Team Rosters Solidified as Spring Split Schedules Arrive!

The Spring Split Line Ups are ready, the players waiting...all we need now is for Opening Day to arrive! I can't wait! You can't wait! Let's start up the pre-season #HYPE!

NA LCS ROSTERS

EU LCS ROSTERS 

Support Lanes 101: To Dive or Peel

by Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis

Choosing when to dive or peel is probably one of the biggest mistakes made in low ELO support. A lot of supports have kits that function well for both diving the enemy and keeping their carry safe. Doing the wrong one at the wrong time can cost your team the game. The full answer isn't as simple as “Oh, you’re Leona, you dive.” It requires an analysis of your own team, the enemy team, the status of both team's carries in terms of power and what cooldowns are available.

First, take a look at your own champion before anything else. What kind of support are you? Tanky supports have a better time diving the enemy than mage supports, but that alone doesn't decide it. Keep in mind, just because it is easy to dive doesn't mean you should. There are champions like Leona and Alistar that are great at diving into the fray and being a huge nuisance, but they sometimes have to sit back and peel. That being said, there are mages that can effectively “dive” or at the very least use their spells to interrupt the backline. Janna is great example of someone who fits that bill. She can throw tornadoes back deep and even flash ult if she wants to sacrifice herself to disrupt a fight in an extreme way.

Once you’ve established what your champion is best at, look at your team composition. Every decent team comp will have an ADC, the same one you helped grow and feed. Is this an ADC that needs to be protected and, if free from enemy interference, can win the game for you? An example of this kind of ADC would be Vayne or Kog Maw. These ADCs absolutely require help from somewhere if they want to stay alive long enough to output damage during a fight. Others, like Caitlyn or late game Tristana, are a bit safer in their range and escapes. They still are the backbone of damage on your team and need to stay alive.

Of course you could make the same argument for any ADC, so it’s kind of irrelevant in the grand scheme of it all. What is more important is looking at your solo lanes and junglers. Do you have an assassin or traditional mage in mid? Keep in mind that you’ll have a larger backline to keep safe in a fight if you have a mage, while assassins will need help creating picks and killing off the enemy. If you look over at top lane, you can have a multitude of different champions, and the same goes for jungle. There’s hyper tanks, bruisers, assassins, mages, supports, etc. Overall as a general rule, the more big bodies you have to clog up the middle of a fight, the more reasonable it is for you to dive. At least when looking purely at your own team's comp.

The reason for this is that you’ve got a much more cluttered area going on in the middle of the scuffle and as each of the team's tanks and bruisers are trying to get past each other, both ADCs will be outputting damage.

Next up, you want to take a similar look at the enemy composition. Pick apart what their strengths are. Have they got an assassin like Zed that can jump into your team? That’s a point towards peeling in that case. If they have an Anivia, however, you can go in the other direction and try and get in her face.

Finally, what I could consider the most crucial part is evaluating the gold distribution. Once the teams have gotten into game a bit it’ll become clear who on the enemy team is a threat, and who on your team is dangerous as well. Going back to the Zed example, if the enemy Zed jumps on to your ADC in a fight, but he’s 0/4/1 and doesn't have any of his spike items(brut/botrk) he isn't going to do anything. If the carry is someone like Lucian or any other ADC with mobility, they can just kite him around and be fine. If the same Zed jumps in but instead of 0/4/1 he’s actually 3/0/2, then he is a problem and kiting him out most likely won’t be enough. You’ll have to sit back on your ADC and keep them safe.

You still want to do the same for your own team, too. If the enemy team wants to dive deep into your team to kill the 1/6/2 ADC while your solo laners go to town in their backline, don’t make the mistake of trying to help the ADC. While it’d be nice to have that ADC get back in the game, they are currently your weakest link and you need to play to your strengths. If you help the ADC rather than helping your solo lane bruisers/assassins you run the risk of having a lose/lose situation where both the ADC die and your solo laners didn't do enough. It’s a similar concept as when a jungler ganks a lane that’s already winning but a little bit. You put your eggs in the basket that looks like it’s gonna win.

As you can probably tell, trying to do this decision making on the fly is pretty hard. It’s one of the things that makes the professionals a cut above the average player. After you break it down a few times it gets more and more doable, eventually to the point that it becomes second nature. Learn your matchups and use them to help you understand what to do when, and don’t flounder in making your choice.

TL;DR:

Look at your champ’s skills (Better at dive or peel?)

Look at your team’s skills and needs (Need lots of peel? Can dive free?)

Look at the enemy team’s skills and needs (They have a lot of protection? Want all over your carry?)

Look at how gold is distributed (Assassin fed, Carry not? Vice-Versa?)

Be sure to check out my other articles:

Support Lanes 101: How to Pick your Support

Support Lanes 101: Part 1.5: (Pocket Pick Supports)
Support Lanes 101: Itemization Choices
Support Lanes 101: Warding
Support Lanes 101: To Dive or to Peel
Support Lanes 101: Be the Annoyance
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By Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis 

Giants Join H2k and 8 other teams in the EU LCS!

H2k and Giants breach the gates of LCS after a successful expansion tournament for both teams.

By Anel “Musinlol” Musinovic

H2k - Miles Ahead of any Challenger Team
Odamne, loulex, Febiven, Hjarnan & Voidle

H2k goes completely undefeated and therefore sweeps their way into the LCS. They have been trying for a long time and with their poor performance vs CW they failed the first time around. Everybody was expecting H2k and Millenium to swoop their way into LCS, but only H2k deserved their faith.

Strengths: H2k showed next to no weaknesses. Febiven, especially, was extremely strong but also Odamne was looking promising. Febiven was even impossible to ban out. We saw Reason Gaming try but they ended up getting 3-0’d due to Febiven going big. 

When you win every single game it is hard not to look good but loulex also did fine. In the whole of Expansion tournament we only saw him pick out Lee Sin, Jarvan & Kha’zix. Despite the Lee Sin being banned out often, no one tried to ban out all three of these champions which I would have loved to see. Questions might be made around his champion pool, but he has some time to work on it for the LCS if that is the case.

Weaknesses: With all games won, weaknesses might be hard to find but Giants botlane did seem to dominate H2k’s botlane of Hjarnan & Voidle. Being a challenger team previously they might struggle against the better LCS teams in laneswaps or wave management. They will scrim the LCS teams coming into LCS so they might have fixed some of it.

Giants - Avoiding Relegations

Werlyb, Fr3deric, xPepii, Adryh & Rydle 

Giants 3-0 Reason Gaming twice in a row and sends themselves into LCS! The Spanish side surprised everybody with their 2-1 win over Millenium and made themselves serious contenders. Many wonder if Giants are really LCS level, and they will be trying to avoid that last spot and the relegations.

Strengths: Definitely the botlane in Adryh & Rydle. Rydle landed some amazing skillshots and Adryh had an exceptional performances on Jinx. Rydle is definitely a quality Thresh but it will be interesting seeing him on other champs as well.  They seemed like an LCS-level botlane but we will have to see how they do going up against stronger botlanes. Rydle will definitely be happy that Gamers2 decided to released him. 

Weaknesses: The three other players, Werlyb, Fr3deric & Pepi has shown that they can be shut down, especially against better teams as H2k. They are really aggressive but sometimes when they shouldn't be. They will have to fix a lot of team problems if they want to have any chance of avoiding relegations. They will be trying to avoid finishing last so they can choose not to face Origen in the relegation matches.

By Anel “Musinlol” Musinovic

EU LCS Expansion Tournament: H2k vs Giants Gaming

By Reece "Sabrewolf" Dos-Santos 

With the demons of past failed LCS attempts behind them, H2k took to the stage against Giants Gaming; both teams coming off back-to-back 3-0 sweeps against their first round opponents.

Pick/ban phase

Interestingly, because of how the teams chose to be set up, Giants remained on red side for the whole series. What they aimed to get out of this strategy, however, will remain an enigma.

H2k was relentless in their ban strategy of taking out the threat of xPepii by removing Xerath, Leblanc and Syndra in all three games. Giants, on the other hand, opted to try and adapt their banning to remove one key component of what dismantled them in the previous game: banning Febiven’s game one Jayce in game two and Voidle’s game one and two Janna in game three.

Pick-wise, both teams displayed good variety of picks and compositions. H2k played a poke strategy with Corki and Jayce in game one before moving on to more team fight orientated compositions in games two and three. The only person that played the same champion in all three games was Rydle on Thresh, a champion that worked quite well for him in the series, especially in game three.

Into the Games

One thing that was noticeable to me across this series was the performance of the bottom lane of Giants. While the action in the bottom lane was often overshadowed by the standout performances of H2k’s top half, Adryh and Rydle put up a very good laning phase in all 3 games. Adryh’s Sivir in game one had a 20 minute CS lead six minutes in, in game three they also heavily bullied out the bottom lane of H2k to the point where Hjarnan’s Sivir only managed to get back into the game off the back off the performance of the rest of his team. Despite the consistent lead in Giants’ bottom lane, there was simply nothing the pair could do when faced with the absolute demolition that Loulex, Odoamne and Febiven put up.

Game one saw three consecutive counter ganks from Loulex on the middle lane as Fr3deric tried his hardest to shut down Febiven but subsequently he ended up just pushing himself and xPepii further behind. Giants made a little comeback with 4 kills and the first dragon but the next three went to H2k and Febiven and Loulex slowly choked the Giants out. 

Game two saw a similar story of Giants’ falling behind on a solo lane early on. Odoamne took complete control of the game on Irelia getting a huge cs lead and 4 kills early on. Febiven’s Orianna also played a heavy part in their team fight presence in backing Odoamne who went nuts decimating the Giants in any way possible. One thing that was a slight let down for H2k was Loulex’s tendency to over commit and go in to deep without the proper protection in order to set things up for his team.

While these attempts proved non detrimental in any way, a team in a better position than Giants would have been able to easily pick on these small positional missteps. The biggest error for H2k in game two was over chasing a good fight they could have used to push into the base, gifting two unnecessary kills to xPepii’s Ahri.

Similarly in game three, Loulex’s presence across the map in the early stages was heavy and the H2k solo lanes quickly took control of the map. Odoamne’s Irelia had Werelyb’s Maokai in his back pocket for the whole game and Febiven’s Ahri was a huge threat; however due to H2k’s tendency to make missteps and positional errors, particularly on Loulex’s front, the game took a lot longer to close out than it  should have. H2k’s dragon control was also very lax allowing Giant’s to pick up three, but the fact that this simply did not matter at all proved how far ahead and how oppressive the solo lanes of H2k were throughout this series.

If I had to pick an MVP throughout this series I’d have to give my vote to Febiven, he had a super commanding series knocking xPepii down and keeping him down across all three games. He remained a constant deadly threat and made team fighting very difficult for the Giants.

With this H2k finally live up to their growing hype since the days being Cloud 9 Eclipse and earn their way into the EU LCS as its 9^th team.

by Reece "SabrewoIf" Dos-Santos

Breaking Down IEM IX Cologne and Looking at Semifinals.

By Anel “Musinlol” Musinovic

With Cloud9 winning IEM San Jose, it is soon time to start IEM Cologne. Here is a bit about the teams that have the potential to win, the casting crew, what is at stake and when it’s going to be played.

Gambit Gaming - The IEM Legends

Cacochard, Diamond, NiQ, P1noy & Edward

A new Gambit at IEM will be trying to replicate the previous success of the old five players from Gambit. The former five: Darien, Diamond, Alex Ich, Genja & Edward, were also under the name Moscow 5 and won IEM Season VI Global Challenge Kiev & World Championship. IEM Kiev was the first LAN event Diamond ever had attended. After coming under the Gambit Gaming organization, the team followed up by winning IEM Season VII Global Challenge and placing 3rd-4th in the World Championship. The next IEM would have the exact same outcome for Gambit, IEM Season VIII Cologne was won with a 2-0 over Fnatic & again they placed 3-4th in the World Championship. Therefore, there is a lot of pressure on the new guys to perform.

A quick mention that their previous organisation won’t be participating in the tournament, Moscow 5 again sadly has Visa problems for their new five players. So Diamond & Edward sadly won’t have the chance to face their old organization.

Toplane - Cabochard : Since the departure of Darien, Gambit has been trying to to fill the toplane role with Kubon but, after a relatively short stay, they switched him out with Cabochard who had previously subbed for them when Darien couldn't get a visa to play. He quickly got picked up by NiP after subbing, but after they failed to qualify for LCS, Cabochard got picked up by Gambit. Cabochard is known for his confidence through laning phase, which makes him vulnerable for ganks. If they can play well with his style of play, he should be one of the better toplaners going into the next season.

Jungle - Diamond : Diamond has been with Gambit for a long time and experienced their IEM success and he'll be trying to replicate it with new teammates. Diamond is known as the innovator and has been one of the players to look at when you define how to play jungle. He is still considered as a elite jungler of EU and will hopefully, for the spectators, come out with something new again. He joined the old Gambit boys by Edward knowing him, despite being 1800 elo which was low for professional players. He is known for exceptional Lee Sin play and for popularizing Evelyn jungle with various builds, most notably the old bluepot start which would allow him to have insane early pressure.

Mid - Niq : NiQ spent several years playing for multiple Polish teams, but after failing to qualify for LCS EU with Denial he himself approached Gambit after Alex Ich's announcement of leaving the team. He had big shoes to fill and has shown himself to be a solid player for Gambit despite having a bad split. He seemed to favour Nidalee in the midlane in the EU LCS. Also, expect to see his favorite champ, Fizz.

ADC - P1noy (Krislund) : He is mostly known under the name Krislund, but changed his name after being confirmed for Gambit because he wanted to have something that represented himself since he is half filipina. He ddidn'thave a good relationship with his father so he changed the name to p1noy because it meant that he was filipina which came from his mothers side.

He is an versatile adc who has played a ton in the Challenger Series, but he's also subbed for Gambit in the Relegation Tournament. He can play both play aggressive and passive well and will most likely be aggressive with his support, Edward. He also shown that he doesn't fall under pressure; he played his first match with Gambit in the Relegation Tournament and showed up big.

Support - Edward : Edward, the man who was previously known as Gosu Pepper, is a huge playmaking support. He is known as the “Thresh Prince” for good reason. He has always been the player to flash in for a kill or for trading the flash of the opposite adc. He would often do this on Sona as well. He has previously been praised as the best Sona and was picking her very often. He describes his playstyle as “see hero, kill hero” which we have seen in the EU LCS multiple times. He has also been trying to innovate the support champions, spamming Vel’koz in soloq and busting out Gragas in competitive play quite a few times.

Roccat - The 5 players with a storyline for IEM

Overpow, Jankos, Ryu, Woolite & VandeR

Roccat are here because Fnatic couldn’t participate without a full lineup. Despite that fact, Roccat are seen by many as the favorites of the tournament and with new strong additions, they are likely to win. They have been praised by many for being good in scrims which has lead to a lot of hype around them at the moment.

Toplane - Overpow : Overpow was for the early of the EU LCS split highly praised and hyped but did not perform exceptionally well in the midlane in the split. He was good at times but really passive in the midlane with many strange picks such as Mordekaiser. He has been praised for being aggressive & having instant tp’s since his role swap to toplane. Many didn’t feel like the removal of Xaxus was a good idea, but Roccat seems to feel happy about putting Overpow top. The question stands if he will be living up to the hype and showing dominance in his lane.

Jungle - Jankos : Jankos was praised as the best jungler in Europe after a good summer split. If you go back and look at his games when he was in the challenger series he wasn't a good jungler, but he's really developed a good understanding of the jungle and mechanical skill over time. He has immense early pressure every single game and has an incredibly high rate of first bloods. He also prefers champs such as Lee Sin & Elise who has great kits for early pressure.

Mid - Ryu: This IEM tournament is going to be an important one for Ryu, with LCS soon coming and teams locking in their rosters. This “tryout period” at IEM for Ryu will be the dealbreaker, with players like Nukeduck waiting in the wings if he doesn't perform. He is known for Ahri and Fizz but mostly for his Orianna which he has mastered completely. He is so good at holding his ultimate in fights so he can zone out the enemy. Despite Roccat consisting of four Polish players they talk in English so Ryu can have a chance of understanding them. It will be interesting to see how Roccat will cope with the language barrier.

ADC - Woolite : Replacing Celaver will be the former Copenhagen Wolves' adc, Woolite. He is one of the products of Copenhagens continuing adc production. He was the shining light for CW and, with a strong support, they could be contesting for the strongest botlane in EU. Woolite is an aggressive player and will suit VandeR well. He'll be a strong replacement for the underwhelming and defensive adc, Celaver.

Support - VandeR : Vander can also be called VandeRlife, because he was definitely a playmaking support who was top two in the LCS. His Thresh is his best champion and was often banned away from him. It will be interesting to see the pairing of Vander and Woolite vs Doublelift and Aphromoo in the semifinal. He has been on the show First Blood and seems to be a really smart player.

Dignitas - Addition of two Koreans 

Gamsu, Crumbzz, Shiphtur, CoreJJ, KiwiKid

Dignitas are going into this tournament despite being behind CLG, Curse and EG, but Curse and EG didn’t have the opportunity to show up so Dignitas, with the depature of Scarra, ZionSpartan and Imaqtpie, have the chance to show off their two new Korean players.

Top - Gamsu : Gamsu is a Korean who has played with Alienware Arena in OGN Winter and also been a sub for Samsung Blue. Without knowing much about Gamsu, I am looking forward to seeing what this new player can offer to the Dignitas lineup. He has also been playing under the name loopercorn in SoloQ in NA. 

Jungle - Crumbzz : Crumbzz, for me, is an very underrated jungler in NA. He is often solid and is extremely versatile since he has played top, jungle & mid competitively. He has also been great on the analyst desk the few times he has been there. He is trying to become the shotcaller for Dignitas which is a very underrated skill. Shotcalling is very important but many seems to forget it when they rate the player. He has previously shown good performances on Elise, Vi and Lee sin. Something I think he has under his sleeve is a Kayle and maybe a Nocturne jungle pick since he has played it once before.

Mid - Shiphtur : Shiphtur came to Dignitas as a “star signing.” People had enormous expectations and in his very first game he did get a pentakill on Leblanc. This was followed by many good performance and Dignitas climbed the ranks. Their performance dropped as the split went on and they didn't do too well in play-offs. He shines on assassin champs and Ziggs.


Adc - CoreJJ : CoreJJ has been streaming a lot on twitch while playing under the name DubuKiD. Many have said that he hasn't been doing too well in soloq but that obviously isn't a big deal when you look at competitive which is a different environment. If you haven’t seen his stream I would suggest it. He is, in my opinion, a very entertaining streamer.  He previously played on Bigfile Miracle with Fusions' new midlaner, Huhi. Other than that, I don’t know much about him but will be watching him closely at IEM.

Support - Kiwikid : With the news that Dignitas was not going to be fielding Imaqtpie, people speculated if Kiwikid was still going to be on the roster. With his roleswap from toplane, he has been kind of underwhelming so far. If he could show up at IEM with huge plays on champions like Thresh, he would minimize the backlash from the community next split.

Counter Logic Gaming - Mystery

ZionSpartan, Thinkcard, Link, Doublelift, Aphromoo

Counter Logic Gaming with the most votes are going to be looking to please their fans. Fan favorite Scarra will be leading the team as head coach. 

Toplane - ZionSpartan : ZionSpartan was also one of the new signings. He is this carry style toplaner who could even pull out a Nasus pick against a Maokai for instance. CLG has a history of turning toplaners into how they want them to play though, but let's hope we can see Zion in a sidelane doing what he does best. He has, in recent vlogs, seemed really happy and has had a great attitude so it seems like he is getting along with the other players.

Jungle - Thinkcard : He has previously subbed for CLG when CLG was bootcamping in Korea. This time he is subbing as well because Xmithie had visa problems. He tried to qualify for LCS with LoLPro but wasn’t showing up in the series at all himself. He isn’t really about fancy Lee Sin kicks or anything like that but is warding the map and being the second support in that sense.

Midlane - Link : Link has been under a lot of criticism and a great way to shut them up would be to come out strong at IEM. He has also been trying to roleswap to jungle but CLG felt like keeping him mid would be the best solution available for them. He will probably be playing farm/poke heavy champions despite of a lot of assassins being strong right now.

ADC - Doublelift : Doublelift is the front of CLG and the one CLG fans value most. He also has a unique story behind him. He was kicked out from home at age 16 because he wanted to be a pro gamer, and had to live with Travis Gafford. The glory days of Doublelift seem long gone and retirement has been an area which has been discussed. He often has Vayne bans against him but always plays the meta adc otherwise. Often he can get caught off guard and be in a bad position in teamfights. With that said, he does make a good botlane with Aphromoo. He has a reputation of trash talking opponents, but for himself, I hope he doesn't trash talk Woolite because I see Woolite getting the better of him.

Support - Aphromoo : Aphromoo is the star of the botlane but often doesn’t get enough credit because his duo partner has such a big name. He is one of the most lovable guys in the scene and has grown as a player since his role swap from ADC to Support. Rush hour as the botlane pairing is called, will have a hard time against the new botlane of Roccat I believe.


Semi-finals

Semi-finals are going to be hard to predict since we haven’t seen many of the teams in action and all of them have new players, but I believe that we might see an EU final here.

I don’t dare to predict the scores but I think that Roccat and Gambit are going to be in the final. Roccat has been sounding strong and will be trying their best to win IEM while on the other hand CLG weren’t sure if they were attending the event and have a sub as well. It wouldn’t be IEM Cologne without having Gambit in the final at least, and Dignitas took a while to get going against Aces High, which could be worrying sign.

IEM Casting line-up

Krepo, Deman, Deficio, stvicious, JoeMiller, Dexter & Sjokz

When to watch?

Saturday - December 20th

13:00 to 18:00 CET - LCS EU expansion winners match (BO5)

18:00 to 21:00 CET - Intel Extreme Masters Cologne Roccat vs CLG (BO3)

21:00 to 0:00 CET - Intel Extreme Masters Cologne Dignitas vs Gambit (BO3)

Sunday - December 21st

13:00 to 18:00 CET - LCS EU expansion decider match (BO5)

18:00 to 23:00 CET - Intel Extreme Masters Cologne final (BO5)

The IEM Cologne prize pool is 30.000$ and every team gets a bit of the cut obviously more for the higher placed teams. 

Teams that didn't make it: Also Dolphins of Wall Street & Aces High eSports Club participated in IEM but didn't make the semifinals.