If you ban Morgana, you have to ban or pick Braum as well a big reason why the won agaisnt IG was the Braum blocking all the dmg. The only reason to ban Morgana is if you go for something like Vi.

Like what is your pick/ban plan on blueside, ban Morgana/GP/Azir and pick Braum? Then they could easily pick Trist/Lulu, Mordekaiser/Lulu, Darius/Lulu.

Regarding braum.
Greatly disagree, he is not a must pick champ.
Braum is maybe the most obv support in the Meta that is comp dependant.
If you're not playing juggermaw (full blawn 2 shields a heal and a braum) you don't really have to pick braum.

banning Azir/GP seems best, though if you are blue, C9 will almost certainly ban GP for you.

I expect the teams are going to spend a lot of time practicing vs Trist/Veigar this week, if they can't find something they like vs Veigar I suspect he'll get banned too

Yes and No about banning GP it could happen or they might wanna dare the other team to trade 1 for 2 powerpicks. I think right now pick/ban wasn't figured out all that much.

I will be surprised if any team lets GP through the rest of the tournament, it may happen a couple times if the other team can play the other 4 power champs extremely well, but I don't think c9 will be that team. Despite the Pentakill, I don't think Balls on Darius really scares anyone as he was struggling up until that final fight even with the early double kill. I think other teams would be pretty happy if Incarnation picks Lulu since he won't be able to carry the whole team like he can with Azir. Hai has played Elise a couple times and it's fine, w/e. His champ doesn't really matter that much tbh. Sneaky on Morde might be the exception. Although he hasn't played the new Morde in a competitive match yet.

I see GP as THE #1 pick in the whole tournament. He's gotten through 3 times and it's been a disaster for the other team. 3-0 with a 25 KDA.

IG vs C9

IG bans : Veigar,Morg,Alistar
C9 bans: GP,Lulu,Morde

C9: First rotation was Darius + Braum

Without checking I'm pretty sure Braum is Top 3 first rotation pick on Redside independent from teamcomp.

I'm not saying Braum is unplayable but juggermaw, just that it's not a must pick.

Your point was to force Lemon on something that makes him uncomfortable, that brings insane opportunitycosts and doesn't even necessarily do much.

Well, our disagreement is whether it does or doesn't do much.
I think it's pretty powerful to force him on something else.

LGD winning the group seems less likely then those odds. They would need to go 3-0, would need TSM to beat Origen and KT and KT to beat Origen, and then win the 4 way tiebreaker

Yeah, not only do they have to win 5 straight games, they need three other upsets. If all games were 50/50 then it would be 256 to 1. It's actually a lot worse than that IMO. I think they'll be sizable favorites blue side vs TSM and underdogs in their other two games.

Blue side is 16-8 in this tournament which is just another nail in the coffin for LGD who already dropped blue side games to KT and OG.

On blue side in this tournament:

NA 5-0
LMS 2-0
LCK 3-1 (KT loss to OG)
EU 3-1 (H2K loss to EDG)
Wild 2-2 (paiN loss to KOO, Bangkok loss to SKT)
LPL 2-4

Basically, outside of KT losing to Origen, the only blue side losses outside of China are huge mismatches and LGD has two of them.

great post.
however, not sure this is a big enough sample size for blue/red side analysis, someone has data for all tier 1 leagues?

Best article I could find that includes season five, however the statistics include previous seasons:

http://www.goldper10.com/article/1873.html

I think the biggest issue for LGD even if they win out is the scheduling. Origen are very likely to be qualified after their first game against TSM. LGD would then need Origen or TSM(unlikely) to steal a game from KT. If Origen and KT both beat TSM the final game between them would be for 1st place(or tiebreaker) in the group and since Origen has pretty much already done what was deemed impossible i doubt that they will be at 100% focus for that game.

Another fun thing with the scheduling is that we are quite likely to have a showoff between EDG and H2K for the 2nd spot in group C. If EDG loses to SKT they will be tied with H2K and its very likely that they are within 1 game when they play eachother in the last match of that group.

EDG will likely crush H2K but;

cant tell you guys how surreal it is being away from the game for a while and seeing ****ing GP as #1 contested pick

I think the game is in a really good state right now, I'm really excited to see how p/b evolves in the coming weeks, I really can't imagine red side keeping the trend with banning morde/gp/lulu and slight deviations. My guess is that in Bo5 teams will just go allin and just be like **** it, you want powerpicks let's get powerpicks for everyone.

Also there is still room for new picks.

a big part of why blue side wins more is they get better bans, some patches like this one really punish purple

Morde is far more likely to be set free in the quarters than GP

lol the h2k edg "showoff".
that will be an artificially hyped game.

i think you might be able to convince me that C9 and TSM were top 5 teams in the world last year. the chinese teams really never has had to face any good western team in a series or even really in more than best of 1. last year when c9 lost to OMG in a best of 5, they had link playing their mid lane rather than hai and we all know how important hai is to that team. Since the two best NA teams drew SSB and SSW in the quarters, we never really got to see NA vs china last year. And the two best europeans were very competitive in group and just had an unfortunate timing and luck.

the fanatic at MSI is also way worse than this version of fanatic as steelback is a massive downgrade and they were very competitive. Like i know the top korean teams are good but are we really sure the chinese teams were ever elite or even better than NA? i mean i am pretty sure tsm put up a better performance against ssw than shrc and tsm splitted group with shrc. But yea just a lot of doubt that the chinese teams were ever good and has been running pretty good draw.

it's not like the only way to asses a matchup is by it actually occurring.
na teams drawing ssb and ssw is irrelevant, they sucked badly last year and would have lost to china pretty big.
(this year they suck as well, not as much but suck as well, and the chinese teams are running super bad with panic attacks and baron steals)

NA teams split with China teams 2-2 in groups last year. Do you work for the LPL or just hate NA?

don't work for anyone or hate anyone.
reality is that asian teams are on general better.
fan hype is reasonable but you should probably stay within the realms of reality.

He is definitely Team China but well TSM Top 5 is pretty hilarious tho.

btw, if something i'm team korea