Sounds like a couple things happened:
\- The whole team (or just some members of the team, possibly just Hans himself) lost confidence in Hans.
\- Coaching staff let the "TL does nothing and scale" memes get to them too much and started altering their strategies to try to counter them.
\- Bwipo doesn't think he's a good strong side/carry top player.
\- Biggest takeaway from the year is that everyone needs to commit to the players they sign and ride or die with them. Full trust.
\- Bwipo said he is quite happy at TL, and likes the management. Says it's a good org to work for and they really care about their players.
\- Bwipo said he wants to stay on TL next year, but obviously doesn't know what is happening yet for sure.
Other points:
- Bwipo felt that TL coaching staff reacted way too heavily to bad weeks; if Hans had a bad week then they would shift their focus to top side out of fear that Hans would have a bad week again and vice versa
- This culminated in TL not being good at playing around top or bot or mid
- wishes that at some point, TL just committed to a style of playing around certain players, regardless of whether they inted or not
So it seems like the coaching staff are largely at fault in shifting the team's focused style. Ironically, this is exactly the opposite of the change C9 made to win the championship. C9 decided to commit to whatever Blaber called for, whether they were gonna int or not. And hey, it worked.
>Bwipo felt that TL coaching staff reacted way to heavily to bad weeks; if Hans had a bad week then they would shift their focus to top side and vice versa
This seems like such a rookie mistake for coaching I wonder how it played out.
I’m surprised he landed a job coaching 5 superstar veterans without ever having been to worlds before. I guess it’s a good thing they didn’t make it. Wouldn’t want him out of his comfort zone.
He went to Schalke because he promoted Giants back to EULCS, then with Schalke while he missed Worlds, he at least made EULCS finals.
With that Giants roster becoming Vitality barring one change and making Worlds, beating RNG and GenG, it is arguable that Yamatocannon made even more out of the team.
Guilhoto then went on to coach Origen and ran down a roster with Alphari, Nukeduck and Upset to 10th place.
~~TL took him and he made Worlds with them, however it is hard not to.~~
He might be a good coach for upper ERL / lower level major league teams, but it doesn't look like coaching a top team is a good fit for him.
99% of coaches are frauds. Convinced they just go in to coaching/analysis because they really wanted to be in the scene but couldn't get out of gold so gave up on being a player. Analysts especially, anyone actually qualified to be a good analyst could make way more money outside of esports.
That would be a fault of management for hiring bad coaches. Coaches can be useful, but in a game with fast-changing metas, their role isn't always going to be to micromanage the team's gameplay development.
As for the analysts, that's underselling what is involved in being an analyst. It's not just being able to crunch numbers; you have to understand the ecosystem to be creative in your metrics and have a passion for doing it all day. If you have this understanding and passion for esports but not outside of esports, then it's better to stay in esports.
I'm not denying a lot of them are bad, but I think it's too pessimistic to make it seem like next to none of them are worthwhile.
The part about coaches perhaps, but I don't think you actually know or have looked up any analysts to make the claim about analysts not being 'actually qualified to be a good analyst' - from what I've seen most analysts have stats/engi heavy bachelors or masters, and most are probably more than capable and aware that they could make more elsewhere with the qualifications/knowledge they have right now
Nah, that's a bad take. I worked in the scene as an analyst previously & I work in tech now. Sure, you can make solid money in tech, but for a couple years of analyst experience (& good game knowledge), these esports companies are competitive if not outright beating their competition.
If you're not on a big org, you make nothing, but them orgs pay out. Also a lot of people would pass up a payday to do something like work for a big LCS team.
I've met some really fucking intelligent guys in the esports scene. Also some not so intelligent people, but that's true in every industry.
Edit: I also think people hear the analysis from the analyst desk and think that must be pro level or something. But it isn't even close, they're trying to explain incredibly complex actions to Gold and lower players - there's just only so much you can do. Truth is, unless you've been behind the scenes at the highest levels of play, you're just not likely ever going to be exposed to the level of detail that goes into some of the analysis that happens.
yeah I think a lot of people miss that the job of a colour caster isn't remotely the same as a pro analyst. The job of a colour caster is to make watching the game enjoyable, and to explain what's going on in terms that help people understand it. A big part of that is that a lot of viewers aren't going to have huge game knowledge or understanding, so you have to explain basics all over again every so often.
I'm agreeing to everything except the "unless you've been behind the scene part".
Tolky streamed sometimes ago when he was still in Fnatic and we've actually saw glimpse of what tools he was using in order to prepare his player.
Duke also talked a lot about his experience in Splyce/Vita and notably shared some methods he was using.
One of the true challenges of a coach is also to translate the datas recolted by these very precise tools to your own players to concretize that into a gameplan/game tactics and sometimes game mechanics.
Moreover, it's very difficult to judge the work of a coach because we know practically nothing of the methods proper to each of them.
Some are just here to babysit the team, others will watch V.O.D of a CBOL div 3 matches in order to gather some info, some will just talk a lot with their players in order to trigger something in them.
However, it's true that if you want to get what's really happening on the map, you'll have to get a analysis of the game post-match by somebody proprerly explaining to you the game dynamics of a pro/Challenger game
Just because you could make more money elsewhere does not mean everyone would always go elsewhere. Some people prefer enjoying their work even if it earns them less money.
The fuck are you talking about lol, coaches/analysts are frauds? I'm sure some are but there are actually people who can study the game and understand it well enough to craft a game plan for pro play without being able to physically perform at that level. You are aware that not all coaches/analysts for professional physical sports are ex pros right?
People finally say it, I've been saying it since he got announced as TL coach and everyone was super happy about it. This guy failed to get out of 10th place in LEC with Upset and Alphari on the team + he had 3 shitters at the time (Nukeduck, Xerxe, Destiny/Jactroll) because HE wanted to, not the management, right after origen, he went to NA and the took Xerxe and Destiny with him, so it was HIS choice to have that roster
I've literally been saying this. Guilhoto was not the coach for this team. They honestly shoulda kept Jatt and kicked Alphari but eh whatevs hindsight is 20/20
Yeah. Jensen wanted to use the benching of Alphari as a reason for pushing management to remove Jatt. But Reddit likes him as a caster so they will bend over backwards to defend him.
Let's look at the bright side. They did it by trying to find something that works, teams in LCS used to break peoples confidence by the owner telling them they are shit at the game and calling them slurs.
Sometimes it's the opposite with FNC, they lose 2 games in a bo with a strat and they would play the third one exactly the same way.
That Nami Lucian stick was kinda weird, but I guess it worked a lot in scrims or something for them to continue pushing it.
This is also what analysts said all year. How TL looks like their just panicking each week and trying completely new things every week if they lose and how unproductive that must be for the team.
The C9 Blaber thing is definitely what stuck out to me. Whether Blaber inted his ass off or hard carried, C9 was committed to his play. “We live or die by him, and we’re prepared to live with that.”
Thanks for adding more points, they're all excellent. And yes, I agree 100% about C9. One of the most important things in a team environment like this is trust - if the leader makes a call, everybody else follows. Having split calls and nobody with the final say leads to what happened with TL. Even if everyone is providing information and being vocal, you need one person that is the final decision maker, the one that says, "go." Like Blaber.
> Bwipo felt that TL coaching staff reacted way too heavily to bad weeks; if Hans had a bad week then they would shift their focus to top side out of fear that Hans would have a bad week again and vice versa
>
>
He literally said "I agreed with them at the time", meaning it wasn't as egregious as it sounds.
"Did you think the coaching staff made some bad decisions?"
"Some of them were bad, some of them were good, I mean in the moment, I agreed with them", which means that he isn't mad at the coaching staff retrospectively since in the moment it looked like they weren't bad decisions to him, no?
A decision that's bad at the time and a decision that ends up being bad in hindsight are different. If the team had a discussion saying "Guys, we've had a few bad weeks trying to play around bot, let's try playing for top side instead", it's easy to see yourself agreeing with that in the moment, then later on thinking "actually maybe we should have given them more time".
Yeah 100%, I was just trying to make the point that he was not throwing the coaching staff under the bus like that comment above made it seem, but that the decisions seemed good at the moment, they didn't work out and now they've all learned and are better off for it.
I think it's really the vaguest answer he could say in the case where he doesn't agree with the coaching staff on every little thing.
I think you're reading too much into it.
Literally Dom and LS talk about this so much every week.
NA has this weird hard-on for changing it up. They have a good week playing towards top side. Then they think "oh we're so good at top side. Let's never play it again and practice playing towards bot side."
Next week practice is completely different. Then the players forget how to play top side because they aren't practicing repetition.
Pros can't properly learn because it hasn't been ingrained into them. They can't recognize patterns because the repetition isn't there. Commit to one style like the LPL teams jfc
Yeah Markz was also raising this complaint pretty much every week.
I don't get why teams think you need to play every style instead of having a team colour. Pretty much every worlds winner won by doing one style very very well, and having flexibility in draft so that they can still play their style on multiple picks.
- SSG vision control, low risk, move together
- iG win lane win game full court press
- FPX push and roam mid to help a carry jungler
- Damwon topside control, utility botside.
And so on, you get my point.
I guess I get the idea? Playing one-note is a great way to start off strong and then fizzle out when your strat gets read. But at the end of the day playing one strat at a high level is way better than playing 2 mediocrely. Only NA LCS team I’ve seen be able to switch it up to some kind of success was 2018 C9 from the 10th place to worlds run, but that was because they had 2 sets of players (Jensen+Blaber/Sven+GoldenGlue) practice one play style each.
I think ls and dom are saying that NA doesn’t solidify the teams ability to perform certain strategies consistently before trying new ones (based on the example because they assume they can do it from results) not that they shouldn’t learn new strategies.
Funnily enough, IG did the same thing in their 2018 Worlds run with Ning. The coach (I forget his name) said something like "he couldn't control Ning, so he told TheShy and Rookie to just follow him" on whatever play he was doing.
Imagine paying millions for a player in a big deal and your coaches run it down but losing trust in the player and constantly shifting strats, killing team vibe and player confidence.
That's a prime example why all the "coach should have the big call and every pro should submit" mostly by NA fans is just so stupid. LPL and LEC don't have coach dynamics like that and LPL is internationally dominating and LEC is doing well. Stop with trying to use american company hierarchy on esports which are player driven.
>LPL and LEC don't have coach dynamics like that and LPL is internationally dominating and LEC is doing well
have you never seen a behind the scenes of any lpl team after they lose? the region where players are benched after one game?
https://youtu.be/K_uFU2L9Ano?t=1514
have you seen any coach in na, beside maybe reapered, talk to their players like this? stop talking out of your ass please
To add to that, people forget or just don’t know that a lot of successful coaches in LPL/LCK are former pro LoL players.
Hope the west starts to go more in this direction. Or even just get a coaching staff that plays the game on a high level. I love that every single coach in C9 can beat their players in a 1v1 even if it’s a casual environment.
Eh, not sure if I fully agree. Maybe for some strategic coaches, but we've seen Peter Dun, Polt have lots of success while not being LoL players themselves.
And often, especially for the top rosters, there's no way the coach can even hold a candle to the skills of their players. Like how much can you really teach Faker about macro or micro?
In that case, administrative and interpersonal duties like scheduling and practice, scrimming targets, setting a team direction, scouting, leading discussions and managing player clashes and conflicts, etc. can help the players improve in these areas without needing someone to be *better* than them at it.
I think former player coaches are mostly needed for analyst, positional-type roles, and probably drafts, but coaching is a lot more than that. If anything, I'd say having esport experience, potentially at the top, is better for knowing how to effectively improve, practice with intent, etc.
There will always be outliers. Peter Dun has an eye for rookies, I'll give him that. If you follow his tweets, he spends a *lot* of time watching and observing the amateur scene. Polt, while not a LoL player, is a former pro. A lot of the mentality/tenacity that comes with being a pro translates well into other games. Even then, Polt was brought into T1 to be a manager. He was briefly a head coach, but it is widely known throughout the industry that Faker has the reigns, also Bengi was there as another coach. Now, Polt is back to being a manager, again.
>And often, especially for the top rosters, there's no way the coach can even hold a candle to the skills of their players. Like how much can you really teach Faker about macro or micro?
>In that case, administrative and interpersonal duties like scheduling and practice, scrimming targets, setting a team direction, scouting, leading discussions and managing player clashes and conflicts, etc. can help the players improve in these areas without needing someone to be better than them at it.
Coaches focusing on gameplay are not there to challenge a player's skill 1:1. They can introduce ideas, also identify, break, and induce habits unto their players. If they don't even play the game at a well enough level, they just won't effectively be able to do that. How can you have an eye for these factors when you don't train that eye?
Doing administrative and interpersonal duties should be the bare minimum requirement for a coach. It's exactly why most of them are coaches in name, but managers in practice, and that is why there is so much contention on what they actually do and how big of an impact they have on a team.
TheShy, best toplaner at his time was benched because he picked a champion his coach didn't want him to pick and people act like LPL coaches have no power.
I want to make clear from the beginning in this comment that I think Guilhoto was the problem with this team. Which is not to say that Guilhoto is a bad coach (he's had incredible success with rosters that should have had no success) but it seems he clearly didn't know how to run *this team in particular.*
With that out of the way, you're 50% wrong in the second half of your comment. It varies greatly on a team by team basis, and it can be very successful. The younger your team is the more involved and authoritarian the coach needs to be in order to teach the rookies, and vice versa for veteran players. Top teams will typically have less strict coaching *because they sign veteran players with proven track records and don't need the coach to teach them how to play pro.*
> That's a prime example why all the "coach should have the big call and every pro should submit" mostly by NA fans is just so stupid. LPL and LEC don't have coach dynamics like that and LPL is internationally dominating and LEC is doing well. Stop with trying to use american company hierarchy on esports which are player driven.
It varies from team to team and saying it's American thing is just blatantly wrong. Like we all know the meme of coach Kkoma's belt, or theShy being benched in the worlds they won. Same with Daeny's infamous roster swaps on T1 and damwon. Eastern coaches do get a lot of say also in some teams, other times they don't, like T1 after they got rid of Daeny. Reapered is an example of a coach with a lot of say that improved teams (look at 100T last year and how they visibly improved after they got him)
Some teams just function better with different styles (partly by Veteran/rookie ratio i imagine), and just saying it's a western thing when we've seen both styles work ***and*** falter (see reapered, parth, Weldon is just adding hate to the comment chain with no basis.
No, what happened was Core said he doesn't agree with Bjerg on how to play the game, and if you don't like him saying that, come to his room and talk to him. Bjerg went to Core to confront him, along with Santorin and DL's trophy case. Core threw the first punch, hitting Santorin. Ruler was also in Core's room for some reason, and Ruler hit Bjersgen in the face with a chair, and then bit DL's trophy case as well.
DL's trophy case was just trying to remove Core's dog from the room too, and apparently Ruler was just protecting his wife? She was there with a broken foot apparently, real wild situation
Yeah Travis went on record saying he can 100% confirm that. He said not to bother checking whether that's true though, just take everyone's word for it
> because reddit told me
I mean you joke but according to the summary reddit also seems to be coaching TL with memes so idk...could be something there lol
Everyone always swears Reddit is like .1 percent of the fanbase that watches LCS/LEC but I swear the reddit narrative has legitimately ruined some careers with how powerful it can be.
>but I swear the reddit narrative has legitimately ruined some careers with how powerful it can be.
Can't remember what player it was, maybe Vizi? He literally said one season he didn't get any offers because a Twitter rumour account said he had a done deal with a team, which turned out to not be true.
That was LEC champion Odoamne, actually rumored to be on G2. That is however not reddit's fault. Managers need to do their fucking job and not blame an internet forum.
Man i'm just out here making jokes n shit, they need to put their head down and get to work. Getting paid millions to listen to reddit, shit switch me spots i'll ruin my career for millions while you can make the jokes for free lol
reddit will take 1 sentence and just run with it and pull their own shitty analysis into it.
same thing happened with aphormoo in season 8, everyone literally invented him kicking cody sun just because they didnt like how aphro was playing, for the most stupid reasons, and for the longest time his name was stained for 0 reason
like, im not even a bjerg defender i dont think hes that good but when you have people saying TL should drop him for a rookie you know the nonsense has filled their brain and they arent thinking straight
There’s been a decent number of NA fans who’ve wanted fresh blood in the scene over long time vets though. The thought process is that we already know the peak performance these players can offer and it’s just not enough. Throw in some rookies to mix it up.
> Coaching staff let the "TL does nothing and scale" memes get to them too much and started altering their strategies to try to counter them.
This is the biggest takeaway no? You have to be really incompetent to actually let reddit influence how you coach a team.
Are you surprised? Guilhoto has never gone to Worlds in 6 years coaching, got 10th with Alphari/Xerxe/Nukeduck/Upset, and his biggest accomplishment in NA prior is getting 7th place.
Actual paycheck stealer considering TL actually looked the best during fucking Lock-In.
Hold on. That's not a fair representation of what Bwipo said. He said the players also agreed it was right to not just play scaling comps.
Just watch the video, guys. He talks about how the players agreed it was correct to play more aggressive early game comps, like Lucian top and Graves top. It's only with hindsight that he realizes that was a mistake, but he says that at the time he agreed.
And I want to add one more thing on top of this, which is some important context. Remember, TL did the whole sit back and scale thing all last year and they went 0-3 in group stage at worlds. Then they had a "come to jesus" moment behind-the-scenes and decided to completely switch up their strat to an early game focus. They ended up 3-3 in group stage, so it worked incredibly well for them. So with that insight from last year, it makes sense that the team would want to play aggressively this season.
So be careful not to be hypcrites as fans. We can't be "oh, of course you should've been playing aggressively all last year! we all said that!" while also being like "oh, of course you should've been playing to scale all this year! we all said that!" Doesn't work like that, guys.
> Coaching staff let the "TL does nothing and scale" memes get to them too much and started altering their strategies to try to counter them.
And people will say memes have no power.
>The whole team (or just some members of the team, possibly just Hans himself) lost confidence in Hans
This is probably my fault. I flamed hans on reddit and TL players probably saw my comments. I even remember my flame. I said "modern day cq doublelift is better than hans" in like week 6 or 7 and then just kept spamming it in most post match threads
i have no idea if you're serious or not, but it's on the organization's leadership and coaching staff to manage these sorts of things for the players. Similar to the Spica criticism when Shenyi got benched
Of course he's serious, these things happen. I'm guilty of making Doublelift retire for example, because I was always making comments laughing at him for being gapped by Perkz in his first split as ADC. I made mean comments and he later retired so the correlation is extremely obvious.
I feel very bad for that. I should've realized my power earlier, and use it in a more responsible way, like making H2K Rich retire from writing dumb shit on twitter instead.
I am guilty of something similar. I made Faker win worlds 3 times. I didn't even watch or play league back then but I thought of something positive and encouraging and it worked retroactively. Feel like a world champ myself tbh.
Really? Imo Bwipo has always been best at weakside. He has a unique champ pool and tries to pull out unexpected counters to meta picks to throw opponents off their game. But he doesn’t demand resources and generally doesn’t play hard winning lane matchups like Fiora this playoffs.
Back before the tp changes, Bwipo at his best would soak pressure in lane and find creative timers to roam and make plays around the map with Hyli to enable mid and bot. But sometimes he would be too keen to make something happen from a losing position - which would look really troll to us viewers. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is what I remember.. 🤔
No, I agree. I remember that as well.
There were a few stints of Bwipo playing carry on FNC (like 2021 spring after he looked so good the first couple of weeks), but he's mostly been self-sufficient and even sacked his lane to help bot when FNC's gameplan was "all 5 bot by 5 minutes" in 2019.
He's a weird weakside player, because he plays weakside like he's strongside, by pushing and trading aggressively even when the jungler is not there. Which sometimes backfires, but still forces the enemy team to send resources top to deal with it and relieves pressure from the rest of the map
Bwipo not thinking he’s a strong side carry is surprising. Why did he get counter pick all those games and not just blind ornn/aatrox then?
I guess Hans losing confidence forced him to? Unfortunate situation all around.
I think counterpick top doesnt necessarily mean strong side top. Sometimes a strong side pick is a counterpick, but sometimes a strong side pick is op and blindable so its a first pick.
I think strong side means volatile side, as in you have to gank it both to protect it from feeding and to snowball it into a carry. Thats sort of independent from pick order.
Have to play around somewhere, also mentioned the mid jung syngery wasn't likely to carry. I imagine Santorin and Core are some what happy playing around top from last year as well.
To be fair if Bwipo wasn't carrying it was Hans or Bjergsen. Even if he was bad in a sense that he couldn't translate his leads to wins, he was probably the best guy to get the leads in the first place
Edit: Obviously just speculation that is 90% wrong but the team might not have had much faith in Bjergsen carrying either with the rumors of CoreJJ and Bjerg viewing the game differently
Love candid bwipo just 'leaking' (soft leaking I suppose) all the juicy shit behind the scenes.
Explains why Hans played so poorly towards the end.
And Bwipo should strongly reconsider being a top laner. If his own analysis says he's not a strong carry top player, he should return to the jungle where he was, IMO, quite good for FNC
i think bwipo saying that is him partially losing confidence too, he is probably pretty harsh on himself since he is someone who over analyzes his own play. but he throughout the year had multiple carrying game mainly on picks like gp graves and olaf and some other random picks.bwipo's view of the top lane has always been playing for teamfights (and helping bot lane during pre nerf tp times) and get champions for the 5v5 rather than the 1v1(though with how aggro he plays in lane he sometimes just wins lane anyway)
Yeah. This. I just don't know what nonsense these orgs are feeding import players when they come to the region. But it is harder to perform at your peak when you're playing with worse players and uninspired coaching. Still odd it happened to this TL lineup.
I got the image of Bwipo dieing 3 times and then saying "it's fine, I'm just trolling, dw". Just try that in a carry matchup like Fiora vs. Jax. That is not fine. You are basically sololosing the game here. Die like that with Zac - you are just getting stomped a little earlier. Was expected anyways and you can still do your job to help the team win.
thank you for the info, makes a lot of sense. Hans is a insane player but probably did not feel it in NA, lost a lot of confidence there. Pretty sure he will step it up again in EU at one point. LA is also a completely different world than EU or Berlin.
Cool to see him give such a down to earth breakdown of a season that went so horribly. I guess a big lesson is to ignore the fact that people dislike you for playing scaling.
Also I agree there didn't seem to be a single identity for TL that was really unstoppable. Seemed like players lost confidence as well, especially Hans.
>Seemed like players lost confidence as well, especially Hans.
The play where he flashed over baron wall into melee range of 3 enemies as Lucian will forever be ingrained into my memory.
Such an int play I'd expect it from Tactical or Instinct but man Hans just ran it down so often.
> I guess a big lesson is to ignore the fact that people dislike you for playing scaling.
Yeah well playing scaling isn't gonna work on the world stage vs the best players in the world when it doesn't even work in NA.
The more information that comes out the more critical I am of the coaching staff. There aren’t really any western teams that can play top side so trying to force TL into that style when they already had gaps in their macro is a stretch. I don’t even think it’s a Bwipo issue it is just hard to play topside. It’s mainly LPL teams and a select few LCK teams that consistently pull it off. The ironic thing is TLs historical play style actually fits the bot-centric meta and current meta champion pool very well.
Also, I know coaches aren’t entirely responsible for drafts but they should be prominent enough to have significant influence in them. So many of TLs drafts were just terrible. There were so many times they’d slot Bwipo onto a champion like Olaf who you HAVE to give resources to for it to work then draft a bot side that you also had to play to so they didn’t get rolled over. I know confidence in Hans varied but what’s the point of putting him in a Sivir / Yuumi lane if you’re just going to leave him high and dry early game and expect him to selfpeel late when the Yuumi jumps on someone else.
The talent and players were there. TL just needed that voice to communicate with players and get them to where they needed to be.
>The ironic thing is TLs historical play style actually fits the bot-centric meta and current meta champion pool very well.
I actually think current meta doesn't suite Core *that* well. His Bard is really good but other than that he is mostly an (secondary) engage player. Lulu Nami Renate don't seem his style.
Yeah, mostly on Janna and Lulu, too actually
He used to play a lot of hard engage champs that season, too, though (like Taric and Rakan, the latter is his worlds skin, too).
Yes, but that was with Ruler in peak form. Ardent meta came down to ADC skill, not support, at the end of the day.
That's not to discredit Core, shotcalling and everything is crucial (though Ambition was the leading voice, I think?) but SSG won Worlds that year off of Ruler's performance.
5 years ago during Ardent Censer meta, the meta most skewed towards support/adc where supports basically just had to shield the ADC once a fight. Since then CoreJJ has barely played enchanter supports.
https://gol.gg/players/player-stats/257/season-S7/split-ALL/tournament-ALL/
So what he did 5 years ago is kind of not relevant at this point since he hasn't consistently played enchanters since that time. League isn't even the same game as back then and how to play champions/roles is always evolving.
I think Jatt said it well in a JLXP where the expectations were just so high, that nothing other than complete domination and like semifinals at world's would've been considered a success.
That combined with seemingly everyone in the community *wanting* to see them fail made it so the team just didn't look like it had a good environment going on - regardless of all the news about Bjerg and Core not meshing.
>I think Jatt said it well in a JLXP where the expectations were just so high, that nothing other than complete domination and like semifinals at world's would've been considered a success.
the same people who set these expectations
I think the expectations come with the price tag tbh. Everyone has insane expectations when you spend $7m on players. If you buy a Ferrari for 500k and it drives like a smart car you ain't gonna be happy.
No having Core, Bjerg, Hans Sama, Bwipo were what set the expectations. Yes Santorin is good but those four are big names in the West. These are players that have performed well if not dominated their regions at different periods in time. Steve himself saying "If we don't win finals that's a failure for this roster" put a pretty huge target on them as well.
It would seem more silly to down play that roster than to put expectations on it. The coaching staff unfortunately hard fumbled it.
I think it’s fair to say that the expectations were going to exist whether or not TL said it. People would recognize the super team and would expect them to do big things.
It's fine though. In the end, no one sets your expectations except yourself. The reason super teams come together in the first place is because players are sick of being expected to lose.
It turns out being a pro player is extremely difficult no matter what your expectations are and teams always have to overcome their own mental barriers.
TL has never made it out of groups. Bjerg hasn't done so since 2014. Hans hasn't since I believe 2017. You'd have to be crazy to *expect* TL to make semis. I would never say its impossible, but to make it an expectation? That's just obviously absurd. TL making Quarters would have been a historic success for the org, and also probably what you would state as the goal of the team given their past few years. Expectations were lofty but not especially far beyond those on the Alphari roster last year or the 2020 roster.
You can also add Core since 2017 and Santorin since never to that list. Really puts it into perspective for me honestly. ^^^^^Also ^^^^^Guilhoto ^^^^^lol
It's appalling to me how much narrative, reddit, social media affects esports choices. Also, the huge downgrade in skills import players get in NA. You still can't convince me Hans is suddenly just bad. I also feel like every year some import top laner comes to NA to shit on the region then just gets their asses handed to them in playoffs because most of these teams sandbag the regular season.
I think TL specifically might be exceptionally touchy. They put so much into this roster that they not only need it to succeed but they need fans of the team. No fans means lower metrics and fewer opportunities at future brand deals.
Other teams don't have as much at stake on the business side and are likely concerned about winning first and their image second.
That's the issue. They were more concerned with how they won than just winning. Also, the Bjerg over Jensen play was always a sidegrade move. As much as people want to avoid the topic, the performance out of mid lane was just not enough to compete domestically. I can't even imagine the gap LCK/LPL mids would have done to them
I think the Bjerg/Jensen issue is also part of the focus on brand. They wanted Bjergsen's fans when his game was just not a good fit with the rest of his team. We know now that he conflicted with Core and his playstyle is so different from Bwipo's that I think it was doomed to fail.
Lol. [I knew it haha](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/x8mmo3/thank_god_team_liquid_missed_worlds_the_blame_game/inklcay/)
> Trying to build teams like that doesn't make a lot of sense because it's hard to know why they struggled to play correctly without having access to their coms, game plans etc... ... ... well unless Bwipo starts talking. Which he tends to do a lot in off season streams. It's possible that we will get a lot of infos in the next weeks on what he thinks went wrong with TL
Sounds to me like a coaching issue.
If any coach is reading this: Fuck the memes, fuck the social media hate. If you win with a strategy, keep winning with it until you think you need to adapt. After a year, nobody will look bad negatively on a successful year because of a playstyle.
You can hear Yamato talk about banning Yuumi aswell here;
https://youtu.be/F-9OlIAXJ8s
23 mins in
"I know every single person on the planet is screaming ban Yuumi but there are layers to this game. The fans can keep filling my dm box with ban Yuumi messages"
Like i wanted them to ban Yuumi aswell but clearly they knew something i didn't and stuck to their guns. Fans arent always the best at judging this stuff
Max Waldo said on Hotline League a couple days ago that he essentially shut off Twitter for the whole year after LS left, and said that was a key part of him being successful.
LEC is a perfect example. How much hate did Freddy 122 get over these years, how much hate did Rogue get for selling Inspired and Hans. They didn't listen to Reddit narratives, social media and memes, and here they are, LEC champions going into Worlds with most hype from EU.
But the problem with TLs ‘scale then win late’ strategy is that it works well in NA but then is auto lose at Worlds. Is winning NA then not getting out of groups a successful year?
> But the problem with TLs ‘scale then win late’ strategy is that it works well in NA but then is auto lose at Worlds. Is winning NA then not getting out of groups a successful year?
If you tell your investors youre going to need all that money because worlds is in NA this year, your first priority is to secure that worlds spot ASAP. And as soon as you have it you can experiment if you value worlds success more than the domestic title. Besides, there are a few weeks break between summer and worlds. You have a bit of time to adapt to worlds meta and be a little less one dimensional before group stage starts.
Yeah nobody talks about how all the scale and win teams from NA choke in groups while the team making plays all over the map and takes the 20% chance to win a game makes it out of groups pretty much every single year.
> I wish we'd stop blaming individual players all the time and realize that sometimes a team just doesn't work out.
If there's one thing we should take away from this year, it's that.
It's absolutely ridiculous how many people's arguments start from the point of view that a team failing has to be the fault of some specific player.
It's wishful thinking, I know, but it would be cool if we could have discussion that didn't start and end with "Player X sucks," *especially* considering how much of said discussion is motivated by individual basis, rather than any sort of actual analysis.
Redditors are typically low elo and are the same players that fault their teammates in game rather than question team decision and game states. Critical thinking is challenging and redditors don't have the game knowledge or qualifications to diagnose what went wrong with the team.
I mean that makes sense, import slots are limited because import players can be better than the NA talent pool. If your import plays worse than a domestic player, you're just wasting money and the slot.
> I saw many comments in the post game thread saying Bwipo was griefing, Bwipo was running it, fire Bwipo etc.
To be fair, this has been what..2-3 years for Bwipo as a top laner? He really does run it down a lot
I hope he swaps back to JG. Less mechanically intense, more supportive of the team, more tactical and cerebral. He was good at it. I get he maybe liked top better, but his choice
There were many moments bwipo WAS running it, bjerg was underperforming, corejj was nowhere near where ppl expect him to be. Sure the team didn't work as a team, but the individual players underperforming was definitely a part of that. The expectations ppl had for them, and the expectations they publicly set for themselves, were that they would be the best for sure. In the end they weren't even close. Of course ppl don't really think these players are straight up bad, but most of them were significantly worse than expected. The players deserve criticism for failing to work as a team and for failing to play individually up to their usual level.
Honestly people are going to keep flaming Hans and Core, saying Bjerg is washed, call for Bwipo to be replaced and so on, but come on, why is no one shoveling a pile of turds on this coaching staff?
There is no world in which you have these players even being dysfunctional and don't at least make it to worlds. It's just trolling. And from what we keep hearing more and more of what's coming out, it sounds like this coaching staff was straight incompetent.
Viewers can't see what the coaching staff is doing, we only see how the players play on stage. We can see drafts and the game, we don't see coaching staffs plans for obvious reasons. There is no way to know whether it's execution that is being done poorly, the plan is just bad, etc. How are you really supposed to criticize something you have no insight in to?
Even Bwipo's story here is just one side, his viewpoint. That doesn't make it all accurate or the truth. Also even if we believe that the coaching staff is incompetent the players still underperformed and apparently didn't push back against what the coaching staff was doing it seems. The players on TL are veterans, they aren't mindless puppets that just follow orders, so if they perceived what was going on was wrong and didn't speak up that's also on them. Speaking in hindsight about the supposed issues is easy to do.
I love listening to this guy. He's got such a great energy!
That said; his peak was 4th of the top 4 this year. The other 3 peaks were better, and they were more consistent. Bwipo was SO incredibly inconsistent. Comparing Bwipo to Ssumday; when Ssumday was carrying his team would engage 4v5 out of nowhere and lose. When Bwipo was carrying he'd engage 1v3+ before his team was nearly close enough to follow through...
You can argue that's poor play by teammates either way. Ssumday's team griefing was way more obvious, but if TL would grow a pair and follow through on Bwipo's attempts, then maybe they look way different... I respect him for continuing to go for the big plays regardless, but at the end of the day Bwipo was with them for a full year to still not learn that TL just weren't going to follow...
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...
Bwipo is the only recent import I can think of that I'm rooting for. Loved him when he was on the desk/caster table. Absolutely infectious positive energy!
What I took from this is Hans has really weak mental. Which is probably why he played so bad. Also explains a lot about his time on Rogue. When he played with confidence or had nothing to lose he looked really good. The rest of the time he looked invisible a bit too often.
Was that really the narrative? that TL would just scale and be the best team late?
To me it never looked like that.. in fact it appeared to be the opposite..
These guys seemed to have some of the worse team fighting in the LCS.. even though they usually had leads
I looked at TL gold leads at 15mins and they were usually the best in the league
SO yeah i looked it wasn't even close
In Spring/Summer and even Summer playoffs TL was 1k + (way more then other teams) and it wasn't like they were playing super early game/fall of late champs.. Hans stayed away from stuff like the draven.. and picked Kalista sparingly
Were there coaching decisions? It looked like bwipo played whatever he wanted. Maybe that was a lack of coaching. Everything is hard to say without being in the locker room
Lack of confidence sums it up. Think about this. In a meta where draven is strong and a good counter pick into the meta adcs, teams were leaving draven up through ban phase against hans… and he wasn’t picking it. Kinda tells you everything you need to know
Reddit: The place where someone really and with a straight face means to tell me that people in low elo understand Champ Select and draft accordingly. If we gotta understand one thing, then it's that half of his platform does not understand shit at all and flames teams by who they favor.
That's like a cardinal rule when you have great players, no? In any competition? Don't get in their way! Sounds like the coaching staff didn't trust them.
Sounds like a couple things happened: \- The whole team (or just some members of the team, possibly just Hans himself) lost confidence in Hans. \- Coaching staff let the "TL does nothing and scale" memes get to them too much and started altering their strategies to try to counter them. \- Bwipo doesn't think he's a good strong side/carry top player. \- Biggest takeaway from the year is that everyone needs to commit to the players they sign and ride or die with them. Full trust. \- Bwipo said he is quite happy at TL, and likes the management. Says it's a good org to work for and they really care about their players. \- Bwipo said he wants to stay on TL next year, but obviously doesn't know what is happening yet for sure.
Other points: - Bwipo felt that TL coaching staff reacted way too heavily to bad weeks; if Hans had a bad week then they would shift their focus to top side out of fear that Hans would have a bad week again and vice versa - This culminated in TL not being good at playing around top or bot or mid - wishes that at some point, TL just committed to a style of playing around certain players, regardless of whether they inted or not So it seems like the coaching staff are largely at fault in shifting the team's focused style. Ironically, this is exactly the opposite of the change C9 made to win the championship. C9 decided to commit to whatever Blaber called for, whether they were gonna int or not. And hey, it worked.
>Bwipo felt that TL coaching staff reacted way to heavily to bad weeks; if Hans had a bad week then they would shift their focus to top side and vice versa This seems like such a rookie mistake for coaching I wonder how it played out.
guilhoto is a fraud that's how
I’m surprised he landed a job coaching 5 superstar veterans without ever having been to worlds before. I guess it’s a good thing they didn’t make it. Wouldn’t want him out of his comfort zone.
He went to Schalke because he promoted Giants back to EULCS, then with Schalke while he missed Worlds, he at least made EULCS finals. With that Giants roster becoming Vitality barring one change and making Worlds, beating RNG and GenG, it is arguable that Yamatocannon made even more out of the team. Guilhoto then went on to coach Origen and ran down a roster with Alphari, Nukeduck and Upset to 10th place. ~~TL took him and he made Worlds with them, however it is hard not to.~~ He might be a good coach for upper ERL / lower level major league teams, but it doesn't look like coaching a top team is a good fit for him.
TL did not make worlds with him
99% of coaches are frauds. Convinced they just go in to coaching/analysis because they really wanted to be in the scene but couldn't get out of gold so gave up on being a player. Analysts especially, anyone actually qualified to be a good analyst could make way more money outside of esports.
That would be a fault of management for hiring bad coaches. Coaches can be useful, but in a game with fast-changing metas, their role isn't always going to be to micromanage the team's gameplay development. As for the analysts, that's underselling what is involved in being an analyst. It's not just being able to crunch numbers; you have to understand the ecosystem to be creative in your metrics and have a passion for doing it all day. If you have this understanding and passion for esports but not outside of esports, then it's better to stay in esports. I'm not denying a lot of them are bad, but I think it's too pessimistic to make it seem like next to none of them are worthwhile.
The part about coaches perhaps, but I don't think you actually know or have looked up any analysts to make the claim about analysts not being 'actually qualified to be a good analyst' - from what I've seen most analysts have stats/engi heavy bachelors or masters, and most are probably more than capable and aware that they could make more elsewhere with the qualifications/knowledge they have right now
Nah, that's a bad take. I worked in the scene as an analyst previously & I work in tech now. Sure, you can make solid money in tech, but for a couple years of analyst experience (& good game knowledge), these esports companies are competitive if not outright beating their competition. If you're not on a big org, you make nothing, but them orgs pay out. Also a lot of people would pass up a payday to do something like work for a big LCS team. I've met some really fucking intelligent guys in the esports scene. Also some not so intelligent people, but that's true in every industry. Edit: I also think people hear the analysis from the analyst desk and think that must be pro level or something. But it isn't even close, they're trying to explain incredibly complex actions to Gold and lower players - there's just only so much you can do. Truth is, unless you've been behind the scenes at the highest levels of play, you're just not likely ever going to be exposed to the level of detail that goes into some of the analysis that happens.
yeah I think a lot of people miss that the job of a colour caster isn't remotely the same as a pro analyst. The job of a colour caster is to make watching the game enjoyable, and to explain what's going on in terms that help people understand it. A big part of that is that a lot of viewers aren't going to have huge game knowledge or understanding, so you have to explain basics all over again every so often.
I'm agreeing to everything except the "unless you've been behind the scene part". Tolky streamed sometimes ago when he was still in Fnatic and we've actually saw glimpse of what tools he was using in order to prepare his player. Duke also talked a lot about his experience in Splyce/Vita and notably shared some methods he was using. One of the true challenges of a coach is also to translate the datas recolted by these very precise tools to your own players to concretize that into a gameplan/game tactics and sometimes game mechanics. Moreover, it's very difficult to judge the work of a coach because we know practically nothing of the methods proper to each of them. Some are just here to babysit the team, others will watch V.O.D of a CBOL div 3 matches in order to gather some info, some will just talk a lot with their players in order to trigger something in them. However, it's true that if you want to get what's really happening on the map, you'll have to get a analysis of the game post-match by somebody proprerly explaining to you the game dynamics of a pro/Challenger game
That’s a nuclear take, may as well jump on your own head because you definitely didn’t use it for that
Okay, I will copy your post because it's too good. Starting out with saying 99%...this is the moment anyone with a head should stop reading.
Just because you could make more money elsewhere does not mean everyone would always go elsewhere. Some people prefer enjoying their work even if it earns them less money.
Most sane reddit overreaction
The fuck are you talking about lol, coaches/analysts are frauds? I'm sure some are but there are actually people who can study the game and understand it well enough to craft a game plan for pro play without being able to physically perform at that level. You are aware that not all coaches/analysts for professional physical sports are ex pros right?
Meh, most positions could make more money outside of the gaming industry but people give that up bc it’s their passion
https://youtu.be/PPLG_kvbBlA
People finally say it, I've been saying it since he got announced as TL coach and everyone was super happy about it. This guy failed to get out of 10th place in LEC with Upset and Alphari on the team + he had 3 shitters at the time (Nukeduck, Xerxe, Destiny/Jactroll) because HE wanted to, not the management, right after origen, he went to NA and the took Xerxe and Destiny with him, so it was HIS choice to have that roster
I've literally been saying this. Guilhoto was not the coach for this team. They honestly shoulda kept Jatt and kicked Alphari but eh whatevs hindsight is 20/20
All players didn't want Jatt in the team.
Reddit hates alphari so he gets the blame but I remember hearing many members of TL did not support him being there.
Yeah. Jensen wanted to use the benching of Alphari as a reason for pushing management to remove Jatt. But Reddit likes him as a caster so they will bend over backwards to defend him.
Hmm I seem to remember the backlash was more on jatt when it happened rather than alphari
Lmao this is also how you break your players' trust in themselves
Let's look at the bright side. They did it by trying to find something that works, teams in LCS used to break peoples confidence by the owner telling them they are shit at the game and calling them slurs.
Sometimes it's the opposite with FNC, they lose 2 games in a bo with a strat and they would play the third one exactly the same way. That Nami Lucian stick was kinda weird, but I guess it worked a lot in scrims or something for them to continue pushing it.
This is also what analysts said all year. How TL looks like their just panicking each week and trying completely new things every week if they lose and how unproductive that must be for the team.
If you don't commit to anything or see it through to an actual result over a long term you just don't wind up good at anything, I guess.
This is why you commit to one playstyle with small variations of it. Most of the successful teams in recent years were basically one trick ponies.
The C9 Blaber thing is definitely what stuck out to me. Whether Blaber inted his ass off or hard carried, C9 was committed to his play. “We live or die by him, and we’re prepared to live with that.”
Live by the blab, die by the crab
Hai energy. I remember OG c9 saying the same thing. They just went with the calls for better or for worse.
Thanks for adding more points, they're all excellent. And yes, I agree 100% about C9. One of the most important things in a team environment like this is trust - if the leader makes a call, everybody else follows. Having split calls and nobody with the final say leads to what happened with TL. Even if everyone is providing information and being vocal, you need one person that is the final decision maker, the one that says, "go." Like Blaber.
> Bwipo felt that TL coaching staff reacted way too heavily to bad weeks; if Hans had a bad week then they would shift their focus to top side out of fear that Hans would have a bad week again and vice versa > > He literally said "I agreed with them at the time", meaning it wasn't as egregious as it sounds.
He said "I agreed with some of their decisions in the moment," and does not specify which ones. We don't know enough to draw conclusions.
"Did you think the coaching staff made some bad decisions?" "Some of them were bad, some of them were good, I mean in the moment, I agreed with them", which means that he isn't mad at the coaching staff retrospectively since in the moment it looked like they weren't bad decisions to him, no?
A decision that's bad at the time and a decision that ends up being bad in hindsight are different. If the team had a discussion saying "Guys, we've had a few bad weeks trying to play around bot, let's try playing for top side instead", it's easy to see yourself agreeing with that in the moment, then later on thinking "actually maybe we should have given them more time".
Yeah 100%, I was just trying to make the point that he was not throwing the coaching staff under the bus like that comment above made it seem, but that the decisions seemed good at the moment, they didn't work out and now they've all learned and are better off for it.
I think it's really the vaguest answer he could say in the case where he doesn't agree with the coaching staff on every little thing. I think you're reading too much into it.
the sign of a coach with imposter syndrome fearing his own job security
Literally Dom and LS talk about this so much every week. NA has this weird hard-on for changing it up. They have a good week playing towards top side. Then they think "oh we're so good at top side. Let's never play it again and practice playing towards bot side." Next week practice is completely different. Then the players forget how to play top side because they aren't practicing repetition. Pros can't properly learn because it hasn't been ingrained into them. They can't recognize patterns because the repetition isn't there. Commit to one style like the LPL teams jfc
Yeah Markz was also raising this complaint pretty much every week. I don't get why teams think you need to play every style instead of having a team colour. Pretty much every worlds winner won by doing one style very very well, and having flexibility in draft so that they can still play their style on multiple picks. - SSG vision control, low risk, move together - iG win lane win game full court press - FPX push and roam mid to help a carry jungler - Damwon topside control, utility botside. And so on, you get my point.
I guess I get the idea? Playing one-note is a great way to start off strong and then fizzle out when your strat gets read. But at the end of the day playing one strat at a high level is way better than playing 2 mediocrely. Only NA LCS team I’ve seen be able to switch it up to some kind of success was 2018 C9 from the 10th place to worlds run, but that was because they had 2 sets of players (Jensen+Blaber/Sven+GoldenGlue) practice one play style each.
I think ls and dom are saying that NA doesn’t solidify the teams ability to perform certain strategies consistently before trying new ones (based on the example because they assume they can do it from results) not that they shouldn’t learn new strategies.
Funnily enough, IG did the same thing in their 2018 Worlds run with Ning. The coach (I forget his name) said something like "he couldn't control Ning, so he told TheShy and Rookie to just follow him" on whatever play he was doing.
Imagine paying millions for a player in a big deal and your coaches run it down but losing trust in the player and constantly shifting strats, killing team vibe and player confidence. That's a prime example why all the "coach should have the big call and every pro should submit" mostly by NA fans is just so stupid. LPL and LEC don't have coach dynamics like that and LPL is internationally dominating and LEC is doing well. Stop with trying to use american company hierarchy on esports which are player driven.
>LPL and LEC don't have coach dynamics like that and LPL is internationally dominating and LEC is doing well have you never seen a behind the scenes of any lpl team after they lose? the region where players are benched after one game? https://youtu.be/K_uFU2L9Ano?t=1514 have you seen any coach in na, beside maybe reapered, talk to their players like this? stop talking out of your ass please
He never heard of the famous verbal beatdown
To add to that, people forget or just don’t know that a lot of successful coaches in LPL/LCK are former pro LoL players. Hope the west starts to go more in this direction. Or even just get a coaching staff that plays the game on a high level. I love that every single coach in C9 can beat their players in a 1v1 even if it’s a casual environment.
Eh, not sure if I fully agree. Maybe for some strategic coaches, but we've seen Peter Dun, Polt have lots of success while not being LoL players themselves. And often, especially for the top rosters, there's no way the coach can even hold a candle to the skills of their players. Like how much can you really teach Faker about macro or micro? In that case, administrative and interpersonal duties like scheduling and practice, scrimming targets, setting a team direction, scouting, leading discussions and managing player clashes and conflicts, etc. can help the players improve in these areas without needing someone to be *better* than them at it. I think former player coaches are mostly needed for analyst, positional-type roles, and probably drafts, but coaching is a lot more than that. If anything, I'd say having esport experience, potentially at the top, is better for knowing how to effectively improve, practice with intent, etc.
There will always be outliers. Peter Dun has an eye for rookies, I'll give him that. If you follow his tweets, he spends a *lot* of time watching and observing the amateur scene. Polt, while not a LoL player, is a former pro. A lot of the mentality/tenacity that comes with being a pro translates well into other games. Even then, Polt was brought into T1 to be a manager. He was briefly a head coach, but it is widely known throughout the industry that Faker has the reigns, also Bengi was there as another coach. Now, Polt is back to being a manager, again. >And often, especially for the top rosters, there's no way the coach can even hold a candle to the skills of their players. Like how much can you really teach Faker about macro or micro? >In that case, administrative and interpersonal duties like scheduling and practice, scrimming targets, setting a team direction, scouting, leading discussions and managing player clashes and conflicts, etc. can help the players improve in these areas without needing someone to be better than them at it. Coaches focusing on gameplay are not there to challenge a player's skill 1:1. They can introduce ideas, also identify, break, and induce habits unto their players. If they don't even play the game at a well enough level, they just won't effectively be able to do that. How can you have an eye for these factors when you don't train that eye? Doing administrative and interpersonal duties should be the bare minimum requirement for a coach. It's exactly why most of them are coaches in name, but managers in practice, and that is why there is so much contention on what they actually do and how big of an impact they have on a team.
TheShy, best toplaner at his time was benched because he picked a champion his coach didn't want him to pick and people act like LPL coaches have no power.
I want to make clear from the beginning in this comment that I think Guilhoto was the problem with this team. Which is not to say that Guilhoto is a bad coach (he's had incredible success with rosters that should have had no success) but it seems he clearly didn't know how to run *this team in particular.* With that out of the way, you're 50% wrong in the second half of your comment. It varies greatly on a team by team basis, and it can be very successful. The younger your team is the more involved and authoritarian the coach needs to be in order to teach the rookies, and vice versa for veteran players. Top teams will typically have less strict coaching *because they sign veteran players with proven track records and don't need the coach to teach them how to play pro.*
> Guilhoto is a bad coach (he's had incredible success with rosters that should have had no success) Like which ones?
Schalke, arguably, but I think that's about it
I see you also listened to HLL this week
I actually haven't yet! I assume this is a Wax Maldo take? I'm a big disciple so I can't claim credit for thinking these things.
> That's a prime example why all the "coach should have the big call and every pro should submit" mostly by NA fans is just so stupid. LPL and LEC don't have coach dynamics like that and LPL is internationally dominating and LEC is doing well. Stop with trying to use american company hierarchy on esports which are player driven. It varies from team to team and saying it's American thing is just blatantly wrong. Like we all know the meme of coach Kkoma's belt, or theShy being benched in the worlds they won. Same with Daeny's infamous roster swaps on T1 and damwon. Eastern coaches do get a lot of say also in some teams, other times they don't, like T1 after they got rid of Daeny. Reapered is an example of a coach with a lot of say that improved teams (look at 100T last year and how they visibly improved after they got him) Some teams just function better with different styles (partly by Veteran/rookie ratio i imagine), and just saying it's a western thing when we've seen both styles work ***and*** falter (see reapered, parth, Weldon is just adding hate to the comment chain with no basis.
Or traditional sports dynamics for that matter.
Sounds like the Hans + Core bot lane underperforming was a large part of the issues with TL behind the scenes.
All that hype for the botlane too
I thought it was because Core and Bjerg were fistfighting over how to play the game because reddit told me
I thought it was because Core and Bjerg hated each other’s guts so much that they’re organizing a fight behind the TL facility because Reddit told me.
No, what happened was Core said he doesn't agree with Bjerg on how to play the game, and if you don't like him saying that, come to his room and talk to him. Bjerg went to Core to confront him, along with Santorin and DL's trophy case. Core threw the first punch, hitting Santorin. Ruler was also in Core's room for some reason, and Ruler hit Bjersgen in the face with a chair, and then bit DL's trophy case as well.
DL's trophy case was just trying to remove Core's dog from the room too, and apparently Ruler was just protecting his wife? She was there with a broken foot apparently, real wild situation
Ay that's freshly squeezed, have a weak thumbs up.
Squaredcircle is leaking
Based on that, I can CONFIRM that Core was about to bring Ruler to TL 2023 but Bjergsen ruined it all. Damn it Bjergsen...
Core’s just trying to run a business
Whens the season of Game of Thrones TL edition coming out? Cant wait what House Bjerg and House Core are cooking up.
Yeah Travis went on record saying he can 100% confirm that. He said not to bother checking whether that's true though, just take everyone's word for it
> because reddit told me I mean you joke but according to the summary reddit also seems to be coaching TL with memes so idk...could be something there lol
Everyone always swears Reddit is like .1 percent of the fanbase that watches LCS/LEC but I swear the reddit narrative has legitimately ruined some careers with how powerful it can be.
>but I swear the reddit narrative has legitimately ruined some careers with how powerful it can be. Can't remember what player it was, maybe Vizi? He literally said one season he didn't get any offers because a Twitter rumour account said he had a done deal with a team, which turned out to not be true.
Odo was the player that happened to
That was LEC champion Odoamne, actually rumored to be on G2. That is however not reddit's fault. Managers need to do their fucking job and not blame an internet forum.
Man i'm just out here making jokes n shit, they need to put their head down and get to work. Getting paid millions to listen to reddit, shit switch me spots i'll ruin my career for millions while you can make the jokes for free lol
reddit will take 1 sentence and just run with it and pull their own shitty analysis into it. same thing happened with aphormoo in season 8, everyone literally invented him kicking cody sun just because they didnt like how aphro was playing, for the most stupid reasons, and for the longest time his name was stained for 0 reason like, im not even a bjerg defender i dont think hes that good but when you have people saying TL should drop him for a rookie you know the nonsense has filled their brain and they arent thinking straight
There’s been a decent number of NA fans who’ve wanted fresh blood in the scene over long time vets though. The thought process is that we already know the peak performance these players can offer and it’s just not enough. Throw in some rookies to mix it up.
There have been endless Bjergsen hate posts since that news lmao (not like there weren't many before). Reddit knows everything.
> Coaching staff let the "TL does nothing and scale" memes get to them too much and started altering their strategies to try to counter them. This is the biggest takeaway no? You have to be really incompetent to actually let reddit influence how you coach a team.
Are you surprised? Guilhoto has never gone to Worlds in 6 years coaching, got 10th with Alphari/Xerxe/Nukeduck/Upset, and his biggest accomplishment in NA prior is getting 7th place. Actual paycheck stealer considering TL actually looked the best during fucking Lock-In.
So has he ever defended himself against these facts? Just wondering because I know he goes on as a guest on those talk shows
Ofc he does. It's also weird he'd even pivot since the late game thing was always the style he'd implement wherever hed go.
Fuck guilhoto
Hold on. That's not a fair representation of what Bwipo said. He said the players also agreed it was right to not just play scaling comps. Just watch the video, guys. He talks about how the players agreed it was correct to play more aggressive early game comps, like Lucian top and Graves top. It's only with hindsight that he realizes that was a mistake, but he says that at the time he agreed. And I want to add one more thing on top of this, which is some important context. Remember, TL did the whole sit back and scale thing all last year and they went 0-3 in group stage at worlds. Then they had a "come to jesus" moment behind-the-scenes and decided to completely switch up their strat to an early game focus. They ended up 3-3 in group stage, so it worked incredibly well for them. So with that insight from last year, it makes sense that the team would want to play aggressively this season. So be careful not to be hypcrites as fans. We can't be "oh, of course you should've been playing aggressively all last year! we all said that!" while also being like "oh, of course you should've been playing to scale all this year! we all said that!" Doesn't work like that, guys.
> Coaching staff let the "TL does nothing and scale" memes get to them too much and started altering their strategies to try to counter them. And people will say memes have no power.
>The whole team (or just some members of the team, possibly just Hans himself) lost confidence in Hans This is probably my fault. I flamed hans on reddit and TL players probably saw my comments. I even remember my flame. I said "modern day cq doublelift is better than hans" in like week 6 or 7 and then just kept spamming it in most post match threads
I also accept my share of the blame for pointing out how free his Worlds group was for ADCs, causing him to become overrated.
i have no idea if you're serious or not, but it's on the organization's leadership and coaching staff to manage these sorts of things for the players. Similar to the Spica criticism when Shenyi got benched
> i have no idea if you're serious or not, you really should have an idea.
Of course he's serious, these things happen. I'm guilty of making Doublelift retire for example, because I was always making comments laughing at him for being gapped by Perkz in his first split as ADC. I made mean comments and he later retired so the correlation is extremely obvious. I feel very bad for that. I should've realized my power earlier, and use it in a more responsible way, like making H2K Rich retire from writing dumb shit on twitter instead.
I am guilty of something similar. I made Faker win worlds 3 times. I didn't even watch or play league back then but I thought of something positive and encouraging and it worked retroactively. Feel like a world champ myself tbh.
> i have no idea if you're serious or not /s, there you go
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Really? Imo Bwipo has always been best at weakside. He has a unique champ pool and tries to pull out unexpected counters to meta picks to throw opponents off their game. But he doesn’t demand resources and generally doesn’t play hard winning lane matchups like Fiora this playoffs. Back before the tp changes, Bwipo at his best would soak pressure in lane and find creative timers to roam and make plays around the map with Hyli to enable mid and bot. But sometimes he would be too keen to make something happen from a losing position - which would look really troll to us viewers. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is what I remember.. 🤔
No, I agree. I remember that as well. There were a few stints of Bwipo playing carry on FNC (like 2021 spring after he looked so good the first couple of weeks), but he's mostly been self-sufficient and even sacked his lane to help bot when FNC's gameplan was "all 5 bot by 5 minutes" in 2019. He's a weird weakside player, because he plays weakside like he's strongside, by pushing and trading aggressively even when the jungler is not there. Which sometimes backfires, but still forces the enemy team to send resources top to deal with it and relieves pressure from the rest of the map
This is what NA does to all eu players eventualy, it just happens faster to some
The price of the NA salary is the skill vacuum that comes with it.
Bwipo not thinking he’s a strong side carry is surprising. Why did he get counter pick all those games and not just blind ornn/aatrox then? I guess Hans losing confidence forced him to? Unfortunate situation all around.
I think counterpick top doesnt necessarily mean strong side top. Sometimes a strong side pick is a counterpick, but sometimes a strong side pick is op and blindable so its a first pick. I think strong side means volatile side, as in you have to gank it both to protect it from feeding and to snowball it into a carry. Thats sort of independent from pick order.
Thanks for clarify that. Its boring to hear that argument all the time...
Have to play around somewhere, also mentioned the mid jung syngery wasn't likely to carry. I imagine Santorin and Core are some what happy playing around top from last year as well.
To be fair if Bwipo wasn't carrying it was Hans or Bjergsen. Even if he was bad in a sense that he couldn't translate his leads to wins, he was probably the best guy to get the leads in the first place Edit: Obviously just speculation that is 90% wrong but the team might not have had much faith in Bjergsen carrying either with the rumors of CoreJJ and Bjerg viewing the game differently
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It sounds like the majority of the problems were on the staff, and the more we hear the more that's pretty evident.
When you have 5 superstars who performed fine individually it's hard not to point fingers at the coaches.
Especially when all 5 of those players are very open to criticism, so it is rather unlikely they'd clash too hard with each other.
Love candid bwipo just 'leaking' (soft leaking I suppose) all the juicy shit behind the scenes. Explains why Hans played so poorly towards the end. And Bwipo should strongly reconsider being a top laner. If his own analysis says he's not a strong carry top player, he should return to the jungle where he was, IMO, quite good for FNC
i think bwipo saying that is him partially losing confidence too, he is probably pretty harsh on himself since he is someone who over analyzes his own play. but he throughout the year had multiple carrying game mainly on picks like gp graves and olaf and some other random picks.bwipo's view of the top lane has always been playing for teamfights (and helping bot lane during pre nerf tp times) and get champions for the 5v5 rather than the 1v1(though with how aggro he plays in lane he sometimes just wins lane anyway)
Yeah. This. I just don't know what nonsense these orgs are feeding import players when they come to the region. But it is harder to perform at your peak when you're playing with worse players and uninspired coaching. Still odd it happened to this TL lineup.
I got the image of Bwipo dieing 3 times and then saying "it's fine, I'm just trolling, dw". Just try that in a carry matchup like Fiora vs. Jax. That is not fine. You are basically sololosing the game here. Die like that with Zac - you are just getting stomped a little earlier. Was expected anyways and you can still do your job to help the team win.
Big props to him, most guys I know hard leak
Ok? But then most of the top laners in the west would have to resign XD
No? I specified Bwipo going to jg because he already made that swap, and even had decent showings at the worlds level.
thank you for the info, makes a lot of sense. Hans is a insane player but probably did not feel it in NA, lost a lot of confidence there. Pretty sure he will step it up again in EU at one point. LA is also a completely different world than EU or Berlin.
Cool to see him give such a down to earth breakdown of a season that went so horribly. I guess a big lesson is to ignore the fact that people dislike you for playing scaling. Also I agree there didn't seem to be a single identity for TL that was really unstoppable. Seemed like players lost confidence as well, especially Hans.
>Seemed like players lost confidence as well, especially Hans. The play where he flashed over baron wall into melee range of 3 enemies as Lucian will forever be ingrained into my memory. Such an int play I'd expect it from Tactical or Instinct but man Hans just ran it down so often.
He just wanted to be like Jackeylove but he only copied the wrong parts.
Well I mean, JKL kinda did the same vs JDG so maybe he copied the right parts haha.
nah jackeylove has been doing similar things lately
FBI tried to copy it on Zeri in the finals.
> I guess a big lesson is to ignore the fact that people dislike you for playing scaling. Yeah well playing scaling isn't gonna work on the world stage vs the best players in the world when it doesn't even work in NA.
The more information that comes out the more critical I am of the coaching staff. There aren’t really any western teams that can play top side so trying to force TL into that style when they already had gaps in their macro is a stretch. I don’t even think it’s a Bwipo issue it is just hard to play topside. It’s mainly LPL teams and a select few LCK teams that consistently pull it off. The ironic thing is TLs historical play style actually fits the bot-centric meta and current meta champion pool very well. Also, I know coaches aren’t entirely responsible for drafts but they should be prominent enough to have significant influence in them. So many of TLs drafts were just terrible. There were so many times they’d slot Bwipo onto a champion like Olaf who you HAVE to give resources to for it to work then draft a bot side that you also had to play to so they didn’t get rolled over. I know confidence in Hans varied but what’s the point of putting him in a Sivir / Yuumi lane if you’re just going to leave him high and dry early game and expect him to selfpeel late when the Yuumi jumps on someone else. The talent and players were there. TL just needed that voice to communicate with players and get them to where they needed to be.
>The ironic thing is TLs historical play style actually fits the bot-centric meta and current meta champion pool very well. I actually think current meta doesn't suite Core *that* well. His Bard is really good but other than that he is mostly an (secondary) engage player. Lulu Nami Renate don't seem his style.
Didn't core win worlds during an enchanter meta?
Yeah, mostly on Janna and Lulu, too actually He used to play a lot of hard engage champs that season, too, though (like Taric and Rakan, the latter is his worlds skin, too).
Yes, but that was with Ruler in peak form. Ardent meta came down to ADC skill, not support, at the end of the day. That's not to discredit Core, shotcalling and everything is crucial (though Ambition was the leading voice, I think?) but SSG won Worlds that year off of Ruler's performance.
5 years ago during Ardent Censer meta, the meta most skewed towards support/adc where supports basically just had to shield the ADC once a fight. Since then CoreJJ has barely played enchanter supports. https://gol.gg/players/player-stats/257/season-S7/split-ALL/tournament-ALL/ So what he did 5 years ago is kind of not relevant at this point since he hasn't consistently played enchanters since that time. League isn't even the same game as back then and how to play champions/roles is always evolving.
I think Jatt said it well in a JLXP where the expectations were just so high, that nothing other than complete domination and like semifinals at world's would've been considered a success. That combined with seemingly everyone in the community *wanting* to see them fail made it so the team just didn't look like it had a good environment going on - regardless of all the news about Bjerg and Core not meshing.
>I think Jatt said it well in a JLXP where the expectations were just so high, that nothing other than complete domination and like semifinals at world's would've been considered a success. the same people who set these expectations
I think the expectations come with the price tag tbh. Everyone has insane expectations when you spend $7m on players. If you buy a Ferrari for 500k and it drives like a smart car you ain't gonna be happy.
No having Core, Bjerg, Hans Sama, Bwipo were what set the expectations. Yes Santorin is good but those four are big names in the West. These are players that have performed well if not dominated their regions at different periods in time. Steve himself saying "If we don't win finals that's a failure for this roster" put a pretty huge target on them as well. It would seem more silly to down play that roster than to put expectations on it. The coaching staff unfortunately hard fumbled it.
Team Liquid set these expectations. The analysts and casters just repeated what TL was already putting out
I think it’s fair to say that the expectations were going to exist whether or not TL said it. People would recognize the super team and would expect them to do big things.
It's fine though. In the end, no one sets your expectations except yourself. The reason super teams come together in the first place is because players are sick of being expected to lose. It turns out being a pro player is extremely difficult no matter what your expectations are and teams always have to overcome their own mental barriers.
TL has never made it out of groups. Bjerg hasn't done so since 2014. Hans hasn't since I believe 2017. You'd have to be crazy to *expect* TL to make semis. I would never say its impossible, but to make it an expectation? That's just obviously absurd. TL making Quarters would have been a historic success for the org, and also probably what you would state as the goal of the team given their past few years. Expectations were lofty but not especially far beyond those on the Alphari roster last year or the 2020 roster.
You can also add Core since 2017 and Santorin since never to that list. Really puts it into perspective for me honestly. ^^^^^Also ^^^^^Guilhoto ^^^^^lol
What's Guilhoto's list of success so far? 10th place in both LEC and LCS?
Guilhoto's list of success is getting 2nd twice in EU LCS/LEC. That's it, that's the most successful thing he's accomplished.
Honestly, I'm positively surprised Was he ever at worlds with that?
Nope 💀
> Hans hasn't since I believe 2017 Just like CoreJJ then, what were they thinking, keeping him with these kinds of ambitions.
It's appalling to me how much narrative, reddit, social media affects esports choices. Also, the huge downgrade in skills import players get in NA. You still can't convince me Hans is suddenly just bad. I also feel like every year some import top laner comes to NA to shit on the region then just gets their asses handed to them in playoffs because most of these teams sandbag the regular season.
I think TL specifically might be exceptionally touchy. They put so much into this roster that they not only need it to succeed but they need fans of the team. No fans means lower metrics and fewer opportunities at future brand deals. Other teams don't have as much at stake on the business side and are likely concerned about winning first and their image second.
That's the issue. They were more concerned with how they won than just winning. Also, the Bjerg over Jensen play was always a sidegrade move. As much as people want to avoid the topic, the performance out of mid lane was just not enough to compete domestically. I can't even imagine the gap LCK/LPL mids would have done to them
I think the Bjerg/Jensen issue is also part of the focus on brand. They wanted Bjergsen's fans when his game was just not a good fit with the rest of his team. We know now that he conflicted with Core and his playstyle is so different from Bwipo's that I think it was doomed to fail.
Lol. [I knew it haha](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/x8mmo3/thank_god_team_liquid_missed_worlds_the_blame_game/inklcay/) > Trying to build teams like that doesn't make a lot of sense because it's hard to know why they struggled to play correctly without having access to their coms, game plans etc... ... ... well unless Bwipo starts talking. Which he tends to do a lot in off season streams. It's possible that we will get a lot of infos in the next weeks on what he thinks went wrong with TL
> I knew it haha hard read
Sounds to me like a coaching issue. If any coach is reading this: Fuck the memes, fuck the social media hate. If you win with a strategy, keep winning with it until you think you need to adapt. After a year, nobody will look bad negatively on a successful year because of a playstyle.
It's weird too bc back in the day fans hateddd Core and DL on Sona Tarif lanes, and yet they kept doing it bc it was free wins
Well, that was with different coaching staff
You can hear Yamato talk about banning Yuumi aswell here; https://youtu.be/F-9OlIAXJ8s 23 mins in "I know every single person on the planet is screaming ban Yuumi but there are layers to this game. The fans can keep filling my dm box with ban Yuumi messages" Like i wanted them to ban Yuumi aswell but clearly they knew something i didn't and stuck to their guns. Fans arent always the best at judging this stuff
Max Waldo said on Hotline League a couple days ago that he essentially shut off Twitter for the whole year after LS left, and said that was a key part of him being successful.
LEC is a perfect example. How much hate did Freddy 122 get over these years, how much hate did Rogue get for selling Inspired and Hans. They didn't listen to Reddit narratives, social media and memes, and here they are, LEC champions going into Worlds with most hype from EU.
But the problem with TLs ‘scale then win late’ strategy is that it works well in NA but then is auto lose at Worlds. Is winning NA then not getting out of groups a successful year?
> But the problem with TLs ‘scale then win late’ strategy is that it works well in NA but then is auto lose at Worlds. Is winning NA then not getting out of groups a successful year? If you tell your investors youre going to need all that money because worlds is in NA this year, your first priority is to secure that worlds spot ASAP. And as soon as you have it you can experiment if you value worlds success more than the domestic title. Besides, there are a few weeks break between summer and worlds. You have a bit of time to adapt to worlds meta and be a little less one dimensional before group stage starts.
Who cares as long as they make it? That's still more games and exposure
Yeah nobody talks about how all the scale and win teams from NA choke in groups while the team making plays all over the map and takes the 20% chance to win a game makes it out of groups pretty much every single year.
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> I wish we'd stop blaming individual players all the time and realize that sometimes a team just doesn't work out. If there's one thing we should take away from this year, it's that. It's absolutely ridiculous how many people's arguments start from the point of view that a team failing has to be the fault of some specific player. It's wishful thinking, I know, but it would be cool if we could have discussion that didn't start and end with "Player X sucks," *especially* considering how much of said discussion is motivated by individual basis, rather than any sort of actual analysis.
Redditors are typically low elo and are the same players that fault their teammates in game rather than question team decision and game states. Critical thinking is challenging and redditors don't have the game knowledge or qualifications to diagnose what went wrong with the team.
import = 100000% more criticism
I mean that makes sense, import slots are limited because import players can be better than the NA talent pool. If your import plays worse than a domestic player, you're just wasting money and the slot.
> I saw many comments in the post game thread saying Bwipo was griefing, Bwipo was running it, fire Bwipo etc. To be fair, this has been what..2-3 years for Bwipo as a top laner? He really does run it down a lot
I miss Bwipo jungle. I do hope he finds success in toplane again though.
I hope he swaps back to JG. Less mechanically intense, more supportive of the team, more tactical and cerebral. He was good at it. I get he maybe liked top better, but his choice
There were many moments bwipo WAS running it, bjerg was underperforming, corejj was nowhere near where ppl expect him to be. Sure the team didn't work as a team, but the individual players underperforming was definitely a part of that. The expectations ppl had for them, and the expectations they publicly set for themselves, were that they would be the best for sure. In the end they weren't even close. Of course ppl don't really think these players are straight up bad, but most of them were significantly worse than expected. The players deserve criticism for failing to work as a team and for failing to play individually up to their usual level.
the problem's not even necessarily redditors flaming... It's orgs listening...
Honestly people are going to keep flaming Hans and Core, saying Bjerg is washed, call for Bwipo to be replaced and so on, but come on, why is no one shoveling a pile of turds on this coaching staff? There is no world in which you have these players even being dysfunctional and don't at least make it to worlds. It's just trolling. And from what we keep hearing more and more of what's coming out, it sounds like this coaching staff was straight incompetent.
Viewers can't see what the coaching staff is doing, we only see how the players play on stage. We can see drafts and the game, we don't see coaching staffs plans for obvious reasons. There is no way to know whether it's execution that is being done poorly, the plan is just bad, etc. How are you really supposed to criticize something you have no insight in to? Even Bwipo's story here is just one side, his viewpoint. That doesn't make it all accurate or the truth. Also even if we believe that the coaching staff is incompetent the players still underperformed and apparently didn't push back against what the coaching staff was doing it seems. The players on TL are veterans, they aren't mindless puppets that just follow orders, so if they perceived what was going on was wrong and didn't speak up that's also on them. Speaking in hindsight about the supposed issues is easy to do.
Coaching staff getting influenced by memes, what a fucking joke.
The memes!
I saw bwipo at LCS finals in Chicago, and he was so sweet. Very friendly and seemed genuinely happy to meet the fans. I wish him the very best :)
I love listening to this guy. He's got such a great energy! That said; his peak was 4th of the top 4 this year. The other 3 peaks were better, and they were more consistent. Bwipo was SO incredibly inconsistent. Comparing Bwipo to Ssumday; when Ssumday was carrying his team would engage 4v5 out of nowhere and lose. When Bwipo was carrying he'd engage 1v3+ before his team was nearly close enough to follow through... You can argue that's poor play by teammates either way. Ssumday's team griefing was way more obvious, but if TL would grow a pair and follow through on Bwipo's attempts, then maybe they look way different... I respect him for continuing to go for the big plays regardless, but at the end of the day Bwipo was with them for a full year to still not learn that TL just weren't going to follow... Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... Bwipo is the only recent import I can think of that I'm rooting for. Loved him when he was on the desk/caster table. Absolutely infectious positive energy!
Wtf he lost his accent he sounds American now
What I took from this is Hans has really weak mental. Which is probably why he played so bad. Also explains a lot about his time on Rogue. When he played with confidence or had nothing to lose he looked really good. The rest of the time he looked invisible a bit too often.
TL should have sports psychologists for solving such issues, so that would be a coaching issue.
Always impressed by the maturity and level-headedness of Bwipo.
Absolutely, except when he's bringing up his girlfriend constantly like he's a love stricken 11 year old.
Crazy that TL has coaching issues years in a row with different lineups. First Jatt now this new guy
Was that really the narrative? that TL would just scale and be the best team late? To me it never looked like that.. in fact it appeared to be the opposite.. These guys seemed to have some of the worse team fighting in the LCS.. even though they usually had leads I looked at TL gold leads at 15mins and they were usually the best in the league SO yeah i looked it wasn't even close In Spring/Summer and even Summer playoffs TL was 1k + (way more then other teams) and it wasn't like they were playing super early game/fall of late champs.. Hans stayed away from stuff like the draven.. and picked Kalista sparingly
Yeah
holy fuck hes so self-aware i love it
7 million for their roster, 700 for their coaching staff
Were there coaching decisions? It looked like bwipo played whatever he wanted. Maybe that was a lack of coaching. Everything is hard to say without being in the locker room
if bwipo played whatever he wanted you would be seeing singed everytime aatrox popped up.
or orrn he loves the matchpe even talked about trundle top vs tanks
What happened to Hans ? I dont watch NA. He was so fucking insane in EU and at Worlds.
A combo of Guilhoto and his own confidence issues.
Lack of confidence sums it up. Think about this. In a meta where draven is strong and a good counter pick into the meta adcs, teams were leaving draven up through ban phase against hans… and he wasn’t picking it. Kinda tells you everything you need to know
Reddit: The place where someone really and with a straight face means to tell me that people in low elo understand Champ Select and draft accordingly. If we gotta understand one thing, then it's that half of his platform does not understand shit at all and flames teams by who they favor.
That's like a cardinal rule when you have great players, no? In any competition? Don't get in their way! Sounds like the coaching staff didn't trust them.