I’d like to preface this by saying that this is merely a short opinion piece on my musings over the various recent events in League of Legends in different regions. I hope you enjoy my mad ramblings and find them enlightening.
Korea is interesting right now. The exodus has led to many changes and a lot of teams needing to take time to adjust. Now that we’re here, things might be starting to balance out a little. Faker and SKT are looking once again like they’re unbeatable, and considering the limiting factors Korea (meaning SKT) faced leading into MSI, it’s probably safe to say that given sufficient preparation time SKT are still the strongest team in the world. CJ look good too, and probably will finish 2nd in the League, though there still seems to be a gap between the two front running teams in LCK.
Looking back, there was a bit of doubt as to whether Korea was still the strongest region, and the spring split certainly didn’t help with KOO (formerly GE) Tigers falling off in a league that got basically rolled by a few choice teams. Well, KOO have still fallen off but the level of play has definitely increased in Korea. Most teams have awesome team fighting prowess and mechanics (seen in the NaJin vs. IM series today), but the skill difference in shot calling and decision making in all stages of the game can be seen when comparing say, IM to SKT.
One thing is for certain: Faker is still god.
No, seriously. Irelia to counter Azir? And it worked, too. Sometimes, words just can’t describe something, or they would feel an injustice to attempt to do so. Needless to say, Faker is the player all League of Legends players aspire to.
Multiple strong teams? Faker back in form? To the dismay of the rest of the League of Legends world: Guess who’s baaack?
Jokes aside, the higher level of competition moving forward will definitely help Korea as the season and meta continue to progress.
North America is such a mess. Thankfully, these next few regions are the fun ones I wanted to discuss. But uh, as far as North America goes? Shouldn’t take too long.
The best way to describe this weekend is probably, everyone played varying degrees of poorly. C9 completely collapsed and let Dignitas get a win that almost no one in the world would have expected, TSM looked shaky against Enemy and Gravity nearly lost a game against a TDK with 3 subs, and if not for Altec they probably would have. Oh, and as for the prophets claiming CLG has entered the era of faith? They surely did not play what I would call ‘badly’, but then you must look at the competition they faced and the mistakes they made.
All of NA LCS was rusty this week, and CLG were no exception. While in true CLG tradition they started the split well, perhaps the best of any team, they made some very questionable in-game decisions and individual mechanical misplays. Luckily, these are the sort of things that can be easily fixed as the rust wears off.
Team Liquid? Pretty easy week. Expected 2-0, and the Team 8 game was a bit nervy. Rust, rust everywhere. Look to week 2 for better insight into this League, and be reserved with your opinions.
Europe has some fantastic competition! They’re probably the 3rd best region in the world right now. Origen made an excellent start to their EU LCS campaign, and look like a seasoned LCS team already (heh, I wonder why).
Naturally, given their recent form, Fnatic look to be the best team in the west at the moment, and by a substantial margin too. It’s hard to say they’re not the favourites to win the EU LCS outright — they’ve looked brilliant.
Oceania is being dominated by the Chiefs. Flat out, there’s no other way to say it. Today, the Chiefs and Legacy faced off in a battle of the top teams of the region — it was decidedly one sided. The only question mark over the Chiefs would be their early game, but they hold such an advantage in almost every other category it almost doesn’t matter, coming back from some significant deficits to win in impressive fashion.
Everyone in their team is one of the best in the region, but my focus this week was on Raydere and EGym — they’re so good. For a long time now, Raydere has been the highest example of mechanical ability OCE has to offer, and EGym’s addition to this team has been a breath of fresh air. The aggressive and in-your-face playstyle (which we saw tonight, with him jumping in to get his passive down on Braum while on one bar of health) complimenting Raydere and the rest of the squad.
The defeat of Legacy helped to illustrate just how impressive the Chiefs are compared to the rest of OCE, and when Razleplasm and co. help mend the early game mistakes we’ve been seeing lately, we could see a team with the potential to make waves internationally.
Mad rambling over! Thanks for taking the time to read my silliness, if you did. In case you can’t tell, this is rather informal and purely just my opinion as of this moment. I didn’t mention every region because I honestly haven’t got too many stand out thoughts on every region. For instance, if I spoke about China it would just put people to sleep!
As a side note, I fully support both Dentist and Deficio and am excitedly awaiting their return.
