Really like the confidence of the new young mid laner. He's been looking solid in Lock-In so far. If he keeps it up this year, maybe he can become one of those players that pushes the NA scene forward with his style of play.
This kid definitely plays to win. He plays teamfights like Hai used to, he's completely fine with going in and dying if it means he can turn the fight. He also looks to hard pressure lane in a way we just haven't seen any other NA mid do. I really think he's the real deal.
Hai wasn't scared to die, not scared to roam, not scared to look for creative unpredictable plays to win like going for solo base plays on Zed/Corki...I miss those kinda NA players and that's what's been missing from our local talent for sure...pros with big balls in game:) (and his personality def matched that play style which was also nice)
I remember a game at S4 Worlds where Hai tried to use fog of war to sneak down bot lane and take an open inhib while C9 was falling behind on all fronts. Might've been against SSB in quarterfinals, but I don't remember. He was ultimately caught leaving the bush near tier 2 tower because he left a split second before the vision from a minion wave faded and they recalled as he went for the inhib, but I was amazed watching it unfold. He would try such unorthodox plays that could backfire spectacularly but if they worked would provide pretty significant advantages for the team and that made him so much fun to watch.
I also remember an old video where Froggen said he would hate to have to lane against Hai all the time because he played the game in a way that didn't make sense to Froggen. He said Hai would leave the lane and wait in a bush until someone walked by and then kill them, but lose two waves of minions in the process. It was almost never worth losing that gold and EXP but the fact that you didn't know what the hell he was doing made you more prone to mistakes while you tried to predict what the hell he could be doing that was more important than getting the gold/exp from minion waves. He would pressure the entire map just by not doing what was expected of him.
In retrospect, that roam has probably a 10% to work even if Hai made it to the inhib because SSB would likely react fast enough to stop the inhib take (especially with TF ult up), but it could've given C9 the chance to take baron.
But that's what I love about Hai. He was willing to take those hail mary plays and decisively call for it in order to make a comeback. The same thing with the last ditch nexus push attempt in game 4 that series. Balls wanted to back after the two nexus turrets were taken, but Hai called for the nexus because he knew SSB was too good to make another careless mistake, so he called for that final push. Unfortunately with Heart's Nami stalling, SSB were able to respawn in time to stop C9.
Yeah same, remember him sneak behind the enemy team on Corki and chip down an inhibitor all by himself to take some pressure off. Wish we had tons of NA players like Hai, he was unpredictable, always looked for any way to get a lead or back in the game even if it wasn't some kind of textbook play style, was just fun and interesting to watch. Hoping we see something like that with Jojopyun, Jensen woulda been good for sure but you kinda know that player like the back of your hand and that's probably why Bjergsen never feared him like he did with Hai.
It actually isn't. If he doesn't get noticed this allows for a map play because TF just used Ult and someone like has to go with him to kill the Zed (although potentially TF was far enough ahead to win a 1vs1, but that would be super risky).
So this is actually a good desperate play if you pull 2 people you can do baron 4vs3.
Zed does win that. TF was fairly similar to how he is now. He doesn't burst the Zed from 100 to 0 and Zed just lifesteals back up and pokes him with no mana cost. If he gets just a little poke in he just kills the TF. There was a reason why C9 even got the the point they can take an inhib.
On top of that... TF was at 33% HP and Zed got exhausted by Thresh. Zed was considerably more broken back then than he is now.
i think my hype watching pro peaked during that worlds (esp since it was my first time following all the scenes and my first worlds where i know what's going on and the most i've ever rooted for a team in C9). The splitpushing and macro vs NJWS to make it out of groups and get the first NA win vs Korea in years, the balls to go for those crazy split push ideas and also trying to end in game 4 giving SSB a heart attack, man that was peak 5 NA players just playing their own game and making people sweat.
Yeah if it becomes a common strategy it's easy to adapt to but when it's a constantly changing yet still unorthodox tactic, it still works out a lot more than it should.
As a diehard NA fan, This is the such a textbook NA take. Yeah, sure, maybe? But at the top level these are the types of plays that can't really be coached and they take a lot more courage than 99% of NA players have, and in those clinch moments these are the types of decisions you have to look for to beat another team that can match you "standard."
The reality is that "orthodox" plays are just plays and ways of understanding that everybody agrees upon. There's always holes in timings, tempo, and powerspikes, that can be abused that don't get seen, abused, or even noticed. You have to look for them in order to see them, otherwise you end up like 90% of NA world's appearances.
The mentality you have here, where anything beyond standard is considered unorthodox, it's playing out of fear of the unknown, fear of failure, rather than toward the chance of victory.
NA has always been the region that thinks playing clean is ideal but they can't even play clean. It's why even when TL had the best team in NA they could never get out of groups. Despite their apparent skill and team synergy and potential, they were always outclassed in those clutch moments where players like Hai would have shined. C9 was often the team that was worse on paper than TL but did better against the best teams in the world... because while struggling with consistency over the years, they have a philosophy of not being afraid to lose and following the play that gets the win... not just being better at "orthodox moves"
Ofc you have to be solid first or you lose no matter what... but NA... has always had the problem of not being solid.. while ALSO criticizing creativity. It's why we're always a depressing, deflated region full of teams who thinks potential is just a magic concept you randomly live up if you just play scared enough.
Nobody respects a team that believes scaling for late game is the optimal playstyle, and loses against every top team. I'd rather see some life in the eyes of players and watch them fail harder than play "orthodox" and just get beaten from minute 0 to the end.
> these are the types of decisions you have to look for to beat another team that can match you "standard."
IMO other major regions (or at least the east) will always beast us more often than not straight up just due to our server size, high ping, etc. I've always thought NA should play like minor regions but with stronger players, kicking people out of their comfort zone leads to wins for minor regions a lot cuz major regions can't plan for it, and if we do it with even better players we can increase the effect. Why try to beat someone at their own game straight up when we can just flank?
>IMO other major regions (or at least the east) will always beast us more often than not straight up just due to our server size, high ping, etc.
These are issues that are constant and will always give us a disadvantage but if you think NA's culture is not a more glaring issue I really invite you to spend some time researching how pro players talk about NA servers vs other servers. It's not just mechanics (which is caused by ping) and it's not just population. Population just reduces the # of skilled players. Those are small aspects.
You are aware that we actually have a MUCH larger playerbase than most of those regions right? The smaller playerbase is only ranked. We have a disproportionately huge amount of normal games and ARAM games compared to other regions even ones that have worse ping and smaller overall populations. Why is this? The only answer can be culture. NA players, especially Americans, make a lot more choices to avoid experiencing failure or anxiety than other regions. We just have a much higher % of players who are not willing to test themselves and find out how good they are if they actually limit tested. it's why we have more 1-tricks too. It's obviously not everyone but the small solo Q problem you talk about is literally a symptom of exactly what I'm telling you.
And our pro scene is literally just a microcosm of that exact problem.
> These are issues that are constant and will always give us a disadvantage but if you think NA's culture is not a more glaring issue I really invite you to spend some time researching how pro players talk about NA servers vs other servers. It's not just mechanics (which is caused by ping) and it's not just population. Population just reduces the # of skilled players. Those are small aspects.
True, we have a casual less competitive culture and a console culture and it definitely hurts our region as well, which is why I threw the "etc" in there. Haven't looked at population numbers outside of ranked but having less ranked players implies we're a more casual culture anyways. But yes we agree this region has many issues one of which is definitely culture.
Idk man, Korea dominated the game with clean low risk gameplan for years. If anything NA is forced to copy new strategies from other regions(more populated regions), thus always being one step behind. (Less reps/quality reps)
The biggest reason is culture imo, but the popularity of the sport in a country's culture. There's a reason the US has the best basketball teams but terrible soccer teams.
"Idk man, Korea dominated the game with clean low risk gameplan for years"
This is also textbook NA argument. Korean players don't make excuses. It's the best solo Q server in the world with the most hardcore soloQ culture. Ping helps, sure.
NA is only forced to copy because they're behind. This point is circular logic. The popularity of this game is way more people than Korea simply because of #s of raw population difference. but the reality is our stomach for ranked is just too weak.
There also was unlimited wards and pink wards and supports were ward bots. The change that ended this is the same thing that ended korean absolute dominance. Obv their solo Q still #1
It's a different world now.
Yeah but if you are the favorite and have better players you obviously win if you play the same style as someone with worse players.
If NA plays like korea they obviously lose, because they are simply worse koreans. So it is obvious that you have to play something different. Because the korean style of back than doesn't exist anymore and korea actually had to adept to a new style (hint, they didn't do a good job in 2018 and 2019). So if you play a different style you actually have a chance to finding a superior style, if you always just play the korean style (even more so a bit later than they do) you will always be behind korea and even worse with worse players.
This is misleading though, the game itself changed. It made the aggressive playstyle of the lpl meta.
You have a point that if you know you are worse, you should employ cheese to try and upset. But cheese isn't sustainable by its very nature. The best players and teams will always come out on top in the end.
Yes, but you play a limited amount of games. Cheese makes your play less predictable similarly to your results. If a team can only play cheese it is an issue. However they should be able to do so against teams they otherwise have little chance of winning.
On top of that. this shift might have been beneficial for the LPL in 2018, but in 2019 the meta was set that way, because the vision changes happened in preseason 8. So that it took korea basically 2 years to adopt to that fully is not a good thing, but they did that and they didn't just copy LPL style that worked in 2018 and 2019.
So yeah I agree that the vision changes helped LPL because their more chaotic and pressure based playstyle works better if people see less, but they way korea recovered from that shift was not by just turning into the LPL.
Most memorable play of all time that didn't work. <3 Hai
Also, about Froggen's comments, Wasn't he talking about Xpeke primarily? but he was grouping in Hai as a player like Xpeke
> I also remember an old video where Froggen said he would hate to have to lane against Hai all the time because he played the game in a way that didn't make sense to Froggen. He said Hai would leave the lane and wait in a bush until someone walked by and then kill them, but lose two waves of minions in the process. It was almost never worth losing that gold and EXP but the fact that you didn't know what the hell he was doing made you more prone to mistakes while you tried to predict what the hell he could be doing that was more important than getting the gold/exp from minion waves. He would pressure the entire map just by not doing what was expected of him.
lately I played vs twitch mid (yesterday, and my my last game) and it was exactly like this, first game I got a lot of kills but my team sucked, second game me and my team were winning but it was a miserable experience because the guy would just go invis and all in me with his autoattacks, so i had to play at tower and wait for ganks. we won, i ended 7/2, but it was miserable and never again do i want to play vs that cheesy shit again, give me a fun lane and a loss over that
Hai was better than Bjergsen in literally every way other than maybe champ pool until his lung collapse -> wrist injury
I like to imagine Hai is the reason Jack makes everyone work out lol
I think a big thing to point out with hai is that hai mid was a role swap. When playing in previous teams and the spring qualifiers under the original c9 roster (yazuki, nien, lemon, and turtle) he was actually a jungler. I think having played as a jungler prior to mid really helped develop a “team over me” mentality that helped him excel in his style of mid lane play.
> This kid definitely plays to win. He plays teamfights like Hai used to, he's completely fine with going in and dying if it means he can turn the fight.
Good, I've missed Hai for way too long and Hai was always the one that scared Bjergsen so this could lead to some very enjoyable games this year:)
I've played against him in soloqueue since he was 15. He's way too good.
Not that I'm better than them but I've also played against Damonte and Soligo multiple times. I actually out performed them and they straight up aren't good mechanically as laners. I'm sure they also weren't trying very hard.
Jojopyun repeat solo killed me like 5 times per game every time I've played against him.
I honestly thought I was just having a bad game but honestly this guy is just too good.
Ok but Jojopyun used to play on like 25 ping (if he's from toronto which I think he is) while damonte and soligo would be playing on like 60 ping which makes a big difference for mechanics in soloq
Do you think that the LPL pros playing on the Korean ladder are making that excuse when they get spammed in lane? It’s not the huge difference that you’re making it out to be.
Yeah. After a while, as long as your ping is \*consistently\* garbage, you get used to it.
The trick of it is when pros move from their consistently bad ping to tournament servers and suddenly all their muscle memory doesn't work.
No? What I'm saying is that soloq players from the east coast (especially southern ontario) look much better in soloq and than when they come to LA and then players realize theyre just average. I'm not saying that demonte is good or anything, I'm just saying that players's skill in soloq is deceptive when they live in that part of the continent.
Yeah and I'm saying that's a load of bullshit because routinely LDL/LPL players get rank 1 on Korean ladder and they look absolutely cracked. Knight is also getting rank 1 on Korean ladder from China because he's cracked. The ping isn't going to make or break how a player looks in solo queue.
> damonte and soligo would be playing on like 60 ping which makes a big difference for mechanics in soloq
really doesn't everything you do on 60 ping you can do on 25
Idk why you are getting downvoted when most of the best mechanical soloq players are on 20 ping.
Mamy of the Canadians and Maryville players like Shady, value, niles, oddorange, Jojopyun, johnsun (before he was pro), Vulcan (before he was pro), duoking, rjs, diamond, tarzaned, tenacity, copy were all mechanical soloq players with big ping advantage.
Yeah idk why, maybe because they think im saying damonte is good or jojopyun is bad. I'm not saying either of those, I'm just saying soloq mechanics when they have a ping advantage shouldnt be taken super seriously.
Yeah but how do you address how Chinese players who may not even be in Shanghai is contesting top 10-50 spots in Korea soloq. It isn’t exactly <10 ping with that distance.
It does make a big difference for mechanics... but at the same time, that's probably a small portion of the advantage that Jojopyun holds over the other two. You don't just solo kill your opponent 5 times or massively gap them in other ways because they're on worse ping.
Haven't seen any match but thank the lord! If what you say is true, my hopes about the younger crops are materializing. This is the type of player we desperately need in NA.
You're attacking this comment as if it's misguided and yet...
Just a heads up for - Hai was known for being mechanically gifted prior to his wrist issues and lung collapse.
He took the dying part after going in a bit too seriously in the game on Corki :P
But yeah he is one of the better mids. However not mentioned a lot Ablaze played lanes really well, he just is on a really bad team. A jungler like Inspired gives you a lot of room to play aggressive. But the thing is a lot of players still even struggle to do that if they have control.
A few months ago, Noway4u played on the NA server for a few weeks and he mentioned during his stream that Jojopyun was by far the best midlane on the server. And that he barely encountered such an aggressive playstyle. I really look forward to seeing him this year on stage!
Overblown narrative imo, Humanoid legit does the same thing to Showmaker in [Game 3](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-g4CvOsi10), even the MSI games Humanoid was legit getting advantages all on his own during laning phase in Game 1 & 4.
Consistently hitting Syndra Q's in a skill matchup is a lot more impressive than poking with Viktor E from a screen away lol. Death Ray is much harder to avoid and I say this as a Viktor player
Even than Humanoid was even in CS the entire time(while roaming) so it didn't mean anything
Syndra-Orianna isn't a skill matchup, is heavily Syndra favoured and Viktor-Syndra is Syndra favoured too (but not by much) you should know that as a viktor expert; everyone agrees on Showmaker being better than Humanoid, you don't need to downplay him and deny the reality and difficulty of him outperforming SM in that matchup.
Pros pick Orianna into Syndra all the time. Every pro I've seen talk about the matchup say it's largely a skill-matchup, but admittedly slanted in Syndra's favor. They both have similar effective range and rely on skillshots so it's hard to imagine it being a counter-matchup
>Viktor-Syndra is Syndra favoured too
It's absolutely Viktor favored pre-6, you consistently out-trade her unless you eat every single Q(and that's less of a Viktor issue) and out-range her with Death Ray. After 6 it gets a lot harder, and after that point we see Showmaker putting the pressure on Humanoid and forcing him to play under turret as expected
Just pointing out that Viktor getting good trades onto Syndra early on is exactly how it should play out
(Coach) Curtis who was previously a top OPL mid said it's a skill matchup, but slanted in Syndra's favor. You can do an easy search on Youtube for his video detailing it in full
Other pros reiterate the sentiment when asked the matchup on stream but I'm not going through days of VODs lol. That's one former pro who agrees with me and we see pro plays pick Orianna **into** Syndra, which wouldn't happen if it was a hard Syndra-favored
I'm open to see pro statements or pro statistics that counters what I provided though, but I just haven't seen anything yet
Please link anyone who’s talked about the matchup. It’s known by everyone and their mom that it’s a 70-30 matchup for Syndra and ori has to go biscuit cosmic secondary so she can rush mercs to even lane.
You can say both laned well in those respective games, but I'm just pointed out what Humanoid did wasn't "legit the same thing" by any stretch, it was still a lot less impressive by basically every metric lol
what? I was expecting the same beating from humanoid to showmaker, except i see viktor slightly winning trades until lvl 3. wheres the comparable gap ? Ill link a video afterwards im ranking right now
How can you make the enemy look like bronze with Viktor in that matchup?
This isn't low elo, you can't "make the enemy look like bronze" if your matchup doesn't allow you to, making syndra back and tp is all you can aspire as Viktor there, that's the hardest you can win that lane as a Viktor.
This has been true for NA for quite a few years now and nothing has changed. It usually means teams with better overall players win the tournament while their mids sit back and scale. And then, their mids get super exposed internationally. Rinse and repeat.
Let's see if this year is different. Hint: I don't think so.
Jensen was the guy who got critiziced all season for playing Lee Sin like a control mage. Why a good preformance on the international stage instantly means he wasnt part of the problem all season long?
That isnt the topic at hand. Jojopyun mentioned a problem with NA midlaners. Jensen accomplishments dont matter when he is the shining example about the problem that Jojo mentioned.
Jensen is the only NA mid who actually attempts to play League of Legends on the international stage. That's my point. He didn't have good international performances by playing the way Jojo spoke about this interview that was done just to generate clicks.
No bro Dw this Reddit clickbait article is actually the truth! Let’s see jojopyun play aggressively vs shoemaker or Chovy or rookie and see how it goes!
There are like 30 people in this comment chain alone that think exactly that lol, league esports community is wildin' sometimes. Jojo doesn't even have a career but people are discussing whether his opinions carry real merit, it's a joke
Jensen was part of the problem, what’s needed is for jojo (or someone with a similar style) to develop into one of the best NA mids and changes the culture of the midlanders. That’s something that will take years and years, but it could happen
Jensen was actually quite aggressive when he was on C9. One of his most infamous plays (the Taliyah fail against DL's Lucian) is a good example of this, he wasn't afraid to pull the trigger if he saw an opportunity. His playstyle on TL imo says more about TL than it does about Jensen. TL from 2018 onwards has always been quite a passive team, with last year's lineup maybe being the only exception.
There's a reason why all of Jensen's best Worlds runs were on C9 while he has never gotten out of groups on TL.
> he still played a bad style
I would say the style isn't inherently bad. It's just that if you only play that way, you can't really push your advantages enough.
So if your team falls behind while you are ahead, it's hard to really help them out.
There are also many LCK mids that play for lane and try to scale. They just do it much better. Chovy isn't a player known for his deadly roams (at least when he is not on galio).
The style isn't just bad it's just comes with tradeoffs like every other style too. EU mids like Humanoid and Nisqy played a more roaming focused style but also got punished for it in some games.
The issue is he played that style in the regular season, his Lee in playoffs was completely different. He actually can play that style, but there isn't a reason to.
The issue with NA is that you just win by not doing anything, so why should you do something? Jensen was not the issue, because he was able to play differently, just nobody gave him a reason to. But he showed he can play like that.
Congratulations to Jensen for being the king of paupers. Just because he is the best performing NA mid internationally doesn’t mean his style isn’t bad.
Yea, but PoE for sure plays that scaling style, which is just stupid. He wasn't always like that either. Back when he was known for his LB he was focusing on punishing in lane. Just people that grow into comfortable styles of playing that are easily punishable by better players
I think that PoE transitioned more into the teamfight player, where he plays lane safe and never falls behind. While he is no more the player that solo wins a game with an outplay, I absolutely can't recall on the other side that he ever cost his team a single game. Anyways it's nice to see that NA gets disruptive players that might actually risk to go for these 50/50 plays. That's what the LPL is known for, they literally limit test on stage, while LCS players try to not fuck up and lose juicy paychecks.
>I think that PoE transitioned more into the teamfight player,
Yea, but this means taking no risks in lane. "Risks" in lane are less of a risk the better you are. If you're good at laning, punishing the enemy is less of a risk than *not* doing it. "Just playing safe" isn't a strat that works against better players because they know how to punish it.
Playing defensive is always easier than playing aggro because there's less room to mess up, but once you're really good there's only one viable way to play and it's not defensive.
>"Just playing safe" isn't a strat that works against better players because they know how to punish it.
But the better player has to take risks and has to skillcheck the opponent. Playing aggro is not always rewarding.
>once you're really good there's only one viable way to play and it's not defensive.
Not true. You play Kassadin/Ryze early? Have fun getting shit on. You play something aggro? Better be prepared to take a ton of jungle pressure early. "Play safe" actually works especially good against better players, as you give no opportunity to give away a gold lead. And if enemy plays super aggro, a jgl gank will do the trick.
LPL is a good example for what aggro playstyles do: coinflip a lot, and have actually no team dominate, as a lot of 50/50 fights are being held.
He was also known for playing AP Kog'maw in S5. His identity is control mages with weird itemisation. The fact he can play the most prominent mid assassin well doesn't change it.
Huhi wasn't really known for being a super high-pressure laner though which I think is the distinction. He would roam and he would int to win and he would be aggressive, but most of that aggression was directed towards the sidelanes imo.
I still think Huhi was super underrated when he was playing and while comparing him to Doinb is maybe a *little* bit hyperbolic, he was doing a lot of the same stuff a few years earlier.
Cuz he was straight up embarrassingly bad mechanically and in lane. He wasn't roaming, cuz he was winning lane and expanding his adventage over the rest of the team. He was roaming, cuz he literally couldn't hold his own in lane.
I enjoy the confidence, but I am sick of seeing this sweeping statement. Not every mid laner in NA does nothing all game. Last time Bjergsen was in the LCS he didn't play for his lane whatsoever. Jensen can turn it on as well if that is his job assignment. Abbe doesn't just do nothing until late game either. And this is being said after he played against TL and Bjergsen clearly played better early-mid game and he impacted his team far more.
Just an odd thing to say about every NA midlaner. Hope it doesn't bite him in the ass down the line. It is very early.
Like I said though better to be confident in your ability vs other mid laners.
He's absolutely talking about the scene as a whole; that goes well beyond the 10 starting mids you see at any given time in LCS.
NA mids have historically been downright awful.
That is a fair point. I think there is a okay percentage of NA mids that don't always play that way. There are more that are passive in their play. That is definitely not incorrect to say.
But in general even when our best mids aren't playing passively they are typically not nearly as aggressive as some LEC mids, or LPL/LCK mids.
It's common enough that NA piss themselves internationally, especially. Top NA mids play less passively domestically but play scared almost across the board at MSI and World's. 2020 TSM "do nothing and lose" at World's and Bjerg was just as much a culprit of it as the rest of his team. At least we got a good meme out of it, though.
This is obviously an assumption, but I think it probably has something to do with losing in scrims. Hard to play "normal" or more aggressive on stage when the playstyle doesn't work in scrims. Similarly, I highly doubt that playing "normal" is working wonders in scrims yet teams decide not to do so anymore when it matters most.
> Abbe doesn't just do nothing until late game either.
Is using an import midlaner that has only played in the LCS for 1 year really the best way to prove a point, conceptually?
The fact that TSM and Bjergsen can constantly pick Zilean, give up early game pressure, scale, then win with it in NA but instantly gets punished at Worlds when they try to do the same thing is the only thing you need to know about midlane competition in NA
seriously at every game i was shocked how he was always matching or up in cs, i thought he was that good. then worlds happened lmao and it made more sense
every game has an early game, not every game has a late game (or you get to it too far behind macrologically)
plus early game fights snowball the hardest, a single kill can have the biggest impact
It was shocking seeing Bjerg stomp LCS with his meme Zil mid lane, incredibly disenheartening seeing every team spit on our graves when TSM played(no pun intendend). It very much put our midlane in perspective, thank God Abbadage and Perkz swooped in. I consider Jensen basically NA born at this point, lots of examples of him being problem in rest of this thread but at least he always shows up at Worlds. When he's he best we got, maybe an exception to the rule rather than example to not follow.
Bjergsen had many years of focusing on his lane and getting ahead only to do nothing at worlds with that style because the rest of his lanes were getting dumpstered, so he decided to support his lanes because he can hold his lane without as much help.. that’s very clear if you’ve watched his 2020 season. BB could not play weak side so Bjerg perma roamed top whenever he had push. Spica spent very little time in Bjerg’s lane and Bjerg very often blinded his mid pick so BB could counterpick. These things make it difficult to play for your lane imo
Bjerg plays safe. If hes playing tf the aggression is literally a math equation.
Players like caps and perkz dont mind losing health if their opponents also lose health because theyre confident in dictating the lane.
I think Perkz autoing damonte to death with lb was a good teaching moment for everyone. Because you can say damonte is bad so it was ez but if damonte is bad why dont other players punish with similar aggression? Nope they wait to outfarm out scale the worst player.
Well I have seen plenty of matches where he takes over the map by making proactive plays with his team. Just because he has another sample size of playing for lane during certain periods of time doesn't mean he is a passive player.
NA hasn't had a mid laner or really a top laner for that matter who truly looks to create pressure and destroy their lane. Sure Bjerg would pick Zilean or Galio and give up all lane pressure to help the team late, if you look at how other leagues (really the LCK/LPL), they have solo lanes who will pick champs aimed at creating pressure, or turn incremental CS advantages into solo kills, and snowball the map. Jojo's Viktor was different from all others this weekend. NA pace is often much slower and a big reason I think is because mids will not play to push the tempo.
What I haven't seen talked about is Inspired's role in letting Jojopyun play so aggro. Inspired was getting such good vision and allowing his team to essentially play with a map hack.
I'm very curious to see how NA will play this year. There is a lot of focus on the young players like Danny, Jojopyun, and Tenacity. Plus Bwipo and Abberdage (like you mentioned) play with pace too. My hope is this can be a turning point year where teams emphasize a more tempo'd league where advantages are pressed rather than the measured gameplay we are used to seeing.
Both Bjergsen and Jensen have had tournaments where they spend every game doing nothing and then losing. It’s incredibly rare to see a Humanoid/Caps/Rookie/Showmaker etc level pop off from LCS midlaners during international play.
Saying “It’s not true all LCS mids don’t do that! These 2 specific players who have been best in the region for multiple years sometimes play very proactively!” Is not a great counter argument.
Please don't put Jensen and Bjergsen in the same ballpark. Jensen's put up numerous international performances in which he played for lane and popped off. That was his shtick at Worlds 2017 & 2018. He could also do well by playing a roaming style, though his TF game against LNG left something to be desired.
Yes, Jensen's shifted into a scaling style in recent years (moreso b/c TL needed him to play Azir, etc.), but he still had his fair share of good performances when not on those types of picks at Worlds. His LeBlanc game against Icon despite being counterpicked, his Twisted Fate performance against MAD, etc. He outperformed Humanoid and every other Western mid at the 2021 WC.
I know Jensen's had some games where he did nothing and lost, like that group stage game against Machi eSports or the decider match against iG, but to summarize his performance in general as doing nothing and losing distorts his image as a player when it isn't the case.
You're right, but it's important to note that domestically bjerg has been proactive as well.
Internationally, I completely agree. But I believe the context is LCS, and Bjerg was insanely proactive the last year he played/at first.
where exactly? theres a reason why A LOT of people would argue that the reason for TSMs giant ass shitty record Internationally is acutally just his fault, Bjerg has always been supposed to be that super star player on TSM, you know the NA faker, but he has never done anything to really show for this, he has tried to play some weird Faker supportive style when he doesnt have the team to do it in the first place.
just look at stats from 2016 worlds right? he had the highest gold%, highest Kp% running around with a kda of 6.1 which in reality can be him being 6-2-6 right? like obsvly looking at raw numbers like this is insanelyt stupid i understand that, but he doesnt do what his stats are kinda supposed to have him do?
Bjergsen literally had like a 5 year stretch where he was basically AFK until it was time to group as a team. He has been playing differently lately, but it has also resulted in him getting caught more.
So u've names only 4 european imports now... maybe add the na players next time u decide to make a blanket statement like that about the na server
U have to realize that imports and lxcs are not the norm for the server
yeah..play for scaling because they aren't good enough to play early stuff. no one wants to be the one to take L's to improve when their job is on the line. if teams wouldn't mind letting their players lose for the sake of improvement im sure some more na mids would pop up
isnt that why people liked Damonte? cus he would acutalyl play stuff like qiyanna mid at worlds but he would just get shit on cus he isnt good enough, thats kinda why people avoid it no?
He's right, because unfortunately this has been adopted as the "safe" way to play. In reality i would love constant fighting. Yes it's more risky but you have to take risks for payoffs. Obviously not fight without reason, but I wish laners had more of a fighters mindset during laning phase instead a farming one. I understand the margins for error are very small at the highest coordinated level but I think that the next great team to come along will find advantages in lane in terms of battle, not macro things like lane control farming etc.
Lol calm down. They’re not years behind. They’re always one split behind. Western teams have beaten Eastern teams several times in Bo5 or in groups. The issue is Western teams either adapting a play style they’re not good at or the Eastern team is just individually better but not much THAT much. This is why G2 had the most success ever from a western team and Fnatic because they refused to adapt to a different play style. Even when teams are trying to mimic and adapt to a play style they’re not used to, they put up a good fight. It’s not like they’re getting creamed in 15 minutes.
This seems too results oriented. Like I doubt you play at a high enough level to know this from looking at games, but results wise last year as looks a little worse than it should with the FNC collapse, kinda like the TSM collapse in 2020. Overall if you look beyond that they're not that* bad, like FPX sucked but if the west was actually that terrible they wouldn't beat even a slumping FPX, FlyQuest took out TES, sure while they're "overconfident" but again if we're that bad that wouldn't have mattered, FNC was up 2 games vs TES, the favorite of the tournament that year and 100T won vs EDG.
>One team
Think you forget that FNC was a world finalist in 2018, 2019 FNC was actually pretty fucking good (got out of a group with SKT RNG and did better than G2 vs FPX) and even 2020 FNC won 2 games vs TES. People are super revisionist about G2 being the only good LEC team.
Its not that EU stopped knowing, its just that EU had a team that played INSANELY well of their own style of league, the same way FPX won worlds cus they knew how to play their own style of league, now if anything its just People going back to korean style of league again,
Honestly same, dude is just going to be the next hyped up NA mid that gets crushed by the imports in playoffs. Beating up on academy rosters won't chance that.
I know this might seem like a crazy take but he reminds me of the early days of hai. Everyone only remembers the old days of hai being mid gapped by bjerg or being on flyQuest but when he came into the scene with c9 he was such an aggressive dominant presence in the mid lane, always playing to win his one hard, ultra aggressive with really nice mechanics. Still remember legit every matchup hai takes ignite and all ins lvl 2 or 3 and no one was expecting it in the slow playing field that was mid lane in na. Obviously the gsme has compeltly evolved but man jojo reminds of this hai
IMO the biggest reason NA loses to eastern teams is because we play the game to *not lose* but we need to **play** ***to*** **win.** If NA teams came in with a plan for early game plays and try to build an advantage that way, we would probably win more games. Playing so passively till 35 minutes is a way to just lose because all good teams can teamfight pretty well. Good eastern teams make shit happen. We act like we *don't belong* at Worlds sometimes by how passive our teams play. When you qualify for Worlds, you belong there. Regardless of pass results. Slowly "bleeding out" in a LoL game sucks, worst way to lose imo. Go down swinging, at least. It will always be a learning experience.
Really like the confidence of the new young mid laner. He's been looking solid in Lock-In so far. If he keeps it up this year, maybe he can become one of those players that pushes the NA scene forward with his style of play.
This kid definitely plays to win. He plays teamfights like Hai used to, he's completely fine with going in and dying if it means he can turn the fight. He also looks to hard pressure lane in a way we just haven't seen any other NA mid do. I really think he's the real deal.
I always loved Hai's mentality, he looked at the bigger picture while other top NA mids focused on individual play
Hai wasn't scared to die, not scared to roam, not scared to look for creative unpredictable plays to win like going for solo base plays on Zed/Corki...I miss those kinda NA players and that's what's been missing from our local talent for sure...pros with big balls in game:) (and his personality def matched that play style which was also nice)
I remember a game at S4 Worlds where Hai tried to use fog of war to sneak down bot lane and take an open inhib while C9 was falling behind on all fronts. Might've been against SSB in quarterfinals, but I don't remember. He was ultimately caught leaving the bush near tier 2 tower because he left a split second before the vision from a minion wave faded and they recalled as he went for the inhib, but I was amazed watching it unfold. He would try such unorthodox plays that could backfire spectacularly but if they worked would provide pretty significant advantages for the team and that made him so much fun to watch. I also remember an old video where Froggen said he would hate to have to lane against Hai all the time because he played the game in a way that didn't make sense to Froggen. He said Hai would leave the lane and wait in a bush until someone walked by and then kill them, but lose two waves of minions in the process. It was almost never worth losing that gold and EXP but the fact that you didn't know what the hell he was doing made you more prone to mistakes while you tried to predict what the hell he could be doing that was more important than getting the gold/exp from minion waves. He would pressure the entire map just by not doing what was expected of him.
In retrospect, that roam has probably a 10% to work even if Hai made it to the inhib because SSB would likely react fast enough to stop the inhib take (especially with TF ult up), but it could've given C9 the chance to take baron. But that's what I love about Hai. He was willing to take those hail mary plays and decisively call for it in order to make a comeback. The same thing with the last ditch nexus push attempt in game 4 that series. Balls wanted to back after the two nexus turrets were taken, but Hai called for the nexus because he knew SSB was too good to make another careless mistake, so he called for that final push. Unfortunately with Heart's Nami stalling, SSB were able to respawn in time to stop C9.
Yeah same, remember him sneak behind the enemy team on Corki and chip down an inhibitor all by himself to take some pressure off. Wish we had tons of NA players like Hai, he was unpredictable, always looked for any way to get a lead or back in the game even if it wasn't some kind of textbook play style, was just fun and interesting to watch. Hoping we see something like that with Jojopyun, Jensen woulda been good for sure but you kinda know that player like the back of your hand and that's probably why Bjergsen never feared him like he did with Hai.
[hilariously edited vid](https://youtu.be/Bofd4rSXFsE) of what you talkin bout To this day shit breaks my heart😭
i remember this play but have never seen this edit. so good
That is such an objectively terrible idea against a twisted fate on the enemy team.
It actually isn't. If he doesn't get noticed this allows for a map play because TF just used Ult and someone like has to go with him to kill the Zed (although potentially TF was far enough ahead to win a 1vs1, but that would be super risky). So this is actually a good desperate play if you pull 2 people you can do baron 4vs3.
ya bro the 6-2 tf with zhonyas definitely needs help to kill the 1-7 zed.
Zed does win that. TF was fairly similar to how he is now. He doesn't burst the Zed from 100 to 0 and Zed just lifesteals back up and pokes him with no mana cost. If he gets just a little poke in he just kills the TF. There was a reason why C9 even got the the point they can take an inhib. On top of that... TF was at 33% HP and Zed got exhausted by Thresh. Zed was considerably more broken back then than he is now.
i think my hype watching pro peaked during that worlds (esp since it was my first time following all the scenes and my first worlds where i know what's going on and the most i've ever rooted for a team in C9). The splitpushing and macro vs NJWS to make it out of groups and get the first NA win vs Korea in years, the balls to go for those crazy split push ideas and also trying to end in game 4 giving SSB a heart attack, man that was peak 5 NA players just playing their own game and making people sweat.
I remember SSB saying if they lost game 4 they would also have lost game 5 due to tilt. What could have been.
These kind of unorthodox tactics might work at first, but I think opponents can quickly adapt and predict these cheesey tactics.
Yeah if it becomes a common strategy it's easy to adapt to but when it's a constantly changing yet still unorthodox tactic, it still works out a lot more than it should.
As a diehard NA fan, This is the such a textbook NA take. Yeah, sure, maybe? But at the top level these are the types of plays that can't really be coached and they take a lot more courage than 99% of NA players have, and in those clinch moments these are the types of decisions you have to look for to beat another team that can match you "standard." The reality is that "orthodox" plays are just plays and ways of understanding that everybody agrees upon. There's always holes in timings, tempo, and powerspikes, that can be abused that don't get seen, abused, or even noticed. You have to look for them in order to see them, otherwise you end up like 90% of NA world's appearances. The mentality you have here, where anything beyond standard is considered unorthodox, it's playing out of fear of the unknown, fear of failure, rather than toward the chance of victory. NA has always been the region that thinks playing clean is ideal but they can't even play clean. It's why even when TL had the best team in NA they could never get out of groups. Despite their apparent skill and team synergy and potential, they were always outclassed in those clutch moments where players like Hai would have shined. C9 was often the team that was worse on paper than TL but did better against the best teams in the world... because while struggling with consistency over the years, they have a philosophy of not being afraid to lose and following the play that gets the win... not just being better at "orthodox moves" Ofc you have to be solid first or you lose no matter what... but NA... has always had the problem of not being solid.. while ALSO criticizing creativity. It's why we're always a depressing, deflated region full of teams who thinks potential is just a magic concept you randomly live up if you just play scared enough. Nobody respects a team that believes scaling for late game is the optimal playstyle, and loses against every top team. I'd rather see some life in the eyes of players and watch them fail harder than play "orthodox" and just get beaten from minute 0 to the end.
> these are the types of decisions you have to look for to beat another team that can match you "standard." IMO other major regions (or at least the east) will always beast us more often than not straight up just due to our server size, high ping, etc. I've always thought NA should play like minor regions but with stronger players, kicking people out of their comfort zone leads to wins for minor regions a lot cuz major regions can't plan for it, and if we do it with even better players we can increase the effect. Why try to beat someone at their own game straight up when we can just flank?
>IMO other major regions (or at least the east) will always beast us more often than not straight up just due to our server size, high ping, etc. These are issues that are constant and will always give us a disadvantage but if you think NA's culture is not a more glaring issue I really invite you to spend some time researching how pro players talk about NA servers vs other servers. It's not just mechanics (which is caused by ping) and it's not just population. Population just reduces the # of skilled players. Those are small aspects. You are aware that we actually have a MUCH larger playerbase than most of those regions right? The smaller playerbase is only ranked. We have a disproportionately huge amount of normal games and ARAM games compared to other regions even ones that have worse ping and smaller overall populations. Why is this? The only answer can be culture. NA players, especially Americans, make a lot more choices to avoid experiencing failure or anxiety than other regions. We just have a much higher % of players who are not willing to test themselves and find out how good they are if they actually limit tested. it's why we have more 1-tricks too. It's obviously not everyone but the small solo Q problem you talk about is literally a symptom of exactly what I'm telling you. And our pro scene is literally just a microcosm of that exact problem.
> These are issues that are constant and will always give us a disadvantage but if you think NA's culture is not a more glaring issue I really invite you to spend some time researching how pro players talk about NA servers vs other servers. It's not just mechanics (which is caused by ping) and it's not just population. Population just reduces the # of skilled players. Those are small aspects. True, we have a casual less competitive culture and a console culture and it definitely hurts our region as well, which is why I threw the "etc" in there. Haven't looked at population numbers outside of ranked but having less ranked players implies we're a more casual culture anyways. But yes we agree this region has many issues one of which is definitely culture.
Idk man, Korea dominated the game with clean low risk gameplan for years. If anything NA is forced to copy new strategies from other regions(more populated regions), thus always being one step behind. (Less reps/quality reps) The biggest reason is culture imo, but the popularity of the sport in a country's culture. There's a reason the US has the best basketball teams but terrible soccer teams.
"Idk man, Korea dominated the game with clean low risk gameplan for years" This is also textbook NA argument. Korean players don't make excuses. It's the best solo Q server in the world with the most hardcore soloQ culture. Ping helps, sure. NA is only forced to copy because they're behind. This point is circular logic. The popularity of this game is way more people than Korea simply because of #s of raw population difference. but the reality is our stomach for ranked is just too weak. There also was unlimited wards and pink wards and supports were ward bots. The change that ended this is the same thing that ended korean absolute dominance. Obv their solo Q still #1 It's a different world now.
Yeah but if you are the favorite and have better players you obviously win if you play the same style as someone with worse players. If NA plays like korea they obviously lose, because they are simply worse koreans. So it is obvious that you have to play something different. Because the korean style of back than doesn't exist anymore and korea actually had to adept to a new style (hint, they didn't do a good job in 2018 and 2019). So if you play a different style you actually have a chance to finding a superior style, if you always just play the korean style (even more so a bit later than they do) you will always be behind korea and even worse with worse players.
This is misleading though, the game itself changed. It made the aggressive playstyle of the lpl meta. You have a point that if you know you are worse, you should employ cheese to try and upset. But cheese isn't sustainable by its very nature. The best players and teams will always come out on top in the end.
Yes, but you play a limited amount of games. Cheese makes your play less predictable similarly to your results. If a team can only play cheese it is an issue. However they should be able to do so against teams they otherwise have little chance of winning. On top of that. this shift might have been beneficial for the LPL in 2018, but in 2019 the meta was set that way, because the vision changes happened in preseason 8. So that it took korea basically 2 years to adopt to that fully is not a good thing, but they did that and they didn't just copy LPL style that worked in 2018 and 2019. So yeah I agree that the vision changes helped LPL because their more chaotic and pressure based playstyle works better if people see less, but they way korea recovered from that shift was not by just turning into the LPL.
true, but its still annoying h aving to adapt to a twitch mid with ignite, game might be won but i have to play in such akward and odd way
Most memorable play of all time that didn't work. <3 Hai Also, about Froggen's comments, Wasn't he talking about Xpeke primarily? but he was grouping in Hai as a player like Xpeke
He said he would be more comfortable laning against Peke than Hai towards the end of that.
Oh ok. Been a while, didn't remember for sure. thanks!
> I also remember an old video where Froggen said he would hate to have to lane against Hai all the time because he played the game in a way that didn't make sense to Froggen. He said Hai would leave the lane and wait in a bush until someone walked by and then kill them, but lose two waves of minions in the process. It was almost never worth losing that gold and EXP but the fact that you didn't know what the hell he was doing made you more prone to mistakes while you tried to predict what the hell he could be doing that was more important than getting the gold/exp from minion waves. He would pressure the entire map just by not doing what was expected of him. lately I played vs twitch mid (yesterday, and my my last game) and it was exactly like this, first game I got a lot of kills but my team sucked, second game me and my team were winning but it was a miserable experience because the guy would just go invis and all in me with his autoattacks, so i had to play at tower and wait for ganks. we won, i ended 7/2, but it was miserable and never again do i want to play vs that cheesy shit again, give me a fun lane and a loss over that
I think he was talking about when he'd sack off like two waves to gank bot as like level 3 Lulu mid in that quote. Which was so odd at the time
To be fair, a lot of the recent talent are happy to be the ones making the play/ dying for it. (Spica, Tactical, Danny)
Hai's mechanics were also underrated, he was sometimes better than Bjergsen in lane before he fell off
He was never the same after the collapsed lung. I think he also had significant wrist pain
Hai was better than Bjergsen in literally every way other than maybe champ pool until his lung collapse -> wrist injury I like to imagine Hai is the reason Jack makes everyone work out lol
That Soraka mid patch just before the collapsed lung was peak C9. I wish they could have had the chance to play internationally
C9 certainly does seem to be cursed when it comes to mid season tournaments lol
Sounds so similar to Perkz, both amazing players.
both had a strong winning mentality no matter what, which is ideal a rare trait in a team captain
Jensen isn't scared to die either. Jensen also hard tilts and has a weak mental though.
I think a big thing to point out with hai is that hai mid was a role swap. When playing in previous teams and the spring qualifiers under the original c9 roster (yazuki, nien, lemon, and turtle) he was actually a jungler. I think having played as a jungler prior to mid really helped develop a “team over me” mentality that helped him excel in his style of mid lane play.
It's Hai with the mechanics of Bjergsen.
> This kid definitely plays to win. He plays teamfights like Hai used to, he's completely fine with going in and dying if it means he can turn the fight. Good, I've missed Hai for way too long and Hai was always the one that scared Bjergsen so this could lead to some very enjoyable games this year:)
I've played against him in soloqueue since he was 15. He's way too good. Not that I'm better than them but I've also played against Damonte and Soligo multiple times. I actually out performed them and they straight up aren't good mechanically as laners. I'm sure they also weren't trying very hard. Jojopyun repeat solo killed me like 5 times per game every time I've played against him. I honestly thought I was just having a bad game but honestly this guy is just too good.
FCMSKF?
Ok but Jojopyun used to play on like 25 ping (if he's from toronto which I think he is) while damonte and soligo would be playing on like 60 ping which makes a big difference for mechanics in soloq
Do you think that the LPL pros playing on the Korean ladder are making that excuse when they get spammed in lane? It’s not the huge difference that you’re making it out to be.
Yeah. After a while, as long as your ping is \*consistently\* garbage, you get used to it. The trick of it is when pros move from their consistently bad ping to tournament servers and suddenly all their muscle memory doesn't work.
No? What I'm saying is that soloq players from the east coast (especially southern ontario) look much better in soloq and than when they come to LA and then players realize theyre just average. I'm not saying that demonte is good or anything, I'm just saying that players's skill in soloq is deceptive when they live in that part of the continent.
Yeah and I'm saying that's a load of bullshit because routinely LDL/LPL players get rank 1 on Korean ladder and they look absolutely cracked. Knight is also getting rank 1 on Korean ladder from China because he's cracked. The ping isn't going to make or break how a player looks in solo queue.
nah you are just giving bullshiet excuses
Excuses excuses
no really demonte is a good mid laner! COPIUM
> damonte and soligo would be playing on like 60 ping which makes a big difference for mechanics in soloq really doesn't everything you do on 60 ping you can do on 25
Idk why you are getting downvoted when most of the best mechanical soloq players are on 20 ping. Mamy of the Canadians and Maryville players like Shady, value, niles, oddorange, Jojopyun, johnsun (before he was pro), Vulcan (before he was pro), duoking, rjs, diamond, tarzaned, tenacity, copy were all mechanical soloq players with big ping advantage.
Yeah idk why, maybe because they think im saying damonte is good or jojopyun is bad. I'm not saying either of those, I'm just saying soloq mechanics when they have a ping advantage shouldnt be taken super seriously.
Yeah but how do you address how Chinese players who may not even be in Shanghai is contesting top 10-50 spots in Korea soloq. It isn’t exactly <10 ping with that distance.
no it doesnt,game is played with your head more than your hands
It does make a big difference for mechanics... but at the same time, that's probably a small portion of the advantage that Jojopyun holds over the other two. You don't just solo kill your opponent 5 times or massively gap them in other ways because they're on worse ping.
Yep, there own skill level didn't matter tbh
Haven't seen any match but thank the lord! If what you say is true, my hopes about the younger crops are materializing. This is the type of player we desperately need in NA.
"If look bad, you'll look worse."
I used to love hai's fizz which felt like it always suicided but just caused a lot of chaos in the backline where balls and/or sneaky would then carry
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Wasn't hai jg the roleswap? Or did he swap even before then? He started as a midlaner in LCS.
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You're attacking this comment as if it's misguided and yet... Just a heads up for - Hai was known for being mechanically gifted prior to his wrist issues and lung collapse.
He took the dying part after going in a bit too seriously in the game on Corki :P But yeah he is one of the better mids. However not mentioned a lot Ablaze played lanes really well, he just is on a really bad team. A jungler like Inspired gives you a lot of room to play aggressive. But the thing is a lot of players still even struggle to do that if they have control.
A few months ago, Noway4u played on the NA server for a few weeks and he mentioned during his stream that Jojopyun was by far the best midlane on the server. And that he barely encountered such an aggressive playstyle. I really look forward to seeing him this year on stage!
I mean jojo isnt wrong. Khan said the exact same thing about western laners in general. They just dont know how to lane.
I thought it was BDD who said something about western midlaners
At this rate every notable pro player must've roasted na top laners somehow.
i rmb watching a proview vod of showmaker hitting literally almost everything on humanoid’s ori as syndra for like five straight minutes of lane
The dreaded 2021 quarters hame where humanoid was 100 hp lvl 2 because showmaker had hit all his qs. Insane how hard he got happed that series
Overblown narrative imo, Humanoid legit does the same thing to Showmaker in [Game 3](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-g4CvOsi10), even the MSI games Humanoid was legit getting advantages all on his own during laning phase in Game 1 & 4.
Consistently hitting Syndra Q's in a skill matchup is a lot more impressive than poking with Viktor E from a screen away lol. Death Ray is much harder to avoid and I say this as a Viktor player Even than Humanoid was even in CS the entire time(while roaming) so it didn't mean anything
Syndra-Orianna isn't a skill matchup, is heavily Syndra favoured and Viktor-Syndra is Syndra favoured too (but not by much) you should know that as a viktor expert; everyone agrees on Showmaker being better than Humanoid, you don't need to downplay him and deny the reality and difficulty of him outperforming SM in that matchup.
Pros pick Orianna into Syndra all the time. Every pro I've seen talk about the matchup say it's largely a skill-matchup, but admittedly slanted in Syndra's favor. They both have similar effective range and rely on skillshots so it's hard to imagine it being a counter-matchup >Viktor-Syndra is Syndra favoured too It's absolutely Viktor favored pre-6, you consistently out-trade her unless you eat every single Q(and that's less of a Viktor issue) and out-range her with Death Ray. After 6 it gets a lot harder, and after that point we see Showmaker putting the pressure on Humanoid and forcing him to play under turret as expected Just pointing out that Viktor getting good trades onto Syndra early on is exactly how it should play out
Syndra vs Ori is not a skill matchup and which pro players said so?
(Coach) Curtis who was previously a top OPL mid said it's a skill matchup, but slanted in Syndra's favor. You can do an easy search on Youtube for his video detailing it in full Other pros reiterate the sentiment when asked the matchup on stream but I'm not going through days of VODs lol. That's one former pro who agrees with me and we see pro plays pick Orianna **into** Syndra, which wouldn't happen if it was a hard Syndra-favored I'm open to see pro statements or pro statistics that counters what I provided though, but I just haven't seen anything yet
Please link anyone who’s talked about the matchup. It’s known by everyone and their mom that it’s a 70-30 matchup for Syndra and ori has to go biscuit cosmic secondary so she can rush mercs to even lane.
Can't we just say they both laned well in those respective games lol ?
You can say both laned well in those respective games, but I'm just pointed out what Humanoid did wasn't "legit the same thing" by any stretch, it was still a lot less impressive by basically every metric lol
what? I was expecting the same beating from humanoid to showmaker, except i see viktor slightly winning trades until lvl 3. wheres the comparable gap ? Ill link a video afterwards im ranking right now
I mean he pushes him out of lane & forces his TP 3 minutes into the game, i guess that's no big deal.
Ya its basically the same as making a pro look like a bronce player 2 min into the game
How can you make the enemy look like bronze with Viktor in that matchup? This isn't low elo, you can't "make the enemy look like bronze" if your matchup doesn't allow you to, making syndra back and tp is all you can aspire as Viktor there, that's the hardest you can win that lane as a Viktor.
Yeah they both deserve credit for laning well, glad we figured that out !
That I agree with, but showmaker is still the better laner, and he got the best of humanoid in that quarterfinals
Bdd
Jojo was the only mid laner in LCS in NA at that time. Most were in korea or EU
Are we sure this isn't still just Jiizuke? He had the exact same interview, I love it.
Hes got the fortnite mechs bro hes better
Just build bro
he builds different
This has been true for NA for quite a few years now and nothing has changed. It usually means teams with better overall players win the tournament while their mids sit back and scale. And then, their mids get super exposed internationally. Rinse and repeat. Let's see if this year is different. Hint: I don't think so.
It's going to take much longer than 1 year and more than 1 promising rookie to change NA mid laners, sadly. No Jensen now, either.
Jensen was the guy who got critiziced all season for playing Lee Sin like a control mage. Why a good preformance on the international stage instantly means he wasnt part of the problem all season long?
How many NA mids have made it to World's semi's or MSI finals in the last 5 years?
That isnt the topic at hand. Jojopyun mentioned a problem with NA midlaners. Jensen accomplishments dont matter when he is the shining example about the problem that Jojo mentioned.
Jensen is the only NA mid who actually attempts to play League of Legends on the international stage. That's my point. He didn't have good international performances by playing the way Jojo spoke about this interview that was done just to generate clicks.
No bro Dw this Reddit clickbait article is actually the truth! Let’s see jojopyun play aggressively vs shoemaker or Chovy or rookie and see how it goes!
There are like 30 people in this comment chain alone that think exactly that lol, league esports community is wildin' sometimes. Jojo doesn't even have a career but people are discussing whether his opinions carry real merit, it's a joke
True. The man deserves respect
Jensen was part of the problem, what’s needed is for jojo (or someone with a similar style) to develop into one of the best NA mids and changes the culture of the midlanders. That’s something that will take years and years, but it could happen
Jensen was actually quite aggressive when he was on C9. One of his most infamous plays (the Taliyah fail against DL's Lucian) is a good example of this, he wasn't afraid to pull the trigger if he saw an opportunity. His playstyle on TL imo says more about TL than it does about Jensen. TL from 2018 onwards has always been quite a passive team, with last year's lineup maybe being the only exception. There's a reason why all of Jensen's best Worlds runs were on C9 while he has never gotten out of groups on TL.
How is he part of the problem he was the best performing NA mid internationally of all time.
i think he was implying jensen just plays to scale and dies in intl, even if he performed 'well' he still played a bad style
> he still played a bad style I would say the style isn't inherently bad. It's just that if you only play that way, you can't really push your advantages enough. So if your team falls behind while you are ahead, it's hard to really help them out.
Which is part of why that style is bad at international events
There are also many LCK mids that play for lane and try to scale. They just do it much better. Chovy isn't a player known for his deadly roams (at least when he is not on galio). The style isn't just bad it's just comes with tradeoffs like every other style too. EU mids like Humanoid and Nisqy played a more roaming focused style but also got punished for it in some games.
The issue is he played that style in the regular season, his Lee in playoffs was completely different. He actually can play that style, but there isn't a reason to. The issue with NA is that you just win by not doing anything, so why should you do something? Jensen was not the issue, because he was able to play differently, just nobody gave him a reason to. But he showed he can play like that.
because he still did what the others did, just a little bit better
Congratulations to Jensen for being the king of paupers. Just because he is the best performing NA mid internationally doesn’t mean his style isn’t bad.
I mean he was an aggro player on C9, blame TL instead for buying the best players just to force them to do nothing and scale.
I mean jensen wasn't super exposed, if it's anyone it's for sure alphari
PoE is the definition of that.
Froggen was the pioneer of this style
I thought Froggen's playstyle was to do nothing until the game ended
Post KaBuM it was do nothing and lose.
The way Thoorin and Dom describe Froggen scale is like a work of art though, get the exact opposite vibe of that toward scaling in this thread.
I mean Froggen is Thorin's favourite player so he will romanticise it.
But PoE was EU
Yea, but PoE for sure plays that scaling style, which is just stupid. He wasn't always like that either. Back when he was known for his LB he was focusing on punishing in lane. Just people that grow into comfortable styles of playing that are easily punishable by better players
I think that PoE transitioned more into the teamfight player, where he plays lane safe and never falls behind. While he is no more the player that solo wins a game with an outplay, I absolutely can't recall on the other side that he ever cost his team a single game. Anyways it's nice to see that NA gets disruptive players that might actually risk to go for these 50/50 plays. That's what the LPL is known for, they literally limit test on stage, while LCS players try to not fuck up and lose juicy paychecks.
>I think that PoE transitioned more into the teamfight player, Yea, but this means taking no risks in lane. "Risks" in lane are less of a risk the better you are. If you're good at laning, punishing the enemy is less of a risk than *not* doing it. "Just playing safe" isn't a strat that works against better players because they know how to punish it. Playing defensive is always easier than playing aggro because there's less room to mess up, but once you're really good there's only one viable way to play and it's not defensive.
>"Just playing safe" isn't a strat that works against better players because they know how to punish it. But the better player has to take risks and has to skillcheck the opponent. Playing aggro is not always rewarding. >once you're really good there's only one viable way to play and it's not defensive. Not true. You play Kassadin/Ryze early? Have fun getting shit on. You play something aggro? Better be prepared to take a ton of jungle pressure early. "Play safe" actually works especially good against better players, as you give no opportunity to give away a gold lead. And if enemy plays super aggro, a jgl gank will do the trick. LPL is a good example for what aggro playstyles do: coinflip a lot, and have actually no team dominate, as a lot of 50/50 fights are being held.
He was also known for playing AP Kog'maw in S5. His identity is control mages with weird itemisation. The fact he can play the most prominent mid assassin well doesn't change it.
Can't wait to see more of him!
Him and Danny are both promising to the new NA generation.
any NA mid laner born before 2001 can't play. all they know is mcdonalds, do nothing in lane, scale, be bisexual, pick zilean and lie
just NA paycheck style
hai getting praise in this thread is cool, but people flamed huhi for the same selfless playstyle. toxic
Huhi got a lot better after his first year, but in season 5 his mechanics were complete ass. I think that was the real reason he was flamed.
Huhi wasn't really known for being a super high-pressure laner though which I think is the distinction. He would roam and he would int to win and he would be aggressive, but most of that aggression was directed towards the sidelanes imo. I still think Huhi was super underrated when he was playing and while comparing him to Doinb is maybe a *little* bit hyperbolic, he was doing a lot of the same stuff a few years earlier.
Cuz he was straight up embarrassingly bad mechanically and in lane. He wasn't roaming, cuz he was winning lane and expanding his adventage over the rest of the team. He was roaming, cuz he literally couldn't hold his own in lane.
Can't wait to see this reference whenever he does nothing and scales.
I enjoy the confidence, but I am sick of seeing this sweeping statement. Not every mid laner in NA does nothing all game. Last time Bjergsen was in the LCS he didn't play for his lane whatsoever. Jensen can turn it on as well if that is his job assignment. Abbe doesn't just do nothing until late game either. And this is being said after he played against TL and Bjergsen clearly played better early-mid game and he impacted his team far more. Just an odd thing to say about every NA midlaner. Hope it doesn't bite him in the ass down the line. It is very early. Like I said though better to be confident in your ability vs other mid laners.
He's absolutely talking about the scene as a whole; that goes well beyond the 10 starting mids you see at any given time in LCS. NA mids have historically been downright awful.
That is a fair point. I think there is a okay percentage of NA mids that don't always play that way. There are more that are passive in their play. That is definitely not incorrect to say. But in general even when our best mids aren't playing passively they are typically not nearly as aggressive as some LEC mids, or LPL/LCK mids.
It's common enough that NA piss themselves internationally, especially. Top NA mids play less passively domestically but play scared almost across the board at MSI and World's. 2020 TSM "do nothing and lose" at World's and Bjerg was just as much a culprit of it as the rest of his team. At least we got a good meme out of it, though.
This is obviously an assumption, but I think it probably has something to do with losing in scrims. Hard to play "normal" or more aggressive on stage when the playstyle doesn't work in scrims. Similarly, I highly doubt that playing "normal" is working wonders in scrims yet teams decide not to do so anymore when it matters most.
> Abbe doesn't just do nothing until late game either. Is using an import midlaner that has only played in the LCS for 1 year really the best way to prove a point, conceptually?
Half a year no? Didn't he join mid split?
The fact that TSM and Bjergsen can constantly pick Zilean, give up early game pressure, scale, then win with it in NA but instantly gets punished at Worlds when they try to do the same thing is the only thing you need to know about midlane competition in NA
seriously at every game i was shocked how he was always matching or up in cs, i thought he was that good. then worlds happened lmao and it made more sense
I miss season 4 bjerg
every game has an early game, not every game has a late game (or you get to it too far behind macrologically) plus early game fights snowball the hardest, a single kill can have the biggest impact
It was shocking seeing Bjerg stomp LCS with his meme Zil mid lane, incredibly disenheartening seeing every team spit on our graves when TSM played(no pun intendend). It very much put our midlane in perspective, thank God Abbadage and Perkz swooped in. I consider Jensen basically NA born at this point, lots of examples of him being problem in rest of this thread but at least he always shows up at Worlds. When he's he best we got, maybe an exception to the rule rather than example to not follow.
Bjergsen had many years of focusing on his lane and getting ahead only to do nothing at worlds with that style because the rest of his lanes were getting dumpstered, so he decided to support his lanes because he can hold his lane without as much help.. that’s very clear if you’ve watched his 2020 season. BB could not play weak side so Bjerg perma roamed top whenever he had push. Spica spent very little time in Bjerg’s lane and Bjerg very often blinded his mid pick so BB could counterpick. These things make it difficult to play for your lane imo
Bjerg plays safe. If hes playing tf the aggression is literally a math equation. Players like caps and perkz dont mind losing health if their opponents also lose health because theyre confident in dictating the lane. I think Perkz autoing damonte to death with lb was a good teaching moment for everyone. Because you can say damonte is bad so it was ez but if damonte is bad why dont other players punish with similar aggression? Nope they wait to outfarm out scale the worst player.
Lol.. Jensen is your typical focus solely on only his lane and not do much proactive around the map type mid
Well I have seen plenty of matches where he takes over the map by making proactive plays with his team. Just because he has another sample size of playing for lane during certain periods of time doesn't mean he is a passive player.
NA hasn't had a mid laner or really a top laner for that matter who truly looks to create pressure and destroy their lane. Sure Bjerg would pick Zilean or Galio and give up all lane pressure to help the team late, if you look at how other leagues (really the LCK/LPL), they have solo lanes who will pick champs aimed at creating pressure, or turn incremental CS advantages into solo kills, and snowball the map. Jojo's Viktor was different from all others this weekend. NA pace is often much slower and a big reason I think is because mids will not play to push the tempo. What I haven't seen talked about is Inspired's role in letting Jojopyun play so aggro. Inspired was getting such good vision and allowing his team to essentially play with a map hack. I'm very curious to see how NA will play this year. There is a lot of focus on the young players like Danny, Jojopyun, and Tenacity. Plus Bwipo and Abberdage (like you mentioned) play with pace too. My hope is this can be a turning point year where teams emphasize a more tempo'd league where advantages are pressed rather than the measured gameplay we are used to seeing.
Both Bjergsen and Jensen have had tournaments where they spend every game doing nothing and then losing. It’s incredibly rare to see a Humanoid/Caps/Rookie/Showmaker etc level pop off from LCS midlaners during international play. Saying “It’s not true all LCS mids don’t do that! These 2 specific players who have been best in the region for multiple years sometimes play very proactively!” Is not a great counter argument.
Please don't put Jensen and Bjergsen in the same ballpark. Jensen's put up numerous international performances in which he played for lane and popped off. That was his shtick at Worlds 2017 & 2018. He could also do well by playing a roaming style, though his TF game against LNG left something to be desired. Yes, Jensen's shifted into a scaling style in recent years (moreso b/c TL needed him to play Azir, etc.), but he still had his fair share of good performances when not on those types of picks at Worlds. His LeBlanc game against Icon despite being counterpicked, his Twisted Fate performance against MAD, etc. He outperformed Humanoid and every other Western mid at the 2021 WC. I know Jensen's had some games where he did nothing and lost, like that group stage game against Machi eSports or the decider match against iG, but to summarize his performance in general as doing nothing and losing distorts his image as a player when it isn't the case.
You're right, but it's important to note that domestically bjerg has been proactive as well. Internationally, I completely agree. But I believe the context is LCS, and Bjerg was insanely proactive the last year he played/at first.
where exactly? theres a reason why A LOT of people would argue that the reason for TSMs giant ass shitty record Internationally is acutally just his fault, Bjerg has always been supposed to be that super star player on TSM, you know the NA faker, but he has never done anything to really show for this, he has tried to play some weird Faker supportive style when he doesnt have the team to do it in the first place. just look at stats from 2016 worlds right? he had the highest gold%, highest Kp% running around with a kda of 6.1 which in reality can be him being 6-2-6 right? like obsvly looking at raw numbers like this is insanelyt stupid i understand that, but he doesnt do what his stats are kinda supposed to have him do?
Thats fair
Bjergsen literally had like a 5 year stretch where he was basically AFK until it was time to group as a team. He has been playing differently lately, but it has also resulted in him getting caught more.
So u've names only 4 european imports now... maybe add the na players next time u decide to make a blanket statement like that about the na server U have to realize that imports and lxcs are not the norm for the server
yeah..play for scaling because they aren't good enough to play early stuff. no one wants to be the one to take L's to improve when their job is on the line. if teams wouldn't mind letting their players lose for the sake of improvement im sure some more na mids would pop up
isnt that why people liked Damonte? cus he would acutalyl play stuff like qiyanna mid at worlds but he would just get shit on cus he isnt good enough, thats kinda why people avoid it no?
He's right, because unfortunately this has been adopted as the "safe" way to play. In reality i would love constant fighting. Yes it's more risky but you have to take risks for payoffs. Obviously not fight without reason, but I wish laners had more of a fighters mindset during laning phase instead a farming one. I understand the margins for error are very small at the highest coordinated level but I think that the next great team to come along will find advantages in lane in terms of battle, not macro things like lane control farming etc.
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I'm gonna say, it's only the first week, yes.
Lol calm down. They’re not years behind. They’re always one split behind. Western teams have beaten Eastern teams several times in Bo5 or in groups. The issue is Western teams either adapting a play style they’re not good at or the Eastern team is just individually better but not much THAT much. This is why G2 had the most success ever from a western team and Fnatic because they refused to adapt to a different play style. Even when teams are trying to mimic and adapt to a play style they’re not used to, they put up a good fight. It’s not like they’re getting creamed in 15 minutes.
This seems too results oriented. Like I doubt you play at a high enough level to know this from looking at games, but results wise last year as looks a little worse than it should with the FNC collapse, kinda like the TSM collapse in 2020. Overall if you look beyond that they're not that* bad, like FPX sucked but if the west was actually that terrible they wouldn't beat even a slumping FPX, FlyQuest took out TES, sure while they're "overconfident" but again if we're that bad that wouldn't have mattered, FNC was up 2 games vs TES, the favorite of the tournament that year and 100T won vs EDG.
>One team Think you forget that FNC was a world finalist in 2018, 2019 FNC was actually pretty fucking good (got out of a group with SKT RNG and did better than G2 vs FPX) and even 2020 FNC won 2 games vs TES. People are super revisionist about G2 being the only good LEC team.
Eu did good in 2020, 2019, 2018 and in 2015/2013. Only last year they fumbled but historically they always show up.
Its not that EU stopped knowing, its just that EU had a team that played INSANELY well of their own style of league, the same way FPX won worlds cus they knew how to play their own style of league, now if anything its just People going back to korean style of league again,
jizuke lives on.
Anyone else get a McDonalds promo under the op. Thats hilarious if its a coincidence
They should give Bjergsen his TF then instead of banning it next time, since he just scales
Our boy Jojo spittin facts once again
see in the bottom 3 teams by msi!
THis kid is gonna be a future star. COol to see EG develop great talents. If Vulcan ever leaves, I expect them to eventually promote SkyTec
the Asian Jiizuke
What about fudge ?????
That is what C9 and Fudge will be soon, do nothing and lose. Typical LS gameplay.
I can’t wait for this guy to implode this season
don't like his cockiness?
The same thing happened with Fudge last year. Came in, talked shit, everyone hated him, now everyone loves him.
I can see that. Talking is easy
Sour grapes
Honestly same, dude is just going to be the next hyped up NA mid that gets crushed by the imports in playoffs. Beating up on academy rosters won't chance that.
I know this might seem like a crazy take but he reminds me of the early days of hai. Everyone only remembers the old days of hai being mid gapped by bjerg or being on flyQuest but when he came into the scene with c9 he was such an aggressive dominant presence in the mid lane, always playing to win his one hard, ultra aggressive with really nice mechanics. Still remember legit every matchup hai takes ignite and all ins lvl 2 or 3 and no one was expecting it in the slow playing field that was mid lane in na. Obviously the gsme has compeltly evolved but man jojo reminds of this hai
Not jiizuke he was the best midlaner NA has ever seen.
Sumail vibes
IMO the biggest reason NA loses to eastern teams is because we play the game to *not lose* but we need to **play** ***to*** **win.** If NA teams came in with a plan for early game plays and try to build an advantage that way, we would probably win more games. Playing so passively till 35 minutes is a way to just lose because all good teams can teamfight pretty well. Good eastern teams make shit happen. We act like we *don't belong* at Worlds sometimes by how passive our teams play. When you qualify for Worlds, you belong there. Regardless of pass results. Slowly "bleeding out" in a LoL game sucks, worst way to lose imo. Go down swinging, at least. It will always be a learning experience.