League of Legends LII: Sin of the Blind Monk

[Eldariel]

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Kassadin's early game is not nearly as bad as you seem to think. That was true a long time ago, but the game has changed in many ways and items like Doran's Shield, Flask, and even Seeker's Armguard make it very hard to shut kassadin down out-right. The closest thing he has to a "hard" counter is 2v1ing him mid, but even that is salvageable with jungler support and using W to cs under tower. Early CS can be sacrificed and Kass' weaknesses disappear completely at level 6.

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Honestly, Kass became a fine laner ever since his W was reworked into magic damage. That made lasthitting under tower with him fairly easy and really catapulted his laning. Recent changes have only improved this.

2v1 Kass doesn't even need that much jungle help; in mid you just CS under the tower, hang in there (you can CS better than most melee champs under tower thanks to the mentioned W, and your competitive ranged abilities especially if support uses abilities for your E), hit 6 and win the game. That's why he was a must-ban for so long. Flavor of the month -> people forget tho. AD Assassins kinda did that but honestly, he's still okay with them too. Silence + Slow + TP is a supersafe escape.

[ex cathedra]

Anyway, game 3:

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Oh My ****ing God! Where game 1 MVP was xPeke, game 2 was Hai, game 3 was definitely MVP Cyanide. This was every bit of Fanatic I remember in the time Shushei was still there. Agressive support, Cyanide shredding through the opposition, xPeke, while not as important as game 1, making minced meat out of mid. This is the ruthlessness I am used to from Fanatic. This is what I was hoping for as a third game.

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I actually think that Cyanide really underperformed that game. Investing the level 1 kills onto your jungler puts a lot of pressure on them to make use of that gold and Cyanide just got out-farmed, out-leveled, and his ganks were largely ineffective. Given how well the Fnatic bottom lane performed that game I feel like the kills would have been much better on Puszu. Cyanide managed his time early game very poorly.

[Qwertystop]

If the various members of Inversion can tear themselves away from the stream for an hour or so tonight, practice is this evening at 8:00 Eastern time.

I'll try, but assorted real-life circumstances (read: family dinner later than usual) might cause partial lateness. If they do, I should still be able to get on for a minute or two around that time to say so.

[Eldariel]

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I actually think that Cyanide really underperformed that game. Investing the level 1 kills onto your jungler puts a lot of pressure on them to make use of that gold and Cyanide just got out-farmed, out-leveled, and his ganks were largely ineffective. Given how well the Fnatic bottom lane performed that game I feel like the kills would have been much better on Puszu. Cyanide managed his time early game very poorly.

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Honestly, I think Cyanide played the worst out of Fnatic, perhaps ahead of G2 xPeke. You can tell xPeke was out of practice on TF. Anyways, yeah, Puszu/Yellowstar crushed all 3 games and Soaz was solid as hell, as you'd expect. xPeke played an amazing Kass.

Cyanide didn't do one big play (didn't get a single one of his legendary steals off, his ganks weren't amazing tho G1 he did pretty good, and he got outfarmed in the jungle hard), and his presence was okay but I think Meteos played better over the 3 games. He teamfought well and tanked like a boss but Meteos kinda did that too. C9 also played objective game better so Cyanide certainly had the opportunity to make something out of it but he didn't.

[Socratov]

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Why is cyanide game 3 MVP? just because he picked up both kills, which would have probably been better on anyone else. Whoever decided for the invade was MVP.

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I actually think that Cyanide really underperformed that game. Investing the level 1 kills onto your jungler puts a lot of pressure on them to make use of that gold and Cyanide just got out-farmed, out-leveled, and his ganks were largely ineffective. Given how well the Fnatic bottom lane performed that game I feel like the kills would have been much better on Puszu. Cyanide managed his time early game very poorly.

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Well, IMO the kills on Cyanide gave him the opportunity to pout on more pressure. Later on he gets a bit behind, but early on he can put on pressure, which translates into winning lanes all over the map.

[ex cathedra]

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Well, IMO the kills on Cyanide gave him the opportunity to pout on more pressure. Later on he gets a bit behind, but early on he can put on pressure, which translates into winning lanes all over the map.

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What I'm saying is that he didn't use that opportunity well.

[Hawkfrost000]

If the various members of Inversion can tear themselves away from the stream for an hour or so tonight, practice is this evening at 8:00 Eastern time.

I've started working on mondays so i wont be making many practices.

DM

[Nadevoc]

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I really didn't like the Nunu pick by NJS. He couldn't get any counterjungling down, and Nunu just doesn't apply a lot of pressure in lanes. I guess it gave them faster dragons/more dragon pressure, but they didn't seem able to leverage it, and his ults seemed pretty ineffective, too.

Nagne's charms seemed to be off for most of the game, too, which is unfortunate.

[Eldariel]

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I really didn't like the Nunu pick by NJS. He couldn't get any counterjungling down, and Nunu just doesn't apply a lot of pressure in lanes. I guess it gave them faster dragons/more dragon pressure, but they didn't seem able to leverage it, and his ults seemed pretty ineffective, too.

Nagne's charms seemed to be off for most of the game, too, which is unfortunate.

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Nagne's bad, Najin Sword seems bad. Practicing only with one opponent never seems to work; it's "Switch midlaners and make up something new as you go, or go home" for them now.

[Nadevoc]

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Nagne's bad, Najin Sword seems bad. Practicing only with one opponent never seems to work; it's "Switch midlaners and make up something new as you go, or go home" for them now.

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I believe the analysts said they can't switch midlaners in the middle of a series, so they're stuck with Nagne.

[Eldariel]

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I believe the analysts said they can't switch midlaners in the middle of a series, so they're stuck with Nagne.

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I do hope for Sword's sake he's a god on some other champ then 'cause his Ahri isn't impressive in the least. He wastes dashes, can't setup those skillshots, mispositions in the start of fights relying too much on his ulti and overall, is just "eh".

Also, that blue-side? Still pretty strong it seems. They seriously need to do something about the coin flip ****, that's dumb. Take winners to groupstages with an advantage, top seeds get choice of side, boom, earned advantage. This randomness is just dumb.

[FireJustice]

sooo blue side really always win?

[Legoshrimp]

sooo blue side really always win?

Pretty much.

Riot is really unimpressive with making the tournament fair.

[ex cathedra]

Riot is really unimpressive with making the tournament fair.

Thank god they made time for 8 GG.eu games in the group stages, it'd be a travesty if some of the quarterfinal teams had to play more than 2 or 3 games all tournament.

[Joran]

Thank god they made time for 8 GG.eu games in the group stages, it'd be a travesty if some of the quarterfinal teams had to play more than 2 or 3 games all tournament.

I used words like "abomination", "travesty", and "laughable" about their format in the survey for Worlds. I have to say the production values are top notch though, the games very entertaining, but the tournament bracket is just terrible.

sooo blue side really always win?

Through the group stages (omitting the games with Mineski and GamingGear.EU), Blue side won 16-9.

Adding in quarterfinals

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Blue side is currently 20-9

[toasty]

I just want to point out something about Riot: they make it by because of fancy production values and the big fact that their game is more popular.

Also: the balance for this patch currently feels rather off. This isn't so much because of triforce buffs, but because of a strange reversion to Season 2 junglers but the adaption of midlaners becoming more assassiney. But in general it just feels extremely extremely easy to read games right now.

Maybe I suck at DotA a lot but it doesn't seem that game is as predictable. But again: I don't play DotA, haven't for four years now.

[Nadevoc]

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It's amazing how much better NJS looks when they put Watch on a champion that lets him actually make plays

[Eldariel]

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It's amazing how much better NJS looks when they put Watch on a champion that lets him actually make plays

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I think the biggest story of this game is Cain/Pray going to town and Nagne not getting slapped around by a trout.

[Nadevoc]

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I think the biggest story of this game is Cain/Pray going to town and Nagne not getting slapped around by a trout.

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I give Watch credit for Nagne being successful early game since he made some ganks early that really felt like it kind of gave Nagne the lane, and he also helped out bot lane (though yeah, Cain/Pray definitely had the lane on their own).

[Eldariel]

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Game 3, Gambit basically needs:
- 1v2 lanes; Darien is fine 2v1, 2v2 Cain and Pray have too big of an edge over Genja and Voidle. Cain and Pray were definitely the reason NJS won G2.
- More escapeable mid for Alex or heavier counterganks/whatever (or both) from Diamond. Diamond didn't really get anything done even tho he had a fighter type jungle and was there.
- Hope Watch picks a ****ty jungler with no playmaking. Probably not gonna happen but Diamond can match him, it's just a matter of the details. More warding would help; Alex reminded me a lot of Nuke_Duck vs. Regi where he goes for the 1v1 over and over again and gets ganked.

NJS on the other hand wants 2v2 and Watch to carry mid and they're fine. Honestly, it could go either way; laning is gonna determine everything. Blue side goes to Gambit this time tho so the picks should favor them unless they drop the ball.

EDIT: OMG, do-nothing Gragas strikes again! I haven't seen Alex play him but Faker is literally the only Gragas I've seen to pull his weight. Good laner, but really peters off damagewise; you need the perfect reposition ultis to make him pay off later in the game.

EDIT#2: Comeback of the Donu... And against AP Nid, Gragas is actually not horrible since while his damage is kinda poor he pokes fine, and sustains great. Corki is also a worse lategame carry than Twitch on the one good carry on NJS. I don't like this for them, even though it IS a hypercarry comp.

[Nadevoc]

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Whyyyyyyyyyyyy, Sword? Nunu did nothing first game. What do you expect to happen this time?

[toasty]

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EDIT: OMG, do-nothing Gragas strikes again! I haven't seen Alex play him but Faker is literally the only Gragas I've seen to pull his weight. Good laner, but really peters off damagewise; you need the perfect reposition ultis to make him pay off later in the game.

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yeah but kog/eve cna pump out the damage fine for that team no?

[Eldariel]

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yeah but kog/eve cna pump out the damage fine for that team no?

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Yeah, but it's still kinda dangerous since they'll have a hard time stopping NJSCarry Pray. On the flipside, as I said earlier, vs. Nidapoke, Gragas actually makes sense so it might work out after all.

[ChaosOS]

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I'm giving this game to GMB Gragas Q AS slow is going to be incredibly overpowered

[NineThePuma]

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How many people will open this spoiler?

[Happy Gravity]

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huuur look I'm so witty

Seems like Gambit's only trick with this comp is Stand United on Evelynn.

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The only thing wittier than that is to put something in a million spoiler boxes for no reason.

[Nadevoc]

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Okay, Nunu being somewhat helpful, but I feel like he'd have been much more helpful on another jungle. Basically Cain/Pray carrying him.

Also, Kobe keeps saying Diamond should save his jungle to drop the Absolute Zero slow when it's an area slow? Am I wrong on this, or would the W not drop that at all (or drop it then immediately be effected again)?

[Eldariel]

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Mostly Gambit just failed those engages; micro mistakes, nothing more. Then they lost. And yeah, W wouldn't work on the AOE slow. It's not Yi Ult. And I'm kinda sad, Gambit had this won but then Voidle goes and gets himself killed and baits Genja in too...

[Manticoran]

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W does actually work for about a second/half a second or so, which with the MS boost should generally be enough to get from the middle to an outer edge of Nunu ult.

[Olinser]

If the various members of Inversion can tear themselves away from the stream for an hour or so tonight, practice is this evening at 8:00 Eastern time.

I bowl on Monday's and Thursdays - pretty sure I told McDouggal a while ago.