Plenty of unexpected EU picks also fail miserably, but just fall out of memory. I'm not sure whether your "empirical evidence" is really correct or just your vibes.
I'm not sure if it's fair to say FNC "copied" anyone. Is it really surprising to see Oscarinin on something like Zac? It's not like he never plays tanks, or FNC never plays tanks.
>Plenty of unexpected EU picks also fail miserably, but just fall out of memory.
Largely due to the fact that whenever EU doesn't fail miserably, it's with those picks. Whereas EU drafting the exact same picks as what the east is already playing, they almost always fail. It's easy for instances in which those picks **don't** work to fall out of memory when there has been instances in which they **did**.
>I'm not sure whether your "empirical evidence" is really correct or just your vibes.
Game 2 of the *series we just watched.* Camille is not a high priority pick and it's clearly something TES were not prepared for FNC to have as an answer.
>I'm not sure if it's fair to say FNC "copied" anyone. Is it really surprising to see Oscarinin on something like Zac?
Copied here is a pretty board term, but I just don't think in a game with 168 champions in it, the only champions good enough to be picked in pro play is the same 20-30 champion rotation. And I don't know if you watch all leagues concurrently, but which those champions are and what's conisdered "meta" is exclusively defined by which picks do the eastern teams prefer. Go back and rewatch some VODs if you don't believe me - western teams pretty much exclusively start playing new picks only **after** the eastern teams have already played them for a couple of weeks.
But hear me out, this is the real mindblower right here - is it *crazy* to assume that the asian teams are playing what they're playing not because those picks are objectively the best in all of League of Legends, but are rather playing them because those are the champions that fit their playstyles the most?
And is it absurd to assume that in a game with so many variables, what LEC teams excel at might not necessarily be the exact same thing as what the asian teams excel at?
So if both of those statements are a possibility, what's the point of drafting a certain way just because "well that's what Gen G would pick if they were in our shoes"? It's not **just** about these picks being unexpected and the enemy team having less practice with them, it's also playing towards what your players are good at instead of trying to be good at something someone else is good at.
But standard front to back fails always, no one said that weird pick = win. It's just that they are straight up better at laning on meta champs and straight up better at standard front to back teamfighting. Even when you get leads eastern teams know how to react to it since they know the champions and have faced similar situations countless times in their league and in scrims at high levels, so they are able to comeback most often than not due to superior macro and micro. While with some non standard picks the situation can be very different and they can make bad decisions like thinkning ksante rumble can 2 vs 1 a fed 3 item camille on a side.
It didn't even fail, there were like 3 bad fights that could have gone the other way and Fnatic win game 3. Blaming draft is absurd, when it was small execution mistakes and fight selection that lost the game.
It’s always 3 bad fights, because guess what, they are just better and will play those standard fights better than you.
But I guess next time it will be different! Sure this time we will just outplay them!
I’m the game before Camille was a variable tes clearly did not expect, that is the whole point, they couldn’t be expecting it if they choose to play ksante into it, thanks for proving my point.
If Faker wanted to prove once and for all that he’s the greatest mind in league of legends, after he retires as a player, he’d come be an NA coach and coach an NA team to a world championship.
Challenge level: impossible.
This would actually be insane ngl. All the best players from the current era retire and become coaches for Western teams and then a Western team finally wins Worlds.
https://i.imgur.com/j8F4QSe.jpeg
It’s the year 2059, and Faker has become the coach of team UDK for the nextgen VR LoL game. Here is the corresponding screenshot. From a korean comic called "The Challenger."
And in Faker fashion, everyone is looking for him but only a trusted few know that he was a legend in previous generations of esports but he has managed to erase his personal information so that he can recruit his own team and train them up. Truly Hide on Bush.
While I would love to see more "fun" picks, isn't the argument of using these picks to surprise Eastern teams conceptually tenuous? This assumes that Western teams are more practised on weird picks than Eastern teams are, which may or may not be true. Also, because weird picks are not played often (otherwise, they wouldn't be weird), it means that Western teams will also not play them to their max potential due to a lack of practice.
Winning with weird picks is highly memorable, which may play into confirmation bias. It's unclear whether weird picks actually statistically do better against Eastern teams.
One thing that should always be assumed is that teams pick the champs they pick because they *think* they will maximize their chances of winning. If weird picks are not selected, we should assume that the players don't think they will give them an edge.
Weaker talent should always favor high-variance over straight-up. If both teams play totally standard, the weaker team is much more likely to bleed out slowly. If the weaker team does something bizarre, they might get stomped but they have a drastically higher chance of winning. It might be 5% rather than 1%, but it's still 5%.
100% agree and Ive said something similar for years. Its why I get happy when some of our scrappy teams actually make it to international because they are the only teams I have hope for in terms of stealing games or series.
Its not consistent, but they throw enough variance and try enough stuff they might surprise a team and win a game or series from that.
I have absolutely no faith in any stock-standard team we send. They win domestically playing htat style, but you 100% know they are going to go international and get dominated. The scrappier the team, the better chance they have of pulling upsets.
All those years TSM went I had zero faith they would be able to do anything because all they did was copy the methodical style of Korea. Yea that might consistently win NA, but its also going to consistently lose internationally. The scrappy teams we sent who really didnt have a better chance of winning worlds, always have a better chance of pulling a random upset because of the high variance of play they have.
I feel the same thing happens to wildcard regions; every region for that matter. You sometimes hear the broadcast or fans saying X wildcard team was the most macro-based team in their region and then they get shit on unsurprisingly. Then the scrappy wildcard teams doing wild picks and weird plays and forces show up and make games of matches vs much higher skilled opponents.
I've addressed this in another post, but I feel like it can be said here too. The game has 168 champions in it and the "meta" rotation of champions barely exceeds 30 or 40. It's not about the "weirdness" of the pick, it's just that the decision on what's meta seems to be made by the best teams and those champions only feel like they're meta **because** they're being played by the best teams. Whereas with 168 champions to choose from, the decision **should** be based on what **your** players are good at, not what the enemy team is good at.
Sure, if T1 are the best team in the world and they are spamming Aatrox top (just an example) then **surely** Aatrox is the best top laner in the game right now, right?
OR, is Aatrox just a pick that enables Zeus' best qualities as a player? And if that's the case, then... is your top laner Zeus? If not, the meta really isn't relevant to your drafting style, is it?
That's why the hate is mostly directed towards western coaches, not the players in this thread. Their entire apprach to the game feels like:
"Hey Oscar, next week you're practicing Aatrox."
"Why?"
"Because that's what Zeus is playing."
Real proper coaching right there.
In the TL vs IG series in MSI 2019, probably the biggest upset NA has had, they won with vayne, lux, and skarner - stuff the eastern teams have definitely not practiced against. The west really needs to stop trying to copy the east because we’ll never beat them at their own game.
The huge drafting blunder in G3 in FNC vs TES comes from drafting for Noah when he's shown to struggle both games against TES, this is why a series is a good showcase of skill, and FNC came up short for a very stupid reason (drafting for noah when everyone and their dog knows its a shit call)
The coach should definitely have known not to draft for Noah and yet they still do it, it's unforgivable and someone should get fired for this (hopefully whoever planned the draft for G3)
Yeah it was very disappointing to see them draft for bot when they were getting fisted in lane. Honestly I'm surprised FNC didnt consider a laneswap, both before the draft AND after the draft when they knew they were up against Varus/Ashe.
But frankly, teams failing to adapt during a best-of series is not exclusive to western teams.
I don't think Noah played nearly as bad as people are making out
Its actually the game 2 (the one people aren't really talking about his performance in) that i was wondering why he was so down.. but the camera barely panned down so it was hard to tell
Game 1.. Game 3 there was very good reasons why they got smashed.. i.e playing vs world class players AND turning up to lane with summoners down.. having not really gained anything.. Also Jun seemed to pick up every kill which was a tad unfortunate.. because it would eventually get traded back as a shutdown
This is what happens when top Asian players have advantages.. the only botlane that might punish FNC in the LEC turning up to lane in those conditions is G2.. and i am not even sure given their 2024 form.. if they would.
On the plus side Humanoid actually did the same in game 1.. if only he could recreate that world class form every game or even every few games lol
I don't think the G3 draft was **for** Noah, it's very hard to say that Xayah Rakan are lynchpins in a draft. In fact they're quite the opposite, it's one of the more non commital picks you can draft for bot lane. They can lane quite well, but don't need to win lane to have a proper impact. They can scale pretty well, but don't need to wait for full on lategame to have a proper impact.
The issue was that Zac, Sejuani and Taliyah / Taliyah, Xayah, Rakan / Sejuani, Xayah, Rakan as 3 man skirmishing units just feel so herbivore. Their G4 picks will only really perform as 4-5 man units, but by the time they were allowed to fight as 4 or 5, they were just so far behind in gold that there was no playing your way out of that situation even if you execute the fight better.
Literally 9 out of 10 east vs west games that I watch that have drafts like these play out the exact same way. They draft these bog standard front to back comps, get to 25 minutes, the fight looks good for 3 seconds and then you're like "wait, they're 7k gold behind because they literally couldn't skirmish" and you end up wondering what the fight would look like on gold parity, except you're not **getting** gold parity vs a team that drafted a prio bot lane or a strong top/jungle or jungle/mid. This isn't KC, they're not gonna wait for 25 minutes with their hands down their own pants while you get the items you need to fight.
EU will either draft "button comps" that can win skirmishes just by outplaying even without proper setup, or they'll just lose games in exactly the same way over and over.
you're talking in hypothethics, but blind picking xayah rakan is very counterable in pro-play, an ashe + strong AA adc just completely shits on them and outtrades them. They needed to ban ashe if they were to play this botlane. Xayah is strong vs melees and short ranged champions, long range poke like ashe+varus is just pure misery for her and it's unplayable.
But that's beside the point, hypothethics aside, Noah was also misplaying teamfights and was out of position multiple times (unable to deal dmg or caught out), so he just had a really poor performance on top of losing miserably in lane.
Zac into that draft was good.. Camille would have been horrible.. I think Sej was the bad pick.. Razork needs to be on an aggressive playmaking champ for FNC to function ESPECIALLY if your 3 lanes aren't amazing (i think mid should be fine).. Would have liked to see him on something like Volibear (idk what the draft bans were.. i know TES were banning Vi and Viego)
Also the G2 2019/20 needing to play mages bot or pyke all the time to beat Asian teams is such a meme
They played pyke/syndra what like 1 x in the 8? victories they had over SKT in 2019
How many games did perkz even win on mages vs top asian teams.. the Syndra win was not even because of Syndra.. the pick was almost a non entity.. and then the other times i remember.. he was losing twice to Griffin playing Zoe/Orriana bot
G2 played everything and were good on everything.. in 2020 they were forced to pick up jungle meta that didn't suit them at all and still made semi finals and lost to Damwon.. who were head and shoulders over everyone
Also are we really going to act like 369 has never played vs Camille before and is shocked its getting picked (after buff)?
eSports coach is a fraud position in the west anyway, are you a friend of the person paying the bills.
Your performance history is then mostly a coin flip on having a good roaster.
No one sane or with much talent in anything is queuing up for such a terrible job
League's community disincentivizes experimentation, especially when that comes from players or regions that aren't considered the best.
There's a very real and prevalent attitude players and coaches have against playing off-meta picks, and it's why I've stopped caring about pro league for the most part. If innovation occurs, it's cause the Eastern teams and players used it.
Any time someone plays different, this community jumps on their asses for trolling or making the game unfun, even if the strat works. See Trick2g's Gates, Baus in general, and even Tilterella in Oce.
This mindset follows through with coaches. NA has been budget Korea for years now.
Plenty of unexpected EU picks also fail miserably, but just fall out of memory. I'm not sure whether your "empirical evidence" is really correct or just your vibes. I'm not sure if it's fair to say FNC "copied" anyone. Is it really surprising to see Oscarinin on something like Zac? It's not like he never plays tanks, or FNC never plays tanks.
It comes down to picking standard and lose always or try to make something up and maybe sometimes win
>Plenty of unexpected EU picks also fail miserably, but just fall out of memory. Largely due to the fact that whenever EU doesn't fail miserably, it's with those picks. Whereas EU drafting the exact same picks as what the east is already playing, they almost always fail. It's easy for instances in which those picks **don't** work to fall out of memory when there has been instances in which they **did**. >I'm not sure whether your "empirical evidence" is really correct or just your vibes. Game 2 of the *series we just watched.* Camille is not a high priority pick and it's clearly something TES were not prepared for FNC to have as an answer. >I'm not sure if it's fair to say FNC "copied" anyone. Is it really surprising to see Oscarinin on something like Zac? Copied here is a pretty board term, but I just don't think in a game with 168 champions in it, the only champions good enough to be picked in pro play is the same 20-30 champion rotation. And I don't know if you watch all leagues concurrently, but which those champions are and what's conisdered "meta" is exclusively defined by which picks do the eastern teams prefer. Go back and rewatch some VODs if you don't believe me - western teams pretty much exclusively start playing new picks only **after** the eastern teams have already played them for a couple of weeks. But hear me out, this is the real mindblower right here - is it *crazy* to assume that the asian teams are playing what they're playing not because those picks are objectively the best in all of League of Legends, but are rather playing them because those are the champions that fit their playstyles the most? And is it absurd to assume that in a game with so many variables, what LEC teams excel at might not necessarily be the exact same thing as what the asian teams excel at? So if both of those statements are a possibility, what's the point of drafting a certain way just because "well that's what Gen G would pick if they were in our shoes"? It's not **just** about these picks being unexpected and the enemy team having less practice with them, it's also playing towards what your players are good at instead of trying to be good at something someone else is good at.
But standard front to back fails always, no one said that weird pick = win. It's just that they are straight up better at laning on meta champs and straight up better at standard front to back teamfighting. Even when you get leads eastern teams know how to react to it since they know the champions and have faced similar situations countless times in their league and in scrims at high levels, so they are able to comeback most often than not due to superior macro and micro. While with some non standard picks the situation can be very different and they can make bad decisions like thinkning ksante rumble can 2 vs 1 a fed 3 item camille on a side.
It didn't even fail, there were like 3 bad fights that could have gone the other way and Fnatic win game 3. Blaming draft is absurd, when it was small execution mistakes and fight selection that lost the game.
It’s always 3 bad fights, because guess what, they are just better and will play those standard fights better than you. But I guess next time it will be different! Sure this time we will just outplay them!
Like in the game before you mean? Fnatic has lost worse vs SK and XL in the LEC just a couple months ago lmao
I’m the game before Camille was a variable tes clearly did not expect, that is the whole point, they couldn’t be expecting it if they choose to play ksante into it, thanks for proving my point.
If Faker wanted to prove once and for all that he’s the greatest mind in league of legends, after he retires as a player, he’d come be an NA coach and coach an NA team to a world championship. Challenge level: impossible.
This would actually be insane ngl. All the best players from the current era retire and become coaches for Western teams and then a Western team finally wins Worlds.
https://i.imgur.com/j8F4QSe.jpeg It’s the year 2059, and Faker has become the coach of team UDK for the nextgen VR LoL game. Here is the corresponding screenshot. From a korean comic called "The Challenger." And in Faker fashion, everyone is looking for him but only a trusted few know that he was a legend in previous generations of esports but he has managed to erase his personal information so that he can recruit his own team and train them up. Truly Hide on Bush.
While I would love to see more "fun" picks, isn't the argument of using these picks to surprise Eastern teams conceptually tenuous? This assumes that Western teams are more practised on weird picks than Eastern teams are, which may or may not be true. Also, because weird picks are not played often (otherwise, they wouldn't be weird), it means that Western teams will also not play them to their max potential due to a lack of practice. Winning with weird picks is highly memorable, which may play into confirmation bias. It's unclear whether weird picks actually statistically do better against Eastern teams. One thing that should always be assumed is that teams pick the champs they pick because they *think* they will maximize their chances of winning. If weird picks are not selected, we should assume that the players don't think they will give them an edge.
Weaker talent should always favor high-variance over straight-up. If both teams play totally standard, the weaker team is much more likely to bleed out slowly. If the weaker team does something bizarre, they might get stomped but they have a drastically higher chance of winning. It might be 5% rather than 1%, but it's still 5%.
100% agree and Ive said something similar for years. Its why I get happy when some of our scrappy teams actually make it to international because they are the only teams I have hope for in terms of stealing games or series. Its not consistent, but they throw enough variance and try enough stuff they might surprise a team and win a game or series from that. I have absolutely no faith in any stock-standard team we send. They win domestically playing htat style, but you 100% know they are going to go international and get dominated. The scrappier the team, the better chance they have of pulling upsets. All those years TSM went I had zero faith they would be able to do anything because all they did was copy the methodical style of Korea. Yea that might consistently win NA, but its also going to consistently lose internationally. The scrappy teams we sent who really didnt have a better chance of winning worlds, always have a better chance of pulling a random upset because of the high variance of play they have. I feel the same thing happens to wildcard regions; every region for that matter. You sometimes hear the broadcast or fans saying X wildcard team was the most macro-based team in their region and then they get shit on unsurprisingly. Then the scrappy wildcard teams doing wild picks and weird plays and forces show up and make games of matches vs much higher skilled opponents.
I've addressed this in another post, but I feel like it can be said here too. The game has 168 champions in it and the "meta" rotation of champions barely exceeds 30 or 40. It's not about the "weirdness" of the pick, it's just that the decision on what's meta seems to be made by the best teams and those champions only feel like they're meta **because** they're being played by the best teams. Whereas with 168 champions to choose from, the decision **should** be based on what **your** players are good at, not what the enemy team is good at. Sure, if T1 are the best team in the world and they are spamming Aatrox top (just an example) then **surely** Aatrox is the best top laner in the game right now, right? OR, is Aatrox just a pick that enables Zeus' best qualities as a player? And if that's the case, then... is your top laner Zeus? If not, the meta really isn't relevant to your drafting style, is it? That's why the hate is mostly directed towards western coaches, not the players in this thread. Their entire apprach to the game feels like: "Hey Oscar, next week you're practicing Aatrox." "Why?" "Because that's what Zeus is playing." Real proper coaching right there.
In the TL vs IG series in MSI 2019, probably the biggest upset NA has had, they won with vayne, lux, and skarner - stuff the eastern teams have definitely not practiced against. The west really needs to stop trying to copy the east because we’ll never beat them at their own game.
Vayne was meta that year but big yes to skarner and lux
The huge drafting blunder in G3 in FNC vs TES comes from drafting for Noah when he's shown to struggle both games against TES, this is why a series is a good showcase of skill, and FNC came up short for a very stupid reason (drafting for noah when everyone and their dog knows its a shit call) The coach should definitely have known not to draft for Noah and yet they still do it, it's unforgivable and someone should get fired for this (hopefully whoever planned the draft for G3)
Yeah it was very disappointing to see them draft for bot when they were getting fisted in lane. Honestly I'm surprised FNC didnt consider a laneswap, both before the draft AND after the draft when they knew they were up against Varus/Ashe. But frankly, teams failing to adapt during a best-of series is not exclusive to western teams.
I don't think Noah played nearly as bad as people are making out Its actually the game 2 (the one people aren't really talking about his performance in) that i was wondering why he was so down.. but the camera barely panned down so it was hard to tell Game 1.. Game 3 there was very good reasons why they got smashed.. i.e playing vs world class players AND turning up to lane with summoners down.. having not really gained anything.. Also Jun seemed to pick up every kill which was a tad unfortunate.. because it would eventually get traded back as a shutdown This is what happens when top Asian players have advantages.. the only botlane that might punish FNC in the LEC turning up to lane in those conditions is G2.. and i am not even sure given their 2024 form.. if they would. On the plus side Humanoid actually did the same in game 1.. if only he could recreate that world class form every game or even every few games lol
Yea people flame Noah and praise Humanoid and the exact same thing played out in both lanes. Creme showed up to mid with no flash and 20% hp at lvl 1.
I don't think the G3 draft was **for** Noah, it's very hard to say that Xayah Rakan are lynchpins in a draft. In fact they're quite the opposite, it's one of the more non commital picks you can draft for bot lane. They can lane quite well, but don't need to win lane to have a proper impact. They can scale pretty well, but don't need to wait for full on lategame to have a proper impact. The issue was that Zac, Sejuani and Taliyah / Taliyah, Xayah, Rakan / Sejuani, Xayah, Rakan as 3 man skirmishing units just feel so herbivore. Their G4 picks will only really perform as 4-5 man units, but by the time they were allowed to fight as 4 or 5, they were just so far behind in gold that there was no playing your way out of that situation even if you execute the fight better. Literally 9 out of 10 east vs west games that I watch that have drafts like these play out the exact same way. They draft these bog standard front to back comps, get to 25 minutes, the fight looks good for 3 seconds and then you're like "wait, they're 7k gold behind because they literally couldn't skirmish" and you end up wondering what the fight would look like on gold parity, except you're not **getting** gold parity vs a team that drafted a prio bot lane or a strong top/jungle or jungle/mid. This isn't KC, they're not gonna wait for 25 minutes with their hands down their own pants while you get the items you need to fight. EU will either draft "button comps" that can win skirmishes just by outplaying even without proper setup, or they'll just lose games in exactly the same way over and over.
you're talking in hypothethics, but blind picking xayah rakan is very counterable in pro-play, an ashe + strong AA adc just completely shits on them and outtrades them. They needed to ban ashe if they were to play this botlane. Xayah is strong vs melees and short ranged champions, long range poke like ashe+varus is just pure misery for her and it's unplayable. But that's beside the point, hypothethics aside, Noah was also misplaying teamfights and was out of position multiple times (unable to deal dmg or caught out), so he just had a really poor performance on top of losing miserably in lane.
Zac into that draft was good.. Camille would have been horrible.. I think Sej was the bad pick.. Razork needs to be on an aggressive playmaking champ for FNC to function ESPECIALLY if your 3 lanes aren't amazing (i think mid should be fine).. Would have liked to see him on something like Volibear (idk what the draft bans were.. i know TES were banning Vi and Viego) Also the G2 2019/20 needing to play mages bot or pyke all the time to beat Asian teams is such a meme They played pyke/syndra what like 1 x in the 8? victories they had over SKT in 2019 How many games did perkz even win on mages vs top asian teams.. the Syndra win was not even because of Syndra.. the pick was almost a non entity.. and then the other times i remember.. he was losing twice to Griffin playing Zoe/Orriana bot G2 played everything and were good on everything.. in 2020 they were forced to pick up jungle meta that didn't suit them at all and still made semi finals and lost to Damwon.. who were head and shoulders over everyone Also are we really going to act like 369 has never played vs Camille before and is shocked its getting picked (after buff)?
eSports coach is a fraud position in the west anyway, are you a friend of the person paying the bills. Your performance history is then mostly a coin flip on having a good roaster. No one sane or with much talent in anything is queuing up for such a terrible job
That's what MAD's current coach says in every interview. But nothing can be done if the team doesn't win against those that play "the standard"
NA has had a grand total of like 3 actual head coaches since the LCS inception lol
League's community disincentivizes experimentation, especially when that comes from players or regions that aren't considered the best. There's a very real and prevalent attitude players and coaches have against playing off-meta picks, and it's why I've stopped caring about pro league for the most part. If innovation occurs, it's cause the Eastern teams and players used it. Any time someone plays different, this community jumps on their asses for trolling or making the game unfun, even if the strat works. See Trick2g's Gates, Baus in general, and even Tilterella in Oce. This mindset follows through with coaches. NA has been budget Korea for years now.
I remember eu lcs being innovators on most of the metas back in the day, and this attribute was also considered being the reason for their success.
Weird pick dont word anymore since pro lol evolves every year
Not again one of these " you gotta cheese the east " to win . No shit you just need to practice and learn the damn game