League of Legends - Road to Worlds Season 5

[Deadpan]

Seeing wins out of Origen and Fnatic would make this chill weekend perfect for me.

[Deadpan]

Oh wow, that first game out of Fnatic was huge. After their first week I though "Okay, they can probably beat C9, but it'll be close" and then NOPE, they just completely crush them. Hopefully this isn't a repeat of last week's "win first game completely then lose the other two" approach.

[osmosisch]

Fnatiiiiiiiiiic YESSS

[Badfinger]

Did not get an opportunity to watch the games this weekend. Did check the results on the games for the last group.

 

C9 holy smokes y'all.

[Deadpan]

With their tiebreaker added in, NA teams apparently went 0-10 in the second week. That has to be rough to watch for fans.

[Badfinger]

Origen continues to show up in International play, into the semifinals!

 

...Against SKT who didn't quite dismantle ahq but still comfortably cruise.

 

The only bummer about the playoffs is that it's KT vs KOO in the quarters, aka oh that thing you've seen 5 times already this year. It's a cool matchup but much less interesting than one of them playing EDG and one playing Fnatic.

[Badfinger]

Fnatic.

 

 

FNATIC!                 

[osmosisch]

Fnatiiiiiiiiiic YESSS

So sad that one of Rekkles and Deft had to lose here though, I would have loved to see EDG test themselves against more teams as well.

[Deadpan]

This was a really interesting series of games. The game they had to remade because Gragas bugged out highlights the weirdness of esports a bit, but it's a shame that this prevented the Mordekaiser vs Gangplank duel from concluding, meaning they are both still undefeated despite being played on opposite sides in this game. Gutsy move for sure from Fnatic to let those through, and in a sense they even got something out of that game since EDG were apparently not satisfied with how that match-up went for them and ended up banning Mordekaiser away on blue side, allowing Fnatic to get one extra ban of their choice on red side, besides having to match the Mordekaiser ban with the Gangplank ban.

 

That's an interesting thing about those power picks, I guess, that there's a chance some teams haven't even prepared them that well since they didn't expect to ever get their hands on them, which means you can kind of dare them into that if you want.

 

Other than that this seemed pretty classic Fnatic stuff, going even or falling behind a little bit and then cracking the game wide open with great teamfights around baron.

[seamus2389]

With Fnatic knocking out EDG  the internet have been speculating as to why the region seen as number two in the world did so badly at worlds. The two things I have seen the most are :

 

(1) Not adapting to the change in the meta as well as the other regions.

(2)  The communication problems of 3 chinese and 2 korean players talking to each other in English at this high level of play with the prevalence of double teleport that requires constant communication to know where the other team are and what are their cooldowns.

 

 

Fnatic is an exception of sorts to this communication problem cause they come from a region of non-english speakers although Europe is a region that has used english as a communication language for years and are from countries where people spend alot of time learning it in school. Both Huni and Reginover  also seem to have a far better English that any Korean player.

 

PS. MonteCristo pointed out on tiwtter the last time an EU team beat a Korean one in bo5 was 3 years ago and KOO's greatest strength has been it's ability to figure out it's opponent's weaknesses given time and SKT are SKT so hopes should be kept in check.

[Deadpan]

I kind of agree with another point made by somebody on the analyst desk though, that KOO's approach of dismantling a team's strategy might not be that useful against Fnatic because of how much versatility they've shown recently. Across the entire season they've been seen as this team that plays passively mid and bot and waits until Huni goes huge with some teleport powerplay, and while they stll do that, they've also shown more pressure in those lanes recently, with Rekkles bringing out the Kennen and the Jinx, and Febiven going back to assassins like LeBlanc and crushing it. The remade game against EDG even showed them willing to forego their usual approach of early game picks and teamfighting to stall out a game, and while it's hard to say who would have ultimately won that, EDG didn't seem to think they had the upper hand there, what with the change in bans.

 

I remain tentatively hopeful that we'll see a rematch of SKT vs Fnatic for the finals.

[seamus2389]

I think Fnatic have a good chance. I worry about Huni going on tilt and Smeb getting out of hand.

[Deadpan]

The Huni vs Smeb matchup really seemed to go strongly in KOO's favor. That series was rough, and the ultimate 3-0 for KOO really doesn't tell you how close it was, initially.

 

In the first game Fnatic actually got ahead with a significant gold lead and seemed to be winning every single lane, but they couldn't translate it into one of those huge teamfights they usually get where they break the game open afterwards, and kudos to KOO for not giving them the opportunity I guess, but when you look at the second game and see that KOO absolutely still made the kind of mistakes that would have set Fnatic up, and how Fnatic managed to then take teamfights from them even while they were behind in gold, you have to wonder how different this all may have looked if one of these fights had happened in the first game instead. As it was, Fnatic seem to have exhausted their entire mental fortitude in the second game by trying to come back after losing all three inhibitors (and almost getting away with it like they did against AHQ). So by the time they get to the third game they just start looking more and more shaken the more they fall behind and start making really unfortunate mistakes.

 

If any one of these games had gone to Fnatic, like the first two were very close to, it might actually have given them the confidence to turn everything around. KOO take a deserved win here ultimately, but I really would have liked to see the series go to five games anyway, just so they actually get to beat Fnatic at their best and not by messing them up by taking close games from them.

[osmosisch]

Yeah that series started out really cool and then just turned depressing.

Interest in the finals: zero. Oh well, I'm glad it was interesting for so long.