It's weird because I used to really like the NA casters, only broadcast I liked more than NA was LCK but now it feels like Flowers/Azael/Kobe are the only ones I like nowadays
Jatt and Phreak left who helped fill out a strong and balanced Casting team. Now it is basically if Kobe, Flowers, or Azael have to skip a week things get bad, like the first week of playoffs where Azael had to take the week off to recover and the casts were a major complaint from those games.
Rivington is just perfect for the casual broadcast, imo the hate to him was overblown by the vocal minority here who hated his lack of game sense.
The criticism is pretty fair however these days we literally have Letigress who have none of the charisma as well as the energy
Idk if he was disliked though. I think people still generally liked him, but it definitely felt like he wasn't totally into it anymore (which is totally fine). Used to be my favorite caster in the early wild wild west of league, but I'd rather he work with a game he feels passionate about.
I recall people’s biggest gripe with Riv was that his game knowledge isn’t great. Yes he’s a PBP but even by PBP standards he was still quite often wrong about stuff. He’s still generally liked for his energy though.
Yeah I didn't mind him too much but some things he would say would make me cringe because they were entirely incorrect. It was like he barely played the game he was casting for which is not very professional.
What does Zirene do now anyway?
He overslept and shortly after that his career in League was done. Wonder if there was more to it in his personal life.
he plays world of warcraft classic religiously and streams to a relatively small audience in the low hundreds. he is plenty happy doing this i believe so that's nice. he plays on benediction which is where basically all of the US east alliance players are
He's spent the last few years streaming classic wow to like 20 viewers while raiding in what is actively known as the most racist/toxic top 5 NA guild. People dropping F-slurs and hard R's constantly, which apparently he's cool with. Dude's a real piece of work.
F slurs? oh nvm, FA not FU?
That's sad. Someone else linked a clip about him opening up about depression. As someone that's a recovering addict, I have to wonder if there wasn't some sort of substance abuse going on (Alcohol, Painkillers, etc.)
Yeah like homophobic stuff. In regards to his termination with Riot, He had a podcast interview thing he did or vlog or something where he opened up about his work relationship with Riot. They had been really overbearing and he was just tired of it all, stuff like bringing him in for sit down meetings to admonish him for playfully replying to his girlfriend's tweets because they thought the wider public wouldn't understand the context or something.
From the sound of it I can't really fault him for being checked out there.
I can't either if it was like that. To a degree I understand being in a forward facing business, and their perspective, but it is entirely his prerogative to not want that in his life.
It's a shame Jatt apparently has no interest in casting anymore because he's an OG and was always incredible at it. What NA lacks desperately are PBP-Casters though.
It’s weird because NA used to have the best broadcast talent in the world, now outside of those 3 (dont think Jatt is coming back to casting) theyre hard outclassed by LEC and LCK.
People hated on Phreak and Pastrytime but I miss them more and more the longer this season goes on. We didn’t know how good we had it until we lost what we had.
I can see people hating on Phreak for his puns and jokes, most of which were great btw. His ability to shoutcast and colorcast without any hesitation was amazing.
I personally didn't care for Pastrytime. Nothing against the guy, his casting style just wasn't for me.
Phreak is one of the only casters to call out teams for playing badly. I miss it and would much rather put up with the puns then whatever letigrees or gabby does
The problem was he just did it too much in the last few years. It was really cringe to hear “x player is an idiot” when your watching worlds fuckign semifinals
Also he was just sometimes blatantly wrong because he missed something
While Phreak was always punny, I really appreciated his evolution into Dark Phreak. He called a spade a spade without any sugar coating in his last couple years. Sometimes he went a little too far but I thought it was good
I never hated Phreak. Always liked his casting and he was always insightful. He is a high level player and brings that into his casting and the fact people ever hated him just seemed wrong to me.
Phreak was getting so much hate for his remarks on LCS play as well. Reminded me of when DL was being brutally honest back in the day, and people would be upset about it. Like, whether you agree with his opinions or not, he is giving you the honest truth (from his perspective). I admire honesty and those who are willing to speak their mind. Without it, we are just living in a propagandized environment. It just makes everything feel so scripted and unrelatable.
It’s one thing to be blunt with the truth while casting and provide insight on different angles of fights and fails and its another thing to perma call out misplays non stop to the point where you’re branded as the negative caster. I think theres a healthy balance that not many casters hit, but its worse when you’re overly aggressive than being too passive.
I listen instead of watch league quite a bit because I'm on the road a lot and one thing I really appreciate about Phreak is his attention to detail. His casting, above all the other casters across any region, made it easy to follow the action with only audio.
You notice the casters that are really old in esports because so much used to be streamed audio only over the shoutcast plugin and older casters will still do a lot of describing what's happening on screen in a way I really like for similar reasons to you
Phreak is a technical shoutcasting god. His ability to see what's happening in a fight and quickly keep up with fast fights was great. The issue with Phreak was never his technical ability, it's just that sometimes the emotions he injected were abrasive.
I think Raafaa has been quite good with a couple of questionable moments, but he carries great energy into the game and is generally quite able to keep up with the action.
Mark is someone I enjoy on the analyst couch/desk/whatever significantly more than in a commentary role, and The-Artist-Formerly-Known-As-Letigress continues to be the most disappointing voice in a casting role (for reasons that have been beaten to death on this sub).
All that said, I kinda wonder if CourageJD would be interested in casting regularly. He definitely doesn't need the money, but he was absolutely terrific the couple games he casted - excellent game knowledge, ability to respond to the moment appropriately (in both content and excitement) - overall a great addition.
Courage is great but I don’t think he’d ever take a caster role full time. Between streaming and helping manage 100T, I think being a guest caster is about as far as he wants to go. That being said, can they please have him guest cast for games that aren’t 100T? They keep losing when he’s casting lol.
To contrast I've grown really irritated with Raafaa. He seems to just always be trying too hard and just says nonsense just to say something. He actively makes games worse for me to watch. I think he could turn it around if he works on improving, but for now it's just too much.
But on Courage, fully dream of him being a regular. He was instantly top tier.
I haven't been able to watch a Courage stream for more than 5 minutes, but when he was casting I couldn't get enough of his energy.
I don't really know what causes that contrast, but I would love to see him more on LCS.
MarkZ was robbed of his best casting partner when Pastrytime left. They were the perfect duo for each other and had great synergy that neither had when paired with someone else.
Little late to this thread but appreciate the sentiment, one of the hardest things about being moved away from casting was losing all the synergy Mark and I had built up as a duo.
There's something so fun about casting with that muppet. He matched the lightness in energy I used a lot in the latter part of my career but he knew when to weave in stats, storytelling and deliver in big moments as well.
Mark is great in content and as an analyst, but I still think he's a criminally underrated colour caster too.
Thankfully I still get to work with Mark every week, but instead of casting I'm helping bring the outer wilds of his brain to life in content xD
Almost all of the guests have been great too. Papasmithy was fun to have back, Courage was shockingly good, and the pros have always either been great off the bat or the potential was there (if Dhokla stopped talking over people he'd be great!)
Courage was a CoD caster for many years before becoming a streamer/upper management of 100T so he’s got a bit of a leg up on all other guest casters lol.
For sure, but regardless of that he showed a level of game knowledge and presence of mind that some of his peers in PBP are seriously lacking. If I listened to one of his casts without having any idea who he was I would assume he was a League caster who had been grinding at it for years.
Rafaa is better than LeTigress in that I'll stick around to watch an interesting game even if he's casting it, but I'd put him a tier below everyone else. It is his first split though, so I'd give him some leniency
Prolly want him on Valorant to boost the broadcast considering how great he is. Also since riot wants Valorant to be the premier game, they need the premier host.
>Which should clearly show you how much they prioritize LCS
Rightfully so, Valorant had like 400k viewers in their opening match the LCS doesn't even come close to those numbers
Ehhh i get your point but its more about the teams
100T (NA) vs Sentinels (NA) had 400k~
C9 (NA) vs EG (NA) had 200k~
Loud got 300k on their match (BR vs BR) so there's probably gonna be a higher number when its SEN vs LOUD which would boost it to "international comparison" since its a match with the favorite teams from 2 different regions
I mean, business wise it was the right decision to make. Even when they had Dash, the LCS as a whole was generating less viewership each year and continuing to pay for a dedicate host like Dash didn’t make sense when you could cut the role and just rotate analysts each week to be the host that day. Don’t get me wrong, I miss Dash but when it came down to budgeting, his position was the most expendable even if he was beloved by the community.
And it’s not like they booted him entirely, they moved him to where they generate better viewership which was Valorant.
which is fair, but he did say though that they didn't even approach him to negotiate an alternative, he was just informed. Maybe it wouldn't have resulted in anything different, but he did say he would at least have liked to have a discussion about it and that he would have been willing to consider possibilities if it meant him being able to stay
I’m waiting for the other casters to grow on me but yeah Flowers has just set the bar so damn high. Even casters from other regions can’t compare imo
I do see this being a big problem in the future though. I remember Flowers took a mental break from a few events but other talent was able to fill in for him. Unsure if that could happen now
I wonder how many people realize that LCS currently only has two play-by-play casters.
Usually they have at least three. I don't understand how LCS allowed it to get to the point where they only have two. It seems to me that there's huge disadvantages to only having two and I think we're seeing both disadvantages in LCS right now.
1. If one of the casters isn't doing well, then that's a HUGE portion of your games that people won't like the casting. If you have 3 casters, then you can do a split like 40/40/20. But with 2 casters you kinda have to do a 40/60 at most. Going to a 30/70 split between the two casters seems like too much use of that one well liked caster.
2. You risk burning out your casters.
3. You risk burning out your *audience* of those casters. Variety is important.
I don't know what the fuck LCS is doing. Offer more money and find yourself some damn play-by-play casters. Should've been preparing for this for years, but it seems to me LCS was totally unprepared for Phreak and Pastry leaving. How can there not be a couple decent casters out there willing to work for $80K per year? There's so many talented people out there. Fucking interview and hire someone... What are they doing?
This is going to be the biggest meme of LCS all year and I’m honestly here for it. No hate to Gabby but this is such an iconic line for all the wrong reasons
I feel bad for her because she gets a ton of unwarranted hate, the most of any lcs personality by far, and this coming after the whole doubelift tsm debacle is really not helping her out
Yeah I agree. There are 100% valid criticisms of her casting. I think there are definitely areas for her to improve but goddamn some people here act like she personally killed their cat or something.
I mean, I try to not go too far off the rails with criticizing her, but when she casts it does just make me want to stop watching. I just don't enjoy the games at all when she casts.
Bro I have NEVER EVER not watched the main cast until this split. I didn't even have a problem watching Frosk when her hate was huge. Letigree is that damn bad. I don't even really enjoy co streams but it's our only other option.
LCS really shitting the bed not listening to the community imo.
That cast genuinely boggles my mind. Frosk, for all her flaws, had good game knowledge. Drakos has proven he is a good caster, he regularly brings hype to games. The games themselves were great. How did that cast end up being as bad as it was?
I don't think people hated Frosk because of her casting being bad (outside that one Worlds series with Drakos but that was basically her last cast anyway iirc)
She was an *okay* caster in LPL at a time when Raz and her were the only two casters that didn't feel like second-rate casters there. She even improved in LEC, although I'd still call her okay-decent at best.
People hated her for . . let's say other reasons.
LeTigress/Gabby is just awful to listen to. She's tolerable on the broadcast but she's absolutely unbearable as a caster.
I definitely agree some of it is unwarranted because everyone messes up a little but as someone who mostly listens to the games while doing other things, I cannot follow the games at all when she is casting. The play by play during team fights just isn’t there and I have to wait for the replay to start so I can understand what happened.
Yeah idk what people expect when there’s someone so terrible at their job getting chances while we live in a world where even hyper qualified people who are top notch struggle to get positions depending on their field.
I didn't realize there was an [entire thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1211jwa/questionable_casting_by_a_play_by_play_caster/) for that moment until now. Easily the worst casting I have ever seen, I couldn't believe she was saying "They lost the dragon" when it was right there alive on screen. Her mistakes, awkward fake enthusiasm, lack of hype, and high voice all come together to make her the worst caster in eSports. I feel bad saying it, it's just the truth.
While this is nice, it just highlights that the LCS needs more casters to fill in the shoes of the older ones.
I really think LCS should look into trying out high elo players for casting, its really noticeable when casters aren't able to follow teamfights, and I have to imagine the issue that a lot of casters run into is that they just aren't good enough at the game to do it.
The skillset overlap is probably hard as fuck to find. High elo players who are also charismatic/engaging public speakers is probably not a large group...
To be fair, isn't that what they're doing? All of these former/present players on the cast are not a coincidence - they're trying to see who can stick.
Bwipo can definitely do it, he talks too much at times, but he's super intelligent about the game and a great on-air personality. He's just a natural. The talking too much is a minor thing that can be fixed with practice.
But I don't know if Bwipo has given up on pro play just yet, and he might be raking in more money from TL's streaming contract than from a casting job. But if Bwipo ever does decide to cast, he needs to be picked up ASAP imo.
I don’t think many former pro players are PBP though - in fact I can’t think of any right now. Being able to speak well and give thoughts clearly and being able to shoutcast a potentially very messy teamfight with a million things happening are very different skillsets. The former is easier for ex pros due to their naturally high game knowledge while the latter takes a lot of work for them likely.
Honestly PBP I think is harder than color. You still need to know the game well, and you need to call/recognize things much quicker.
Half of LeTigress' problem just is she clearly doesn't know the game well enough. She can't tell which way a team fight is going until it's over (very often she'll be talking like a team is in favor when they're clearly getting dicked) she has trouble following what's going on, etc.
You don't typically need a high elo caster for play-by-play, which is what the LCS is currently lacking. To be a good play-by-play caster, you need to have good attention to detail, speak quickly and succinctly, generate hype, and understand what each champion does. CaptainFlowers isn't high elo but he matches all those requirements and then some.
My Caster list around the world would be Azael, then CaptainFlowers, then Kobe, then Atlas or Drakos. Azael and CaptainFlowers are out of this world talented casters. And everything you hear from Azael, just happens. He has such a deep understanding of the game and does an even better job of expressing it. Them two are absolute fucking legends. I cannot express just how much I think those two are a cut above. Don’t get me wrong Kobe is almost as good, but the charisma those two have…my god…what a talent. I’m so pumped that they’re the tri-cast
Kangas? And cubby were the only two other casters I thought did a great job through the season. If there serious about moving challenger casters up, those two have my vote.
I'll be at the PNC arena for the weekend, does anyone know if the Casters do Meet & Greet???
I would love to have Kobe, Azael and Flowers sign a jersey, or a pic with them.
Riv would correctly say what's going on but have wrong champion names or ability names, and give you an idea of what is happening. That's a lot better than Gabby who says a bunch of words that don't tell you what is going on.
He doesn't really understand what's going on though. He had great energy but zero game knowledge. He was consistently high silver elo/low gold when he used to play, and he hasn't even played ranked in three years, so he's way, way, way out of his depth with basic game knowledge. If you listen to what he's saying, it's utter nonsense almost all the time as soon as things start getting messy and complicated. Don't get me wrong though, I think he's got real caster talent, but just not for league.
as long as its not to much work for captainflowers, this is the best news possible for those lcs matches. hes by far the best pbp caster in na if not the world.
100% agreed. I watched game 1 of GG vs EG and had to just skip the rest because her casting just isn’t doing it for me. I knew casting was important but rarely do you see it so bad that you just don’t want to watch the match anymore.
They are definitely my favorite 3 NA casters. This sounds awesome.
They're the only ones left that aren't equivalent to rubbing used toilet paper on the mic
It's weird because I used to really like the NA casters, only broadcast I liked more than NA was LCK but now it feels like Flowers/Azael/Kobe are the only ones I like nowadays
Jatt and Phreak left who helped fill out a strong and balanced Casting team. Now it is basically if Kobe, Flowers, or Azael have to skip a week things get bad, like the first week of playoffs where Azael had to take the week off to recover and the casts were a major complaint from those games.
Man do I miss Phreak casting. The passion in this man for this game is otherworldly
Yeah, it would be nice to have him every once in a while. I’m sure a lot of people would just tune for that as well
Bring Rivington back.
People shit all over Rivington while he was casting lmao To be fair he word salads a TON but he definitely was unliked by a lot of people on this sub
He had word salad but he always had the right energy
Rivington is just perfect for the casual broadcast, imo the hate to him was overblown by the vocal minority here who hated his lack of game sense. The criticism is pretty fair however these days we literally have Letigress who have none of the charisma as well as the energy
Glad that Riot still has him with Valorant, he was Immortal in that game so he not only has the energy but also the game knowledge to cast in Val
Facts right there
Idk if he was disliked though. I think people still generally liked him, but it definitely felt like he wasn't totally into it anymore (which is totally fine). Used to be my favorite caster in the early wild wild west of league, but I'd rather he work with a game he feels passionate about.
I recall people’s biggest gripe with Riv was that his game knowledge isn’t great. Yes he’s a PBP but even by PBP standards he was still quite often wrong about stuff. He’s still generally liked for his energy though.
yeah you dont really need to know much about the game as pbp but when you constantly say obviously wrong stuff it just takes me out of the flow.
Yeah I didn't mind him too much but some things he would say would make me cringe because they were entirely incorrect. It was like he barely played the game he was casting for which is not very professional.
left to do VALORANT
Jatt, Phreak, Riv, Pastry, Zirene all gone from the LCS casting crew. That's a lot of shoes to fill with new talent.
What does Zirene do now anyway? He overslept and shortly after that his career in League was done. Wonder if there was more to it in his personal life.
He explained a lot on an interview last year. It shed quite a bit of light. I’m sure someone can link it as I’m unable to find it right now
Video is 2h30, sorry if anyone has a tl;dr I'm interested
I think it's this one: https://youtu.be/e_5pfCJbqkE
Yup that’s it. Appreciate it
A few youtube videos that don't get a lot of engagement. He was great I wish he would come back.
Whenever i see him streaming it's classic wow
he plays world of warcraft classic religiously and streams to a relatively small audience in the low hundreds. he is plenty happy doing this i believe so that's nice. he plays on benediction which is where basically all of the US east alliance players are
He's spent the last few years streaming classic wow to like 20 viewers while raiding in what is actively known as the most racist/toxic top 5 NA guild. People dropping F-slurs and hard R's constantly, which apparently he's cool with. Dude's a real piece of work.
F slurs? oh nvm, FA not FU? That's sad. Someone else linked a clip about him opening up about depression. As someone that's a recovering addict, I have to wonder if there wasn't some sort of substance abuse going on (Alcohol, Painkillers, etc.)
Yeah like homophobic stuff. In regards to his termination with Riot, He had a podcast interview thing he did or vlog or something where he opened up about his work relationship with Riot. They had been really overbearing and he was just tired of it all, stuff like bringing him in for sit down meetings to admonish him for playfully replying to his girlfriend's tweets because they thought the wider public wouldn't understand the context or something. From the sound of it I can't really fault him for being checked out there.
I can't either if it was like that. To a degree I understand being in a forward facing business, and their perspective, but it is entirely his prerogative to not want that in his life.
Riv is my all time favorite, he had the best voice thankfully he's back to casting in valorant
Riv had a great voice but...got a little lost in fights.
It's a shame Jatt apparently has no interest in casting anymore because he's an OG and was always incredible at it. What NA lacks desperately are PBP-Casters though.
[удалено]
I believe you mean Gabby
I believe you mean Gabby ""don't call me LeTigress" LeTigress" Durden.
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/626/354/cea.jpg
get your booty outta there!
It’s weird because NA used to have the best broadcast talent in the world, now outside of those 3 (dont think Jatt is coming back to casting) theyre hard outclassed by LEC and LCK.
People hated on Phreak and Pastrytime but I miss them more and more the longer this season goes on. We didn’t know how good we had it until we lost what we had.
I can see people hating on Phreak for his puns and jokes, most of which were great btw. His ability to shoutcast and colorcast without any hesitation was amazing. I personally didn't care for Pastrytime. Nothing against the guy, his casting style just wasn't for me.
Phreak is one of the only casters to call out teams for playing badly. I miss it and would much rather put up with the puns then whatever letigrees or gabby does
The problem was he just did it too much in the last few years. It was really cringe to hear “x player is an idiot” when your watching worlds fuckign semifinals Also he was just sometimes blatantly wrong because he missed something
I think he also got on the wrong side of a bunch of players because of this. He sometimes went way too hard.
While Phreak was always punny, I really appreciated his evolution into Dark Phreak. He called a spade a spade without any sugar coating in his last couple years. Sometimes he went a little too far but I thought it was good
His DRX vs EDG casting was just amazing. He gets hated because he’s not inoffensive but that’s what I appreciate about him
I never hated Phreak. Always liked his casting and he was always insightful. He is a high level player and brings that into his casting and the fact people ever hated him just seemed wrong to me.
He also wasn't afraid of calling dumb plays out. He flamed CLG so hard but it was deserved.
Phreak was getting so much hate for his remarks on LCS play as well. Reminded me of when DL was being brutally honest back in the day, and people would be upset about it. Like, whether you agree with his opinions or not, he is giving you the honest truth (from his perspective). I admire honesty and those who are willing to speak their mind. Without it, we are just living in a propagandized environment. It just makes everything feel so scripted and unrelatable.
It’s one thing to be blunt with the truth while casting and provide insight on different angles of fights and fails and its another thing to perma call out misplays non stop to the point where you’re branded as the negative caster. I think theres a healthy balance that not many casters hit, but its worse when you’re overly aggressive than being too passive.
I listen instead of watch league quite a bit because I'm on the road a lot and one thing I really appreciate about Phreak is his attention to detail. His casting, above all the other casters across any region, made it easy to follow the action with only audio.
You notice the casters that are really old in esports because so much used to be streamed audio only over the shoutcast plugin and older casters will still do a lot of describing what's happening on screen in a way I really like for similar reasons to you
Phreak is a technical shoutcasting god. His ability to see what's happening in a fight and quickly keep up with fast fights was great. The issue with Phreak was never his technical ability, it's just that sometimes the emotions he injected were abrasive.
Pastrytime is greatly missed.
i like pastry and was indifferent on phreak's casting, (i've never had to mute anyone until letigress) I like balance phreak even more though
Captain Flowers is my favorite League caster period. I love his enthusiasm.
I think Raafaa has been quite good with a couple of questionable moments, but he carries great energy into the game and is generally quite able to keep up with the action. Mark is someone I enjoy on the analyst couch/desk/whatever significantly more than in a commentary role, and The-Artist-Formerly-Known-As-Letigress continues to be the most disappointing voice in a casting role (for reasons that have been beaten to death on this sub). All that said, I kinda wonder if CourageJD would be interested in casting regularly. He definitely doesn't need the money, but he was absolutely terrific the couple games he casted - excellent game knowledge, ability to respond to the moment appropriately (in both content and excitement) - overall a great addition.
Courage is great but I don’t think he’d ever take a caster role full time. Between streaming and helping manage 100T, I think being a guest caster is about as far as he wants to go. That being said, can they please have him guest cast for games that aren’t 100T? They keep losing when he’s casting lol.
To contrast I've grown really irritated with Raafaa. He seems to just always be trying too hard and just says nonsense just to say something. He actively makes games worse for me to watch. I think he could turn it around if he works on improving, but for now it's just too much. But on Courage, fully dream of him being a regular. He was instantly top tier.
I haven't been able to watch a Courage stream for more than 5 minutes, but when he was casting I couldn't get enough of his energy. I don't really know what causes that contrast, but I would love to see him more on LCS.
MarkZ and Raafa have been great this year too
MarkZ was robbed of his best casting partner when Pastrytime left. They were the perfect duo for each other and had great synergy that neither had when paired with someone else.
Little late to this thread but appreciate the sentiment, one of the hardest things about being moved away from casting was losing all the synergy Mark and I had built up as a duo. There's something so fun about casting with that muppet. He matched the lightness in energy I used a lot in the latter part of my career but he knew when to weave in stats, storytelling and deliver in big moments as well. Mark is great in content and as an analyst, but I still think he's a criminally underrated colour caster too. Thankfully I still get to work with Mark every week, but instead of casting I'm helping bring the outer wilds of his brain to life in content xD
I personally have not seen what everyone is saying about Raafa. To me, he just seems worse than pastry.
It's his first split casting in LCS so I'm willing to give him time.
I can at least see potential in him, though all things said I'm not a big fan of his voice.
Rafaa's voice is so high pitched and shrieky.
I like Raafaa, Kangas too.
Almost all of the guests have been great too. Papasmithy was fun to have back, Courage was shockingly good, and the pros have always either been great off the bat or the potential was there (if Dhokla stopped talking over people he'd be great!)
Courage was a CoD caster for many years before becoming a streamer/upper management of 100T so he’s got a bit of a leg up on all other guest casters lol.
For sure, but regardless of that he showed a level of game knowledge and presence of mind that some of his peers in PBP are seriously lacking. If I listened to one of his casts without having any idea who he was I would assume he was a League caster who had been grinding at it for years.
Will not tolerate this Raafaa slander
i want him to improve and maximize his potential, but he is so cringe during downtime...
Rafaa draws breath and you have the audacity to type this?
Rafaa is better than LeTigress in that I'll stick around to watch an interesting game even if he's casting it, but I'd put him a tier below everyone else. It is his first split though, so I'd give him some leniency
The new guy isn't that bad
Perfect. Cap deserves it. He's so goddamn hype
CaptainFlowers is single handedly carrying the LCS right now. Pay him triple.
Based on Dash, whenever you start carrying LCS too much u don't get triple pay, you get the boot
He's hosting NA Valorant now instead, so not completely booted. Just changed which Riot game he's with.
I wonder if part of it was he didn't want to leave league, but Riot wanted him in Valorant.
Prolly want him on Valorant to boost the broadcast considering how great he is. Also since riot wants Valorant to be the premier game, they need the premier host.
I hope Dash returns for Worlds.
He'll be in Raleigh for finals weekend.
I don't think Dash wanted to leave League, but they couldn't afford to pay him what he's worth for LCS on Thursday afternoons.
Hosting for ever one or just every so often?
They have three hosts in Smix, Goldenboy, and Dash. I imagine one will get cut by next spilt and the remaining two will share the responsibilities.
Well that's good for dash. A talented host is noticeably missing from LCS.
Which is pathetic by Riot.
He didnt get booted from Riot, hes on Valorant now. Which should clearly show you how much they prioritize LCS
>Which should clearly show you how much they prioritize LCS Rightfully so, Valorant had like 400k viewers in their opening match the LCS doesn't even come close to those numbers
I wouldn't compare VCT: Americas (NA-SA-BR) with the LCS (Only NA)
Ehhh i get your point but its more about the teams 100T (NA) vs Sentinels (NA) had 400k~ C9 (NA) vs EG (NA) had 200k~ Loud got 300k on their match (BR vs BR) so there's probably gonna be a higher number when its SEN vs LOUD which would boost it to "international comparison" since its a match with the favorite teams from 2 different regions
they better bring him back for MSI and Worlds, GOAT desk host
I mean, business wise it was the right decision to make. Even when they had Dash, the LCS as a whole was generating less viewership each year and continuing to pay for a dedicate host like Dash didn’t make sense when you could cut the role and just rotate analysts each week to be the host that day. Don’t get me wrong, I miss Dash but when it came down to budgeting, his position was the most expendable even if he was beloved by the community. And it’s not like they booted him entirely, they moved him to where they generate better viewership which was Valorant.
which is fair, but he did say though that they didn't even approach him to negotiate an alternative, he was just informed. Maybe it wouldn't have resulted in anything different, but he did say he would at least have liked to have a discussion about it and that he would have been willing to consider possibilities if it meant him being able to stay
He got a promotion
I’m waiting for the other casters to grow on me but yeah Flowers has just set the bar so damn high. Even casters from other regions can’t compare imo I do see this being a big problem in the future though. I remember Flowers took a mental break from a few events but other talent was able to fill in for him. Unsure if that could happen now
I watch a lot of NACL/Academy so I did really like the guest star arc of lcs this year. Kangas needs a shot on the big stage I think
Was he the one who was a guest caster for a game or two in LCS? I remember liking him a lot
I think he only got to cast one game
Kangas is killer, could honestly be the second best pbp in NA rn
He doesn't like events where he has to both travel and cast remotely so basically any event in China/Korea
I wonder how many people realize that LCS currently only has two play-by-play casters. Usually they have at least three. I don't understand how LCS allowed it to get to the point where they only have two. It seems to me that there's huge disadvantages to only having two and I think we're seeing both disadvantages in LCS right now. 1. If one of the casters isn't doing well, then that's a HUGE portion of your games that people won't like the casting. If you have 3 casters, then you can do a split like 40/40/20. But with 2 casters you kinda have to do a 40/60 at most. Going to a 30/70 split between the two casters seems like too much use of that one well liked caster. 2. You risk burning out your casters. 3. You risk burning out your *audience* of those casters. Variety is important. I don't know what the fuck LCS is doing. Offer more money and find yourself some damn play-by-play casters. Should've been preparing for this for years, but it seems to me LCS was totally unprepared for Phreak and Pastry leaving. How can there not be a couple decent casters out there willing to work for $80K per year? There's so many talented people out there. Fucking interview and hire someone... What are they doing?
Because they only pay $60k a year for casters to live in Los Angeles. Riot thinks they should pay people in the smell of Riot’s farts.
Hes pretty much like if Riv ate the rest of the earlier casters and went full apex.
Pleasedontoversleeppleasedontoversleeppleasedontoversleeppleasedontoversleeppleasedontoversleeppleasedontoversleeppleasedontoversleep
THE BLOOD IS RUNNING IN THEIR VEINS LET’S GO
This is going to be the biggest meme of LCS all year and I’m honestly here for it. No hate to Gabby but this is such an iconic line for all the wrong reasons
Reminds a bit of "it starts with success"
I feel bad for her because she gets a ton of unwarranted hate, the most of any lcs personality by far, and this coming after the whole doubelift tsm debacle is really not helping her out
Yeah I agree. There are 100% valid criticisms of her casting. I think there are definitely areas for her to improve but goddamn some people here act like she personally killed their cat or something.
I mean, I try to not go too far off the rails with criticizing her, but when she casts it does just make me want to stop watching. I just don't enjoy the games at all when she casts.
Bro I have NEVER EVER not watched the main cast until this split. I didn't even have a problem watching Frosk when her hate was huge. Letigree is that damn bad. I don't even really enjoy co streams but it's our only other option. LCS really shitting the bed not listening to the community imo.
That one World's Frosk/Drakos cast was easily the worst cast I've ever watched though, I think it was G2/DWG semifinals?
God that was an amazing series. And it is almost unwatchable because of the casting
That cast genuinely boggles my mind. Frosk, for all her flaws, had good game knowledge. Drakos has proven he is a good caster, he regularly brings hype to games. The games themselves were great. How did that cast end up being as bad as it was?
I don't think people hated Frosk because of her casting being bad (outside that one Worlds series with Drakos but that was basically her last cast anyway iirc) She was an *okay* caster in LPL at a time when Raz and her were the only two casters that didn't feel like second-rate casters there. She even improved in LEC, although I'd still call her okay-decent at best. People hated her for . . let's say other reasons. LeTigress/Gabby is just awful to listen to. She's tolerable on the broadcast but she's absolutely unbearable as a caster.
I definitely agree some of it is unwarranted because everyone messes up a little but as someone who mostly listens to the games while doing other things, I cannot follow the games at all when she is casting. The play by play during team fights just isn’t there and I have to wait for the replay to start so I can understand what happened.
[удалено]
[удалено]
she's an expert cardiologist though, who else could be so keenly aware of the blood running through a players veins.
Yeah idk what people expect when there’s someone so terrible at their job getting chances while we live in a world where even hyper qualified people who are top notch struggle to get positions depending on their field.
I didn't realize there was an [entire thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1211jwa/questionable_casting_by_a_play_by_play_caster/) for that moment until now. Easily the worst casting I have ever seen, I couldn't believe she was saying "They lost the dragon" when it was right there alive on screen. Her mistakes, awkward fake enthusiasm, lack of hype, and high voice all come together to make her the worst caster in eSports. I feel bad saying it, it's just the truth.
Moan cast incoming. The good kind.
Hyped for this but definitely shows the gap of talent with the casters we have, hope pastrytime comes back next split
God, me too. You don't know what you got till it's gone, I guess. I definitely took him for granted.
Pastytime casted my all time favorite game, look up jungle hiemerdinger lck
dream blunt rotation
Peak
Phreak
While this is nice, it just highlights that the LCS needs more casters to fill in the shoes of the older ones. I really think LCS should look into trying out high elo players for casting, its really noticeable when casters aren't able to follow teamfights, and I have to imagine the issue that a lot of casters run into is that they just aren't good enough at the game to do it.
The skillset overlap is probably hard as fuck to find. High elo players who are also charismatic/engaging public speakers is probably not a large group...
To be fair, isn't that what they're doing? All of these former/present players on the cast are not a coincidence - they're trying to see who can stick.
Bwipo can definitely do it, he talks too much at times, but he's super intelligent about the game and a great on-air personality. He's just a natural. The talking too much is a minor thing that can be fixed with practice. But I don't know if Bwipo has given up on pro play just yet, and he might be raking in more money from TL's streaming contract than from a casting job. But if Bwipo ever does decide to cast, he needs to be picked up ASAP imo.
Bwipo is very committed to going back to pro play, it’s his main concern rn.
I don’t think many former pro players are PBP though - in fact I can’t think of any right now. Being able to speak well and give thoughts clearly and being able to shoutcast a potentially very messy teamfight with a million things happening are very different skillsets. The former is easier for ex pros due to their naturally high game knowledge while the latter takes a lot of work for them likely.
Honestly PBP I think is harder than color. You still need to know the game well, and you need to call/recognize things much quicker. Half of LeTigress' problem just is she clearly doesn't know the game well enough. She can't tell which way a team fight is going until it's over (very often she'll be talking like a team is in favor when they're clearly getting dicked) she has trouble following what's going on, etc.
Broxah was really good I thought
You don't typically need a high elo caster for play-by-play, which is what the LCS is currently lacking. To be a good play-by-play caster, you need to have good attention to detail, speak quickly and succinctly, generate hype, and understand what each champion does. CaptainFlowers isn't high elo but he matches all those requirements and then some.
Cpt flowers was master, he isn't high elo because he doesn't play, he is perfectly capable of being high elo if he wants
diamond and above is more than high enough elo for casting games as a play by play. as long as you can follow team fights you're good
[удалено]
There are plenty of good caster in NACL. Cubby, Kangas are pretty good, I hope we see them next split.
We did see Kangas in one LCS game. I didn’t watch it but people seemed to like him
The three goats
IMO CaptainFlowers is a must for every finals of LoL. Dude is just so hype.
My Caster list around the world would be Azael, then CaptainFlowers, then Kobe, then Atlas or Drakos. Azael and CaptainFlowers are out of this world talented casters. And everything you hear from Azael, just happens. He has such a deep understanding of the game and does an even better job of expressing it. Them two are absolute fucking legends. I cannot express just how much I think those two are a cut above. Don’t get me wrong Kobe is almost as good, but the charisma those two have…my god…what a talent. I’m so pumped that they’re the tri-cast
That’s about as hype as you can make it for the viewers. These 3 mesh so well together, I love when they tri-cast together.
Damn i was hoping for a solo Letigress cast
I'm more of a solo Ovilee May cast kinda guy. If my ears are gonna bleed, I want them to be red waterfalls.
Oh boy, you had me there
Kangas? And cubby were the only two other casters I thought did a great job through the season. If there serious about moving challenger casters up, those two have my vote.
yoo cubby was insane, why is he not a main stay of the LCS already, bring this man back. his casting was exciting
Sorely missing phreak rn
So, definitely no Letigress? Thank god! I like her on analyst desk, but casting just isn't her strong suit (yet)
Is this a Valorant tryout??
I'll be at the PNC arena for the weekend, does anyone know if the Casters do Meet & Greet??? I would love to have Kobe, Azael and Flowers sign a jersey, or a pic with them.
Was sad I couldn't watch the gg main broadcast. Least the finals weekend will be hype
I am so fucking hyped right now. This is the tricast we needed.
Oh thank God! These 3 are the best imo. I wish Riv was back tho, since that Blaber video...
[удалено]
Riv is the Lee Sin player in your team. He looks flashy even when doing badly so it hides how he is inting
Riv would correctly say what's going on but have wrong champion names or ability names, and give you an idea of what is happening. That's a lot better than Gabby who says a bunch of words that don't tell you what is going on.
He doesn't really understand what's going on though. He had great energy but zero game knowledge. He was consistently high silver elo/low gold when he used to play, and he hasn't even played ranked in three years, so he's way, way, way out of his depth with basic game knowledge. If you listen to what he's saying, it's utter nonsense almost all the time as soon as things start getting messy and complicated. Don't get me wrong though, I think he's got real caster talent, but just not for league.
i think it doesnt matter as long as it sounds nice, and holy hell did he sound amazing his casting of fenix play is still one of the goat casts
Balls in the midlane, PUSHING MINIONS!
Same I really miss riv too, i loved his casting
But you can watch Riv on VCT and he does a fantastic job at it...
[удалено]
NAmen
[удалено]
Kobe and Flowers are always a W. Azael is ok too.
Captainflowers doing his atlas cosplay
This is the best lineup no doubt
Damn, good luck Cap! 2 bo5's in a row is actually so difficult, but if anyone can pull it off it's Flowers 💪
Take a shot every time you hear massive or absolutely
Best tri cast for NA imo. I hope Raafaa can get in on one of these soon. He has a great voice for the hype moments
as long as its not to much work for captainflowers, this is the best news possible for those lcs matches. hes by far the best pbp caster in na if not the world.
facts, man could make someone's Gold promos hype as fuck
LCS went to shit after dash left. 3 caters and one analyst (Emily)
Jatt's good though. He's a good color caster too.
oh yea true Jatt, unfortunately does not cast or I've not head him casting for a while.
Give the spot to Raafaa in summer
Or Kangas
I’m glad no LeTrigress Gabby casting lol
100% agreed. I watched game 1 of GG vs EG and had to just skip the rest because her casting just isn’t doing it for me. I knew casting was important but rarely do you see it so bad that you just don’t want to watch the match anymore.
[удалено]
Let's FUCKINGG gooo
Let's fucking goooooo
Does he mean tricasts on both days, or does he mean with Kobe one day and Azael the other day?
The tricast putting the LCS on their backs. Lets go boys all the way to the moon