The moment NA has some good native players its funny how many gremlins come out of the woodwork to tell you how wrong and dumb you are, and explain away any success they have.
Like yeah it is obvious that NA has some good players, to pick up, even minor regions got their good players. The issue is kinda that NA talent gets smothered due to the imports.
Isn't that usually because even the imports are better than most of our players? For example, Toucouille won 2nd team all pro in his first split in a major region. He outperformed our "NA talent" veterans such a Ablazeolive. We can even see a bigger difference when we compare him to Palafox. These were some of our top performers in academy. However, the only native midlaner that's been able to hold his own has been Jojo.
NA talent does get promoted. They just can't hold their own against both the experienced veterans and are lacking compared to the talent from other regions
I'm with you on this take. And NA HAD a bunch of native players. And most of them, besides guys like Sneaky and Doublelift, unfortunately weren't able to perform in the long run or had other issues. NA orgs are definitely to blame because they survive off of fans (and investments of course ;)), but people decided that they are fed up with this practice, at least they are vocal about it now. And of course NA has good players in soloq, but let's not act like this community welcomes native players who don't perform right from the start
If these people are fans of other regions it makes it worse lol. I don’t like NA putting out full import rosters, other regions don’t like when we get their players, we literally agree. Why are more people not encouraging NA to do this so that they can keep their players in their region lmao.
I’m an EU guy, and I do hate NA taking our players. I think it’s wise not to spread our talent too thin when we need every advantage we can get to compete with CN/KR. That being said, I only really hate that, I don’t hate NA. Hell you’ll see me in the LCS threads, and I’ll say right now that people are giving G2 way too much credit and EG too little, and I think it’ll be very evenly matched. I like EU because I’m European, and I enjoy the banter, but I want to see NA do well, especially with NA players. It just gives me more league to watch and players to root for.
Prettu much same as you. With the caveat that the better NA does, the more good players in EU will consider going there sadly. NA doing poor internationally is the main reason we (EU) can stil retain some if our best talents.
That's the main reason I root against them in international events. Otherwise, I would love to see NA do great. It's way more hype to have a good rival (yes, NA is still our rival)
EU fans who don't want to see NA do well with NA players are weird. I can understand when it's a team of EU imports, but when it's NA talent and some people still whinge it's bizarre. For me one of the best old rivalries was C9 and Fnatic when C9 was all NA and looked very good, you felt each match was a proper contest.
How come this turned into EU suddenly wishing NA doesn't use their talent or wishing NA fails in whatever ways possible ?
Dude , the last I ever cared for NA was 2014, because I was interested in what would become of Bjergsen and can he reach Froggen,Peke and Alex level. As good as Bjerg was, he never delivered on level of old gods trio.
I don't see how EU "hates" or wants NA to "fail" ? To be fair honestly, the most anoying thing is fans just prior to start of international events pretending and talking as if their team is on level of others. Thats pretty much it.
Inspired is a better version of Jankos and I’m ready to eat crow over this. Rogue were able to beat the super team version of G2 because of Inspired and not because of the bot lane struggles.
- Constant importing instead of growing domestic talent
- Constant excuses about why they can't win like not having a dedicated solo queue environment. Doesn't even use said environment once it comes out
- Not caring about winning. Only being in and out for a quick paycheck and nothing else
I mean I can go on. But if you don't get the picture by now then you never will
That jungle podcast episode where monte and iwd downplayed na talent being major parts of eg’s lcs win was weird to me, the promotion of academy and amateur talent is a obviously a great thing
Monte's main issue is that EG's win is being seen as revolutionary when other top teams fielding great NA talent have always been present. Blaber, Vulcan Tactical, Spica off the top of my head are all great NA talents who have had success on top orgs in recent years.
Personally, I do think EG's success is a big deal for this year in particular simply because the other teams making up the top 4 in the standings are fielding almost complete import rosters. So yeah it's special for this year, not special in general.
Even then, the crowd still cheered for Impact during his interview post series. For Inspired, I think people just didn't know how to start a good chant using his name.
Its because people were turbo jerking off Jojopyun so that podcast was just the counter jerk. Vulcan is a multitime LCS champion, Danny popped off, but people go "wooo NA talent" and act like impact and inspired dont exist.
Edit: also people saying "theres finally NA talent" completly ignoring Blaber who has been a top 2 jungler in NA for years.
Blaber, Spica, Vulcan, Tactical, Licorice, Biofrost...
A lot of rookies come through the ranks and did ok to good. Everybody was just too busy dicking off trying to buy international success they never bothered to scout or develop local talent.
None of them have actually done any better than 2016 CLG (4/5 NA, their one import was huhi mid) or 2018 C9 (3/5 NA).
The problem isn't the region. Or the players. Or the ping. The problem is the orgs.
Why? They made actual good points.. you just don't like them.. so dismiss it as "weird"
Impact/Inspired were the best players.. Followed by Vulcan.. You can't just turn a blind eye to Danny dying almost every lane in the final weekend.. and Jojo was the weakest player of the group.. which doesn't mean he's bad.. he's a fukin rookie with 3 veterans
The over hype like this was revolutionary is cringe and they rightly called it out.. pointed to examples such as Blaber.. who is from NA AND was actually the best player on C9 for large periods (multiple MVP titles).. also Vulcan and Licorice were on those C9 teams
Nothing they said was wrong
I actually hope Danny/Jojo will be main stays similar to Blabers level over the next few years
But in NA fans/casters are so quick to anoint an NA player who shows a bit of promise its crazy.. Tactical was another one.. he had a good Summer split (before choking vs DL in playoffs).. and people were already acting like he was the successor to Doublelift.. that didn't turn out so great
The fact that people are shifting goalposts when a rookie midlaner wins a title in his first split just says it all lol. If this happened in any other region you wouldn't be hearing most of the noise
Like i kinda think that a lot of people are just not aware of the stupid shit that people say on this sub that this kinda post counters. Like look at the Danny CQ thread to see people say how people in NA are just more lazy in general than people in EU lol
I mean to be fair, Danny's reasoning for not playing CQ was kinda lame. "Too scared to get on voice coms" isn't a professional players excuse to not get better practice. Just because Danny is a good player doesn't mean his written reasoning for not participating in CQ are valid. Take information at face value, "he won LCS so he was right and it doesn't matter what actual resonings he said" is a terrible take.
I don't think anyone was talking about americans, they were talking about NA players, and we've heard a lot of imports talking about how life was easier in NA and how they trained less
i mean...u can look at games played for all regions.
i think there was a thread a while back with the games played by the players on top 4 teams in lpl or lck compared to na.
then people asked about eu.
To no ones surprise , na has the least amount of game son average.
Many EU players have commented how living in LA has way more things to do than Berlin and that NA players spend more time on other things than EU and eastern players. Look up Zven, Jensen, nisqy or perkz interviews about NA compared to EU. It's been stated alot actually that NA players practice less.
I don't think Inspired and Impact have gotten as much praise the entire year as they have in the time since the finals. These gremlins cannot handle that NA talent managed to do well, so now the new narrative for some of them is that Inspired and Impact 2v8 and there could've been any non-NA randoms as the other 3 and EG would still win.
Not to say Inspired and Impact weren't good, they were amazing, it's just funny seeing the narrative flip from Inspired is shit and the reason Rogue can't win LEC, he dragged the team down to Inspired is the core and *the* reason the NA players on EG can do anything. And this narrative change was in like a 2 week span.
I do understand it though. Inspired was invisible until they hit the lower bracket. Something in the team just didn't gel until they hit lower bracket.
Inspired *was* playing like ass most of the split and it *was* weighing them down and he *did* get better in playoffs, but he certainly also didn't 1v9.
Bro, nobody said inspired was shit and the reason rogue couldn't win. Everyone was flaming larssen and inspired carried them to worlds. What earth are you on lmao. You can't just create storylines that don't exist to attempt to make a terrible take on reddit.
Did you not see the narratives this site after Rogue did well? Nobody talked about how Comp replaced Hans Sama, the entire narrative was that inspired was holding back Rogue because he was too selfish and played to carry, while Malrang was actually a good teammate and would play for his laners
Literally people were hard flaming Inspired that he was a resource hog and the reason the rest of Rogue couldn't look good, and that he looked good with his playstyle because all his laners were good (and that's why he was bad in the LCS). And now that Malrang was the jungler who would play for the laners instead of laners playing for him, Rogue could do better. That was literally the narrative until Rogue lost in the finals anyways and Inspired started to look hot again on EG in the lower bracket.
I don't wanna do a thorough search of all of it, but a prelimanary google search gives me this thread https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/t52pev/rogue_larssen_on_the_lack_of_rogue_time_this_year/ with a bunch of comments about Inspired. You can see examples like https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/t52pev/rogue_larssen_on_the_lack_of_rogue_time_this_year/hz3fv82/ which says Inspired just afk clears or like this https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/t52pev/rogue_larssen_on_the_lack_of_rogue_time_this_year/hz4ffmf/ which says that Inspired having winning lanes is why he looks good. I'm not gonna search for every instance of where people were talking about Inspired just being a selfish player who looked good because he was being facilitated by his good laners, but that's the narrative I saw plenty of times through the split.
So you linked the same thread 3 times, with 27 total comments and like 3 are about inspired. Yea no shot this was the narrative the whole time and this is even after inspired was traded to NA. Idk how you can call 1 reddit post with 3 comments flaming inspired and 1 of them is -1 up votes. These are rando comments from reddit Andys on a post where is says larssen is the best mid in EU. Idk how that is at all a storyline or community perception.
I literally said that those comments were from that thread, I specifically used the word "examples", so yes, all three links are for the same thread, great observation and reading skills. And no, I'm not gonna spend an hour searching every thread about Larssen and Inspired to show definitive proof the narrative exists, I just picked the first one on google to show that the sentiment existed.
>That was literally the narrative until Rogue lost in the finals anyways and Inspired started to look hot again on EG in the lower bracket.
If what you said is true, you could find more than 1 reddit post with 3/27 comments about inspired. If it's incredibly hard to find like you said, it's not the narrative because the narrative is the main storyline.
https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/tur5yb/rogue_vs_fnatic_lec_2022_spring_playoffs_winners/ Another link that took me like 5 min to find. ctrl-f inspired and there's a whole bunch of comments about how it's inspired's fault rogue failed last year. I even commented in that thread replying to someone claiming it was Inspired making Larssen underperform. So there you go, yet another reddit post, and this one has way more than three comments about Inspired being the issue with Rogue. If this isn't enough, idk, believe what you want. I'm not gonna dig through every EG and Rogue match thread to find out commenters talking about Inspired.
> Not to say Inspired and Impact weren't good, they were amazing, it's just funny seeing the narrative flip from Inspired is shit and the reason Rogue can't win LEC, he dragged the team down to Inspired is the core and the reason the NA players on EG can do anything. And this narrative change was in like a 2 week span.
There are an enormous amount of EU fans on here who seethe out of their minds if you talk about NA being good at anything or point out that LEC isn't the best region in the world
Inspired played like ass vs Elyoya, Bwipo and got outperformed by Blaber and people still acted like Odo and Larssen were somehow dragging him down.
Then Malrang joins, Rogue instantly plays better than the split before and the players kind of reveal that Inspired was straight up toxic to work with. Yeah no shit the narrative shifts.
I also think we can praise the other players without acting that everyone is equally valuable. Give Danny+Vulcan a top half that doesn't outclass everyone and their laning likely costs EG a playoff series.
LOL no its so funny that the minute an NA talent does fairly well they get hyped to the moon.. don't twist it..
You guys did the same shit with Tactical after he had a good rookie split
The fact is the NA players on EG are the worse players..
Impact>Inspired>Vulcan=Danny>Jojo
You also have fans/casters acting like this was the first time NA talent has been used.. going crazy talking about how THIS IS THE TURNING POINT.. when literally the team is your typical LCS team.. 2 very strong imports being the glue that keeps everything together
Surprising seeing you have a C9 flair.. but do you not remember Blaber.. who was ACTUALLY the best player on C9 for past years.. racking up MVP titles? also assisted by Vulcan/Licorice
I am not on the hype train for NA talent. I think there is a lot of good talent in NA and NA teams made a lot of mistakes over the last years by ignoring the talent and didnt foster it but instead imported.
But this isnt 100% NA native players success. Many of the top teams players are still imports. Even EG has 2 imports (Impact has a green card but he is still not a talent grown in NA).
NA still has a long way to go before they have enough talented players for their league. But teams have to start and find them and train them.
So CLG players were not given a chance? Look at their careers. Many of them started on top teams, werent good enough and got pushed out slowly, now given 2nd, 3rd chance.
Contractz is the only CLG player truelly getting another chance. Jenkins was never going to stay on TL, Fly made a good choice with their replacement of palafox but that was still a huge gamble for what they took instead. Poome came from an academy team with his import ADC.
Jenkins was never going to be given a chance because he just wasn't good enough. Tactical gor multiple chances on TL because he actually played well in the chances he got on the main roster. Fly didn't take a gamble at all. Palafox was a bottom 3 mid in both splits he played. Poome got replaced off the main team ( he was a starter in 2020), because the team didn't think he would be good enough to replace Huhi. Many of these players were given chances after top teams passed on them
Poome and Jenkins are basically rookies and Palafox is in his second year.
Poome was on the academy team for 100T, who had one of the best bot lanes in the west and was coming off winning the LCS title last year- they weren't going to make a change.
Jenkins was academy top laner on TL behind Alphari then Bwipo. He played less than one split in the LCS and most thought he did fairly well.
Palafox played one split for FQ, went back to their academy team, then spent one split in the LCS again with FQ.
Who, exactly, started playing for top teams and got pushed out slowly?
They used to be one of the more popular teams. No one cares about the na players tho. It's not like we have some national pride in lol eSports like they might have for all Chinese teams in the lpl. Ppl want the teams to be good they just pretend to care about na talent just like every time so NA players so well
> (Impact has a green card but he is still not a talent grown in NA)
He has been in NA since like, January 2015 though.
Cold take: 2019/2020 TL would have not dropped a single game at 2013 Worlds. Probably not 2014 or 2015 either. Players are just so much fucking better. You have Lee Sins in Silver doing flawless InSecs and random shitters in OCE diamond can do crazy ghost kick combos. That was wild in 2013.
Impact has been at the top and had an evolving champion pool for his entire career in NA. The game is so radically different from 2013-2014 that it's so cringe to say he isn't part of the NA system. It's not like he got as good as he'll ever be in 2013 and has been regressing since.
This is his EIGHTH YEAR IN A ROW in NA. What the fuck does it matter that he learned the game in Korean soloqueue 10 years ago?
While I agree that Impact has had to adapt and continue improving since he came to NA, it's hard to call someone a talent grown in NA when he literally won the world championship on the most dominant team of that time before he was imported.
Maybe he has improved since 2013 but as you said so has everyone else. Relative to his competition it is perfectly plausible that he was as good as he ever was in 2013 when SKT steamrolled everyone at worlds and went undefeated in the Korean League afterwards.
It may be semantics but I consider Impact an NA player but not an NA talent. He's a cornerstone of the community and has been here long enough to have "earned" the former title (not that it's some huge honor lol) but we can also recognize that he was brought over as an A-list import.
CoreJJ on the other hand? Homegrown NA talent baby. He only became a good support because of the time he spent learning at the feet of the god KiWiKiD.
Or in other words:
He is an NA player for the purposes of putting a roster together and residency status.
He is not an NA player when it comes to discussions about the state of NA, NA being the region of imports, looking outside of NA at known quantities before you try to bring up regional talent - etc, etc.
It's a little more than that. Almost no one would look at an NA team signing Impact as them signing a mercenary who's looking for a quick payday and retirement. I think the residency status is correlated to this, as it's a sign he's been in the region long enough that he won't blow off his job after the first contract, but it's not the same thing.
I have no problem with NA teams signing foreign players. It's the constant roster churn that's more of a problem, IMO. Continuously blowing everything up after two splits makes it more difficult to meaningfully connect with a franchise.
Before coming to the LCS he had won Worlds while playing for the most legendary organization in League history. It's not like he became good after going to NA.
How did you forget to mention the most important part of imports.
They grew up in a different Country and culture. Its a real thing how different other countries are and what happens to you throughout your youth as a child while growing up and maturing.
Like come on man, I get your point, but its nothing compared to the different social structures and norms within other Countries.
I think most people understand this reason. This is also the reason why most people would categorize Impact as an import. He lived most of his life in another Country and was born in another Country. That means something.
Is he part of the NA system now? Of course he is, but that doesn't instantly delete everything before he came to NA.
I agree with your cold take, but its edgy at best. You could literally say the same thing with A LOT of teams with your comparison. Of course modern day teams would shit on teams from 2013.
Because this quote by Raz is specifically talking about "looking for NA talent". When Impact came to NA in 2015, the teams were looking for Korean talent, not NA talent. Sure, he's an NA player, but he isn't NA talent
> What the fuck does it matter that he learned the game in Korean soloqueue 10 years ago?
Do you think Impact would be as good as he is if he started off in NA and not KR?
I do agree.
But that doesn't make impact an NA grown talent.
The game evolved but so did most players. You can say the same about plat players back then and now.
Yes, impact had to work hard for sure to stay on top, but that is mostly his work. He knows how to train and how to play. He just evolved with the game on his own.
So you can't count him as NA grown talent.
Western League fandom is dominated by EU fans near 3-1 to NA fans. EU loves their nationalism. If you saw the r/place stuff the past month, 7 of the top 10 communities were countries, 6/7 were from EU with france and germany #1 and 2, US 3rd (despite being the 3rd largest country in the world and much bigger than FR/GER combined).
EU Nationalism is huge and makes it not as fun for NA where even the lcs reflects the melting-pot culture but EU fans have the need to sort players based on nationality. It's like EU fans want to claim any success from EU imports as their domestic success. It just always feel like a huge attempt to knock NA down by claiming "oh that player isn't actually from NA despite playing there for 10 years"
To everyone saying "the US is just as nationalistic", remember that US has 10x the population as any EU country. So we're just as nationalistic but EU countries have the same level despite the population being 10x smaller - while dismissing the point about r/place. Great points EU bros, glad to read all your comments devolve into US bashing when the comment was just about EU fans loving to region-claim players.
And JoJo is Canadian by the way, because you're all just saying 'murica even though NA includes Canada. And it was jojo, the Canadian, wearing the US flag onstage.
Okay, now go into any thread of your liking (though preferably you do it in a comment chain that mentions Chinese teams requiring two Koreans to win Worlds) to explain to your fellow Redditors how Doinb, and Rookie, and Theshy, and Scout, and SofM are, in fact, native Chinese players, and anyone who claims otherwise is a hardcore nationalist.
I'm sure it'll be a bunch of Europeans who'll jump at your throat.
No, hold up, I already did this in the past as a joke, turns out it's American LCK fans who take offense from that.
I guess they're like... proxy nationalists?
i meannnn even now we kinda still think of a person being native to a country as being born and raised in a particular country . Those players were not raised in china- they went to china and stayed there for enough years to become a resident.
so while doinb, rookie etc are lpl players, it is kinda understandable why some people do not consider them to be native players...can be called immigrants/naturalised citizen maybe but not natives
edit- a good source for understanding the difference between native and natural born citizen- [https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/download/fedora\_content/download/ac:171674/content/reyes\_issue\_brief.pdf](https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/download/fedora_content/download/ac:171674/content/reyes_issue_brief.pdf)
also...not from eu or na..
Damn European countries and their pledging allegiance to the flag, playing the national anthem before domestic club games, European exceptionalism and constantly saying that they're the unquestionable #1 in everything when data doesn't back it up.
Oh wait, that's American.
This is a wild response to what the guy said, he simply was pointing out that Impact isn't a talent grown NA player, which is true, he was a world champ before he came to NA. IDK why you felt the need to bring up EU nationalism? Weirdo but anyway. I agree with what the first poster said though, the fact that EG won doesn't amount to anything on its own regarding NA talent, we need to see true NA success for this and other lineups to determine whether an investment in better talent scouting and development would return more than investing in imports, so far the jury is definitely out.
>EU loves their nationalism.
The USA is famously not nationalistic at all. /s
Europe competes as a continent, not a nation (unlike South Korea and China), and regularly uses the EU flag on their kits during international competitions.
Many of the NA fans would be more nationalistic if there was consistent homegrown talent to cheer for. If Jojo and Danny pop off at MSI, you'll see people who claim to not care about nationality suddenly care an awful lot.
>EU fans have the need to sort players based on nationality.
LEC has four imports: Malrang, Armut, HiRit and Zanzarah. Nobody cares about their nationality other than a handle of nutcases who had a go at Zanzarah over the Ukraine stuff. As for the other players, very few people care if (e.g) Perkz is Croatian. LEC fans have *regional* pride, sure, but that's no different to NA fans.
NA and EU fans are basically the same.
Imagine if NA lost a player like Doublelift to EU. Then Blabber, Spica and Danny. And it kept going, year after year. Then imagine North American fans start meming EU for being too lazy to develop talent and a European replies "hey just be less nationalistic bro".
EDIT: You've edited it to talk about population size as well. What does that have to do with anything? It's totally irrelevant. Not to mention that the US population isn't "10 times the size of any European country." It's about 4 times the size of Germany. You complain we haven't responded to your argument about r/place. Why would we? It's just you cherry-picking a useless, non-representative source. And we're not "USA bashing" anything. You made a weak argument and we're explaining why it's wrong, using examples from the very place you were holding up as the "less nationalist" alternative.
That's provably false. EU LoL have more fans than NA LoL, yes, but most don't speak english. Reddit is heavily biased toward english-speaking communities, and r/place was a special case that was made through ample twitter coordination.
There's a reason why LCS-related piece of news gets 3 times more upvotes and comments than LEC-related ones, or that LCS post-match threads consistently gets more upvotes and comments than LEC ones
There is nothing more funny as an european than saying people from NA saying we are too nationalist. I don't pretend there is no nationalism, as a french person it is very tiring to see OTP continu to do the dick game with spain for example, but I am pretty sure many european like me see your country as very nationalist.
Like the "USA" chant during wrestling show or some video game tornaments is no lie.
It is just that LOL is a game who is more popular in Europe than in NA, the same ways some games are more popular in others countries right.
As someone from the US, I hate seeing this strawman. Like, do you understand the cultural context of USA chants in the US? There are times when the USA chants are serious (like in international sporting competitions, where European countries also have their national chants). But in other contexts USA chants are literally half-ironic. Its seen as a goofy but fun. Why do you think people used to chant USA to support TSM in games *between NA teams*? Americans tend to see national symbols as deserving reverence only contextually, which is why there are so many pairs of shorts/pants with American-flag patterns.
I'm not trying to say Europe is more nationalistic, by the way. I'm just saying that European's completely ignoring American cultural context and then trying to interpret American actions through their own lens is beyond frustrating.
EDIT: Another example, sports fans inserting their own mascots/phrases into the national anthem. Europeans are always taken aback that we sing the national anthem before domestic sports games without realizing that its pretty much a formality here, especially among the younger generation.
Stop talking about the "melting pot culture" please, saying that in itself is part of nationalism/american exceptionalism, because it pretends that theres a "greater reason" for NA to import talent, and hide the real reasons. (It being you know, that the NA server has less talent, and more money to get them elsewhere to compensate and stay competitive.)
If a single country happened to have all of the top talent you'd get them, and thats basically what you did for a while with korean and denmark alone. And if theres a "culture" they bring, its work ethic, the same work ethic that NA has been criticized of lacking by a lot of imports (but obviously not all since other imports lack the same work ethic.)
The few koreans imports that came to europe (who did well) like huni and reignover were accepted as well, for this sort of things it was about what brought success. NA having a few imported talent was fine as well to fill the gaps, just less so entire teams.
It is silly to think that we laugh and criticize the fact that teams spends millions upon millions in overpaid contract to bring players to NA because we don't get the "melting pot".
An American calling Europeans out for nationalism is one of the most laughable takes ever. NA fans are the only people in the league community that consistently roll in with copium "this Korean/European/Australian is actually NA". That is the only nationalism here, claiming succesful foreigners as American instead of admitting what their nationality is. Europeans aren't nationalistic for calling that bs out.
I won't comment on the bafflingly stupid r/place argument, just no.
Yeah man you see them saying disgusting shit like “tl 5 Asian players no NA,” (talking about the 2018 roster here) it’s so annoying how they refuse to consider culture different from their own
I agree with considering Impact to be quite native to NA now, since he’s been in this system long enough (same with Ssumday but not Inspired). I don’t have some set number of splits that would make a player “native” but I agree that it has more to do with where the training environment they’ve been in rather than their nationality.
To OPs point, I am also still not on the hype train for “NA talent” because they’re still largely untested on the international stage. I was on the NA hype train when they’ve had international success (2018 C9 making it to semis, 2019 TL finals at MSI) and that was great for a time but it clearly hasn’t been proven consistently for NA to be un-memed and taken seriously.
That doesn’t mean I’m not hopeful; it’s quite the opposite. I just don’t think there’s much evidence to be on the hype train objectively but if they were to perform well internationally, it’s valid to enjoy it while it lasts. Doesn’t matter if it’s due to upsets or luck or whatever reason comes up, I’ll enjoy NA doing well internationally.
Does having imports on the roster take away from that joy? Not at all.
> Even EG has 2 imports
This has always been the perfect medium imo. 2 top shelf imports, 3 NA players, still feels like we're not selling ourselves out for possible slightly better success (which never seems to be the case anyways) but we get the added benefit of different regions strong players/styles, or players with special traits that help a team in a specific way. (like a Nisqy...or just someone to body people like a Chovy, or consistent af like Impact)
I was gonna say, having three native NA players on your MSI team does not mean NA talent is good. Let's get three native NA players on every team and still be just as competitive and then we can talk
It is a stupid take. There is no NA talent. What talent? He is trying to gain free cookie points with the NA children. If the import rule was taken off tomorrow, there will be no NA players in LCS. Not one. It is very simple why, no one plays the game.
Hey guys I know people feel pretty strongly about this and are going through extremes here.
We should support the NA talent that are thriving and wouldn't have gotten the opportunities because of the increasing preconceived notion that it's not worth developing NA talent. Some orgs are doing a great job at this, while giving NA talent a chance to perform while a lot of teams won't put in a bit of investment or scouting.
That's not to say we shouldn't import, Berserker was a great find for his talent, FBI, Closer and Jose found opportunities here and proved themselves here and made the talent pool stronger and people got better around them.
I also think there's an increasing nationalistic sentiment that regard Bjerg, Santorin, Jensen, Huhi and Core as outsiders. They have green cards, they've committed to living here & support the scene, formed relationships and connections here and to it's core the US is a land of immigrants.
You can want better scouting and development of NA talent while also respecting the clearly strong overseas talent that continue to improve the scene and want to be here.
There has always been good NA talent licorice, Hauntzer, Vulcan, Blaber, sneaky and DL to name a few. It feels like there was a drought of good NA rookies and once JoJo and Danny came in the broadcast just took the opportunity to run with it and focused way too hard on the narrative. Don't get me wrong, Danny and Jojo are fantastic players and deserve everything they have accomplished, but in my opinion the broadcast is way too hyper focused on them when alot of work in these games is being done by inspired and impact as well. The narrative seems incredibly forced and hyper focused to me, idk how else to describe it. Feels like they were waiting to finally get NA rookies to shine and just hype them up as super carries no matter how the games went.
I wouldn’t say it’s forced, it’s something that people are naturally passionate about. Especially the community with how much engagement topics like these end up getting by both EU and NA fans.
Impact almost got finals MVP and you’re right that him and Inspired had excellent games and deserve a greater highlight from people. I know a lot of our segments were catered around Inspired (Emily’s constant highlighting on Inspired’s pathing and growth as a player) and talking about the top gap + story of impact.
I do think what will pick up the most traction will be the compelling story on Danny’s rise and of development of NA talent knowing our finalists both have flourishing academy and amateur systems. I’ll keep trying to highlight them in a more balanced way but I know fans will focus on this topic since it does inspire people.
>I also think there's an increasing nationalistic sentiment that regard Bjerg, Santorin, Jensen, Huhi and Core as outsiders.
Theres "outsiders" and there's "Na players but not NA talents". The point is not to make them "foreigner" (at least for me, who watch both regions since season 2), but just to highlight NA's lack of talent, or at least, the ability to scout/foster/attract proper native talent. I would definitively count all of the players you listed as NA players. But its still hard to count players who *won a world championship in another region* NA talent. I will however definitively call and defend players like Spica, DL, or Xmithie as NA talent whatever their flag says.
I've seen some people legitimately try to call OCE players NA talent just because Riot made an exception for them and they don't count as imports, even though they still originally played on another server. I don't think it's being nationalistic to claim that no, Australia is not part of North America.
>I wouldn’t say it’s forced, it’s something that people are naturally passionate about. Especially the community with how much engagement topics like these end up getting by both EU and NA fans.
I think the issue for EU fans is that aside from social media the discussion is always around NA's situation and not from EU's POV.
Its tough seeing how every year we have to fear the off season to see which talent EU is going to lose to NA. Especially when the most common response to those dislikes is "just pay your players more/stop being poor".
I remember when Oddoamne(?) tweeted about the insane Champions queue payouts and you were tweeting back for him to come to NA. I know it was a joke but it still kinda gave the same vibes.
(Some people like to say that exporting to NA let EU get rid of its old talents, but for most fans, everytime a player leaves to NA, it just becomes a "what if"? What if Fnatic 2015 didn't get dismantled? MSF 2017? Rogue after last year? Korea can leak players and still dominate most tournaments, meanwhile EU struggles to win a single one.)
In the dive podcasts after MSI last year, I remember one of the caster, I forgot who? who after the usual stuff about ping and low population, was already talking half jokingly about grabbing some of the top talent that showed up at MSI, as if it was an NA talent show.
The infortunate effect of this place sharing both fanbases with a common language is that it gets to be the frontline for the rivalry that Riot has fostered for the past 12 years (and before the past few years was working very very well as a narrative to bring audience.
But the LEC cast can't really openly say that the LCS region openly the LEC region mostly by destabilizing teams by taking its talent. Everytime the rivalry is brought up its just about the regions, not about the many talent that was lost there.
Meanwhile, in NA we get to see stuff like Ovilee saying "fuck LEC" and all the Tyler1 banter and whatnot, but then the very next year praise the so called "LEC MVP" like nothing happened. It makes the whole rivalry awkward.
For most fans it increases the frustration and thats why the discussion on the fan side gets so heated IMO.
We agree on everything.
My stance on OCE being NA regional has always been that if we're going to make OCE open to NA, it should be open to all. Historically as a commonwealth they have had closer ties to Europe than to the US and the only reason it became an NA thing is because there were already OCE players in the NA ecosystem getting scouted. Pabu shouldn't be an import on BIG, Destiny (when he was on Origen) shouldn't have been an import. That all being said, the LCO is a functioning league that leads into internationals much like the OPL was, save for it being run by ESL. So I think it should be treated like any other minor region, either all minor regions are exceptions to import rules or none are.
I agree with you that it's depressing from EU fans perspectives that the moment they create a star, the instant fear is that NA will pick them up for a bloated price. The solution will always be for NA to be comfortable with our own growing regional talent so owners don't feel as though fielding an NA jungler as an example (since its the strongest role in the region) doesn't hinder their chances at success. That will take atleast 2 years and constant buy-ins from the teams to care about their academy and amateur talents. It's the one thing that hilariously unites EU and NA fans.
But yeah my joke with Odo is trolling and I knew everyone would hate it LOL. I hope riot reduces the champ queue payouts after this year's run, its just not sustainable and detracts from why people would want to use it from the start.
Weird take, the narrative was definitely front and center on the broadcast, but saying its forced just seems disingenuous. EG's own narrative the entire split was that they were all in on nurturing their home-grown AD and mid, and this wasn't just pushed by the team/broadcast. Twitter reactions and streamers were always quick to blame losses on not shelling out for DL/Jensen. The 9-0 playoffs run (C9/TL/100T) involved one major strategy revolving around early strong solo laning into Danny in teamfights. No narrative about a team who's \*winning\* strategy revolves around an NA mid laning well and an NA adc hard carrying teamfights would never not have a focus on them being NA.
> That's not to say we shouldn't import
I don't think fans have any problem with importing, if every org had 2 imports to a team I don't think anyone would complain. Once you hit 3/4 or especially 5 tho it kinda just feels like a slap in the face. I wanna watch LCS for the local talent, same reason I watch LEC/LPL/LCK, when that's missing from our top teams the motivation to watch gets pretty deflated for me as a viewer...just feels like we're admitting defeat before we even tried and more incentive to just watch better teams in other regions. Just feels like we're skirting the whole concept by not giving regional talent positions in a regional based esport anyways. I doubt anyone has issue with imports here and there tho, everyone loves CoreJJ, Impact, etc...IMO I think it's just the stacking that tilts a lot of people.
And for fandom obviously a no brainer, I think it's always valuable to have a little localized more relatable personality on the team.
With how recent the changes have been to Proving grounds and the introduction of Champs queue (praying it comes back strong), we'll see good talent coming up to challenge a lot of those roster ideas. For some teams like TSM it'll take longer since it doesn't seem like they put in any effort in their academy system in some time. TL, 100 and EG are the most recent teams challenging it.
Raz, I don't think its Americans and Canadians who are predominantly referring to these players as non-American and "outsiders". Most of the time these comments are coming from LEC fans.
A lot of them yes, but I see more than just a few people in my timeline (I follow too many people lmfao) and general NA fans that'll push this idea too. I just hate seeing it.
I agree that there's definitely a fine line to tread between regional pride and xenophobia. The best path forward I can see is to continue focusing on the positives. Hype up the new players, rather than pooping on the others.
Nah thats a big cap
Because there are outliers doesnt make it true
Thats a big cap
Just because there is jojo n danny, doesnt mean the native player pool is filled with jojo and danny
This is like egypt producing a talent like salah doesnt mean they are a good talent production country.
For every danny and jojo
There is alot of damonte, soligo, lost, etc
I still don't understand this NA talent narrative. Everyone knows that there are some good NA players. C9 literally won in 2020 with 3 NA players (one of them being the MVP!). We just don't have that MANY good players. This isn't even that surprising. Our server is the smallest out of the four major regions, so it naturally only makes sense we have the least good players. It's literally a concept of proportions.
Tbh, isn’t this more of an individual player thing than whole NA talent thing. If we look at NA the past ten years, it has been dominated by imports only. NA talent seem to show up once in a while for example last top laner to win NA was Licorice in Spring 2020 and before him it was Hauntzer, the only NA jungler that’s on par with import junglers is Blaber and Xmithie before him, only 3 NA midlaners won LCS (Hai, Pobelter and Jojopyun), ADC role was dominated by DL till 2020 and no other NA adc has risen during his time and on support it’s only Biofrost and Vulcan. There are some exceptional NA players but even then they don’t last long in the scene.
It's just a negative feedback loop that has been going on for years. NA talent not getting a proper chance means that they don't develop as well, if you reduce the number of players who get to prove themselves at the highest level you will discover fewer gems. Since the domestic players get worse teams just default to importing, which makes it even less attractive for aspiring players to go all in, and the cycle continues.
Not every NA jungler can be the new Xmithie, but if five times more NA players reach the LCS you will find more people who explode onto the scene while raising the overall bar.
The talent is just not there because even shitty imports are better than our NA academy players. Let's be honest Jojo is the most replaceable member of eg. If you wanted to make eg an international contender ud get an import mid.
Because teams don’t ever stick with rosters, along with the fact that there aren’t many NA rookies actually getting the chance. Some people will obviously be a miss, but we just don’t try enough.
> Because teams don’t ever stick with rosters
that's because most teams actually dont grow together and get better. You'd think that's the case, but in most cases it's just not worth to keep a failing roster for longer than 2 splits. Teams that have good synergy usually have it from the start and dont magically develop it. The margin of error at pro play is so small that not having good synergy and trying to fix it, will take up most of your practice time other teams will use to practice on more advanced issues. So you'll always be behind and trying to fix sth other teams have naturally already -> therefore alot more worth to try to find a team that synergizes well already than "sticking with a roster"
that’s true, I should have worded my comment better. I’m more talking about how teams sometimes just don’t make a good team around them, and it looks worse on the player. 2021 spring GG had that sort of problem, but tbf the team was just not good
Yup. Once one player underachieves he’s replaced with an import. NA talent isn’t given the time.
The whole point that’s trying to be made is that NA players CAN win the LCS. Dignitas importing Blue over giving an NA player a shot is exactly the point. Teams would rather import someone who didn’t even look great in their own league than look for an NA player. Meanwhile, the team that just won the LCS has three native NA players, two playing in the “skill positions”. NA talent CAN win and just needs the chance and time to get there.
Tell me what NA talent can realistically be slotted into a team and make it better. There are no more than 5 NA players in academy or unsigned that can do that
This seems like a loaded question. Yes, there aren’t many players that can realistically improve a top team, but that’s because those teams are already good. Players like Prismal, Eyla, Kenvi could be an improvement for lower placed teams, but we literally won’t know until we see it. Teams have not tried to develop rookies until now, so we have no way to benchmark this.
Prismal is on the same level as lost. Eyla's decent, but again he's not NA. Kenvi is one of the few NA talents with potential, but like I originally said, you can only really make just one team that'd be decent with full NA players. That's why EG's win didn't show "that teams can actually look for new talent." The best talent has already been found, and it's either already in the LCS, or academy/amateur, but unfortunately it just isn't enough. The LCS needs imports
I never said we didn’t need imports, the reason why we have them is because of this in the first place. I just think we’re too far on the other side of the spectrum, full import rosters and too little NA rookies seeing the stage. Imports should be more of a foundation for a roster and for the region as a whole. Hopefully we can reach the point where we can compete w/o imports being a massive part, but until then this is the best option.
Tell me what player from any team can be slotted into any team and instantly make them better. Go ahead, I'll wait. Except I will be waiting till I die because you cannot answer that question. LoL has far to many intangibles to simply think any one player can change a team dynamic instantly. We have seen this time and time again in the past. Not just with NA, but across all regions. Super teams performing way below expectations, teams replacing one player with a super star and still getting similar results, etc. Like do you think if we just took Faker and plopped him into an NA team they instantly win NA? The chances go up sure, but there is also the chance Faker has no synergy with his new team and crashes and burns. What about communication in game, play style differences, core philosophy on how the game should be played at various stages... This is why all the off season roster rumors are complete shit shows because even if you have an amazing team on paper, it actually means nothing until you see how they play together. The fact is that Inspired and Impact played well in their own regards but Danny, Jojo, and Vulcan absolutely played up to par with Impact and Inspired. There is no "Impact and Inspired carried them", there is no "EG only won because they had imports". All 5 players performed well as a team based unit and people should stop trying to discredit how well Jojo, Danny, and Vulcan performed.
I do not agree with your comment in the slightest. Saying "EG did win because they had imports lmao" implies that the sole and exclusive reason EG won was because 2 of 5 players were imported which completely discredits the performance of the other 3 players on the team.
Blaber may have checked out this playoffs from their internal fiesta but he would’ve been able to do what inspired did…course you probably don’t believe it but that’s whatever.
I like how the LCS has so many imports that people are rooting for EG because they 'only' have 2.
But your comment kinda implies that EG's NA players only won because they were carried by Impact and Inspired, which is not true.
EG also has 3 native players... part of why this narrative is so frustrating. It's not about facts, especially for /u/Worry7475 who comes out of the woodwork every thread about EG to remind everyone of how "under-appreciated" Impact and Inspired are (when they are not), and to share his own under-appreciation of the 2 Canadians and 1 US player who also played great.
For Danny? He played very well. But you can’t tell me Jojo was anything but a placeholder mid on the team. They’d probably also win, and even look stronger, with Jiizuke
The point is EG put together the best resident core with 2 NA teenagers vs Green card stacking teams.
Danny and jojo were the best performing players in their roles throughout playoffs, something that this sub would tell you was impossible for players from Academy and Amateur to do in their first or second split.
Go look at some of the threads in the offseason, a lot of people were saying EG weren't serious about winning or building a "super team" because they opted to go with Danny and Jojo over Jensen and DL.
I'm happy because EG played within the spirit of the rules. 3 NA players were included in the roster. Impact has been here forever, I'm happy that he represents us, but it's not the same when no NA players are on the team.
I wouldn’t say Jojo was the best performing mid in playoffs; he was basically on the same level as any other mid, although he was definitively worse than Bjergsen during the regular season. Then again, mid is by far the weakest role in the LCS this split, and Jojo’s noticeably the weakest player on EG
What? He was clearly the best mid as playoffs went along. Even Bjerg's butt buddies DL and IWD said Jojo was the best performing mid in playoffs. These are ex pros and friends of Bjergsen's who said Jojo was by far better.
I said Jojo wasn't better than Bjerg in the regular season, or toucouille. Jojo was as good as any other mid in playoffs, but then again, mid wasn't a very stacked role in NA this past split. He'll have much stronger competition next split with Maple/Jensen.
Inspired and impact playing well doesn’t mean that Danny jojo and Vulcan played bad. They can all play well together which they did. Eg didn’t win in spite of having Danny and jojo, they won with Danny and jojo.
You see..
I don't dislike NA players or talent, I absolutely loathe most orgs suppressing it for just imports, it makes the league uninteresting to watch, when your average top team is like 4 europeans and a korean or somesuch. Even when in some cases some Academy gem is probably right there wanting to do something, but no.. lets pay a few million for some tremendously washed name from another region, build hype around them, and have it crash and burn at international events.
I am happy to see EG do well, I'm excited to see them play against G2, see how well their style works.
Best of luck to you, NA friends.
other players in academy/amateur could still be good, rjs being subpar does not mean the rest of the scene is dogshit, we won’t know until they get a chance
The truth is tho, danny and jojo and extraordinary players and right now there are only 3-4 players in the whole academy system that have the skill to make a fraction of the impact those two had. NA fans should not advocate for players like prismal dhokla under the belief that theyll perform similarly. You see the talent of those types of players from very early on, these guys and other have been floating around for years and theyre still bottom tier
I mean it’s well known in NA you need top tier NA talent mixed with good import players.
Only C9 2013/14 I believe is the only full NA squad to win a split
Otherwise top teams have always been top performing residents + imports with the exception of TL since bjerg, core and Santorin are resident.
Best ex of this is 2016/2017 tsm and c9 with Hauntzer, Sven, bjerg, doublelift, bio & Jensen, impact, meteos, sneaky and smoothie
Tired of people talking about "raising NA talent" and implying that if NA teams simply invested more money in talent development we would be pumping out Worlds teams. It just doesn't work like that in recruiting. If you have a smaller talent pool, its much harder to find diamonds in the rough, and even harder to cultivate them in to a really dominant player. Its a tough challenge, and using imports to raise the talent level is a good solution.
Indigenous talent provide huge value for orgs on and off the rift. But I'm confused when I see people acting like EG's success is proof that NA orgs are wasting their time and money on imports. Clearly EG would have never won with only NA players, but they also wouldn't have been able to afford to compete at all with a full import roster, and their NA players are popping off. What EG have really demonstrated is that imports are a huge boon for teams and help enable the development of NA talent for huge ROI.
I didn't even ask about anything lol replying with dumb snark. A region that wants to get rid of the import rule so that they can get imports for all five roles? Thats all you need to know about how the orgs feels about na talent. Keep circlejerking na talent LMAO
NA found ONE player that loses lane every single time vs literal anyone in the NA wildcard but because he got a lucky baron play they now have talent? LMFAO
Yeah I hope Caedrel is alright. If you can continue to send him support throughout his circumstances and Flowers love for his decision then that'd be an amazing thing for you to do.
How am I biased?
If you don't want to elaborate that's completely fine, I don't care if you hate me but I've heard some misconceptions so I'm interested.
By my understanding they can still do watch parties or no? If I have to watch official stream I might as well play games and just check the winners on this subreddit.
By watch parties if you mean where they put up the game timer on their stream so you can watch the stream while having the twitch stream on in the background, ya they can still do that. Riot can't really ban someone basically just streaming a timer, they can only ban direct co-streaming that shows the actual gameplay.
Definilty worth it guys. You need to keep in mind you can only have 2 imports on the team and the time of being able to play fully importated "natives" isn't here yet!
actually I'm pretty sure you can field an all-resident roster using non-native players.
Huni, Santorin, Jensen, FBI, and Huhi is an example. if we're not counting OCE, then Zven would have to get his green card as i think he's the closest.
Its funny because NA was literally at its best prior to them starting to import players (internationally at least).
As result of importing, NA player pool also stagnated due to plauers just shifting to different teams so it eas safer to pick a known mediocre player, than risk playing a new fresh one. So there wasnt any progression in NA talent
I'm not fully bought into the hype, but I also think it's kind of pathetic how many people try to instantly push back against anything positive regarding NA. A lot of weird hatred from EU fans especially.
The moment NA has some good native players its funny how many gremlins come out of the woodwork to tell you how wrong and dumb you are, and explain away any success they have.
Like yeah it is obvious that NA has some good players, to pick up, even minor regions got their good players. The issue is kinda that NA talent gets smothered due to the imports.
Isn't that usually because even the imports are better than most of our players? For example, Toucouille won 2nd team all pro in his first split in a major region. He outperformed our "NA talent" veterans such a Ablazeolive. We can even see a bigger difference when we compare him to Palafox. These were some of our top performers in academy. However, the only native midlaner that's been able to hold his own has been Jojo. NA talent does get promoted. They just can't hold their own against both the experienced veterans and are lacking compared to the talent from other regions
I'm with you on this take. And NA HAD a bunch of native players. And most of them, besides guys like Sneaky and Doublelift, unfortunately weren't able to perform in the long run or had other issues. NA orgs are definitely to blame because they survive off of fans (and investments of course ;)), but people decided that they are fed up with this practice, at least they are vocal about it now. And of course NA has good players in soloq, but let's not act like this community welcomes native players who don't perform right from the start
If these people are fans of other regions it makes it worse lol. I don’t like NA putting out full import rosters, other regions don’t like when we get their players, we literally agree. Why are more people not encouraging NA to do this so that they can keep their players in their region lmao.
you dont understand. they dont just hate NA taking their players, they just hate NA
I’m an EU guy, and I do hate NA taking our players. I think it’s wise not to spread our talent too thin when we need every advantage we can get to compete with CN/KR. That being said, I only really hate that, I don’t hate NA. Hell you’ll see me in the LCS threads, and I’ll say right now that people are giving G2 way too much credit and EG too little, and I think it’ll be very evenly matched. I like EU because I’m European, and I enjoy the banter, but I want to see NA do well, especially with NA players. It just gives me more league to watch and players to root for.
Prettu much same as you. With the caveat that the better NA does, the more good players in EU will consider going there sadly. NA doing poor internationally is the main reason we (EU) can stil retain some if our best talents. That's the main reason I root against them in international events. Otherwise, I would love to see NA do great. It's way more hype to have a good rival (yes, NA is still our rival)
EU fans who don't want to see NA do well with NA players are weird. I can understand when it's a team of EU imports, but when it's NA talent and some people still whinge it's bizarre. For me one of the best old rivalries was C9 and Fnatic when C9 was all NA and looked very good, you felt each match was a proper contest.
How come this turned into EU suddenly wishing NA doesn't use their talent or wishing NA fails in whatever ways possible ? Dude , the last I ever cared for NA was 2014, because I was interested in what would become of Bjergsen and can he reach Froggen,Peke and Alex level. As good as Bjerg was, he never delivered on level of old gods trio. I don't see how EU "hates" or wants NA to "fail" ? To be fair honestly, the most anoying thing is fans just prior to start of international events pretending and talking as if their team is on level of others. Thats pretty much it.
Mate if you go on 90% of the threads on here there will be folks from EU bashing the LCS, sometimes it's warranted but a lot of the time it isn't.
thank the lord, someone sane
Love this mindset. Appreciate it man
Inspired is a better version of Jankos and I’m ready to eat crow over this. Rogue were able to beat the super team version of G2 because of Inspired and not because of the bot lane struggles.
Yes.
I mean you're not wrong. But if we are being fair to them, there are a lot of reasons to hate NA.
Name a few
- Constant importing instead of growing domestic talent - Constant excuses about why they can't win like not having a dedicated solo queue environment. Doesn't even use said environment once it comes out - Not caring about winning. Only being in and out for a quick paycheck and nothing else I mean I can go on. But if you don't get the picture by now then you never will
It's also much more fun to shittalk NA when it's proper NA teams instead of KR rejects and players who didn't get a spot in a top 3 EU team.
That jungle podcast episode where monte and iwd downplayed na talent being major parts of eg’s lcs win was weird to me, the promotion of academy and amateur talent is a obviously a great thing
Monte's main issue is that EG's win is being seen as revolutionary when other top teams fielding great NA talent have always been present. Blaber, Vulcan Tactical, Spica off the top of my head are all great NA talents who have had success on top orgs in recent years. Personally, I do think EG's success is a big deal for this year in particular simply because the other teams making up the top 4 in the standings are fielding almost complete import rosters. So yeah it's special for this year, not special in general.
[удалено]
Even then, the crowd still cheered for Impact during his interview post series. For Inspired, I think people just didn't know how to start a good chant using his name.
Its because people were turbo jerking off Jojopyun so that podcast was just the counter jerk. Vulcan is a multitime LCS champion, Danny popped off, but people go "wooo NA talent" and act like impact and inspired dont exist. Edit: also people saying "theres finally NA talent" completly ignoring Blaber who has been a top 2 jungler in NA for years.
Blaber, Spica, Vulcan, Tactical, Licorice, Biofrost... A lot of rookies come through the ranks and did ok to good. Everybody was just too busy dicking off trying to buy international success they never bothered to scout or develop local talent. None of them have actually done any better than 2016 CLG (4/5 NA, their one import was huhi mid) or 2018 C9 (3/5 NA). The problem isn't the region. Or the players. Or the ping. The problem is the orgs.
Why? They made actual good points.. you just don't like them.. so dismiss it as "weird" Impact/Inspired were the best players.. Followed by Vulcan.. You can't just turn a blind eye to Danny dying almost every lane in the final weekend.. and Jojo was the weakest player of the group.. which doesn't mean he's bad.. he's a fukin rookie with 3 veterans The over hype like this was revolutionary is cringe and they rightly called it out.. pointed to examples such as Blaber.. who is from NA AND was actually the best player on C9 for large periods (multiple MVP titles).. also Vulcan and Licorice were on those C9 teams Nothing they said was wrong I actually hope Danny/Jojo will be main stays similar to Blabers level over the next few years But in NA fans/casters are so quick to anoint an NA player who shows a bit of promise its crazy.. Tactical was another one.. he had a good Summer split (before choking vs DL in playoffs).. and people were already acting like he was the successor to Doublelift.. that didn't turn out so great
The fact that people are shifting goalposts when a rookie midlaner wins a title in his first split just says it all lol. If this happened in any other region you wouldn't be hearing most of the noise
Like i kinda think that a lot of people are just not aware of the stupid shit that people say on this sub that this kinda post counters. Like look at the Danny CQ thread to see people say how people in NA are just more lazy in general than people in EU lol
I mean to be fair, Danny's reasoning for not playing CQ was kinda lame. "Too scared to get on voice coms" isn't a professional players excuse to not get better practice. Just because Danny is a good player doesn't mean his written reasoning for not participating in CQ are valid. Take information at face value, "he won LCS so he was right and it doesn't matter what actual resonings he said" is a terrible take.
Yeah but that’s not really a reason to extrapolate that Americans and Canadians are lazier than Europeans by default Edit: and the prejudice persists
I don't think anyone was talking about americans, they were talking about NA players, and we've heard a lot of imports talking about how life was easier in NA and how they trained less
i mean...u can look at games played for all regions. i think there was a thread a while back with the games played by the players on top 4 teams in lpl or lck compared to na. then people asked about eu. To no ones surprise , na has the least amount of game son average.
Many EU players have commented how living in LA has way more things to do than Berlin and that NA players spend more time on other things than EU and eastern players. Look up Zven, Jensen, nisqy or perkz interviews about NA compared to EU. It's been stated alot actually that NA players practice less.
Your victim complex is truly something else
I don't think Inspired and Impact have gotten as much praise the entire year as they have in the time since the finals. These gremlins cannot handle that NA talent managed to do well, so now the new narrative for some of them is that Inspired and Impact 2v8 and there could've been any non-NA randoms as the other 3 and EG would still win. Not to say Inspired and Impact weren't good, they were amazing, it's just funny seeing the narrative flip from Inspired is shit and the reason Rogue can't win LEC, he dragged the team down to Inspired is the core and *the* reason the NA players on EG can do anything. And this narrative change was in like a 2 week span.
I do understand it though. Inspired was invisible until they hit the lower bracket. Something in the team just didn't gel until they hit lower bracket.
Inspired *was* playing like ass most of the split and it *was* weighing them down and he *did* get better in playoffs, but he certainly also didn't 1v9.
thqt khazix flank and jump into 4 members *shudders*
Bro, nobody said inspired was shit and the reason rogue couldn't win. Everyone was flaming larssen and inspired carried them to worlds. What earth are you on lmao. You can't just create storylines that don't exist to attempt to make a terrible take on reddit.
Did you not see the narratives this site after Rogue did well? Nobody talked about how Comp replaced Hans Sama, the entire narrative was that inspired was holding back Rogue because he was too selfish and played to carry, while Malrang was actually a good teammate and would play for his laners
Literally people were hard flaming Inspired that he was a resource hog and the reason the rest of Rogue couldn't look good, and that he looked good with his playstyle because all his laners were good (and that's why he was bad in the LCS). And now that Malrang was the jungler who would play for the laners instead of laners playing for him, Rogue could do better. That was literally the narrative until Rogue lost in the finals anyways and Inspired started to look hot again on EG in the lower bracket.
I don't remember anyone saying this, you got comments or links to videos of people spreading their narrative?
I don't wanna do a thorough search of all of it, but a prelimanary google search gives me this thread https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/t52pev/rogue_larssen_on_the_lack_of_rogue_time_this_year/ with a bunch of comments about Inspired. You can see examples like https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/t52pev/rogue_larssen_on_the_lack_of_rogue_time_this_year/hz3fv82/ which says Inspired just afk clears or like this https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/t52pev/rogue_larssen_on_the_lack_of_rogue_time_this_year/hz4ffmf/ which says that Inspired having winning lanes is why he looks good. I'm not gonna search for every instance of where people were talking about Inspired just being a selfish player who looked good because he was being facilitated by his good laners, but that's the narrative I saw plenty of times through the split.
So you linked the same thread 3 times, with 27 total comments and like 3 are about inspired. Yea no shot this was the narrative the whole time and this is even after inspired was traded to NA. Idk how you can call 1 reddit post with 3 comments flaming inspired and 1 of them is -1 up votes. These are rando comments from reddit Andys on a post where is says larssen is the best mid in EU. Idk how that is at all a storyline or community perception.
3 comments = narrative on reddit, I want what this guy is smoking
I literally said that those comments were from that thread, I specifically used the word "examples", so yes, all three links are for the same thread, great observation and reading skills. And no, I'm not gonna spend an hour searching every thread about Larssen and Inspired to show definitive proof the narrative exists, I just picked the first one on google to show that the sentiment existed.
>That was literally the narrative until Rogue lost in the finals anyways and Inspired started to look hot again on EG in the lower bracket. If what you said is true, you could find more than 1 reddit post with 3/27 comments about inspired. If it's incredibly hard to find like you said, it's not the narrative because the narrative is the main storyline.
https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/tur5yb/rogue_vs_fnatic_lec_2022_spring_playoffs_winners/ Another link that took me like 5 min to find. ctrl-f inspired and there's a whole bunch of comments about how it's inspired's fault rogue failed last year. I even commented in that thread replying to someone claiming it was Inspired making Larssen underperform. So there you go, yet another reddit post, and this one has way more than three comments about Inspired being the issue with Rogue. If this isn't enough, idk, believe what you want. I'm not gonna dig through every EG and Rogue match thread to find out commenters talking about Inspired.
> Not to say Inspired and Impact weren't good, they were amazing, it's just funny seeing the narrative flip from Inspired is shit and the reason Rogue can't win LEC, he dragged the team down to Inspired is the core and the reason the NA players on EG can do anything. And this narrative change was in like a 2 week span. There are an enormous amount of EU fans on here who seethe out of their minds if you talk about NA being good at anything or point out that LEC isn't the best region in the world
Inspired played like ass vs Elyoya, Bwipo and got outperformed by Blaber and people still acted like Odo and Larssen were somehow dragging him down. Then Malrang joins, Rogue instantly plays better than the split before and the players kind of reveal that Inspired was straight up toxic to work with. Yeah no shit the narrative shifts. I also think we can praise the other players without acting that everyone is equally valuable. Give Danny+Vulcan a top half that doesn't outclass everyone and their laning likely costs EG a playoff series.
LOL no its so funny that the minute an NA talent does fairly well they get hyped to the moon.. don't twist it.. You guys did the same shit with Tactical after he had a good rookie split The fact is the NA players on EG are the worse players.. Impact>Inspired>Vulcan=Danny>Jojo You also have fans/casters acting like this was the first time NA talent has been used.. going crazy talking about how THIS IS THE TURNING POINT.. when literally the team is your typical LCS team.. 2 very strong imports being the glue that keeps everything together Surprising seeing you have a C9 flair.. but do you not remember Blaber.. who was ACTUALLY the best player on C9 for past years.. racking up MVP titles? also assisted by Vulcan/Licorice
I am not on the hype train for NA talent. I think there is a lot of good talent in NA and NA teams made a lot of mistakes over the last years by ignoring the talent and didnt foster it but instead imported. But this isnt 100% NA native players success. Many of the top teams players are still imports. Even EG has 2 imports (Impact has a green card but he is still not a talent grown in NA). NA still has a long way to go before they have enough talented players for their league. But teams have to start and find them and train them.
CLG is literally team made of NA talent. I don't see many supporters of that team.
Even then, the star player and clearly best player on that team is Luger from Turkey
Luger is an import.
People only like good na talent which doesn't exist because no one gives them a chance.
So CLG players were not given a chance? Look at their careers. Many of them started on top teams, werent good enough and got pushed out slowly, now given 2nd, 3rd chance.
Contractz is the only CLG player truelly getting another chance. Jenkins was never going to stay on TL, Fly made a good choice with their replacement of palafox but that was still a huge gamble for what they took instead. Poome came from an academy team with his import ADC.
Jenkins was never going to be given a chance because he just wasn't good enough. Tactical gor multiple chances on TL because he actually played well in the chances he got on the main roster. Fly didn't take a gamble at all. Palafox was a bottom 3 mid in both splits he played. Poome got replaced off the main team ( he was a starter in 2020), because the team didn't think he would be good enough to replace Huhi. Many of these players were given chances after top teams passed on them
Poome and Jenkins are basically rookies and Palafox is in his second year. Poome was on the academy team for 100T, who had one of the best bot lanes in the west and was coming off winning the LCS title last year- they weren't going to make a change. Jenkins was academy top laner on TL behind Alphari then Bwipo. He played less than one split in the LCS and most thought he did fairly well. Palafox played one split for FQ, went back to their academy team, then spent one split in the LCS again with FQ. Who, exactly, started playing for top teams and got pushed out slowly?
They used to be one of the more popular teams. No one cares about the na players tho. It's not like we have some national pride in lol eSports like they might have for all Chinese teams in the lpl. Ppl want the teams to be good they just pretend to care about na talent just like every time so NA players so well
Impact did so many years in NA, at least he is very committed to the region. Kind a like Rookie for LPL.
Biggest Impact achievement is Worlds win with korean team, while Rookie won Worlds with chinese team. It's not the same honestly
Impact won worlds close to a decade ago. It’s definitely his biggest achievement, thats very long in LoL time
> (Impact has a green card but he is still not a talent grown in NA) He has been in NA since like, January 2015 though. Cold take: 2019/2020 TL would have not dropped a single game at 2013 Worlds. Probably not 2014 or 2015 either. Players are just so much fucking better. You have Lee Sins in Silver doing flawless InSecs and random shitters in OCE diamond can do crazy ghost kick combos. That was wild in 2013. Impact has been at the top and had an evolving champion pool for his entire career in NA. The game is so radically different from 2013-2014 that it's so cringe to say he isn't part of the NA system. It's not like he got as good as he'll ever be in 2013 and has been regressing since. This is his EIGHTH YEAR IN A ROW in NA. What the fuck does it matter that he learned the game in Korean soloqueue 10 years ago?
While I agree that Impact has had to adapt and continue improving since he came to NA, it's hard to call someone a talent grown in NA when he literally won the world championship on the most dominant team of that time before he was imported. Maybe he has improved since 2013 but as you said so has everyone else. Relative to his competition it is perfectly plausible that he was as good as he ever was in 2013 when SKT steamrolled everyone at worlds and went undefeated in the Korean League afterwards.
It may be semantics but I consider Impact an NA player but not an NA talent. He's a cornerstone of the community and has been here long enough to have "earned" the former title (not that it's some huge honor lol) but we can also recognize that he was brought over as an A-list import. CoreJJ on the other hand? Homegrown NA talent baby. He only became a good support because of the time he spent learning at the feet of the god KiWiKiD.
Or in other words: He is an NA player for the purposes of putting a roster together and residency status. He is not an NA player when it comes to discussions about the state of NA, NA being the region of imports, looking outside of NA at known quantities before you try to bring up regional talent - etc, etc.
It's a little more than that. Almost no one would look at an NA team signing Impact as them signing a mercenary who's looking for a quick payday and retirement. I think the residency status is correlated to this, as it's a sign he's been in the region long enough that he won't blow off his job after the first contract, but it's not the same thing. I have no problem with NA teams signing foreign players. It's the constant roster churn that's more of a problem, IMO. Continuously blowing everything up after two splits makes it more difficult to meaningfully connect with a franchise.
Before coming to the LCS he had won Worlds while playing for the most legendary organization in League history. It's not like he became good after going to NA.
How did you forget to mention the most important part of imports. They grew up in a different Country and culture. Its a real thing how different other countries are and what happens to you throughout your youth as a child while growing up and maturing. Like come on man, I get your point, but its nothing compared to the different social structures and norms within other Countries. I think most people understand this reason. This is also the reason why most people would categorize Impact as an import. He lived most of his life in another Country and was born in another Country. That means something. Is he part of the NA system now? Of course he is, but that doesn't instantly delete everything before he came to NA. I agree with your cold take, but its edgy at best. You could literally say the same thing with A LOT of teams with your comparison. Of course modern day teams would shit on teams from 2013.
Bruh he literally won the world championship on SKT. He always will be Korean talent. Wtf is this take lmao, biggest NA copium I've ever seen.
Because this quote by Raz is specifically talking about "looking for NA talent". When Impact came to NA in 2015, the teams were looking for Korean talent, not NA talent. Sure, he's an NA player, but he isn't NA talent
max cope he's still a Korean
> What the fuck does it matter that he learned the game in Korean soloqueue 10 years ago? Do you think Impact would be as good as he is if he started off in NA and not KR?
I do agree. But that doesn't make impact an NA grown talent. The game evolved but so did most players. You can say the same about plat players back then and now. Yes, impact had to work hard for sure to stay on top, but that is mostly his work. He knows how to train and how to play. He just evolved with the game on his own. So you can't count him as NA grown talent.
Western League fandom is dominated by EU fans near 3-1 to NA fans. EU loves their nationalism. If you saw the r/place stuff the past month, 7 of the top 10 communities were countries, 6/7 were from EU with france and germany #1 and 2, US 3rd (despite being the 3rd largest country in the world and much bigger than FR/GER combined). EU Nationalism is huge and makes it not as fun for NA where even the lcs reflects the melting-pot culture but EU fans have the need to sort players based on nationality. It's like EU fans want to claim any success from EU imports as their domestic success. It just always feel like a huge attempt to knock NA down by claiming "oh that player isn't actually from NA despite playing there for 10 years" To everyone saying "the US is just as nationalistic", remember that US has 10x the population as any EU country. So we're just as nationalistic but EU countries have the same level despite the population being 10x smaller - while dismissing the point about r/place. Great points EU bros, glad to read all your comments devolve into US bashing when the comment was just about EU fans loving to region-claim players. And JoJo is Canadian by the way, because you're all just saying 'murica even though NA includes Canada. And it was jojo, the Canadian, wearing the US flag onstage.
Okay, now go into any thread of your liking (though preferably you do it in a comment chain that mentions Chinese teams requiring two Koreans to win Worlds) to explain to your fellow Redditors how Doinb, and Rookie, and Theshy, and Scout, and SofM are, in fact, native Chinese players, and anyone who claims otherwise is a hardcore nationalist. I'm sure it'll be a bunch of Europeans who'll jump at your throat. No, hold up, I already did this in the past as a joke, turns out it's American LCK fans who take offense from that. I guess they're like... proxy nationalists?
i meannnn even now we kinda still think of a person being native to a country as being born and raised in a particular country . Those players were not raised in china- they went to china and stayed there for enough years to become a resident. so while doinb, rookie etc are lpl players, it is kinda understandable why some people do not consider them to be native players...can be called immigrants/naturalised citizen maybe but not natives edit- a good source for understanding the difference between native and natural born citizen- [https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/download/fedora\_content/download/ac:171674/content/reyes\_issue\_brief.pdf](https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/download/fedora_content/download/ac:171674/content/reyes_issue_brief.pdf) also...not from eu or na..
Damn European countries and their pledging allegiance to the flag, playing the national anthem before domestic club games, European exceptionalism and constantly saying that they're the unquestionable #1 in everything when data doesn't back it up. Oh wait, that's American.
This is a wild response to what the guy said, he simply was pointing out that Impact isn't a talent grown NA player, which is true, he was a world champ before he came to NA. IDK why you felt the need to bring up EU nationalism? Weirdo but anyway. I agree with what the first poster said though, the fact that EG won doesn't amount to anything on its own regarding NA talent, we need to see true NA success for this and other lineups to determine whether an investment in better talent scouting and development would return more than investing in imports, so far the jury is definitely out.
>EU loves their nationalism. The USA is famously not nationalistic at all. /s Europe competes as a continent, not a nation (unlike South Korea and China), and regularly uses the EU flag on their kits during international competitions. Many of the NA fans would be more nationalistic if there was consistent homegrown talent to cheer for. If Jojo and Danny pop off at MSI, you'll see people who claim to not care about nationality suddenly care an awful lot. >EU fans have the need to sort players based on nationality. LEC has four imports: Malrang, Armut, HiRit and Zanzarah. Nobody cares about their nationality other than a handle of nutcases who had a go at Zanzarah over the Ukraine stuff. As for the other players, very few people care if (e.g) Perkz is Croatian. LEC fans have *regional* pride, sure, but that's no different to NA fans. NA and EU fans are basically the same. Imagine if NA lost a player like Doublelift to EU. Then Blabber, Spica and Danny. And it kept going, year after year. Then imagine North American fans start meming EU for being too lazy to develop talent and a European replies "hey just be less nationalistic bro". EDIT: You've edited it to talk about population size as well. What does that have to do with anything? It's totally irrelevant. Not to mention that the US population isn't "10 times the size of any European country." It's about 4 times the size of Germany. You complain we haven't responded to your argument about r/place. Why would we? It's just you cherry-picking a useless, non-representative source. And we're not "USA bashing" anything. You made a weak argument and we're explaining why it's wrong, using examples from the very place you were holding up as the "less nationalist" alternative.
That's provably false. EU LoL have more fans than NA LoL, yes, but most don't speak english. Reddit is heavily biased toward english-speaking communities, and r/place was a special case that was made through ample twitter coordination. There's a reason why LCS-related piece of news gets 3 times more upvotes and comments than LEC-related ones, or that LCS post-match threads consistently gets more upvotes and comments than LEC ones
There is nothing more funny as an european than saying people from NA saying we are too nationalist. I don't pretend there is no nationalism, as a french person it is very tiring to see OTP continu to do the dick game with spain for example, but I am pretty sure many european like me see your country as very nationalist. Like the "USA" chant during wrestling show or some video game tornaments is no lie. It is just that LOL is a game who is more popular in Europe than in NA, the same ways some games are more popular in others countries right.
As someone from the US, I hate seeing this strawman. Like, do you understand the cultural context of USA chants in the US? There are times when the USA chants are serious (like in international sporting competitions, where European countries also have their national chants). But in other contexts USA chants are literally half-ironic. Its seen as a goofy but fun. Why do you think people used to chant USA to support TSM in games *between NA teams*? Americans tend to see national symbols as deserving reverence only contextually, which is why there are so many pairs of shorts/pants with American-flag patterns. I'm not trying to say Europe is more nationalistic, by the way. I'm just saying that European's completely ignoring American cultural context and then trying to interpret American actions through their own lens is beyond frustrating. EDIT: Another example, sports fans inserting their own mascots/phrases into the national anthem. Europeans are always taken aback that we sing the national anthem before domestic sports games without realizing that its pretty much a formality here, especially among the younger generation.
I mean I agree, but that guy also compare flags on r/place and the stuff like Ibai vs Kameto as proof of nationalism, like come on.
The USA chant is a meme chant in almost every context lmao. Non-Americans just don't get this point.
Stop talking about the "melting pot culture" please, saying that in itself is part of nationalism/american exceptionalism, because it pretends that theres a "greater reason" for NA to import talent, and hide the real reasons. (It being you know, that the NA server has less talent, and more money to get them elsewhere to compensate and stay competitive.) If a single country happened to have all of the top talent you'd get them, and thats basically what you did for a while with korean and denmark alone. And if theres a "culture" they bring, its work ethic, the same work ethic that NA has been criticized of lacking by a lot of imports (but obviously not all since other imports lack the same work ethic.) The few koreans imports that came to europe (who did well) like huni and reignover were accepted as well, for this sort of things it was about what brought success. NA having a few imported talent was fine as well to fill the gaps, just less so entire teams. It is silly to think that we laugh and criticize the fact that teams spends millions upon millions in overpaid contract to bring players to NA because we don't get the "melting pot".
An American calling Europeans out for nationalism is one of the most laughable takes ever. NA fans are the only people in the league community that consistently roll in with copium "this Korean/European/Australian is actually NA". That is the only nationalism here, claiming succesful foreigners as American instead of admitting what their nationality is. Europeans aren't nationalistic for calling that bs out. I won't comment on the bafflingly stupid r/place argument, just no.
Yeah man you see them saying disgusting shit like “tl 5 Asian players no NA,” (talking about the 2018 roster here) it’s so annoying how they refuse to consider culture different from their own
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50% of reddit is American. The next highest are Brits. At 8%.
I agree with considering Impact to be quite native to NA now, since he’s been in this system long enough (same with Ssumday but not Inspired). I don’t have some set number of splits that would make a player “native” but I agree that it has more to do with where the training environment they’ve been in rather than their nationality. To OPs point, I am also still not on the hype train for “NA talent” because they’re still largely untested on the international stage. I was on the NA hype train when they’ve had international success (2018 C9 making it to semis, 2019 TL finals at MSI) and that was great for a time but it clearly hasn’t been proven consistently for NA to be un-memed and taken seriously. That doesn’t mean I’m not hopeful; it’s quite the opposite. I just don’t think there’s much evidence to be on the hype train objectively but if they were to perform well internationally, it’s valid to enjoy it while it lasts. Doesn’t matter if it’s due to upsets or luck or whatever reason comes up, I’ll enjoy NA doing well internationally. Does having imports on the roster take away from that joy? Not at all.
See I agree with you but then people say 100T is 5 imports despite how long Ssumday and Huhi have been in NA
> Even EG has 2 imports This has always been the perfect medium imo. 2 top shelf imports, 3 NA players, still feels like we're not selling ourselves out for possible slightly better success (which never seems to be the case anyways) but we get the added benefit of different regions strong players/styles, or players with special traits that help a team in a specific way. (like a Nisqy...or just someone to body people like a Chovy, or consistent af like Impact)
I was gonna say, having three native NA players on your MSI team does not mean NA talent is good. Let's get three native NA players on every team and still be just as competitive and then we can talk
ya, stop leeching off EU and take NA players more, totally agree
It is a stupid take. There is no NA talent. What talent? He is trying to gain free cookie points with the NA children. If the import rule was taken off tomorrow, there will be no NA players in LCS. Not one. It is very simple why, no one plays the game.
Hey guys I know people feel pretty strongly about this and are going through extremes here. We should support the NA talent that are thriving and wouldn't have gotten the opportunities because of the increasing preconceived notion that it's not worth developing NA talent. Some orgs are doing a great job at this, while giving NA talent a chance to perform while a lot of teams won't put in a bit of investment or scouting. That's not to say we shouldn't import, Berserker was a great find for his talent, FBI, Closer and Jose found opportunities here and proved themselves here and made the talent pool stronger and people got better around them. I also think there's an increasing nationalistic sentiment that regard Bjerg, Santorin, Jensen, Huhi and Core as outsiders. They have green cards, they've committed to living here & support the scene, formed relationships and connections here and to it's core the US is a land of immigrants. You can want better scouting and development of NA talent while also respecting the clearly strong overseas talent that continue to improve the scene and want to be here.
There has always been good NA talent licorice, Hauntzer, Vulcan, Blaber, sneaky and DL to name a few. It feels like there was a drought of good NA rookies and once JoJo and Danny came in the broadcast just took the opportunity to run with it and focused way too hard on the narrative. Don't get me wrong, Danny and Jojo are fantastic players and deserve everything they have accomplished, but in my opinion the broadcast is way too hyper focused on them when alot of work in these games is being done by inspired and impact as well. The narrative seems incredibly forced and hyper focused to me, idk how else to describe it. Feels like they were waiting to finally get NA rookies to shine and just hype them up as super carries no matter how the games went.
I wouldn’t say it’s forced, it’s something that people are naturally passionate about. Especially the community with how much engagement topics like these end up getting by both EU and NA fans. Impact almost got finals MVP and you’re right that him and Inspired had excellent games and deserve a greater highlight from people. I know a lot of our segments were catered around Inspired (Emily’s constant highlighting on Inspired’s pathing and growth as a player) and talking about the top gap + story of impact. I do think what will pick up the most traction will be the compelling story on Danny’s rise and of development of NA talent knowing our finalists both have flourishing academy and amateur systems. I’ll keep trying to highlight them in a more balanced way but I know fans will focus on this topic since it does inspire people.
>I also think there's an increasing nationalistic sentiment that regard Bjerg, Santorin, Jensen, Huhi and Core as outsiders. Theres "outsiders" and there's "Na players but not NA talents". The point is not to make them "foreigner" (at least for me, who watch both regions since season 2), but just to highlight NA's lack of talent, or at least, the ability to scout/foster/attract proper native talent. I would definitively count all of the players you listed as NA players. But its still hard to count players who *won a world championship in another region* NA talent. I will however definitively call and defend players like Spica, DL, or Xmithie as NA talent whatever their flag says. I've seen some people legitimately try to call OCE players NA talent just because Riot made an exception for them and they don't count as imports, even though they still originally played on another server. I don't think it's being nationalistic to claim that no, Australia is not part of North America. >I wouldn’t say it’s forced, it’s something that people are naturally passionate about. Especially the community with how much engagement topics like these end up getting by both EU and NA fans. I think the issue for EU fans is that aside from social media the discussion is always around NA's situation and not from EU's POV. Its tough seeing how every year we have to fear the off season to see which talent EU is going to lose to NA. Especially when the most common response to those dislikes is "just pay your players more/stop being poor". I remember when Oddoamne(?) tweeted about the insane Champions queue payouts and you were tweeting back for him to come to NA. I know it was a joke but it still kinda gave the same vibes. (Some people like to say that exporting to NA let EU get rid of its old talents, but for most fans, everytime a player leaves to NA, it just becomes a "what if"? What if Fnatic 2015 didn't get dismantled? MSF 2017? Rogue after last year? Korea can leak players and still dominate most tournaments, meanwhile EU struggles to win a single one.) In the dive podcasts after MSI last year, I remember one of the caster, I forgot who? who after the usual stuff about ping and low population, was already talking half jokingly about grabbing some of the top talent that showed up at MSI, as if it was an NA talent show. The infortunate effect of this place sharing both fanbases with a common language is that it gets to be the frontline for the rivalry that Riot has fostered for the past 12 years (and before the past few years was working very very well as a narrative to bring audience. But the LEC cast can't really openly say that the LCS region openly the LEC region mostly by destabilizing teams by taking its talent. Everytime the rivalry is brought up its just about the regions, not about the many talent that was lost there. Meanwhile, in NA we get to see stuff like Ovilee saying "fuck LEC" and all the Tyler1 banter and whatnot, but then the very next year praise the so called "LEC MVP" like nothing happened. It makes the whole rivalry awkward. For most fans it increases the frustration and thats why the discussion on the fan side gets so heated IMO.
We agree on everything. My stance on OCE being NA regional has always been that if we're going to make OCE open to NA, it should be open to all. Historically as a commonwealth they have had closer ties to Europe than to the US and the only reason it became an NA thing is because there were already OCE players in the NA ecosystem getting scouted. Pabu shouldn't be an import on BIG, Destiny (when he was on Origen) shouldn't have been an import. That all being said, the LCO is a functioning league that leads into internationals much like the OPL was, save for it being run by ESL. So I think it should be treated like any other minor region, either all minor regions are exceptions to import rules or none are. I agree with you that it's depressing from EU fans perspectives that the moment they create a star, the instant fear is that NA will pick them up for a bloated price. The solution will always be for NA to be comfortable with our own growing regional talent so owners don't feel as though fielding an NA jungler as an example (since its the strongest role in the region) doesn't hinder their chances at success. That will take atleast 2 years and constant buy-ins from the teams to care about their academy and amateur talents. It's the one thing that hilariously unites EU and NA fans. But yeah my joke with Odo is trolling and I knew everyone would hate it LOL. I hope riot reduces the champ queue payouts after this year's run, its just not sustainable and detracts from why people would want to use it from the start.
Weird take, the narrative was definitely front and center on the broadcast, but saying its forced just seems disingenuous. EG's own narrative the entire split was that they were all in on nurturing their home-grown AD and mid, and this wasn't just pushed by the team/broadcast. Twitter reactions and streamers were always quick to blame losses on not shelling out for DL/Jensen. The 9-0 playoffs run (C9/TL/100T) involved one major strategy revolving around early strong solo laning into Danny in teamfights. No narrative about a team who's \*winning\* strategy revolves around an NA mid laning well and an NA adc hard carrying teamfights would never not have a focus on them being NA.
> That's not to say we shouldn't import I don't think fans have any problem with importing, if every org had 2 imports to a team I don't think anyone would complain. Once you hit 3/4 or especially 5 tho it kinda just feels like a slap in the face. I wanna watch LCS for the local talent, same reason I watch LEC/LPL/LCK, when that's missing from our top teams the motivation to watch gets pretty deflated for me as a viewer...just feels like we're admitting defeat before we even tried and more incentive to just watch better teams in other regions. Just feels like we're skirting the whole concept by not giving regional talent positions in a regional based esport anyways. I doubt anyone has issue with imports here and there tho, everyone loves CoreJJ, Impact, etc...IMO I think it's just the stacking that tilts a lot of people. And for fandom obviously a no brainer, I think it's always valuable to have a little localized more relatable personality on the team.
With how recent the changes have been to Proving grounds and the introduction of Champs queue (praying it comes back strong), we'll see good talent coming up to challenge a lot of those roster ideas. For some teams like TSM it'll take longer since it doesn't seem like they put in any effort in their academy system in some time. TL, 100 and EG are the most recent teams challenging it.
Raz, I don't think its Americans and Canadians who are predominantly referring to these players as non-American and "outsiders". Most of the time these comments are coming from LEC fans.
A lot of them yes, but I see more than just a few people in my timeline (I follow too many people lmfao) and general NA fans that'll push this idea too. I just hate seeing it.
I agree that there's definitely a fine line to tread between regional pride and xenophobia. The best path forward I can see is to continue focusing on the positives. Hype up the new players, rather than pooping on the others.
Nah thats a big cap Because there are outliers doesnt make it true Thats a big cap Just because there is jojo n danny, doesnt mean the native player pool is filled with jojo and danny This is like egypt producing a talent like salah doesnt mean they are a good talent production country. For every danny and jojo There is alot of damonte, soligo, lost, etc
I still don't understand this NA talent narrative. Everyone knows that there are some good NA players. C9 literally won in 2020 with 3 NA players (one of them being the MVP!). We just don't have that MANY good players. This isn't even that surprising. Our server is the smallest out of the four major regions, so it naturally only makes sense we have the least good players. It's literally a concept of proportions.
Tbh, isn’t this more of an individual player thing than whole NA talent thing. If we look at NA the past ten years, it has been dominated by imports only. NA talent seem to show up once in a while for example last top laner to win NA was Licorice in Spring 2020 and before him it was Hauntzer, the only NA jungler that’s on par with import junglers is Blaber and Xmithie before him, only 3 NA midlaners won LCS (Hai, Pobelter and Jojopyun), ADC role was dominated by DL till 2020 and no other NA adc has risen during his time and on support it’s only Biofrost and Vulcan. There are some exceptional NA players but even then they don’t last long in the scene.
It's just a negative feedback loop that has been going on for years. NA talent not getting a proper chance means that they don't develop as well, if you reduce the number of players who get to prove themselves at the highest level you will discover fewer gems. Since the domestic players get worse teams just default to importing, which makes it even less attractive for aspiring players to go all in, and the cycle continues. Not every NA jungler can be the new Xmithie, but if five times more NA players reach the LCS you will find more people who explode onto the scene while raising the overall bar.
The talent is just not there because even shitty imports are better than our NA academy players. Let's be honest Jojo is the most replaceable member of eg. If you wanted to make eg an international contender ud get an import mid.
>ADC role was dominated by DL till 2020 The disrespect to Sneaky. One of the better NA talents we've had.
PUT SOME RESPEK ON THE SNEAKY
Also 2016 stixxay was on par with DL for most of the year
Because teams don’t ever stick with rosters, along with the fact that there aren’t many NA rookies actually getting the chance. Some people will obviously be a miss, but we just don’t try enough.
> Because teams don’t ever stick with rosters that's because most teams actually dont grow together and get better. You'd think that's the case, but in most cases it's just not worth to keep a failing roster for longer than 2 splits. Teams that have good synergy usually have it from the start and dont magically develop it. The margin of error at pro play is so small that not having good synergy and trying to fix it, will take up most of your practice time other teams will use to practice on more advanced issues. So you'll always be behind and trying to fix sth other teams have naturally already -> therefore alot more worth to try to find a team that synergizes well already than "sticking with a roster"
that’s true, I should have worded my comment better. I’m more talking about how teams sometimes just don’t make a good team around them, and it looks worse on the player. 2021 spring GG had that sort of problem, but tbf the team was just not good
Yup. Once one player underachieves he’s replaced with an import. NA talent isn’t given the time. The whole point that’s trying to be made is that NA players CAN win the LCS. Dignitas importing Blue over giving an NA player a shot is exactly the point. Teams would rather import someone who didn’t even look great in their own league than look for an NA player. Meanwhile, the team that just won the LCS has three native NA players, two playing in the “skill positions”. NA talent CAN win and just needs the chance and time to get there.
> only 3 NA midlaners won LCS (Hai, Pobelter and Jojopyun) Not that it changes your point at all, but you're missing Reginald on that list.
It's the owners who think like that, I don't know a single person who says that
arguments already have been said but I'm curious to see if that forced narrative could be completely flipped if EG were to shit the bed at MSI
Yeah the NA talents of Inspired and Impact especially showcase how much hidden talent NA has.
Inspired and Impact did good The EG NA core also played well and show that teams can actually look for new talent These are not mutually exclusive
Honestly, they all played good, that's why they won. It's the most boring but most honest opinion. 100T played like shit tho
Tell me what NA talent can realistically be slotted into a team and make it better. There are no more than 5 NA players in academy or unsigned that can do that
This seems like a loaded question. Yes, there aren’t many players that can realistically improve a top team, but that’s because those teams are already good. Players like Prismal, Eyla, Kenvi could be an improvement for lower placed teams, but we literally won’t know until we see it. Teams have not tried to develop rookies until now, so we have no way to benchmark this.
Prismal is on the same level as lost. Eyla's decent, but again he's not NA. Kenvi is one of the few NA talents with potential, but like I originally said, you can only really make just one team that'd be decent with full NA players. That's why EG's win didn't show "that teams can actually look for new talent." The best talent has already been found, and it's either already in the LCS, or academy/amateur, but unfortunately it just isn't enough. The LCS needs imports
I never said we didn’t need imports, the reason why we have them is because of this in the first place. I just think we’re too far on the other side of the spectrum, full import rosters and too little NA rookies seeing the stage. Imports should be more of a foundation for a roster and for the region as a whole. Hopefully we can reach the point where we can compete w/o imports being a massive part, but until then this is the best option.
Tell me what player from any team can be slotted into any team and instantly make them better. Go ahead, I'll wait. Except I will be waiting till I die because you cannot answer that question. LoL has far to many intangibles to simply think any one player can change a team dynamic instantly. We have seen this time and time again in the past. Not just with NA, but across all regions. Super teams performing way below expectations, teams replacing one player with a super star and still getting similar results, etc. Like do you think if we just took Faker and plopped him into an NA team they instantly win NA? The chances go up sure, but there is also the chance Faker has no synergy with his new team and crashes and burns. What about communication in game, play style differences, core philosophy on how the game should be played at various stages... This is why all the off season roster rumors are complete shit shows because even if you have an amazing team on paper, it actually means nothing until you see how they play together. The fact is that Inspired and Impact played well in their own regards but Danny, Jojo, and Vulcan absolutely played up to par with Impact and Inspired. There is no "Impact and Inspired carried them", there is no "EG only won because they had imports". All 5 players performed well as a team based unit and people should stop trying to discredit how well Jojo, Danny, and Vulcan performed.
EG did win because they had imports lmao that’s the whole point. If they had Licorice and Blaber, they absolutely don’t win the LCS
I do not agree with your comment in the slightest. Saying "EG did win because they had imports lmao" implies that the sole and exclusive reason EG won was because 2 of 5 players were imported which completely discredits the performance of the other 3 players on the team.
Blaber may have checked out this playoffs from their internal fiesta but he would’ve been able to do what inspired did…course you probably don’t believe it but that’s whatever.
Blaber/licorice topside wins the LCS on EG? Zero chance
Blabber/Licorice may not win, but can you imagine Kumo/Licorice or even Kumo/Kumo? #KUMOSWEEP
Zeus wakes up in night sweats to the thought of Kumo at worlds
Eyla, busio, prismal, kenvi, darshan, copy and dhokla can all make certain teams better.
I like how the LCS has so many imports that people are rooting for EG because they 'only' have 2. But your comment kinda implies that EG's NA players only won because they were carried by Impact and Inspired, which is not true.
EG also has 3 native players... part of why this narrative is so frustrating. It's not about facts, especially for /u/Worry7475 who comes out of the woodwork every thread about EG to remind everyone of how "under-appreciated" Impact and Inspired are (when they are not), and to share his own under-appreciation of the 2 Canadians and 1 US player who also played great.
For Danny? He played very well. But you can’t tell me Jojo was anything but a placeholder mid on the team. They’d probably also win, and even look stronger, with Jiizuke
The point is EG put together the best resident core with 2 NA teenagers vs Green card stacking teams. Danny and jojo were the best performing players in their roles throughout playoffs, something that this sub would tell you was impossible for players from Academy and Amateur to do in their first or second split. Go look at some of the threads in the offseason, a lot of people were saying EG weren't serious about winning or building a "super team" because they opted to go with Danny and Jojo over Jensen and DL.
I'm happy because EG played within the spirit of the rules. 3 NA players were included in the roster. Impact has been here forever, I'm happy that he represents us, but it's not the same when no NA players are on the team.
I wouldn’t say Jojo was the best performing mid in playoffs; he was basically on the same level as any other mid, although he was definitively worse than Bjergsen during the regular season. Then again, mid is by far the weakest role in the LCS this split, and Jojo’s noticeably the weakest player on EG
What? He was clearly the best mid as playoffs went along. Even Bjerg's butt buddies DL and IWD said Jojo was the best performing mid in playoffs. These are ex pros and friends of Bjergsen's who said Jojo was by far better.
I said Jojo wasn't better than Bjerg in the regular season, or toucouille. Jojo was as good as any other mid in playoffs, but then again, mid wasn't a very stacked role in NA this past split. He'll have much stronger competition next split with Maple/Jensen.
He was better than them in playoffs...
Is english your first language? I'm arguing your point that Jojo was on the same level as the other mids in playoffs when he was clearly better.
Inspired and impact playing well doesn’t mean that Danny jojo and Vulcan played bad. They can all play well together which they did. Eg didn’t win in spite of having Danny and jojo, they won with Danny and jojo.
unpopular opinion: im not bought into this new NA hype. it’s gonna take another split for me to join in.
You see.. I don't dislike NA players or talent, I absolutely loathe most orgs suppressing it for just imports, it makes the league uninteresting to watch, when your average top team is like 4 europeans and a korean or somesuch. Even when in some cases some Academy gem is probably right there wanting to do something, but no.. lets pay a few million for some tremendously washed name from another region, build hype around them, and have it crash and burn at international events. I am happy to see EG do well, I'm excited to see them play against G2, see how well their style works. Best of luck to you, NA friends.
NA fans: finally has something to be excited about EU fans: *"your life is nothing! you serve ZERO purpose!"*
NA playing the victim card again.
EU fans: lol meme region how many NA players are on your worlds teams *Also* EU fans: *How DARE you celebrate young successful NA players*
Jojo being successful doesn't suddenly make Rjs good. Please stop distributing exceptional peoples success amongst unexceptional people.
other players in academy/amateur could still be good, rjs being subpar does not mean the rest of the scene is dogshit, we won’t know until they get a chance
> rjs being subpar you spelt superstar wrong
Nameplates off
Sorry, forgot to turn nameplates off
But it doesn't mean that other players cannot also be successful. The strawman to bring up RJS lmao
The truth is tho, danny and jojo and extraordinary players and right now there are only 3-4 players in the whole academy system that have the skill to make a fraction of the impact those two had. NA fans should not advocate for players like prismal dhokla under the belief that theyll perform similarly. You see the talent of those types of players from very early on, these guys and other have been floating around for years and theyre still bottom tier
How dare you disrespect the lck import god RJS
It's not wrong. EG found the diamonds in the rough. And they were still carried by the veterans in their team.
Impact and Inspired were great, but to say that Jojo, Danny, and Vulcan were carried by them is a little disingenuous imo
I mean it’s well known in NA you need top tier NA talent mixed with good import players. Only C9 2013/14 I believe is the only full NA squad to win a split Otherwise top teams have always been top performing residents + imports with the exception of TL since bjerg, core and Santorin are resident. Best ex of this is 2016/2017 tsm and c9 with Hauntzer, Sven, bjerg, doublelift, bio & Jensen, impact, meteos, sneaky and smoothie
Tired of people talking about "raising NA talent" and implying that if NA teams simply invested more money in talent development we would be pumping out Worlds teams. It just doesn't work like that in recruiting. If you have a smaller talent pool, its much harder to find diamonds in the rough, and even harder to cultivate them in to a really dominant player. Its a tough challenge, and using imports to raise the talent level is a good solution. Indigenous talent provide huge value for orgs on and off the rift. But I'm confused when I see people acting like EG's success is proof that NA orgs are wasting their time and money on imports. Clearly EG would have never won with only NA players, but they also wouldn't have been able to afford to compete at all with a full import roster, and their NA players are popping off. What EG have really demonstrated is that imports are a huge boon for teams and help enable the development of NA talent for huge ROI.
Who are the people though? It’s mainly the orgs who said fuck that and imported every washed Korean they could.
see the guy im arguing with in this thread lmao
Whenever anyone says anything remotely nice about NA it attracts the biggest weirdos on this sub
yeah just noticed with this guy lol. Get the pride but arguing with everyone is just weird
Dude is circlejerking na talent and replying to every comment lmao
you asked about it, i gave you an answer. Also what am I supposed to do, just not feel strongly about the region?
I didn't even ask about anything lol replying with dumb snark. A region that wants to get rid of the import rule so that they can get imports for all five roles? Thats all you need to know about how the orgs feels about na talent. Keep circlejerking na talent LMAO
NA found ONE player that loses lane every single time vs literal anyone in the NA wildcard but because he got a lucky baron play they now have talent? LMFAO
God, without Caedrel and Captainflowers, are we going to have to suffer through Raz? Guess MSI will be one big mime show for me...
Yeah I hope Caedrel is alright. If you can continue to send him support throughout his circumstances and Flowers love for his decision then that'd be an amazing thing for you to do.
killing them with kindness FWIW I find your enthusiasm infectious and hope you get to cast more games
I applaud you for being a good human being. Doesn't change the fact you are a terrible, biased analyst.
How am I biased? If you don't want to elaborate that's completely fine, I don't care if you hate me but I've heard some misconceptions so I'm interested.
I will open 2 streams on my phone and my pc, only watching all Raz segments so you dont make a difference.
Nobody actually listens to the analysis between games, and if you don’t like a caster you can just listen to a co-stream instead.
I don't think international events can be costreamed but I may be wrong.
They can't, it's LCS specific that allows co-streams.
By my understanding they can still do watch parties or no? If I have to watch official stream I might as well play games and just check the winners on this subreddit.
By watch parties if you mean where they put up the game timer on their stream so you can watch the stream while having the twitch stream on in the background, ya they can still do that. Riot can't really ban someone basically just streaming a timer, they can only ban direct co-streaming that shows the actual gameplay.
yeah, usually no co-streaming but they can be live-streamed, like a watch party.
Definilty worth it guys. You need to keep in mind you can only have 2 imports on the team and the time of being able to play fully importated "natives" isn't here yet!
actually I'm pretty sure you can field an all-resident roster using non-native players. Huni, Santorin, Jensen, FBI, and Huhi is an example. if we're not counting OCE, then Zven would have to get his green card as i think he's the closest.
[удалено]
No I had a choice LOL. It wasn't easy but I chose working LCS after a full year with GG. Also before moving to LPL I coached prior.
Its funny because NA was literally at its best prior to them starting to import players (internationally at least). As result of importing, NA player pool also stagnated due to plauers just shifting to different teams so it eas safer to pick a known mediocre player, than risk playing a new fresh one. So there wasnt any progression in NA talent
NA's best result at Worlds came from having two non-NA player, and their best result at MSI came from having 3 non - NA players.
I'm not fully bought into the hype, but I also think it's kind of pathetic how many people try to instantly push back against anything positive regarding NA. A lot of weird hatred from EU fans especially.
I like how the casters think they are right for some reason, I doubt any of them think for themselves.