EU LCS: a western fan’s last hope
Once upon a time, the Eastern regions barreled their way into the competitive League of Legends scene. Their superior mechanics and strategical play put them ahead of the curve and they have maintained their lead ever since, but not without a few blips along the way.
League of Legends, A History
Many League of Legends fans today might be surprised to learn that a few serious analysts questioned whether Korea was intially too far behind to catch up to the western scene. Since the Easterners’ emergence on top, however, very few teams have managed to challenge them.
The first (and many would argue the last) two Western teams to put up a fight against serious Eastern competition were the top two European teams of 2012: M5 and CLG.EU.
In the red corner, Russian overlords MOSCOW FIVE...
The legendary Moscow Five, consisting of Alex Ich, Diamondprox, Genja, Gosu Pepper, and Darien, were arguably the best team in the world during their prime. In 2012, their online performances were inconsistent at best, but a certain distinction must be made between online-tournament M5 and post-boot-camp LAN M5. After a few days of non-stop practice before major LAN events, M5 typically dominated any team in their path.
One of the more notable events for the team, after being re-branded as Gambit Gaming before the 2013 season, was IEM VII: Katowice. This tournament ended with Gambit sweeping Azubu’s Frost and Blaze consecutively. For many, this earned them the title of world’s best League of Legends team. This period of total dominance from the Russian powerhouse was unparalleled until SKT rose to the top in 2013.
CLG.EU, aka Froggen and crew
For many League of Legends fans, M5′s reign completely over-shadowed CLG.EU’s run in 2012. However, CLG.EU was one of the few teams to consistently challenge M5 in major tournaments. They beat M5 in a major LAN event - twice. They traveled to Korea to compete in the already-prestigious Korean league, Azubu the Champions. In the bracket stage, they started by sweeping the heavily hyped World Elite and dropped only one game in a bo5 against Najin Sword, making them the first and only Western team ever to take down a korean team in a best-of-5 series.
In the other side of the bracket, Azubu’s Frost and Blaze met in what most assumed would be the real Azubu the Champions Finals. Frost pulled out a win in the final blind-pick game and earned the right to represent Korea against a Western team that legitimately challenged them on their own playing field.
CLG.EU opened the series strong with two wins, and for most of the third game it looked like CLG.EU would sweep the best Korean team 3-0. After a catastrophic turn of events, CLG.EU lost game 3 and seemed to go on tilt (particularly Wickd) for the rest of the series, resulting in a 2-3 loss for the European challengers.
I don’t believe anyone would argue that CLG.EU was a better team than M5, but CLG.EU managed similar accomplishments almost purely on the back of Froggen’s drastically disproportionate impact in their games. It would be a crime to fail to mention that CLG.EU, when against the best teams in the world, was almost always out-matched in every role except one - mid. Froggen’s carry potential, late-game decision making, and insane team-fighting stood above and beyond any other League of Legends player. During his prime, Froggen was the best player in the world.
Oh, and let’s not forget who held the 3rd/4th spots at the Season 2 World Championship: M5 and CLG.EU, two European teams that were legitimately strong enough to have ended up facing each other in the finals.
The fall of Western relevance
Since mid-2013, the argument of East vs West has been heavily one-sided. The tone of these discussions shifted until the only argument anyone could make for the West is that it might produce one or two teams that could even come close to challenging a top Eastern team.
Two years of competitive League have come and gone, and there has been only a handful of relevant results to discuss. -Season 3 World Championship had only 3 western teams finish top 8 with Fnatic finishing 3rd-4th only because they had been matched against another Western team in the round of 8. -Season 4 World Championship had a few contradictory results. For instance, both C9 and TSM were beaten 3-1 by the Samsung teams in the round of 8, but TSM had their asses handed to them on a silver platter while C9 was challenging their opponents every step of the way. I don’t think any sensible fan would argue that TSM was better than C9 on the international stage, then, now, or ever. (Sorry TSM fans, but I don’t think their streak of smashing NA only to be smashed outside of NA will ever be broken.) Not to mention that the EU teams, who all seemed to show a higher skill-ceiling as a team relative to the NA teams, were so inconsistent (or offensive - damn you Sven, you guys had the easiest group to advance from) that not a single one made it out of group-stages.
North America - destined to fail
In the history of League of Legends, there have only been two North American teams to show up against international competition: CLG.NA, when the Doublelift/Chauster bot lane was regarded as one of the best bot-lanes in the world; Cloud9, when they had one of the best shot-callers in the world.
TSM’s more and less recent results are always the same - smash the local competition using strengths and strategies that will ultimately fail on the world stage and then proceed to fail on the world stage. They have decided to stick with their current roster and coaching staff and I think, given their goal of winning a world championship, this is a failure on their part. It is my belief that their current roster either already has or will soon peak. They have shown off their skill ceiling numerous times and it is clear that, even on the best of days, they can’t handle serious international competition. What TSM needs is a Forg1ven-esque AD carry and a coaching/analyst staff that doesn’t encourage them to continue their 4v5/abandon Dyrus strategy.
I consider Cloud 9 a truly great western team and I hope they learned enough about the game with Hai in their comms that their greatest strength, shot-calling, won’t fall utterly to the wayside. Liquid and Impulse are also promising teams and candidates for the #1 spot in North America, but I still believe only C9′s ceiling is high enough to challenge top international competition, including top EU teams.
EU LCS: a western fan’s last hope
First and foremost, this new Fnatic line-up is something to behold. A powerhouse of a western team despite one clear and evident weakness that was resolved beautifully in the off-season with the return of Rekkles over Steelback. This team made it out of the round-robin at MSI with a dominant game over TSM and a surprisingly competitive game against SKT, and then proceeded to show off their impressive skill-ceiling by over-performing against SKT, one of the best teams in the world. Yes, this was their best performance ever and it is possible we might never see such a performance from a western team again, but let’s not forget this performance was followed immediately by a roster move that was undeniably an upgrade in every possible way.
I consider Fnatic to be far and away the best Western team, but my next assertion is one that would certainly piss off a lot of NA fanboys: H2K is currently the second best Western team, second only to Fnatic. Not only that, but they have made numerous strides forward as a team without any steps back. Improvement after improvement after improvement, and yet they keep improving.
Froggen’s Alliance is still the only team to take an EU LCS title from Fnatic, and likely the only Western team to ever win a perfect game against a top Korean team, but the acquisition of Rekkles over Tabzz and re-branding to Elements proved disastrous. Not only was there little to no synergy with the mechanical star of a player Rekkles, but the players steadily lost confidence in each other and this, combined with several roster moves, marred what would result in Froggen’s worst split ever.
At this point, there is little to no evidence that a “Froggen and crew” team will put themselves back at the top of the EU LCS, but what I can say is that this new Elements line-up enjoys playing together, something that hasn’t been true in months. My hope is that this positive atmosphere will result in the resurgence of Froggen, historically the greatest Western player of all time.
UOL lives and dies by their quirky picks and hyper-aggressive play-style, and their overall strength has been hard to read in their time in the competitive scene. One thing we do know about the lovely Unicorns is that their skill-ceiling seems to be higher than other middle-of-the-pack Western teams.
Origen will have to prove themselves, and I think today’s match against H2K is a perfect opportunity for them to do it. Four of the five players on this team have played in at least one world championship - I would be surprised to see them in the summer split finals, but there is no doubt that it is a possibility.
Gambit and SK have a long way to go from the start of the season, but I think the Gambit we will see by Week 4 will be a different beast than anything we have seen from them in quite some time. According to Forg1ven’s twitter feed, Gambit was actually unable to practice the week leading up to their loss against Elements in week one. As for SK, assuming they find a solid replacement for Candypanda, I think they also have a lot of room to grow. Their performance at worlds was actually quite good in the games in which they played with their full line-up.
When all is said and done, what we’re left with are the two best Western teams on one side of the Atlantic, and a handful of other teams that all have a high enough skill-ceiling to dethrone them. If all seven of these European hopefuls can continue to challenge each other in scrims, the EU LCS might just produce a Western contender for the Season 5 World Championship. One can only hope. ;)
