The Dive | "The Fudge Factor (And Semifinals)"

hello and welcome to the dive presented by honda season 5 episode 17 we just finished with the rumble stage and we're moving straight on to semi-finals here although cloud9 and pentinet are both not moving on they are done rest in peace yeah that was a doozy of a group stage uh there's a lot to unpack there a lot of things happen uh i'm actually looking forward talking about it great yeah you do what do you what i was looking i mean i mean you can start feel free yeah looking forward to talking i'm not happy to talk about it that sucked i'm sad i'm super sad um it was a really really weird uh weird tournament for c9 i think um that's what a lot of people are talking about with them exiting is is how good are they really because they were able to take games off the korea and chinese number one seeds but then they also lost to no offense to pentinet probably one of the the weakest round robin opponents to make it at msi so it's it's really hard to judge um you know how good they they really were um yeah and so i don't know it was a really weird tournament and then like the way that it all went out with the losing to pennsylvania when it mattered most kind of thing like all that was just uh the most quintessential anything that you could you could have happen yeah i mean it's tough right it's like for me i i think at the end of the day um you know and i kind of tweeted this i think people somewhat misunderstood what my point was like they took it more as an excuse but it's like i think that you know being being like really consistent and not making mistakes is just as important as your skill in laning your team fighting your objective control your vision like these are thing it's it's like an equal part of the game right you know losing in lane it's it's really it's just as bad if you don't lose lane but you're someone who consistently gets caught and dies and that costs your team more right and and the part that it's like i think was missing as context from from my tweet um is the idea that it's like not all mistakes are equal right there are some mistakes that are so much more costly you know missing some cs not that big of a deal maybe going for like a trade kill or a death or whatever you miss execute a little bit maybe not that big of a deal but if you do that same thing right was when baron spawns he was barren off of it that can cost you a whole game if you bit your team into a team fight that you know they're not in position to take that can cost you a whole game and cloud9 consistently made those kind of mistakes like the really big oh my god the game's over kind of mistakes and that to me was was their biggest downfall you know they're these kind of mistakes are the ones that can eliminate 30 minutes of solid gameplay right and they had tons of games throughout the group stage where i would actually say all three losses against dom one were fairly competitive and then they beat them once right but in those three games they had critical errors where all of a sudden the game flips on its head they also had some of these where it was early and it blew up obviously most notably uh you know the dfm one at the scuttle the mad lions wanted the scuttle it's like these mistakes that just end the game and cloud9 i think made you know probably more of those than any other team yes they're obviously a lot better than pentenette as far as their overall performance you know regardless of record um but penta it was more like okay you're just like not as good as some of these other teams they just can't compete for the most part uh whereas cloud9 to me it was like you're watching them they can compete they're showing that they compete for 20 or 30 minutes then they do some really horrible thing and the game is over right and i think that's why people come away feeling a little bit weird is that it's like ah man that's frustrating like we almost had it so many times and like i saw a lot of like unlucky and stuff and like i mean i guess a little bit but it was more about decision making and poor evaluations i think of their position and how they had to play it out because a lot of it was unforced errors right the most egregious one as far as unforced error to me was the one against psg where they had like an incredible scaling comp with cog lulu right and blabber is in the side brush you get them off the bear and then he split from the rest of his team and just kind of like bare slaps the leona and it's like what is this gonna do here and so of course you know psg engages on him they kill him off everyone from cloud9 is like piling in to try to support him they get grouped up they all get hit by lee sin kick they all die you lose baron game over right and there was a lot of a lot of those uh i felt like kind of plays the thing that i wanted to tackle actually um was the so many people throwing around unlucky uh terminology i know most of these people are not actually it's ironic saying it's looked yeah yeah they're not saying it's luck base right and they're they're they're going for encompassing that feeling um and don't have a more perfect language to actually put it into but there are a substantial amount of people that also see that and then and they actually you know do feel like oh it was unlucky you know and it's actually like you know luck base or chance base or anything like that which it is not to me um if if you are making you know decisions in the game this game is based off of making decisions if you're making mistakes in these in decisions then that is your level that is part of you as a player or as a team and that means that you are worse that is bad you know bad decision boom okay that's part of me that that means that i'm bad it's like a similar thing to your point on uh on consistency because since consistency is not just important for the pro level of play it's important for just even you at home climbing your solo queue ladder um you know that that that separates and it removes it's actually based on your rating is based on trying to remove you know the randomness factors um and actually trying to overcome some of the unlucky things of unlucky teammates and stuff like that so yeah i really wanted to tackle the the unlucky terminology because i um actually i definitely think it's overused i think we can definitely use better language because uh what really was sad was you know and what were some of these choices in these decisions um yes they also talked about specifically for cloud9 you know um afterwards and interviews they were talking about communication with blabber between lanes and stuff for some of these uh things yes the scuttle crab one at the beginning was like the funniest because it's very obviously you know and clear on screen a big blunder and it's very easy for everyone to grasp onto um but they themselves talking about it you know even before getting into game and champ selecting stuff and the communication between top and being able to move and all of this getting bundled up into it um for me it's just like yes we we could compete um in a lot of these areas you know like laning and you know team fighting and a lot of stages and drag fights and we got to see cloud9's peak you know in the win versus dom one in the in the win versus uh you know rng so i'm i'm still excited for this team but you have to remove you have to remove these mistakes your example of the blabber going for the leona is a such a clear one because you look at that play and you see him moving back and forth in the brush too i assume there's a lot of team communication going on right there and they're discussing like going for this engage but you have to take into account the actual game state you know where he's so far away from his carries that if you touch that leona that is not only the worst possible you know champion on their team to engage on it was literally the only tanky champion but the leona is also closer to their carries so they can hit blabber over the wall claudia's carries can't hit and so then they're forced they walk around in this group around the wall and then just get aoe leona's done so it's actually the worst possible scenario their carriers kind of group up in in an attempt to follow up on this yeah i don't even need to fight you're caught lulu you could just afk and farm even even taking aside the the other extenuating services of the game and where you're about to go for it just looking at that play um you you do not that is not an engage that that is not a go call as far as the you know whatever whose choice it was communication or whoever starts it out that that has to those types of things have to be um uh corrected you know i think um a lot of the blabber stuff reminds me of the early blabber and n a days um you know when he came onto the scene there were a lot of jokes about him being like a brain off player and like just hella aggro and you know all those those funny like listenings that they had with reaper and stuff is like get your brain on today this kind of stuff and then like he got better in n a to the point where like he was like okay he's just insane but he's also really aggressive um and like there's stuff like when you look back at this season where he like invaded i think it was cersei and like he like just kind of killed him i think he was on lilly or maybe xerxes was on lilia and he just like sidestepped a bunch of stuff but it's like those kinds of plays that work in n a that i think the better competition he struggles with making those same plays where he's just monstrously better and like it i think he has to relearn a little bit on the pro stage some of these aggressive tendencies where he's going to get punished way harder needs to be a little bit more thoughtful about how he does it i guess i could say i'm hopeful that that can happen for blabber because we've seen him improve in n a and like as he gets more national stage time and games and stuff that he can hopefully keep keep leveling up um but it's not a total excuse because he's been a pro now for i know was it four years um in a starter for two unfortunately they didn't get any international experience last year with uh obviously msi getting canceled and stuff but um yeah you hope that that they can take this thing bring it back so if they qualify for worlds again uh this this time that they can clean up these really bad inconsistent problems that they have go ahead as well if you have i was gonna say you know one thing that i uh i did think was also interesting i mean people talked a lot about the rumble pick like that was like just a huge focus for for a lot of junglers right in that like hey these guys just can't play it they're not playing it correctly i think that was true with um with bobber but i also thought it was kind of interesting that you know there wasn't a ton of discussion about morgana as well because even just like stylistically think about all the champions that blabber has been able to dominate on it's like often champions that can set up for themselves you know play making champions you think about you know the olaf where he has all these highlights where he's just running over games lee sin when that was meta for the jungle you know even like uh his gragas and his j4 where it's like flag and drag flash body slam flash hitting these combos it's a different play style and i'm not gonna say it's like the exact one to one or maybe quite as big as like when marksmen were swapping to mages but i do think like the shift as far as the jungle meta was nearing uh you know that sort of level of change as far as playstyle right and we saw like double if was a big example always got me in but tons of of 80s around the world struggled with that meta change right struggled with the shift from uh traditional marksmen to mages in the bot lane and i do think that you know rumble as far as actual like skill and mastery of the champion we saw that was hard but morgana is also a playstyle thing where you're essentially like more of a support right like you're playing a very different role um you know you have one unreliable skill shot in in your binding and then of course you can like be fairly powerful if you can land your soul shackles in skirmish and so on but it's a different style than what he has been successful on so i did think that hurt him too of course it's not an excuse because you know to play at the top level just as i criticized marksman players for not being able to play mages if there's going to be a meta shift for junglers well you got to be able to play mages too right the more complete players always get an advantage especially when there is a meta shift someone who can play it all is always going to have the edge and that hurt perks here as well perks i thought looked pretty pretty invisible on control mages he had one good victor game uh his two orianna games i can't remember a single good shock wave between the two and he had two other victor games where you know it was pretty absent you know i i'd be curious to dig into some of the actual like laning stats and maybe i can do that before we while you guys are talking um but you know my feeling was he just didn't perform to his level and those were the two guys that i thought you know just didn't didn't look like themselves they they just had a really rough tournament they played poorly see i think the uh the blabber blabber thing uh was kind of hammered a lot on both the on the rumble and the more ghana as far as everyone's like he can only play under ah he's been figured out and then teams also started uh you know drafting around that and so i guess he's watching the stylistic play right people were focusing on oh he can't pilot a champion and forgetting that it's like it's a total shift almost that's all that's all yeah and you definitely notice like the black a lot of opportunities where he black shields himself on morgana instead of you know zven or uh or perks or something like that uh yeah though those are definitely relevant we want the best for cloud9 and i'm actually very glad that this team be uh you know did get this experience um and i'm pretty hopeful for [Applause] you know strap on my my north american hopeful optimism um because every time we get smashed down like this you know you gotta start sifting through the grains of sand for the uh for the for the diamonds there um all the things that they can improve on really were were shown up with a big magnifying glass here yes there's been so much conversation around the jungle around blabber around that adaptation um for the perks point i think a lot of it was um positioning uh for him both a couple in team fights some in side lanes as well but in some of my early reviews of the early games as far as the champion specific stuff like his movement on victor in lane was really good and i was getting super hyped and i was just like very impressed in a lot of these situations where victor especially in some of these aggressive matchups that he's playing into he's relying on movement to dodge on skill shots or ganks and stuff like that he has really good uh gravity field placement and stuff like that and so i was uh i was getting pretty hyped for that but um it definitely the he definitely had some positional errors uh towards towards the mid stages and later stages with those champions which um to your point you know also position very differently than those aggressive ones where you're uh you know you have cc or your silence or something flanking yeah or you're uh you're playing lady gary's uh but he did play a significant amount of ad carries but i don't want to focus so much just on that like cloud9 had other a lot of other issues as well these team-oriented issues where we're talking about some of the choices for the setups for team fights also if you notice whenever cloud9 um you know did have a disadvantage at the beginning of the game holy moly was it like blown open into uh you know a lot of the games were just blown open to big gaping holes whereas a lot of the rng games and dom won games um you would see they go into cons conservation mode and they start giving up the minimum in a lot of these areas but they do give up um without confrontation and they look to trade here trade there uh and then you get scenarios like oh do you know domwan gave up all game long basically um little little incremental things versus uh dfm and then they wait for the one mistake dfm over chase into the base giant aoe team fight boom and domino actually won that you know that dfm game where they they were at disadvantage the entire time so some of the things about playing the game from uh disadvantage um you could see you know lpl lck representatives doing that that a bit differently as well um i really did think that the bottom lane deserve praise for clown x i know a lot of people especially with the highlight plays that fudge is pulling off later with the lease in um and then an irelia in the final game um everybody you know focusing on that a lot and i was very glad to see you know his growth continued growth uh as a player because fudge still very young and he's always had his sights on improving constant improvement which is is really nice to see but overall for the for the rest of the team too you know yeah i think so i mean i think we could say that that's probably the biggest upside takeaway in the storm is fudge feels like an anime protagonist in a lot of ways where he kind of gets beat down but then like powers up very quickly uh you know like going all the way back to the locking tournament getting slammed by someday in alfari to like qualifying for this event you know taking both them down on the way there uh and then kind of struggling at the start had a rough game versus uh khan in in their first round robin of the group stage all the way to like now just hulking out making plays uh in in the entire round or rumble stage uh so i i think fudge is someone who can keep getting better he can be a huge focal point for this team uh going even into summer uh just can see that his carry play is something they can probably rely on a little bit more um and then like you said bot lane stuff was really good um a little bit like you know like everyone on cni's they were inconsistencies but vulcan and sven uh i think were a lot of times the backbone for the team when a lot of other things were going wrong around them uh so i was really excited about that i did want to hop in about the the jungle metapoint um because i think it could be easy for people to think of this as an excuse for blabber not playing well because one thing i do want to say is everyone had to deal with the jungle meta change it wasn't like these guys were like the rest of the world was playing on this patch because everyone talked about oh well na is behind a patch it's it's did not matter at all no one played these junglers before they got to iceland basically or with the patch at solo queue you know and so i think you know you can talk about some junglers maybe being a little better in that play style already or whatever but like you saw everyone i think in in the group stage struggle with the rumble you're watching canyon have issues uh i think way even has some issues if i remember correctly a lot of junglers eliot even in the first part of the rumble stage was like shooting us alt into the valley in top lane you know that that that nice image in top lane if you look up is always going down that thing sometimes like everyone was struggling struggling with the champion and so that's why i think blabbers mistakes stand out even more because he was making just non-champion related mistakes sometimes too i think because you could you could see just a lot of people struggling but like blabber was extra extra struggling and so that's why i don't want to you know paint it as as just a meta thing um no i wasn't trying to do that which is i knew you weren't but i know people are going to think that in the comments so i want to make sure that we get that out and that's why i was saying like hey it's an advantage you should like players are rewarded for being good players at lots of different stuff right it's the same thing that top laners have to deal with guess what sometimes carry pla scary tops are the meta and some top laners can't play those so they're pretty crap in those metas sometimes it's tank only meta and some of the carry top laners aren't as good at team fighting so they struggle right it's a stat you're evaluated on is your your ability to adapt you know and incorporate new changes yeah um about uh psg though they also got eliminated um honestly did not get eliminated or pgg one letter off pgg uh them getting eliminated um jazz one over my heart uh you know okay came in uh already ready to you know root for for pabu after you know all-stars and everything like that um but chaz as well bio panther uh you know just just hats off to these guys just because remember to take a step back again and and just for a moment uh you know a round of applause for them as far as what they had to deal with here their entire league was dissolved and their players most of their players shipped off and yet they they have this miraculous run they qualify to the group stage they you know they get their upset win um i i just thought it it was definitely a big celebration as far as the the monumental effort that they had to put in and the entire time doing it so fun with uh with all the memes and having a good attitude uh you know keeping up their spirits the memes are definitely an important part i mean they are honestly yeah i think uh they they used their time on stage well uh you know both in terms of trying to have fun on the stage but then afterwards i saw a ton of their pictures at like the volcano and stuff like they they definitely uh were having a good time and i know i said earlier about like oh they're maybe one of the weaker teams we've seen at a rumble stage just portion the stage of the msi i didn't want that sound like a shot because i think as kobe highlighted they had to go through so much crap to get here that's totally outside their control and all this stuff and so that's why it's pretty insane that they overtook the tcl um you know a region that generally is seen as stronger and they were able to do that in this year where they had to go through a lot of struggles um and then i think you know like obviously salty and a fan here but like what they did was huge like they and the way they did it too was not like when they beat c9 it wasn't like this coin flip you know they got the kiana and like a bunch of assassins and they they three-furrow us at level one and then snowball the game encounters run all over the map they they fought front to back with like a victor control mage team comp send a tk thing got a small lead in the early game then just slowly ground out c9 yeah yeah that's pretty impressive that shows that they have a lot of skill that they can actually win that way and so um yeah i think pentinet uh was actually really enjoyable to have uh you know playing their games and then meme in the hell off twitter yeah i mean i was casting that game and i was definitely dying inside but at the same time it was like i had to i had to give them the respect for it right and i talked about that a lot in the cast that it's like hey like they're actually just playing a standard game they're out macroing they're out team fighting their decision making is better you know cloud9 was not grouped when they need to be at the end of the day they're not the better team but they played better in that game and they played better uh in that game with a tremendous amount of disadvantages that i think that their league and players have been been kind of dealing with so i thought it was it was pretty awesome and definitely have been exciting uh i wanted to talk a little bit about some of the positive for me for cloud9 i know you guys have been touching on but obviously i said some you know my negative thoughts um but i was just so blown away by fudge not only did i think he had like a good performance for him or for expectations i actually thought he was maybe the second best or or even arguably uh the best performing top laner in in the like rumble stage you know i think probably number two uh i think that is like a pretty reasonable take i think that you know the playmaking that he had uh even like his his team fighting was so good he was pretty consistent across almost all games like even when put down in focus like the malphite game is team fighting was really good um you know that stood out to me a lot obviously the lease in the renekton games have been pretty solid always finding good angles good opportunities to engage the irelia game whether or not you think it was like super serious doesn't matter he still played it very very well so you know i just think his growth has been so monumental and and i agree i think it was you kobe talking about their bottom lane their bottom lane was really good throughout the throughout the event right yes uh there were bad moments and stuff i think especially from zven he's gonna be the only receiving out of more criticism than vulcan i think everyone's like pretty agreed that like damn vulcan you played really well almost the entire time uh zven had some some stinker games and some mistakes but like overall like you know that that bot lane performance was good right and and i do maintain hope and like yes this is like me as a as you know an lcs uh hopeful and an lcs fan um that that they can make it happen for worlds right you know like three out of the five pieces had really good performances this is one of the worst performances perks has ever had in his career and like i i don't expect it to be repeated in the same way at worlds like i think he can bring a better level and i'm hopeful that you know blabber can bring a better level whether through you know improving at these picks if these are going to remain in the meta over the course of you know the next four or five months whatever it is until worlds or by maybe just having having the meta be something that fits him a little bit better and improving on some of the decision making you know reviewing some of the mistakes learning from some of the things that they failed at at msi so you know i'm still pretty pretty excited and kind of cautiously optimistic about c9's chances going into into another international tournament you know knowing that at least at their best uh they can compete with some of the very best teams in the world a little note for the continued meta rumble is all ready to freaks dismay on the list for bands for jungle specifically uh for the next patch they already announced it they tweeted out their little preview for that uh so i think they want to keep him out at least a little bit uh tone that power down perfect setup there azael for our honda mvp section uh if we can move right along to the honda mvp uh supported uh section that we have here question this time around what was the moment or play uh and the player responsible for that moment uh from the rumble stage games that really stood out to you i think uh for me uh it's gotta be the fudge irelia i mean i know that the uh the game didn't matter most recently it was just fresh on my mind that was really clean hit over the wraith camp wall hit a multi-man ultimate to get a bunch of stacks on people and then use them to jump and kind of congo line into the uh uh ziya who was coming down out of her ultimate uh got her to panic by going to the person next to her that's really clean i like fudge's carry play i hope we see more of it in the lcs now this split and less less gragas weak side yeah yeah isaiah's ended up talking uh i'm giving a bunch of praise the fudge but we we could just go down the line and keep choosing fudge plays the lee sin fudge play that that was when i still had hope you know i that was early in the morning just woke up listen to the games looking on my phone i'm like holy sh let's go fudge we can do it you know like that's where you're like oh my god cloud nine this wins gonna be huge we could make it out and it was just so well thought out to me i always loved the plays the most you know from guys like faker his not not just like the zed play but you think of the cassiopeia plays uh where he's he's predicting what his opponent's next move is going to be and dodging the cc preemptively so fudge goes in he's like all right not also going to try and cue auto me obviously lock him down but he's slow champion so warthop to the side to dodge it then flash over to the carry and that type of predictive play around your opponent's best options are always what i love to see the most because that that that's the mark of the highest level of players is they play around what their opponents are going to do and then it looks really cool yeah for me the fudge interview wow what a man you know just handling those questions with such poise such a calm so humble looking to improve that confidence all right do you have a do [Laughter] another one would be uh maple this is a call of game i think versus cloud9 was absolutely insane that one really stood out to me um not only because you know maple has just been kind of like a beast for so many years he has a little bit of a soft spot in my heart because he's been so good for so long and i really respect the consistency uh but also because akali wasn't really meta in this tournament right and he busted it out i thought they had a much worse comp than cloud nine in that game and it just didn't matter because he just went beast bowed you know he solo killed perks in lane he was popping off in team fights he was playing i just thought such an incredible game and and that was one of the moments that really stood out to me the the i think the one that that really stuck to me too was the xiaohu game i think it was against damon uh where he was lee sin and they had tf to support him he was i think that was uh against someone but i can't remember either way i mean xiaohu was someone that people were a little concerned about coming into the tournament and uh you know after watching him regionally kind of get uh stomped on a little bit in the playoffs uh but he's been one of the best players for for rng i'd say and really really good at making plays uh his gnar's been disgusting but that leasing game was one where they kind of fell behind everywhere on the map but top lane and he got really ahead and then he actually was the key factor in like the turning fight and being able to go into like that wraith brush and kind of wait for them to face check him and set his team up i mean i think xiaohu is so good about the entire game of league of legends not just the laning phase where oftentimes i think myself and a lot of people just tunnel on like wow did you see that 20 cs leading lane what a monster you know like i think xiaohu brings so much to the to the team yeah i would also shout him out for uh for playing mid lane as well because uh he topped the stats in two different categories there he would he was on the sheet twice one for one as a mid laner and one as a top laner for me um but for a non-fudge one i always say carsey and kaiser and specifically uh though the one i remember the most is the tristana jump in on three people just goomba stomping you know blowing everybody up but for so much of this tournament oh and a lot of the plays were with tristana combos and and all in bottom lanes um but they played that aggressive nice knife's edge in so many of the situations really well especially early on um and then kaiser continued throughout the rest of uh of the series to to be on point in starting out so many of these plays for them so that that to me was was really uh memorable the showmaker zoe game as well um that was really really insane like he he had a lot of i think absolutely incredible incredible games and i thought he was like by far the best mid in in the tournament uh so far he's just been slamming you know i don't think that um any any of the other mid laners have really lived up to showmaker thus far and and we'll see if that changes the knockout stage but definitely been some some really exciting moments uh so time to talk about the meta a little bit uh are you guys expecting kind of any major changes you know going from rumble stage to knockout is there anything that you think is is really going to kind of fall out of favor we've obviously seen somewhat of a deprioritization of rumble as teams kind of get used to like all right if he's going to get picked we're going to invade him or we're going to do something to like actually put him behind that's worked a couple of times and coming to best of five maybe that's even more of a concern i mean yeah we kind of talked about uh this on last episode too but i i really want like and support the rumble picks with uh cc setup in the team comp like you really get to see it shine the psg i was just so yeah i was so happy with the psg comp even though it was against cloud9 you know and uh you know it came at them beating up the boys i was just like oh my god we get to see rumble kiana again uh giving me flashbacks of clutch worlds run and stuff but um when you can combine it with stuff like that um you know things that can create space like the the nocturne uh galio dive um i thought i thought was really well utilized i don't expect there to be big shifts coming forward i'm hoping that we get to see um some of some of these mid laners to to the point playing um yes kian is probably not going to be super frequent especially not blind pick uh like that so much but akali as well i'm still holding out for for an increase in akali play we saw it a couple times uh you know just like we saw you know keanu a couple times poking her head in there uh i hope for best of five scenarios when you do get in the weeds um through the through the pick bands like when you're getting through these best of fives and that the bands evolve to what just beat us it starts to leave more openings for for counter picks like that and for teams to go for um you know some assassin heavy style uh pick bands so that's what i'm hoping for because i really like that that direction yeah it's always interesting too how a meta develops over a tournament because it's not just about learning what's good for the patch necessarily which always takes a little bit as you kind of be like oh this thing was actually good this whole time or this this was something but also like the individual teams learning each other's tendencies and knowing like okay let's not give kai wing leona that's scary and like those kinds of things that people start to pick up on um you know like with blabber like okay udyr is clearly his best thing let's start taking that away you know teams start to focus on that and i think that's what's also interesting with with some of this stuff um you know as as people have picked up rumble some teams have started being like uh he wasn't that scary on it so that that's the other thing that that i don't know if it technically counts as the meta in the sense that most people talk about it because it's it's more about the actual teams that are playing um but i think that's also what's really exciting when you start looking forward to best of fives is like hey now you're just playing this person you have about a week to prep for it so like what is your read from what you've seen going on in the meta and then also from the specific team in group stage so far um because some of those like i said like i would definitely look at trying to get a couple of these people off specific champions uh you know xiaohu on nars is terrifying and it's hard with some of the standard bands going on and then you start to see the really you know specific draft strategies and best of fives because if you're just red side banning these three things every game you know it's hard to fit some of these more specific bands in there i mean both both the lck and the lpl teams like nautilus kaiser every single game if they can pretty much so it'll be interesting to see if kaiser starts getting banned or taken away or if teams just aren't really worried about it uh there seems to be pretty like mixed feelings on the pick but i mean gala picked it eight times uh one i think all but one you know ghost played it 11 times out of 15 games and both their supports played eight nautilus games so like they're pretty much going to it every single time it's up so there are you know to your point some of those champions uh where it's like people are really really heavily prioritizing them that may be targeted and taken away and uh it'll be interesting to see if that kind of like opens up any holes in some of these teams games i hope that the sena doesn't uh get to fill in one of those holes because uh they could go right back to you to that and i honestly i don't really enjoy watching that style anymore uh i'm down for like sennheimer or something okay okay yeah if you if you went up with that you can get an approval but yeah i'm tired of this instead of tom kent stuff yeah yeah i mean it's kind of def it's definitely slow to watch right like sometimes i would say the one kind of thing i like about it is it sometimes gets paired with cool split pushers and stuff because it works really well with like side lane play and cross map play you know with cinahl and tom cage could also help you out but like the pick itself is usually pretty boring for sure uh said it's just that it's just slow right like it's it's fun to play i love that playing champion but i don't really like watching it uh because it doesn't really have pop-off moments like almost ever i know i'm sure someone's gonna jump in the comments and link some highlights like there are some but it's like cross cross map snipes yeah every time is hitting you with with 800 range she's popping off all right it's just like oh you auto cued someone from out of their range with a million stacks in competitive play and now they have to back up right like you see that heal through the whole team dude that was so good i'm not yeah i mean you could be great at the champion there's clearly huge amounts of skill to it but it's just not that exciting as far as spectator experience yeah i mean a large part of its play style too is like you just want to make the bot lane not interactive while you farm up your stacks and stuff with tk and you just he grey helps you heal and yeah it's it's it's a it's a boring bot lane for sure all right on to some semi-final previews uh dom one picked mad lions uh shock said on the broadcast they had a couple hours to pick but they just snapped we want mad lions no hesitation grab them up so that's going to be one of the matchups that leaves rng with psg uh what are your thoughts just right off the bat on dom one just immediately going to mad lions uh i mean it's not too surprising given that you've already seen pretty much everything by that point in the day it's not like you're you you have much debating to do if you've if you've already thought about it plus you have like all the scrims and stuff that you probably have you know experience with as well um i'm not surprised they snap picked i i feel like that i i feel like that i rarely hear teams take a long time to pick yeah but what about the actual choice here because because to me that one um i thought it actually made sense as far as the the trajectory of psg um and how they look just so much scarier each progressive day that we've gone on in the tournament um i i know a decent amount of people were shocked or sometimes you get offended if like they pick your team like what you think we're weaker huh you think you take us um i really do i think that the progression from from psg is being respected here with this pick um and again everyone's going to also always reference that oh my camera froze for a second um they they are also incorporating a substitute player yet again and so then it it should be you like like you have more gains to get by working more and more with this player as far as communication and team synergy and stuff like that um but also i think uh how they've actually adapted and utilized the meta um you know as far as talking about our stat for for judging uh junglers or any players on on adapting to these big changes and quickly incorporating the new champions guess what river is all over that okay he's all about it uh he is fully in there as far as junglers and that gives you a big advantage since especially in best of fives you are looking so critically at champion select um and the evolution of pick bands over a best of five series that sort of flexibility and adaptability is incredibly important um not to say like oh yeah hasn't been right there with the with it as well he's also because um you know by virtue of them also moving on you know he had to be but he was also quite good with uh with a lot of the new ones yeah i think mad lions probably i think just struggled more with macro than than some of the other teams did uh i felt like some of their games against rng and dom won like it was more about set up around dragons as a team for why they would would struggle less than like their skirmishing ability and some of these kinds of things and i think that's probably why i would guess don juan picked them um more than so then they think they have like a massive mismatch anywhere because i mean maybe mid lane i think humanoids had some some pretty questionable plays this tournament um and in showmaker like you're saying is they'll i think you're saying that like he's probably the best in the tournament so like maybe that's one of the areas they're targeting but i would i would expect that it's more of a team decision and just like hey we think that we can in a five game series beat them uh because we feel really confident about our our play versus them uh in 5v5s i mean mad lines can pop off there they're obviously a very scrappy team but they have struggled to find that same level of aggressiveness against the top teams and they've even said that as much in their interviews that they feel like they have a lot harder time playing confidently playing aggressively and knowing what they want to do against against the the dominant kia and rng yeah yeah i mean it makes a lot of sense you know especially when you look at the kind of matchups that they had they were both 31 minute wins for dom 1 they were both like 10k gold leads or they're about uh they were both very very comfortable games for adam won so i think you know probably based on the stage games too it makes sense i think where some of the surprise came you know i'd seen some surprise on social media uh was the idea of like you know the mad head-to-head with psg being 3-1 you know and kind of like looking at that as as it being a superior team through that lens and mad definitely had the better of psg you know in their match-ups you can even look at the psg game the one that they lost and it's like well that was kind of around the level level one or things that really went bad in the early game um but it did feel like domino was so incredibly comfortable against mad and mad you know had their had their good game today here where they got the the upset against rng and i think that's kind of like big for maybe building a little bit of confidence and saying hey we can challenge some of these top teams yeah because i think otherwise you know if they got handled by rng today and all the other games against rng and don juan were losses then you really kind of have no hope i think going into best of five so it'll it'll be a pretty interesting matchup you know i think that um as far as kind of like expectations versus reality for me like one of the biggest differentials was the bot lane right i do think that carzie and kaiser looked a lot better uh i tend to agree with you that like their issues were more like team issues and map play and some of the things that they uh sometimes get caught out in you know like i know the eu casters are like always joking about like we'd be watching a game and you would be like 10k ahead they're like i'm like this game's over and like but they got humanoid he could get caught out like you know like no matter what's happening like you can't lose this game like oh humanoid you know so so some of the led gassers definitely do not have the utmost confidence in in his consistency shall we say uh you know kind of a lot of memes about like uh you know how to how does humanoid die on a side lane like every single game type of thing um and and that's something that i think don moore is really good at punishing like if you do make a mistake don juan will punish you um and i think that mad it feels like their early games have been pretty solid and hopefully that they can craft some like intelligent plans and try to come up with you know some some advantages as far as their picks i think humanoid like his solution today was really really good overall i think he has been pretty impressive on those types of picks so uh i do think they're fairly flexible and and they're going to have to look to i think craft like specific strategies to try to i think get a one up on dom one because dom one is just so solid like despite the fact that there was so much talk about oh my god they're so shaky they went eight and two in the rumble phase right and and they still win so many of these games you know they topped the group in the first stage top group in the second stage and yes they had closer games i think than people were expecting but domwant does feel like they're getting better too i think that their games were more shaky in in the first phase you know the near loss to dfm the loss to cloud9 etc so so they are getting better and and i think they're going to be really really terrifying in the semifinals in humanoid's defense too and for a lot of mad lions a lot at least uh so far at this tournament so many of these uh you know getting caught out of mistakes or whatever have come after the fact that they've gotten this big lead and you can see it in his eyes and in the camera afterwards and his reactions and he's like here we go he's on the limit test he's going in and all of a sudden you know the games are like they have these big leads oh humanoid is under their sec you know tier three tower right now boom giving over a kill maybe they can use that gold uh and all of a sudden narrator is like spoiler no they did not come back and win that game madeline still won it uh and you know it's funny because like we have this a decent amount with uh with european representatives you know they're kind of living living some some true to g2 style stuff where happy games exactly some of these ones um you kind of pick apart some of the choices uh some of the team team choices as well as individual choices um but uh yeah i definitely do think the opening is there i think uh one of the key parts of the opening is barrel um he started to get a little bit more together in in the back half of the second round right at the beginning of this tournament for sure but he he was like really the clear weak link through through the majority of this tournament for this team um just questionable engages in lane out of lane positioning in team fights uh you know just like kind of hooking in often and then just like insta dying and like i always like nautilus is definitely one of those champs who's way more paper than you think he is as a tank because his only real defensive steroid is like i got a little bit extra health on my shield which you know like isn't really anything so uh if his aftershocks down he just dies i think a lot of times that happens to support players especially from behind but like a lot of these were not that kind of situation it was just like barrel was not playing well and so like you're saying with kaiser and karzi uh having a really good tournament so far like maybe if you can snowball bot lane um that's that's a way in but i still think it's hard because i think ghost has been really good um you know he's had some moments where he alters a little too aggressively on the kaiser but he's he's not like he's not someone who got a ton of respect prior to this tournament he's often considered like almost an afterthought a little bit for all the other good players but i think if he was as good as as people kind of gave him credit for this team would be struggling a lot more he's actually better than expectations in a lot of ways so um you know maybe we'll see if they take him off kaiser he just falls apart but but um at the very least you can set him behind too if if you're able to exploit barrow a little bit more in in the the early portions of the game and kind of the reason i brought it up uh during during the dom game and and then previously too when we're talking about uh the 80 carries in like the kaiser focus for them um kaiser has been for for so long the premier ad carry most ad carries champion statistics look very kaiser skewed uh and in playoffs in lck it was denied to him ghost didn't get kaiser a single time but he then like i'm saying if he fills it in with the sena again the senate to me was also just in it's almost like you get away the lesser of two evils i guess that there wasn't too much difference in the two evils for me um because uh they were willing to run the senate without tom kenz uh the entire time as well so um i i do think yes uh you know the kaiser focus is there for a lot of these ad carries um but it it's not uh it's not going to be like this this black hole or or anything that that logs them down i do like looking for the holes for don juan i mean they lost one game to a team not named rng and it was it was the one cloud nine game and that was like the fudge x factor on the lease in right and when you're looking for these like crazy picks or what are they gonna do if you look towards mid lane it's like the only aggressive pick that humanoid really played this entire year is lucian got banned by dumb one both times against them it's like what are you going to bring out like maybe you do some sort of split push strat try to like really focus on or because he had some pretty successful tf games if i'm recalling correctly so like maybe you could do something like that but i do feel like if you're just gonna play like the victor the orianna like slow scale it up fight dom juan that is a losing recipe uh for mad yeah and it's it's interesting that uh you know to match them up as far as the the two teams overall because madd have uh especially during playoffs like had so much success in focusing on team fighting um and so i i'm super interested to see the the adaptations from coaching staff in the best of five as it does evolve because you get that answer very quickly if both teams try and do uh team fighting right uh and you're like okay there are slight differences khan likes scion more than uh you know arma actually likes wukong for for their like team fight top side but but like if both teams have similar goals uh then you get the answer very quickly and when we get into those situations we're like all right now who's gonna pull out uh you know more poke heavy or who's gonna pull out the twisted fate and side lane play um and that that's the uh the interesting part i feel like yeah i think uh the top lane matchup is is probably one of the bigger x factors in the series because they do have that really different champion pool like you're saying um but i did like seeing khan off the scion thank god i actually think he looked really good uh in his more aggressive games like obviously the aatrox game he popped off really hard on um but you know even the lease in uh they lost against c9 with the jace uh but i i still thought it was uh not not the worst performance i'd rather see him playing aggressively i would not play jason to armit because he's gonna hit you with the the wukong so you gotta be ready probably ban that if you are gonna do that but but overall i just like the the champion pull that contact in in uh msi so far compared to his regional regional play so where do you think that that mad should try to look for for their like advantages then right you know if we're thinking okay like showmaker is probably the best performing mid lane tournament like khan's pretty solid you kind of like you're saying you like his champion pool a bit more candy and his canyon like you know are you looking towards the bot lane then to kind of try to be that x factor here's here's my strategy uh is actually and yeah it feels like everybody's like oh man you have this shield of invincibility around mid lane because you have showmaker you know because you got best mid laner in the league yeah okay i say try and attack that take it away attack one of their biggest strengths if you start to put pressure on him it also because domwan likes to play so much for lanes helping canyon get control of camps if you attack the mid lane and you can try and weaken that mid lane duo with canyon uh that's a way of also you know finding your way into the neutral objectives uh and humanoid is not scared so humor's not scared of anybody so i'm definitely i'm definitely looking for at least them to test that strategy because el yoja and humanoid have a lot of confidence in as a mid-jungle duo um they definitely have the champion pools to do it uh they have the the play style to do it so i actually that that would be one of the first ones i would want to try and at least test uh versus this team to see if you can you know find uh yeah i i think that's smart in the best of five because you have time to like kind of try and figure out what's gonna work and if you do that get rid of his zoe showmaker zoe always disgusting and it is one of the better like in into control made matchups while still having priority and all this stuff i was spectating uh humanoid in us soloq yesterday he played like four zoe games in a row uh as well so it could be like you don't have to ban it maybe it could be a takeaway type of yeah situation but i like that mark yeah seems to make a lot of sense we beat we beat dom juan together kobe it's solved you cracked the case uh i'll be excited to see see how it turns out right and i think matt is is going to be doing obviously a lot of planning you know trying trying to figure out you know what picks they want to go with do you want to play that standard style do you want to try to go crazy el yo is definitely someone who could pop off given the right circumstances um but it does feel like a pretty huge hill to climb uh what are you guys feeling for for predictions for for me this is kind of looking still like as much as i want to believe in in you know the rise up here from the mad lions and and see some sort of really competitive series it feels to me like a 3-0 like at best maybe a 3-1 um you know because dumb one has been so solid so consistent and i just think that they kind of match mad lions really well where mad lions are are strongest you know you're talking about like okay if if matt if you think like mid jungle is this really powerful way to play uh it just feels like you're you're kind of going up against that brick wall right you're going up against canyon and showmaker who are you know some of the absolute best in in their role in the entire world and play so incredibly well together go ahead mark let's go ahead oh i said go ahead first all right uh i think uh i go 3-1 for them that's the coward prediction i'm a coward tail tucked between my legs as i say it uh i agree with you like i think it's it's a tough matchup for mad lions not just um you know hey it's maybe the best team at the tournament um but also uh just directly i i feel like canyon and showmaker do such a good job controlling el yoya this huge playmaker for the team uh feels like he might be struggling a little bit with canyon it feels tough but i would still expect mad lions to have one of these good games kind of like the one they had against rng today where the enough of these kind of shots that they're taking connect and they can actually play the game out from there and win um i know damon is not invulnerable uh you know we saw them lose to c9 on the group stage get beat by rng twice struggled with dfm you know like you can if you get ahead of them actually make it pretty difficult for for them so i think medlines can probably win a game maybe even two but i would still take down one here's my reasoning for mad lions at least getting one game i i think that blue side is really important for this matchup i think that you get very very little value against domwan in red side counterpicking them ever because they're so safe with their team comps and and right now on the patch blue side gets a lot of leeway of you know target bands um and trying to force you uh into uh into your red side bands so i i think they at least they might not win all their blue side games i think at least mad lions wins uh you know one of their blue side games so yeah i i was leaning towards 3-1 um i think i'll stick with it copycat surprise all right makes a lot of sense the next match-up we have is rng versus psg i think people are are maybe feeling a little bit more hopeful for a close series on this one you know given some of the improvements from psg given that they actually you know split games here uh in the rumble stage rng did look more vulnerable you know they obviously they lost one cloud nine they lost one to mad they lost one to psg yes they did beat don juan uh but i think that is kind of giving people a little bit more hope for this when you look at some of the individual matchups it maybe doesn't feel like as doomed i think maple for one you know really did outperform crying uh throughout the group stage maybe that's a way in and they've had some some pretty you know different picks some different looks uh that that sometimes can help you against the team that like on paper looks better as you're talking i want to change my uh dom one mad to a 3-2 at least now because i also i also think matt's going to have uh you know be able to um you know go toe-to-toe in some of these games that do get to the later team fights off of uh you know dominant not getting a substantial early lead but let's move right right along i'm with you uh catch catching up quick here uh i i'm also super excited for the for the next one uh like we've been saying psg's trajectory uh over the tournament has has been great and that's what makes this one super exciting and then ending with yes that last game versus cloud9 did not affect their standings you know third place first place doesn't really matter at all because uh the first place team is gonna pick their opponent anyway and so that didn't have a lot with it but the fact that psg even played the wombo combo kiana rumble nocturne galio um and the coordination and the the choice of fights that they're going for and even some of the earlier play in the river um really really did get me excited for this team um yes i i do also have the maple nostalgia um and the flash wolves uh you know nostalgia for him and even hanabi a little bit as he was on the later versions of flash wolves um i'm definitely still gonna be favoring rng because they they have looked so good uh this tournament i would still have them even though dom one did get first place uh with the overall record uh what could rng do they lost the game to cloud nine you know that's unavoidable and they had to give it back to they're like you beat us c9 how about we eliminate you by losing to mad lions that was a five-head galaxy loss right there yeah um but uh yeah gala gala and ming especially i think ming has just been insane this tournament um his his rome still up to the top side map it's just like ming ming is a one-man roaming death squad um and he's he's turn he's turning around plays all over his timings are feel like they're slightly off what you would expect for support timings um to me um or you know maybe maybe xiaohu and i was just really good at baiting in you know and setting up for it but um it feels like when you need him boom the you know the batman light in the sky is on and ming is there making the play for you yeah i think the the bot lane for rng has been really insane uh the one time that rng when they lost to psg it was a a pretty crazy bottling snowball in favor of psg where they they got i think it was a gank they got a kill and then when they reset on the map there's like a weird jungle invade that doggo showed up to and started goomba stomping on everyone uh and so that was like just a huge snowball but i think if that doesn't happen you know like ming like you said is so important for the team and getting everyone else ahead that uh when he's not shut down uh he he will usually take over the games i i also kind of agree with your point about rng maybe being the better between don juan it's a very interesting conversation um but i think they tend to get more mechanically outplayed i think than than don juan does usually um i think they have like rng is this weird team where i don't think they have that like other than ming really a superstar that you would say but they're all like insanely good and um i'm talking to some some people they describe it as like this like free-flowing team that feels like anyone who needs to step up in that game can kind of do that um and i think that that's kind of the the identity that they have and and i i think they're actually so insane on a macro level about how they control games and stuff like that um i i really like how they play i think it's it's way more balanced than some of the other teams they for sure uh and i think yeah people can contest you on who's better them or dom one i think they for sure without beyond a shadow of a doubt have proven that they are the best um map wide team side lane playing team they have they have had way more impressive you know split push victories um to your point on on objective trading actually macro decisions i i think yeah i think that's boom uh no contest right there real really impressive yeah i mean they're an interesting team right and they kind of bucked the traditional lpl trend of being like the super crazy aggressive team right you know even in the lpl they were more the kind of like measured they play side lanes they're good at 5v5 they're like kind of the macro team right the they win a lot of the games either through side lanes or 5v5 and traditionally when you think to a lot of like the lpl teams that have been dominant it's it's like superstar solo laners you know like gapping people as far as uh lane goes and and that's not usually what they do um you know xiaohu i think people are are pretty hot on him but like even when you look at playoffs right like him getting blasted in lane by inaugurally every single game and and then just winning the game anyway right like they're getting past a lot of these teams in the lpl that have those superstars that you're kind of more used to seeing you know the rookies and and the doing bees and the nuggeries and and these kind of guys um that i think people more relate with like traditional lpl play style so they are a really interesting team but i think because like their team play is so solid but there's also more of an opportunity to sometimes like outplay or or dominate someone individually which can lead you to maybe a snowball victory right to like have that kind of x factor and i think that's where you know teams can look to try to attack them and i think that's sometimes where we saw uh you know the psg loss the the loss against c9 for for uh rng the loss against mad lions there's kind of like sometimes individual outplays that end up costing them the games uh because i feel like that the parts are sometimes we good in the whole i think ming is kind of like separate from that though to be fair because i think he's maybe the best support in the world um but but for the most part like there's more of a hope that you could maybe kind of like gap gap one of these guys in lane if you're really on or you really get a good pick and and so that'll be interesting i mean psg has actually had a really good early game you know i want to dig into it more because i'm not sure like how much of people's early game stats are affected by the penta net games you know that might swing things a lot um but uh in including the pentanet games rng had actually you know like a 1k gold lead at i believe it is 15. uh and psg actually have double that they have almost as good as dom 1 like an over over 2 000 gold lead at at uh 15 there so like their early game is pretty powerful they could potentially snowball a game if you can get these lane advantages if you can look for counter picks and that's kind of where i'm more like hey like maybe you can find a way in i still agree that rng is favored and if you can't get those those edges which you're not gonna be able to get every time it's not like these are weak players they're just not you know the lpl superstars that that you're kind of maybe used to seeing internationally um but i do think that that at least gives me like more hope where it's like hey if you come in with like a really good game plan when you come in with some really good counter picks some cool level ones these types of things like maybe you could get a game a little bit out of control and take rng out of their comfort zone i want to specifically reference uh the game where psg pick they're solo laners of akali and lee sin um and and and they're just indexing so high on these assassins and outplay and flank uh potential and they they play super aggressively in the early game to try and set that up and gain the uh territory on map to be able to do that and i think that is another reason why uh dom juan chose mad instead of them go ahead mark no i was gonna say pretty much the same thing is that psg's early game can can be pretty pretty dominant it feels like a lot of it swings for me on kai wing and river uh i think not that they're the best players but like the same way that c9's best games were when blabber played well um that's kind of how i feel a little bit for them where river does have some of these amazing games on morgana and rumble where he just runs over the game and kai wing is just blasting people with ultimates from leona all over the map and those are clearly their best games um and i'm a little bit more concerned when when those two are the ones struggling um much more so than uh doggo or jungle team eh i mean i feel like that's that would if you can somehow hold ming down and like high wing actually is able to get on the map and work with river those are those are clearly when i think they're at their best and they those two work really well together about snowballing their games to that point maple does have some outplays but they're they're they're less of that kind of individual outplay team and more about like a roaming death squad that shows up and murders you under your turrets and stuff at good timings kai wing to me has been so insane and that's why you know people keep trying to give praise to supports at this tournament and and and people usually are like oh you know this is like the second best because they they don't want to put it first because you're like ah you can't really put them over me but then there's so many to me also names trying to get in the door for second best support because the supports are so stacked at this tournament uh kai wing has just been insane especially the last couple of days um the the games where uh it was the the ziya leona bottom lane for them um off of the you know their victory over mad off of yes they did invade the rumble they blast cone over you know you get this advantage in the jungle but then on top of that they mad did get the kill counter kill onto karzi uh you know for the bottom lane and they set it up and he's got this extra gold and yet kai wing is still constantly engaging constantly finding these openings uh and creating this huge advantage for psg on the bottom side of the map so i feel really feel like he he has also been an absolute star for psg so i i completely agree with you there as far as like the the support-ish play-making roles for this team um really have been a lot of like how they how they live and die um and some of the variants for them yeah i also think um just like for rng they because they i don't think they have these superstars that we usually talk about with lpl and even someone like showmaker and canyon or nuts like they also have a little bit less of that just individual outplay potential in the mid to late game uh in team fights and stuff which is why i think they they have lost some more games than than down one because they fell behind pretty far to in their three losses each of those were pretty heavy snowballs um with like you know blabber pulled off a gank top and a gank bottom vault or made on volleyball just in the first like four minutes you know there's a level one where crying walks in gets killed and then like humanoids totally unlocked to run over the map and snowball bot lane and stuff and then as we're talking about already the doggo jumping stuff from that loss like i feel like they're their comeback even though they have really good macro like if they come to contest you at the dragon from like 3 or 4k down they're less likely to just like hey we're better than you as players and won this game now uh the way that sometimes don juan seems to do that we're like wait a minute i had the lead here damn it um so that that is one of the reasons give me that back that's why i'm a little bit more scared for for them against uh psg who we're we just keep hyping up about how good their playmaking can be if they're on that day i'm still not predicting them to win though all right who are you predicted to win who let's get into it uh i'm still going rng as much as we just spent all that time hyping psg and talking about the worries like ah they're just so fundamentally solid that like in a five game series it's really hard to to not think that like they're gonna be able to find find the wins and they have such a breath of different like play styles too when we're talking about like the global macro play that they can they can bust out with the tf or just play normal front to back team fight um as well as still being good enough to go like more skirmish oriented you know like they can kind of do it all um you know they'll bust out nocturne midnight like they have pocket picks and stuff like that so i think in a five game series i i still expect them to win games am i gonna say three one twice am i that one yes you are that lame next as i'll go uh goodbye i'm actually on through one i think it seems most likely um simply simply because i mean i agree right like we spend a lot of time talking about possibilities for psg because it's it's obvious who their favorites are right you know it's it's so obvious that both these series who the favorites are and and i do think that psg should be able to to get you know a hold of one of these games and snowball it but like you say it's in a best of five it's really tough because they are such solid teams both rng and dom one are really really solid and playing out the game they played out in in somewhat little bit different ways but like um they are really really good macro teams they're really good late game teams they don't give you a tremendous amount of mistakes uh you know i'm so excited for the draft for this one because if if psg can really kind of you know flip the series on its head i think it's gonna be through draft you know like maple has 11 different champions played already at msi which is pretty insane right uh they are not afraid to go for some of these really aggressive picks some of these really aggressive comps we saw them do it against cloud9 today you know with the the rumble the nocturne like everything flying in uh these types of picks i think are are really cool and and that could be a way to to beat rng right and i think barring that it's gonna be really really tough right it's kind of the same thing where if you play rng's game if you play a little bit slower you allow them to get out into the side lanes and start to really set up the map in the way that they want uh they're probably gonna run you ragged right they're either gonna be taking advantages when you're trying to go for dragons or you over commit to a side and you lose an objective like they're just so good at that push and pull and they've showed it a lot of times this tournament yeah i mean maple was the one i was gonna hyper focus on because i'm actually gonna say 3-2 um and to me the the way you pry this one open is the maple cryon match-up um it has been very difficult for teams to to fully do that especially because uh ming does roam up to mid lane quite frequently uh just on some of these uh you know push out they will push out bottom uh off of a away gank even if they don't get a you know a kill just a summer spell and a wave push and and kind of transfer that pressure uh towards mid lane but maple man uh especially his his akali game i was like he's still got it he may be old but he's doing it one for the boomers here i want to see i want to see some big gaps uh you know anytime you we've got one of the you know household names from years and years and years ago and and he's he's showing performances like this on the international stage i'm all about it um so i'm hoping that with the versatility that they have shown um and in some of these games you know rng are going to try and do their you know split push to victory uh side lane stuff uh i think psg are positioned to try and throw down on that and then it's going to come down to can you get those individual outplays you know um can they actually put up there and so i'm i'm hoping for this five game series i'm predicting it for the five game series uh i still give the tip a final tip to rng uh for being the the better the better team uh but man it i'm super excited for that that matchup especially all right sweet we gotta be predicting two best of fives what a what a weekend is going on in kobe's head he's having a great time full game full sets of league of legends yeah kobe's just trying to dodge some flame here everyone's so good it's such a great wholesome everyone's great if there's one thing that you can be sure of we're all gonna have a good time actual reasons behind them though thank you very much three try it by the way three one is the most lame prediction yeah that one i'm going for mark here as they all no three three two is definitely the dodge flame if if if uh i think if it's like a population three one is the the most probable statistically yeah but i feel like we actually if you look at the number like how series usually go i don't think it's actually the most common i'd have to double check that but i have no idea i'm just trolling it yeah that's just talking out of your butt right now oh i remember i looked this up once um a long time ago okay it's uh reviews i'll take his word on this one that's true appeal to authorities i'm a five-star podcaster how could i be wrong i'm taking your word for it all right we got some anchor questions here first one comes from isaac chan what do you got for us isaac hey guys a current sentiment surrounding c9 is that they are far better than their record would reflect either due to bad luck or simply better opponents in your opinion which team in international league of legends history had the largest delta between their score line and their actual performance in both the over-performing and underperforming direction i think back to me it's definitely a tough question um but i think immediately back to the worlds of h2k and albus knox luna was it i did feel like uh that that victory um and celebration on how far h2k got i felt like was a maybe one of the over ones this is an interesting question because it's not when they say delta can go either direction so you're taking the negative delta they say they're asking both says yeah you start negative i i mean like kobe just told the good will he got from the eu fans for predicting the 3-2 i think like what about world champion teams what like you know like they actually won but it was like a closer final that should have been like skt versus samsung in 2016. it was a full five game series but skt hard stomped game one and game two they were hard stomping game three before they kind of trolled it game four they legitimately lost and then they stomped game five again i don't know i think it was 2016 skt but that's one word like they actually won the world championship but that final was way closer than it had any business being um but they were still like worthy of getting to the finals right well they won they still want so i'm saying like i'm saying saying samsung was worthy of getting to the finals oh yeah so it's the largest delta between their scoreline and their actual performance i guess i guess scoreline i'm saying it should have been a 3-0 final but it was a 3-2 yeah so you're interpreting it as their score line being like their series score line not their tournament scoreline well i mean the thing is then you're always saying it's going to be a team that got knocked out i'm saying this world championship team was even better than the history books might remember with the 3-2 so that's all right nobody cares about you guys pedantic argument skt underperformed by winning worlds you heard it here they underperformed while winning worlds that's that's that's a pretty hot take um yeah i mean it's a hard question right like it's so hard to remember all the specific instances i think you guys had some good ones did cloud9 have like the biggest delta i don't know i mean they had a lot of close games at the end of the day um you know like in another world would they have picked up a couple more wins yeah probably but like let's be honest and any is close a lot of the time and it's usually those games those trap games and that's something that like you just can't afford to to have happen to you right like even going into the rumble stage i talked about this last week on the dive i was like yeah pentinet's probably not going to get more than one win but if you're the team that loses them you're probably going home surprise surprise right like that that stuff happens um i i will say that their performances against the top teams were pretty good though right like performance against dom one was pretty good could have won a couple more of those games for sure so i i do think that there was definitely a a significant delta between like three and seven record with no context and like how they showed against a lot of teams but i i don't know if i can say that it's like the biggest ever or anything like that do you have any uh example uh references for historical teams that you want to reference because we did talk about that general topic at the beginning of the podcast where we're like okay okay i want to want to remove the unlucky phrasing and that stuff okay so so like uh a record that is much worse from groups than their inevitable performance um so this is kind of like taking it you know one like a interpretation of it yeah but g2 when they won msi only went five and five in group stage and they played against team liquid who went four and six in group stage those were your finalists so like is that an over performance based on group stage or you know an under performance in group stage that like you know which was the real one so it's interesting to see because people are so quick to be like you didn't do that well in groups you're you wouldn't have done well anyway right like so good riddance go home but option but there there was two teams that it was like this this is the first year uh medic tweeted out that europe has ever gone better than fifty percent win rate at msi right so mad statistically from the group stage just like a record had the best performance ever does that mean that they're better than the 5 and 5 g2 that won probably no one's going to make that argument right so it's just it's just interesting like i do think that records in group stage aren't always indicative of the performance coming from this tournament and team liquid in g2 that year you know a combined below 500 record were the two finalists i was going to say option c is that the nine in one team who then lost in semi under performance igg underperformed yeah probably one of the biggest deltas because that team was actually nasty yeah and it's just interesting it's like which which side of the coin do you take right and often in the big subsets pretty much any time you have a big upset it's some of column a and some of column b so if you want to look towards this question more deep you just look at all the biggest upsets in history and generally on that day one team performed better than they expected the other team performed worse than expected and that crossover happened right where the worst team became the better team in that moment i had i had two more examples ready to go uh one of the most famous the alliance super team crafted around froggen that got kaboomed that's a that's definitely an easy one there uh the other one to me that actually actually hurt my heart more because 2018 was such a special year for worlds for for both north america and europe but the vitality team that was in the cloud nine group and we got out over them over gen g um that one performance are an overperformance uh i i feel like it is it's one of the ones where they are better than their record right that that that's what i'm saying because they didn't even get to get out of that group but they were right there on like the same i always remember yamato's speech of the like screw this old style league of legends we're not copying them take take that bull by the horns and just ride it like it was the same mentality they took the same approach to like you know their their draft strategies uh they were all about the aggression all about you know this this big like revolution year in in league of legends that was this watershed moment here it it literally made all of lck like have this self-reflection year and they're like is it us we got to change we and they have this like you know complete identity crisis because of not just cloud nine and we always remember cloud9 because you know they move on and we were so happy and we got semi-finals even then after that but also vitality was a big part of that they were in the same group and they were of the same kind of creed i would say cool question thank you very much isaac great name by the way all right this next one comes from i'm probably going to say it wrong i'm sorry man ahad rajput how's it going mark kobe is there my name is ahad and i had a question about making a career in first name right that's a doubt you guys have gone over the path to being pro and even recently went over the esports certificate controversy i would love to end up in an analyst role one day but i have no idea how to go about it or what the credentials would be yes i'm a recent electrical engineer grad shout out to copy and uh diamond top mate where do i send in my resume uh that that's that's a another good question i actually get questions like this a lot everyone's looking you know how to get involved uh to me i always remember the story of zix and zix is a guy who is now coached tsm clg hundred thieves all these huge names in north american league of legends and guess how he started out on reddit submitting ideas to hotshot gg and he gets picked up as clg analysts just by like consistently putting in effort and making this content and putting it up to uh you know visibility for for the for the people that are in charge of these teams more recently i've seen a lot of people uh you know content creators um any anyone interested in like social media doing the same with hundred thieves and then and tweeting out these things and then kind of going viral it's those types of things that really um that's always going to be a viable path it's not the only path in but that's always one that you can try and catch people's eye by by making something first and then being like look at this is what i made instead of um you know trying to trying to uh you know get in through oh ex credentials are weird because it's it's not easy to be able to say like yeah i went to like esports college or whatever that's you know it doesn't exist right um but i would say uh even though you don't probably won't use a an engineering degree at all and at least you can point to it and and say hey look i am smart it gives you that little bit of credibility yeah i mean my store is very similar to zix and a lot of the early analysts i mean most of us didn't have connections in esports um we were just people who really liked watching and like six i was a big fan of the lg eu at the time made a bunch of like scattering reports for them to and i i tried to contact them on reddit yellowpete was the only guy who responded sent like one message but then didn't follow up uh but then when curse at the time was they did like we're doing open tryouts between season two and or season three and season four i was like i sent steve an email i had like sat in the email for like weeks i was too scared to send it and i just got drunk one night and i sent it finally and had like a couple typos in it that was the origin of just secrets here's mark there you go you know uh so i sent him the email i attached those scouting documents a couple other things and like you know wrote up a nice cover letter uh basically and i it was like you know just a cold application um and it got in touch almost fell through i had to like follow up a couple times because people are busy um finally like just kind of just like kind of it that was i started working with them as in a volunteer capacity um and then eventually i started hiring people myself i mean i moved pretty far up that ladder uh you can do resumes like coaching positions are posted on team social media on websites on different things if you're not doing it right now make a twitter account follow literally every team that you want to potentially apply for um and start like kobe saying build it and have something to show you need to do that realistically uh even if you're not posting this content yourself like i didn't make these scattering reports for content but you need to have a portfolio for people who are making these hiring decisions to dig into and actually see what you're talking about because it's not going to come through on a resume or cv like it's just not going to happen real quick too the the the rank is is important and always uh always help to helps to include because you just get you know some sort of uh you know credibility there yeah the higher you can go the better but um otherwise like kobe's saying like a number of people started as content creators dylan falco got hired by tsm by making videos talking about tsm and they hired him uh you know i think parth might have been a similar thing initially i forget exactly for him but a lot of people started making content and then they got hired i'd also say i feel like a lot of times people hyper focus on like the absolute most popular team that's probably getting 100 times the applications of a less popular team right like you know you just need somewhere to get your foot in and prove yourself and work your way up right like if you're trying to uh start out with you know cloud9 or tsm lcs team like the chances of getting in or even getting your application paid attention to is probably you know enormously less than if you're starting for like the least popular academy team as your goal right like that sort of thing so sometimes um you know where you're setting your sites can help and i guess we're just kind of assuming that he means like actual analyst and not like someone on the desk analyst like for shows but if he if you mean that then i would say uh i'll keep it really brief because you know we've gone long on this um but if you if you do mean like being on lcs analyst desk as an analyst like that type of thing you need to start doing on-camera work and build again build a portfolio in the same way there are so many people who message me and are like how do you be a caster how do you get on the analyst desk and stuff and you know how do you get good at that at the end of the day you just got to start doing it doesn't really matter what you're doing it for getting comfortable uh you know and confident being able to you know talk about pretty much anything and being able to be conversational and look on camera as far as like having some confidence and and being able to like be personable and have energy and you know work on your tone and like all these types of things there's all kinds of stuff and you could read uh you know all about any of that stuff um for any from any like traditional broadcast type sense as well because all those baseline skills i think really do help get people noticed like even if someone's really smart at the game but you really struggle on camera with nerves or whatever then it's tough it's tough to get in so definitely the more experience you can build up the better yeah i would say if it's like you're saying uh you know an on-air roll too coming to the interviews and stuff and having examples of commentators that you look up to or styles that you like so that you can specifically talk about where you want to be and what you want to become and like your direction and your goals and the baseline that that helps a lot for people because sometimes a lot of times people come in blindly and they're like i love esports i want to be a commentator but if you actually narrow it down like that and you're like i love this person for this reason these are the types of things that i want to do well good advice all right thank you very much for the questions ahad that'll wrap uh wrap it up express now oh my god thank you honda for me that's why i love a tail and remember if you're watching us on youtube remember guys on camera you gotta practice practice remember you gotta look good you gotta go shine you gotta be able to use your words you gotta buff up the head in the morning make it look nice hit that subscribe button so you don't miss an episode of the dive you can also check us out on spotify mark what is happening with your face apple podcast and anchor dot fm please send us your questions on twitter use the hashtag thedive lol or send us your voice messages on anchor fm page we have an exciting weekend of games ahead of us semifinals kick off with psg talon vs royal never give up at 6 00 a.m pacific on friday don juan vs mad lions on saturday and then the finals are gonna be on sunday we will record right after the finals and it will be coming out monday may 24th for the final msi wrap up episode we'll see you all then [Music] goodbye [Music] you

Channel: LCS

Views: 47,051

Rating: 4.891892 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: itirNSOyv2I

Length: 87min 57sec (5277 seconds)

Published: Wed May 19 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/iyoiiiiu]

People are focusing quite a lot on PGG winning against C9, but reality is that C9 would have been kicked out even if they had won their game vs PGG. C9 was more than 1 win away from advancing, they were 2 wins away from even getting a tiebreaker, which they would have needed to win as well.

[u/Sjeg84]

Pretty resonable argumentation.

[u/Tobbbb]

Adding to the reasons why DWG chose MAD for their semifinal opponents: I think they have a draft advantage and predictability in the solo lanes of Madlions. Humanoid only played victor, orianna and lucian so far (in the rumble stage), with lucian being the most scary one. Armuts game impact on champions other than gnar and wukong was pretty lackluster and those picks are relatively easy to draft around. Jungle and bot side picks are pretty stale anyway. With that in mind DWG should be able to draft priority in top, mid to establish early mid game control and enable canyon to be in their comfort zone.

My prediction is 3:0 DWG unless Armut steps up and Mad solo lanes have some picks prepared to actually pressure the map in the mid game.

[u/Janitor_]

Bruh did everyone forget that blaber has been to international events before??? and guess what? He did so bad they switched in sven permanently instead of having that 6th man jungler.

When the pressure is on, this dude chokes, Hard. That's a major consistency from this dude. Who the fuck pushes and flashes for scuttles like that. . .

[u/Tennis-Money]

Was really looking forward to their prediction for the tournament winners since this would be the one before finals, but nice episode regardless.