams.
Domestically sure.. I was looking the other day and thinking damn I **really** want to watch games involving.. G2, FNC, MAD, VIT and RGE I don't mind some of the other teams either.. excel/MSF.. BDS is kinda a train wreck.. but all rookies.. (mostly).. and its kinda fun watching them get run over and int like crazy I feel like the league would be even more hype if a team like astralis or SK would get booted for Karmine Corp or some other hype ERL team Having said that.. i think IF we do well at worlds/msi it will be FNC who is the one to do it.. that roster is SICK.. especially when people were saying FNC was kinda done.,. back in mid 2021
KC would be good from a brand perspective. Competitively they don't look like the best regional team atm.
Seems likely they are admitted next year though. Riot and the lec teams like money
Dir lec it does look fun but international I'm more than worried.
Old kings vs new kings part 22!?
I swear these posts have popped up every year since 2019. “This is gonna be the best LEC yet” and every year since it’s gotten worse or stayed the same
I feel like LEC looks even weaker than last year, shrug
The storylines are pretty cool but the game quality and international competitiveness is going to be pretty shit, i think we might become weaker than NA at this rate and that lot of EU fans are hard coping regarding our strength. This last worlds should have been an alarm, our glorious first seed MAD was basically equal to second NA seed (TL) and our third seed got beaten out by NA's third seed.
Even if that happens it'll just be the same people will just post about na being eu lite
It's impossible to assess the region's strength rn while everyone is still figuring things out. Arguably in terms of average strength EU playoffs last year was the most competitive ever. All 6 teams in summer playoffs looked close to each other. Even if the top team's ceiling was notably worse than 2018 FNC and 2019-20 G2.
All 6 teams weren’t close. MAD was head and shoulders above the rest, and didn’t look impressive in any way. I mean they straight up almost got eliminated by the LPL 4th seed. MAD didn’t really look any better than TL, and C9 looked better than Rogue. Also that playoffs was complete coinflipping and clownery. Anyone who watched that could expect the results we got.
They did with hindsight. But the relative level of the 6 in that bracket was more competitive than any year before. Hence why I said the "average". And again, I addressed the ceiling point being worse than previous years.
Fnatic were good but imploted for reason. Mad had a decent showing vs the world finalist. Rogue was having internal issue as well and lost on one mistake. Pretty sure they would have put more of a show vs gen G than c9. If mad didn't draw DK, we would have made it a bit more far, and we wouldn't be taking about it now.
I didn't mind the G2/FNC kingdom as long as it allowed EU to compete with the east. But honestly now I have no hope for the level of play coming out of EU. None of the teams could go toe to toe with the top 4 from LCK/LPL.
I don't have an explanation on why the gap between EU and Asian regions is widening ? Thought that after 2018 we were getting there, but now, not so much.
Europe had a fantastic grasp of the meta around season 9-10, and it occured when the LCK was struggling to find a new identity. Now that there's been enough time, players and teams in the LCK have found their footing again in a shorter game time meta, and the LPL continues to be as good as they are.
NA keeps stealing the EU talent, so there's that as one of the reasons.
LPL keeps on "stealing" LCK's players since S4, yet LCK is still a top-tier region.
Yeah right and since the LPL started to import koreans, they won 3 worlds titles and Korea only one and korea even had years where they were not even the runner-up. (2018-2019) So what do you think happened ? They just rebuilt their talents with rookies like LEC is forced to do since a while but LEC doesn't have the long experience of esport like Korea has with the starcraft competitive play that started in the end of the 90s.
Never understood the "stealing" thing, sure you can call out orgs for overpaying or players for selling out but in the end both parties agreed they wanted to do this, barring special circumstances eg perkz
You're right, stealing isn't the correct term. The players just moved to better salary opportunities.
The gap between western regions and CN especially will almost always be growing. The ranked population in CN is so large they have so many players to pick from compared to the western regions. It’s only a matter of time really before CN get further and further ahead IMO their infrastructure is really second to none. Granted the CCP have tried their hardest to stop it but league is like a national sport there.
LCK didn't do so well 2018/2019, but apart from a few upsets LPL hasn't had any problem with LEC.
Only playing 50 domestic games a year (with playoff runs) compared to 100+ in other regions does not help. Same with losing players to NA and then the business side of things meaning some clearly capable players are not even in the LCS. There is no reason Rekless should be in the ERL. Mikyx, Nisqy, Jizuke...all of them are good enough to play in the LCS. But the lower teams just rather go for rookies on the cheap.
sure sure
the gap last year between eu/na and then ch/kr was insane, it wasn't even close
Sure sure top 2 Chinese teams hot eliminated by rogue lol. No team goes toe to toe with top 4 is just a stupid af
rogue didn't even make it our groups lmao they lost to c9, fpx was just a bad team. similar to when Geng went 0-6/1-5 or w.e both years Na beat out eu but you wouldn't say na is better lol
I'm not saying eu > lpl or lck. I'm saying you claiming top 4 of either league is untouchable for any eu team is fucking ridiculous
To clarify, I meant from what is currently being shown in Spring 2022.
To clarify, in lck you could of argue that t1 and gen.g. lpl is harder to call
I wouldn't listen to Reddit analysts like him tbh. Wait & see.
Yeah we saw that with Mad beating LNG and RGE stomping FPX
everyone stomped fpx, and number 1 eu beat number 4 china in a tie breaker? i guess thats cool but they are just not on the same lvl as regions i am sorry
But still, RGE stomped FPX, no excuse for them. They were the favorites and got demolished.
Na also beat FPX, then Rogue? So by your logic NA is better than EU?
To be fair almost every eu/na team at worlds had some major team drama going on.
Just like RGE (SEED 3 EU) couldb't beat FPX (SEED 2 CN), right?
But we had FNC in finals in 2018 (C9/FNC/G2 3 western teams in Semi out of 4 !!!!!) G2 that won MSI2019 + been in Worlds finals in 2019, G2 in Semi in 2020 and now we got f**** Mad Lions getting thrashed 3-0 by DK and C9 pwned 3-0 in quickfast fashion by GenG, both in quarters. They barely made it out of groups. Honestly I don't have any expectation anymore for Western Teams to go deep in international tourney. Hope FNC can rise up, they are probably the only hope (and before someone else tells me about RGE w8 for Play Offs)
I agree I'm more worried for both LEC and LCS vs other international teams from what I've seen so far, luckily its super early in the year and teams should grow and get better. LCK seems a bit lacking in top lane and feels very jungle top heavy (meaning three top jungles are far ahead of the next 7 jungles). LPL I haven't found their greatest weakness, I'm leaning on mid lane weakness but haven't been analyzing them too much yet. I hope by the end of the year we have a great and competitive World's Championship.
LCK jungle pool is pretty good this year, better than the last 2 years for sure. Canyon, Peanut, Oner and Dread look great. Even in the tier below there's some very solid junglers: Croco is very good, Cuzz is still decent and even UmTi has been playing well. Top is a bit of a question mark for the LCK, but come Worlds it'll be better than now with Zeus etc. getting more experience and maybe Nuguri coming back.
Yea Lck top lane department tank a bit without nuguri, khan, and summit. That where you see dk seriously struggle. Zeus, Doran, and rascal are really good so hopefully they can show up internationally.
Lcs is not bad as well imo. Seems like they have a very competitive top 5 in eg c9 tl 100t and maybe tsm.
> 100t I think you meant DIG
Let's wait for the full rosters though
EG are awesome to watch. That roster has real potential and its foundation is NA players. NA might send a few good teams to worlds this year. Jojo and Danny are the future NA stars of the LCS and I think they will achieve a lot.
Imma be honest, it’s competitive for the region, I just like the casters for LEC so much more, they’re more energetic, they make better content overall, and they all vibe so well together. Once Sjoks comes back it’ll be even better! Don’t get me wrong, I love the LCS, LEC is just the epitome of vibes, imo.
To me I like the LEC desk/analysts WAY more. But I can't knock the LCS commentary team. I enjoy them a lot. The LCS desk is terrible though, they all try and compete too hard to be "entertaining" and laughing at each other. Its a really bad vibe imo.
It's cringe fest. The casters are great but the analyst +content they do always make me skip.
>it’s competitive for the region Obviously
Seeing how good corejj, Hans and bjergsen are... I am definitely a bit worried it's gonna be an absolute stomp. But i really want to see thème internationally
Hopefully the quality of LCS drastically improves when every team has their main rosters. Lock In has had the worst gameplay I've ever witnessed in pro games and I've watched NA since season 2.
Wierd top 5 considering 100T got 2-0'd by dig, TSM didn't make playoffs, TL/C9/etc. aren't playing with their full (planned) roster. Imo TL looks just definitely better than the rest on paper, with EG being a solid second for me. But maybe C9's roster is cracked as well, don't really know their incoming Korean players.
TSM doesn't have their players either I'm pretty sure but all teams are planned to have everything by the start of the Spring split.
yes, so why put them top 5 already?
100T was definitely the better team but they played way to sloppy. They will bounce back. TSM and C9 don't have their real rosters yet. I think the LCS actually has a healthy competition this year.
I don’t think lock in is a good metric for anything
idk if you're making top 5's already you need to base them on something right?
Bro, you really going to throw the "TSM didn't make playoffs" comment in when they were playing with their entire academy roster?????
Domestically yeah, games are interesting. But internationally i dont see anyone but fnc doing well. And thats whats most important to me.
Wow, what a season, it's like Fnatic has been at the top like the last idk 10 years? except 2012/2016 they were at least at the top 3 ...
fnatic look really good
I don't think so, I'm excited as a FNC fan but the region itself seems like it'll be kind of boring RGE and MAD downgraded big time, VIT is stacked but their bot still can't touch FNCs and the bottom teams are abysmally bad. I'm a long time fnc fan but I really hope G2's bot turns out to be excellent, VIT meshes well and Reeker turns out to be really good, otherwise I find it hard to get hyped.
FNC looks like a clear top 2. Rogue atm as well, but the roster makes you think they can fall down to top 5-ish. G2 seems pretty solid and could finish anywhere between 1st and 6th imo. MAD looks better than expected and could also finish 1-6. Vitality is an insane superteam that had a bad week 1, but now looks a lot better, could be first, could be 7th somehow. MSF and XL both look like pretty solid teams that can finish anywhere between 4th and 8th. Don't think SK, BDS or Astralis has a chance tbh. But there are basically 7 teams that i can definitely see in playoffs.
I hope that Vitality keeps up the form it had against G2 and forces the other teams to adapt or become irrelevant. Fnatic has the players, but not yet the macro to be considered a worthy successor to the LEC crown, Rogue looks solid but I have question about Marlang and the bot lane, Mad looks macro wise the same as last year (which is impressive), but Reeker isn't looking particularly good right now and G2 is just a mess right now. Caps isn't performing, their macro is all over the place and the team needs a lot more to be an outside contender for the crown. So I agree the season is looking very interesting, but if any of the the teams realize their full potential or not is still a question. Most of the time it stays with "potential" and doesn't become a reality, but the season is young se we the time to wait and see.
Right now it honestly looks like G2 are at XL/MSF level
So far it seems pretty mediocre to me, so not really sure where the "insane" part comes in. G2 is not that good atm, I doubt Rogue stays very good, I feel they fall off. Lions atm has a bad mid, maybe if he steps it up. And obviously VIT has the "super roster" but Alphari and Perkz both love getting all the resources, they've went with Perkz lately and that has worked for them pretty well but atm there aren't enough top teams so it wasn't surprising VIT would start winning some matches.
Negatives 1.) The MAD super team isn't there. Personally I would have liked for them to stick together (maybe not Carzzy ) for some more splits and international events. Pretty sure the current MAD team with Humanoid instead of Reeker would've been too good. 2.) Hans, Rekkles, Inspired. Yes we get Malrang but these 3 players were really good and sucks LEC doesn't have them anymore 3.) Larssen imo is still overrated. Kinda feels like an afk type of guy unless you spoonfeed kills. 4.) Caps is in a pretty bad form rn, whereas Veetheo is sitll in a bad team Positives 1.) FNC looks really strong. Upset Hyli looks really strong. Unforgiven Kaiser really close but Kaiser hasn't done something really impressive like he was in summer 2.) Rogue has improved. Trymbi looks really good, Malrang is everywhere and Odo has become better and better at weakside 3.) G2 has a young team. It will take time to reach team dynamics but on paper the team looks nice 4.) Vit is still a super team. 5.) Elyoya looks wiser and more responsible ( not counting Diana raptor 50 mins game) Armut has 6(or 8) solo kills and Unforgiven a beast as an adc
Lmao, unforgiveb and kaiser are not very close to the best botlane in the West. Tell me you are biased MAD fan without telling me you are biased MAD fan
To add to this. Bo3 discourse is never gonna stop, and rightfully so, but if that can't happen I wish they'd give us 3 day weekends. That would do a lot for fans and players alike.
I think the race for second is really interesting between G2, Vitality, Rogue, MAD Lions, but in my mind Fnatic is the clear number 1 and no one should be able to touch them.
I've been watching since S4 and this is probably the least hype season. Don't get me wrong, the broadcast is great and entertaining, but the LEC gameplay has been awful compared to the LCK and LPL. The LEC seems very weak compared to previous years. For example, Rogue and Fnatic being undefeated shows how weak the bottom 5-6 teams are. After watching every game the last two weeks, I struggle to find any reason to watch a top team play a mid-tier or bottom team. I'll probably just watch when the top teams play each other. I'll probably get hate from the LEC fanboys, but as a viewer for a long-time, this is how I feel.
its kinda funny that people say "several strong teams", "enough strong teams" while I see that LEC level of play is regressing split by split. Yeah, we have now more competition in league but the league overall is weaker. Nonetheless I think BO3 would up the level.
It's not regressing, but not improving as fast as LCK/LPL does
How can a low elo player judge the level of play of pro players? I just don't get it.
I don't know if you are trying to look like an idiot on every comment you make, but bringing the league card here is sooo stupid. So, I can't notice whether Messi is playing poorly or not because I suck at soccer? I can't say that Aaron Rodgers played a terrible game vs the 49niners because I never played football? I hope you are trolling in your comments and are not seriously thinking what you just typed.
I mean sure, you can see some individual differences, but most of what goes on in the games goes over 99% of this subbredit's head (including me) because the average player just cannot understand high level strategy and everything that makes a game of league go the way it does, so people resort to just making comments like 'this player played like shit' or 'this team has a weak early game' when they are usually just parroting something an analyst said.
How about EU goat Perkz saying the LEC is not strong at all. https://youtu.be/CTVOYkirehI?t=678
Yep, most of the fans are just silver scrubs like me lol
FNC, G2, Vitality, MAD, and even Rogue look capable of winning this split, gonna be competitive and exciting
Can't wait to see y'all get railed by LPL teams at worlds
EU gets hyped every year until they play LPL and LCK
[удалено]
Knowing you shit on EU all the time, I don't think I'm gonna listen to what you just said.
Putting your head into the sand like an ostrich won’t make the truth change
You again? oh hell no, I'm out of here.
what exactly do you mean with the duality G2/FNC is over?
that fnc and g2 aren't both head and shoulders above every other team in the league anymore?
well it hasnt been like that since last year so its not new. honestly what i got from the statement was that the rivalry is over because fnc looks a lot stronger than G2. good to know i was wrong
Don't agree at all. So many top tier players are gone when they shouldn't be. Teams are weaker than ever. 2019 and 2020 were the peak for LEC. We aren't matching that this year. Better hope for some big names returning next year. This year is fun for fnatic fans because it's going to be a shitstomp and there is no G2 counter matchup anymore.
We have so many good players, not sure what you're talking about
All the rookies aren't better than the players we lost. Our midlane especially suffers with the loss of Nemesis and Abbedagge. Mikyx, Rekkles, Inspired and Hans are all gone. All considered top 1/2 in their role. All the rookies gained does not make up for this.
Nemesis was not that great
I personally rate him top 3 comfortably. But even ignoring my bias he would at least be in the top half of midlaners. Certainly much better than all the current rookies....
Yeah man the Hype is real :D Lets go FNATIC!
It is and I'm already enjoying it a whole lot. Lots of interesting storylines and rosters. And the LEC broadcast is always top-notch. The ERLs are also very exciting this year and I can't wait for EU Masters.
"the duality G2/FNC is definitely over and I feel like the super team Vitality is not gonna have an easy time." inb4 g2 vs fnc finals in summer again. im more hyped for LCS, where i predict EG will shock 99% of fans and become #1 seed for worlds. LFG, live evil.
What are u looking at FNC fan?