Please he has 48% winrate on Rumble and Riven over a 50 game samplesize and regulary lost lane against low Diamond players and he has a higher winrate on those new 3 champs than on his old ones. Also every other Toplaner would've the same problem, do you see them struggle? No, in fact most Toplaners have a blast right now and take all the bans.

Balls has been in decline for a while now.

This is probably the reason c9 is in decline too. It's just that hai's shotcalling is world class

ps: I was wrong about the reddit circle-jerk (it does exist though), but it was mainly the pro's going against jatt

Should be an exciting worlds, interested in seeing how the different regions line up.

Ban priorities

Fiora #1
GP #2

Kalista, Ali, Lulu, Victor, Azir probably all high ban rates

pretty surprised they didn't nerf Victor

Is paIN actually decent?

Fairly interesting odds from their matches IMO, they're nowhere nearly as heavy dogs as the IWC teams usually are.

Only +538/-810 vs. KOO, +257/-330 vs. CLG, and +175/-216 vs. Flash Wolves.

The rumours were that pains opponents in brazil finals were scrimming lcs teams and doing well.. and pain 3-0'd them.

Safe to say nobody has any clue. They seem to be very mid centric around kami in a similar fashion to TSM around bjerg.

They are a lot closer to the other teams than other IWC teams have been in the past, they can probably take a game off the other teams in group A.

Imagine Pain denying CLG, like Kabumm did to ALL.

Most of the odds I checked seemed weird, gotta look again when I got time, like C9 is 3.29 against IG and 3.5 against FNC but IG vs FNC is even. Gotta look how much juice they take etc.

Pain is probably alot better than Kabuuum and CLG is worse than Alliance was so them losing to PAIN wouldnt be that huge of an upset imo. Alliance losing to Kabumm was the biggest upset(throw) in the history of league. Kabum was a bad team that would get stomped by most challenger teams and Alliance was playing really good.

Both EU and NA have been standing still for a while letting lesser regions close the gap. I havent seen PAIN but if the hype for them is true i would assume they would finish in the lower regions in the LCS without making a fool out of themselves so if CLG can drop a game vs a middle of the pack NA LCS team they could very much drop a game versus PAIN.

Worlds predictions and discussion.

I don't know how Thorin always comes up with his analogies, but it's hilarious. Dominate with "worrying trend" had me laughing out loud as well, I can see it in SoloQ in the future where people are just like "This is a worrying trend"

I think Picks and Bans will be very interesting in this Worlds.

It seems like there are so many picks that will be either ban or first pick that there might be games where multiple of those picks get through if pocket bans go deep enough.

It seems like all junglers will be left up, with so many priority bans, banning a Lee Sin or Rek'sai seems like a waste given the other top picks available. It seems like Lee Sin will be the #1 Jungle Priority with the buffs, so teams that can't play Lee Sin will be at a massive disadvantage.

I'm assuming Azir goes off the must pick/ban list for this patch.

I would imagine Gangplank, Kalista, Mordekaiser, Fiora are all almost must pick or bans if teams have them in the champion pool, which leaves pretty small windows for pocket bans.

Worlds Top 20 players is already indeed hilarious.

Aphromoo > Picaboo is just bad beyond explanation.

I wanted to get a pool going for like $20-50. But I lost track of time. May be too late now

Is Aphro even a top 5 LCS support?

Yellowstar
Mithy
Kasing
Lustboy
Xpecial

Special mention to Kiwikid

The fact that Adrian managed to hide from the world the fact that Apollo is the worst player to ever grace the LCS, he should get de facto #1 OAT status

Aphro is 100% better than lol xpecial.

Dl/Aphromoo is the best botlane in Na and maybe #2 behind fanatic for western teams and I think its mostly aphro but noone can stop the DL fail late

You could let him play with mata or meiko and he's still going to throw a bunch of wins away

I assume Morde sucks at pro level, the TP mids including diana and lulu are probably getting banned a lot

I disagree DL has been solid and is the best player in CLG. I really don't understand why he gets so much hate.

On the last episode of Summoning Insight Monte said that Morde/Blitz is one of the strongest bot lanes right now and iirc it was Dexter who said that Morde is too strong and the worst thing Riot has ever done to the game.

Riot has had some really suspect patches Ali when sheen headbutt worked was pretty obnoxious, Zed in season 3 certainly wasn't a fun place to be

I could see Morde being good, but no mobility no range sounds like a bad time vs pro teams, Morde/Blitz seems like the ultimate swing for the fences lane, ultra-high variance

he's cocky but prone to idiotic mistakes and honestly has believed he's been a top5 adc for the last 4 years, if he's as good as he thinks he his CLG makes worlds the last 3 years too

I agree that CLG´s botlane is really strong. But only when there is a 2 v 2 scenario. Aphro is really really good at setting up DL in the laning phase but after that he doesnt really cut it for me. His roaming and warding isnt all that strong. Late game decision making i think hes in the same boat as DL in that they never really leave the laning mentality.

The idea was that post level 6 you set up for dragon and do it, if the enemy team contests you get a hook from your vision. Once you have dragon you just siege and grab towers with Morde's ult dragon since it's super strong and snowball from there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11VjB4xm-Ow

Thorin/Monte Top 20, they got DL as well before Aphro. DL was just really good this season, especially on Trist which is gonna be a 100% ban against CLG

I don't think it's as high variance as you think with all the engage tools like Talisman or Righteous Glory that Blitz can get. Sure, level 1-5 it's not too scary, but after fifteen minutes you just won't be able to take any fights.