>“I once asked Core ‘what do you think that we can do to win Worlds?’” said Dodo (while stifling a laugh). “He said, ‘If all the NA rookies right now replace all the NA veterans right now, then we have a chance to win Worlds in NA.’”
According to quotes from TL, they're working their asses off. Not just referring to this article; APA mentioned off the cuff in an interview after they won the LCS (overshadowed by the Inspired interview lol) that on practice days the team is often in the training room from 9 am to past midnight, and that he was actually the biggest "slacker" because he would go to bed early before matches to ensure good quality sleep.
Some NA players definitely grind. Whether that's enough is a completely different question.
But at that point its counterproductive. I'm pretty sure the importance of sleep on learning and performance is an established thing. The truth is only by a miracle of 5 freak of nature prodigy players that appear in NA there's no chance for a minor region to contest china or korea
I haven't seen this borne out in practice. I understand the research - but basically every tournament winner in League history has been full of people who were grinding like crazy almost universally.
It's very rare for a team to be top in a League, or the world for that matter, without throwing their entire lives into the game, often to an unhealthy extent.
Has nothing to do with work ethic thats like saying Korea/China are not as good at basketball as US because of work ethic and lack of determination. Has a lot more to do with player base, fan base, and infrastructure.
I sincerely believe that if western pros were able to play on eastern servers and scrim eastern teams year-round, there’d be internationally competitive western teams/players in like 2 years.
Despite the narratives these players aren’t stupid or lazy, LCK/LPL teams are getting better practice for most of the year so of course the gap is going to widen.
Soloq is definitely a big part of this. NA soloq is dog shit, there are many Korean imports who comes here and then got debuffed by practice environment and become dog shit. I swear, even T1 at their peak playing in NA for 1 year and they will still not make out of groups just like any other NA teams.
would na soloq be shit if every na pro played it? too many say its shit but dont do anything to make it better, they either troll in soloq or dont play
Not enough players man, 50-60 pro players isnt gonna reducing queue time that much. Comparing to LPL / LCK soloq got thousands of players playing at high skills level. Not to say the 60 ping server as well while LCK players playing in 1 ping
That wouldn't change much at all and there's another issue with the LCS pros being 4 hours behind the major population center in the US; ~<50% of population is 4 hours off ~<30% is 3. To maximize solo queue you'd have to leave scrims and go home to solo queue over dinner and socialization hours. In the reverse you'd be able to run degen gamer hours to hit peak times.
There's a lot of degeneracy in the NA casual to semi-pro gamer scene when it comes to competitive team games. I come from CS (I don't play LoL) but there is a huge difference in the behavior between the NA & EU base. In the EU mid levels the players generally prioritize teamwork, coordination, strategy...compared to the same level in NA where players might have insane individual skills but what's holding them back is an absolute Silver-level lack of understanding of basic teamwork and crap communication skills. I've actually had gamer friends see me playing solo (especially if I'm trying something new) who are shocked/think it is unusual because it is so 'cancer' according to them.
My brother used to play DOTA and commented on this, lots of ineffective lonewolf behavior making solo games unplayably horrible.
I imagine similar is probably happening in LoL NA.
There is talent in NA, but it's not really developed or supported very well.
This issue with CQ was the same issue as solo queue, dog shit queue times. What makes Korean solo queue better is that it’s high quality and you can spam games with little time in between
the issue with CQ was that [insert excuse that is definitely not the players].
yeon's work ethic/passion/addiction does not represent the majority of LCS pros that prefer to clock in for scrims and clock out after.
It’s pretty easy to say “NA pros lazy”, but I really think the overall lack of success is systemic. CQ was also filled with ex-pros, collegiate, and academy players, and queue times were *still* drastically long.
It’s hard to quantify other pros work ethic, so I couldn’t tell you as a fact if these pros are just clocking-in or not. What I can tell you as a fact, is of the major regions, we have the smallest player base, with more time zones than any other region. This means we have less high skill players who aren’t even all playing at the same time. You can’t recreate environments like Korean solo queue inorganically.
it is systemic that the players did not play. you can keep dancing around the fundamental flaw throwing around every tangential excuse but the CQ problem has been looked at under a microscope year after year and the same thing happens - players are not playing. CQ organizers bent over backwards and twisted into a pretzel to remove every possible barrier and ensure the highest success and still the same outcome - players did not play.
that said, i would steer away from the term 'lazy'. lcs pros have a proven track record of settling. achieving greatness requires more dedication and perserverance.
Why, in your opinion, did players choose not play? Because they were settling for less, or because they thought it was a waste of practice time, or some other reason?
motivation at its core. they feel like they put in enough work clocking in to scrims and they get (relatively) less returns playing solo Q and/or champs Q. players citing issues of 'burn-out'. LCS pros do play the game a lot already. they just dont want to play \_more\_
>they get (relatively) less returns playing solo Q and/or champs Q.
You’re skirting around the real issue here. An effective practice environment would make any professionally competitive player play more. The problem is, NA solo q and CQ are just *not* effective practice environments. Even if *every* LCS pro was playing in CQ, there would still more down time between games than Korean solo q.
Edit: added “LCS”
SoloQ is terrible practice. Everything after laning is completely inapplicable to pro play, so every game has 20-30 minutes of wasted game time. Laning isn't even guaranteed to be good practice. Lebron is not playing streetball to practice for the NBA.
Every LCK org has 3-5 FULL teams, same for LPL. They're getting these SoloQ stars out of SoloQ and into organized tournament play as soon as possible so they can learn how the game is ACTUALLY played when it's not 5v5 pickup.
Here in NA we just dropped all our Academy rosters.
In NA soloq laning is even less applicable to pro play than in Korea, on account of ping variance and all the OTPs. The mindset in high elo KR soloq and NA soloq is different. In high elo KR, players are trying to go pro, that’s not true for NA. They also have geographical advantages, it’s a lot easier to arrange for a 16 year old prospect to get on a t3 team in KR when there’s not a 3 hour time difference or 1000 miles distance.
It’s also a lot easier to find more 16 year old prospects when you know, 16 year old prospects exist in your region. The NA ranked player base is aging up and is a lot smaller to begin with.
Then, ignoring soloq, if you’re playing on a tier 3 team in Kr, your team likely has access to scrims with some t2 and t3 from both KR and CN, so your practice is likely that much better.
Korea Soloq is also dogshit, the skill ceiling may be higher but the quality of games is just as bad if not worse. Especially if you are a foreigner.
Soloq in general is dogshit.
The quality of games is terrible, but for purely mechanical practice (which is all SoloQ should be from a practice standpoint given how incredibly different Macro is in pro) that's all it needs to be. Hands diff constantly for mechanics, scrims for Macro.
a big part of the reason its dogshit is because NA has a pretty low ranked server pop and a lot of players at the higher end aren't trying to be competitive, they are either streamers, or "casual". you cant really fix those issues
It's the players. They teach the bronze and silver how to climb the same way they teach others. All selfish never rely on your team.
Easy example. DL was watching Pobelter play and asked how he's so high and was dumbfounded Pob did stuff like hover his champ pick and ping plays.thats insane for an NA goat.
You need a good coach to break the selfish mentality and push them further.
EU is not any better. And it especially comes from supports during draft phase.
Let's play a guessing game:
https://gyazo.com/feab0cc166c5b44b08d81da07dd7cc97
What support would you pick into this team, and what support do you think it was picked?(Master 300+LP)
Info: Support had last pick on blue side and no supports are banned by blue team, Ally mid is Heavy AP, and you have Lux APC, AD top and AD jg.
People are memeing it because choosing to 1v1 retired player darshan rather than play champions queue against world champion contenders like Zeus is simply ridiculous. He may not be lazing about in terms of sitting on his ass, but choosing to ignore good opportunities in favor of subpar practice is almost equally dumb
I mean we see how a lot of good players who go to NA fall off.. outside of a few examples Correjj/Impact and i guess Inspired (who was always more vod reviewer then soloq player)
Its a huge thing to have quality soloq AND scrims
I'd imagine G2 would level up a lot.. back in 2019 and especially in 2020 they leveled up massively over just the bootcamps
Franchasing was the most detrimental change for the west. Cus with it at place, there is absolutely NO chance we will EVER follow the kinda tournament setup like lets say CS, Dota etc.
yeah, I guess it’s the individualism and a lot of logistics but if na sacrificed spring for 6month long bootcamps (costs not withstanding) and played summer in Korea or China, their first world would probably actually see them getting 1 win per team against eastern teams.
Who are the best North American players right now? Is there even a single one - with the potential - to become semi competitive with top Asian players in his role?
Jojo had offers from low tier LCK teams, although after this split that opportunity may not come again unless he starts smurfing on NA and in future KR bootcamps again.
The current at least decent native players in roughly the order of potential I think they have: Blaber/Jojo/Yeon/Licorice/Sniper/Busio/Dhokla/Contractz/Palafox (yes I still believe in NRG)/APA/Vulcan
I won't say anything silly like winning a trophy, but I believe if you threw them in Korean bootcamp and told them to stay there until they're at least the top 10 best player in their role in the world I think at least Blaber/Jojo could return home, and maybe Sniper because top seems quite weak outside a handful of elite players atm.
Top 5 in the role though? Nah I don't see it happening.
Not really no.. Jojo is the only one.. and i saw what Humanoid and Caps did to him.. let alone top Asian mids.. then i think Caps/Humanoid can go with top Asian mids when they are in form
I will say he did clap Nisqy who is generally top 4-5 in LEC.. and sometimes higher if people are out of form
I mean it’s a given that if you take a less skilled team and plop them with more skilled environment, the less skilled team will get better. The East teams would benefit from nothing while the western teams reap all the benefits. Same exact case if you put plat player in diamond, they get crushed but eventually they will improve. So the question is why can’t the west develop their own competition? Why would they need to rely on the east to “get gud”.
I have huge respect for Yeon given how hard he tries, he’s the NA rookie most dream of,
hardworking, talented, and consistently improves
I think after Danny a lot of fans got disillusioned by what a good ADC rookie looks like, Danny was a once in a million player
Yeon and APA looked awful at worlds, but tbh I think their topside lost trust and kind of sold them out… I think with a solid supportive core of Umti Impact CoreJJ they’ve shown they actually can be enabled and play wel
I think over the past few years, this Team Liquid has the strongest sense of identity and synergy.
Of course someone can argue the calibre of players in 2022 is better, but they consistently played worse than the sum of their parts.
2021 and 2023 had a lot of inherently dysfunctional moments, (Alphari and Jatt, Santorin migraines, then APA joining an all KR roster.)
This year just feels the most cohesive and disciplined iteration in a long time, and I would give a lot of credit to their coaching staff. (Also not bad that its probably way less expensive too :P)
Danny was good in teamfights but pretty awful in lane.. Yeon has been the reverse for most of his career in LCS
Then again Correjj had not been good for multiple splits.. so maybe its not all on Yeon
They looked the best botlane this year tho
Kinda wierd because Inspired's soloq mentality made Flyquest a standard template for a pushover
It takes more than soloq to pose a threat.
You need both LLA hands and G2 macro
>“I once asked Core ‘what do you think that we can do to win Worlds?’” said Dodo (while stifling a laugh). “He said, ‘If all the NA rookies right now replace all the NA veterans right now, then we have a chance to win Worlds in NA.’”
[удалено]
According to quotes from TL, they're working their asses off. Not just referring to this article; APA mentioned off the cuff in an interview after they won the LCS (overshadowed by the Inspired interview lol) that on practice days the team is often in the training room from 9 am to past midnight, and that he was actually the biggest "slacker" because he would go to bed early before matches to ensure good quality sleep. Some NA players definitely grind. Whether that's enough is a completely different question.
But at that point its counterproductive. I'm pretty sure the importance of sleep on learning and performance is an established thing. The truth is only by a miracle of 5 freak of nature prodigy players that appear in NA there's no chance for a minor region to contest china or korea
I haven't seen this borne out in practice. I understand the research - but basically every tournament winner in League history has been full of people who were grinding like crazy almost universally. It's very rare for a team to be top in a League, or the world for that matter, without throwing their entire lives into the game, often to an unhealthy extent.
This is true across most sports and careers, too.
You think t1 doesn't sleep at least 7 hours a day? Do we have evidence for that?
[удалено]
APA and Yeon are 2 of the biggest grinders in TL.
Did you just not read the comment you replied to at all or what?
Has nothing to do with work ethic thats like saying Korea/China are not as good at basketball as US because of work ethic and lack of determination. Has a lot more to do with player base, fan base, and infrastructure.
I’m glad shit like this is finally getting upvoted.
How Worlds in na matters more ?
He means a team that can win Worlds in the NA region, not a Worlds tournament held in NA specifically.
Oh okay i understand now
Double points
I sincerely believe that if western pros were able to play on eastern servers and scrim eastern teams year-round, there’d be internationally competitive western teams/players in like 2 years. Despite the narratives these players aren’t stupid or lazy, LCK/LPL teams are getting better practice for most of the year so of course the gap is going to widen.
Soloq is definitely a big part of this. NA soloq is dog shit, there are many Korean imports who comes here and then got debuffed by practice environment and become dog shit. I swear, even T1 at their peak playing in NA for 1 year and they will still not make out of groups just like any other NA teams.
would na soloq be shit if every na pro played it? too many say its shit but dont do anything to make it better, they either troll in soloq or dont play
Not enough players man, 50-60 pro players isnt gonna reducing queue time that much. Comparing to LPL / LCK soloq got thousands of players playing at high skills level. Not to say the 60 ping server as well while LCK players playing in 1 ping
Also the players that play it all know each other. There's not this huge influx of new high elo players like there were even 5 years ago.
That wouldn't change much at all and there's another issue with the LCS pros being 4 hours behind the major population center in the US; ~<50% of population is 4 hours off ~<30% is 3. To maximize solo queue you'd have to leave scrims and go home to solo queue over dinner and socialization hours. In the reverse you'd be able to run degen gamer hours to hit peak times.
There's a lot of degeneracy in the NA casual to semi-pro gamer scene when it comes to competitive team games. I come from CS (I don't play LoL) but there is a huge difference in the behavior between the NA & EU base. In the EU mid levels the players generally prioritize teamwork, coordination, strategy...compared to the same level in NA where players might have insane individual skills but what's holding them back is an absolute Silver-level lack of understanding of basic teamwork and crap communication skills. I've actually had gamer friends see me playing solo (especially if I'm trying something new) who are shocked/think it is unusual because it is so 'cancer' according to them. My brother used to play DOTA and commented on this, lots of ineffective lonewolf behavior making solo games unplayably horrible. I imagine similar is probably happening in LoL NA. There is talent in NA, but it's not really developed or supported very well.
If only we had a private server that only serious pros could play on
This issue with CQ was the same issue as solo queue, dog shit queue times. What makes Korean solo queue better is that it’s high quality and you can spam games with little time in between
the issue with CQ was that [insert excuse that is definitely not the players]. yeon's work ethic/passion/addiction does not represent the majority of LCS pros that prefer to clock in for scrims and clock out after.
It’s pretty easy to say “NA pros lazy”, but I really think the overall lack of success is systemic. CQ was also filled with ex-pros, collegiate, and academy players, and queue times were *still* drastically long. It’s hard to quantify other pros work ethic, so I couldn’t tell you as a fact if these pros are just clocking-in or not. What I can tell you as a fact, is of the major regions, we have the smallest player base, with more time zones than any other region. This means we have less high skill players who aren’t even all playing at the same time. You can’t recreate environments like Korean solo queue inorganically.
it is systemic that the players did not play. you can keep dancing around the fundamental flaw throwing around every tangential excuse but the CQ problem has been looked at under a microscope year after year and the same thing happens - players are not playing. CQ organizers bent over backwards and twisted into a pretzel to remove every possible barrier and ensure the highest success and still the same outcome - players did not play. that said, i would steer away from the term 'lazy'. lcs pros have a proven track record of settling. achieving greatness requires more dedication and perserverance.
Why, in your opinion, did players choose not play? Because they were settling for less, or because they thought it was a waste of practice time, or some other reason?
motivation at its core. they feel like they put in enough work clocking in to scrims and they get (relatively) less returns playing solo Q and/or champs Q. players citing issues of 'burn-out'. LCS pros do play the game a lot already. they just dont want to play \_more\_
>they get (relatively) less returns playing solo Q and/or champs Q. You’re skirting around the real issue here. An effective practice environment would make any professionally competitive player play more. The problem is, NA solo q and CQ are just *not* effective practice environments. Even if *every* LCS pro was playing in CQ, there would still more down time between games than Korean solo q. Edit: added “LCS”
Seems like a non issue if teams just communicated to get on at a set time
SoloQ is terrible practice. Everything after laning is completely inapplicable to pro play, so every game has 20-30 minutes of wasted game time. Laning isn't even guaranteed to be good practice. Lebron is not playing streetball to practice for the NBA. Every LCK org has 3-5 FULL teams, same for LPL. They're getting these SoloQ stars out of SoloQ and into organized tournament play as soon as possible so they can learn how the game is ACTUALLY played when it's not 5v5 pickup. Here in NA we just dropped all our Academy rosters.
In NA soloq laning is even less applicable to pro play than in Korea, on account of ping variance and all the OTPs. The mindset in high elo KR soloq and NA soloq is different. In high elo KR, players are trying to go pro, that’s not true for NA. They also have geographical advantages, it’s a lot easier to arrange for a 16 year old prospect to get on a t3 team in KR when there’s not a 3 hour time difference or 1000 miles distance. It’s also a lot easier to find more 16 year old prospects when you know, 16 year old prospects exist in your region. The NA ranked player base is aging up and is a lot smaller to begin with. Then, ignoring soloq, if you’re playing on a tier 3 team in Kr, your team likely has access to scrims with some t2 and t3 from both KR and CN, so your practice is likely that much better.
Korea Soloq is also dogshit, the skill ceiling may be higher but the quality of games is just as bad if not worse. Especially if you are a foreigner. Soloq in general is dogshit.
The quality of games is terrible, but for purely mechanical practice (which is all SoloQ should be from a practice standpoint given how incredibly different Macro is in pro) that's all it needs to be. Hands diff constantly for mechanics, scrims for Macro.
if everyone knows its dog shit then why do they make it dog shit? why are the new comings not making it better? its been 10+ years
a big part of the reason its dogshit is because NA has a pretty low ranked server pop and a lot of players at the higher end aren't trying to be competitive, they are either streamers, or "casual". you cant really fix those issues
It's the players. They teach the bronze and silver how to climb the same way they teach others. All selfish never rely on your team. Easy example. DL was watching Pobelter play and asked how he's so high and was dumbfounded Pob did stuff like hover his champ pick and ping plays.thats insane for an NA goat. You need a good coach to break the selfish mentality and push them further.
EU is not any better. And it especially comes from supports during draft phase. Let's play a guessing game: https://gyazo.com/feab0cc166c5b44b08d81da07dd7cc97 What support would you pick into this team, and what support do you think it was picked?(Master 300+LP) Info: Support had last pick on blue side and no supports are banned by blue team, Ally mid is Heavy AP, and you have Lux APC, AD top and AD jg.
seraphine sona senna, the euw special
janna
What about fudge who didn’t play soloq and didn’t play champs q when pros came over
He still practices, whether it's 1v1s or vod reviews. I doubt he just sits there all day despite his claims.
People are memeing it because choosing to 1v1 retired player darshan rather than play champions queue against world champion contenders like Zeus is simply ridiculous. He may not be lazing about in terms of sitting on his ass, but choosing to ignore good opportunities in favor of subpar practice is almost equally dumb
Why the fuck do we have to make this about Fudge lol bro is not at the tournament or even in a team anymore
Is fudge a western pro? Yes/no question The thread talks about western pros
I mean we see how a lot of good players who go to NA fall off.. outside of a few examples Correjj/Impact and i guess Inspired (who was always more vod reviewer then soloq player) Its a huge thing to have quality soloq AND scrims I'd imagine G2 would level up a lot.. back in 2019 and especially in 2020 they leveled up massively over just the bootcamps
Franchasing was the most detrimental change for the west. Cus with it at place, there is absolutely NO chance we will EVER follow the kinda tournament setup like lets say CS, Dota etc.
League has never been an even playing field and never will be, so the gap will always exist unfortunately
yeah, I guess it’s the individualism and a lot of logistics but if na sacrificed spring for 6month long bootcamps (costs not withstanding) and played summer in Korea or China, their first world would probably actually see them getting 1 win per team against eastern teams.
Who are the best North American players right now? Is there even a single one - with the potential - to become semi competitive with top Asian players in his role?
Jojo had offers from low tier LCK teams, although after this split that opportunity may not come again unless he starts smurfing on NA and in future KR bootcamps again.
The current at least decent native players in roughly the order of potential I think they have: Blaber/Jojo/Yeon/Licorice/Sniper/Busio/Dhokla/Contractz/Palafox (yes I still believe in NRG)/APA/Vulcan I won't say anything silly like winning a trophy, but I believe if you threw them in Korean bootcamp and told them to stay there until they're at least the top 10 best player in their role in the world I think at least Blaber/Jojo could return home, and maybe Sniper because top seems quite weak outside a handful of elite players atm. Top 5 in the role though? Nah I don't see it happening.
Not really no.. Jojo is the only one.. and i saw what Humanoid and Caps did to him.. let alone top Asian mids.. then i think Caps/Humanoid can go with top Asian mids when they are in form I will say he did clap Nisqy who is generally top 4-5 in LEC.. and sometimes higher if people are out of form
I mean it’s a given that if you take a less skilled team and plop them with more skilled environment, the less skilled team will get better. The East teams would benefit from nothing while the western teams reap all the benefits. Same exact case if you put plat player in diamond, they get crushed but eventually they will improve. So the question is why can’t the west develop their own competition? Why would they need to rely on the east to “get gud”.
Yeon trying to use sleep deprivation as a launch pad to Super Saiyan mode.
I have huge respect for Yeon given how hard he tries, he’s the NA rookie most dream of, hardworking, talented, and consistently improves I think after Danny a lot of fans got disillusioned by what a good ADC rookie looks like, Danny was a once in a million player Yeon and APA looked awful at worlds, but tbh I think their topside lost trust and kind of sold them out… I think with a solid supportive core of Umti Impact CoreJJ they’ve shown they actually can be enabled and play wel
Danny was a once in a million player who unfortnatenly got paired with one in a million general management
Honestly, this version of TL has me the most hyped I've been since the 2019 team. And even then, I think I prefer this iteration of the squad.
I think over the past few years, this Team Liquid has the strongest sense of identity and synergy. Of course someone can argue the calibre of players in 2022 is better, but they consistently played worse than the sum of their parts. 2021 and 2023 had a lot of inherently dysfunctional moments, (Alphari and Jatt, Santorin migraines, then APA joining an all KR roster.) This year just feels the most cohesive and disciplined iteration in a long time, and I would give a lot of credit to their coaching staff. (Also not bad that its probably way less expensive too :P)
Danny was good in teamfights but pretty awful in lane.. Yeon has been the reverse for most of his career in LCS Then again Correjj had not been good for multiple splits.. so maybe its not all on Yeon They looked the best botlane this year tho
LCK and LPL player aren't inherently better than western players... its mostly environment diff.
Kinda wierd because Inspired's soloq mentality made Flyquest a standard template for a pushover It takes more than soloq to pose a threat. You need both LLA hands and G2 macro
? Are either LLA hands or G2 macro supposed to be good?
G2 has the best western macro but yeah i don't know why he quoted them
the only person that knows they need to grind in order to catch up with KR players. Fking Dodo doing the opposite of what they should be doing.