League of Legends

[Kaden]

That was not pretty.

[Tyr]

This tournament was quite silly and I find it annoying CLG didn't fight Europe first, because I feel like the chinese teams just made each team feel like they were gods fighting 1200 rated pubs. There was even one match where one of the asian teams didn't ban.

Apparently there's already speculation from the NA forums (la di surprise) that CLG did in fact not try to win but merely reserved the real tactics for the finale seeing as SK didn't have to be defeated regardless.

[Kaden]

Oh, well, if people are speculating on forums...

[John Doe]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLJvHCtlVVY

[Tyr]

The people running WCG is a bunch of failures. Jesus Christ, how hard is it to make a WORKING stream? Riot Games had to shift the stream from perfectly working high quality to this non-quality glimses of terrible quality due to a contract agreement. This is retarded.

[Kaden]

Wish they had a video of it up. I definitely forgot to catch the stream.

[Tyr]

I can send you replays of the semi-finals but the Grand Finals is the one conctractually bound to be viewed on WCG's shit so I don't know how to find it.

[Kaden]

Yeah, if you have videos of the semi finals, that would be awesome.

[Belle Hibiki]

EU vs. US was hilarious.

[spoiler]
EU: Lol twisted fate / shen / soraka what now
US: next game ban twisted fate
EU: fuck

That last round was pretty horrible to watch. EU couldn't do *anything*. US got the Dragon *every time*, won every teamfight, pushed tons of towers while denying kills on their own... Just wow. [/spoiler]

[Kaden]

Someone posted these on the LoL forums:

WCG Finals Round 1

WCG Finals Round 2

WCG Finals Round 3

I'll spoiler tag most of this, but in game 3 there is the single best Amumu ult I've ever seen: hawkshot from Ashe, bandage toss through a wall, and ults the entire enemy team. "Holy shit" describes it perfectly. Also, Game 1 was fantastic.

[spoiler]So it was pretty easy to see how the two teams used playstyles that were basically the exact opposite of each other. US with the steamrolling-katamari-of-awesomeness that is the five-man gank squad and Germany with the hyper mobile method of multi-lane pushing. Germany absolutely destroyed in the first game with a TF that was just all over the place. US had no answer for him.

At the beginning of the Game 1 video, Phreak talks about how Germany was prepared for the Taric, Garen, Morgana, Amumu, whoever (MF?) team that US started with. If I saw that team in a ranked match I would probably just afk and call it good. Using that TF/Shen/Soraka combo of globalness was a good counter, but it really seemed like they didn't think it all the way through. If the strategy didn't work, then it didn't work, but if it did work, then of course US is going to counter ban. And that's exactly what happened.

Without their TF, they went to more standard poke/kite team comps, but that was the absolute worst thing they could have done. The current "lawl we're tanky DPS" US meta spawned because poke/kite teams can't do shit about it. You can poke all you want, but when the other team just balls up and rolls down your middle lane, there's not really shit you can do about it.

I think Germany continued picking champions that suited their playstyle, but once the game got started, they let themselves be pulled into the pace of the US game. Still, a couple of phenomenal games. The third one not-so-much, but... y'know... it happens.[/spoiler]

[Tyr]

http://www.own3d.tv/user/clgame

Semi-finals here. Also Belle's spoilers sums up the entire finals. [spoiler]I found it dissapointing that Europe put all their eggs in a basket ruined by 1 ban.[/spoiler]

[Ashe]

Definitely going to have to try to watch all these.

[Kami]

Swain Champion Spotlight:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i19hj3LVP7A

[John Doe]

All champs are free, play them.

[Kaden]

I think I'm going to buy Karthus.

Maybe.

I don't know how I feel about it yet, though.

[Orion]

I meant to try him last week, but I'm not at home. I did, however, have a few games of Ezreal and loved him so much that I bought him.

[Kaden]

Ezreal is legit. It's too bad you got him now that he's been nerfed into the area of "fine" instead of straight awesome.

[Kami]

I think my next purchase will be Miss Fortune. Before I do that I need to get my Mordekaiser build straightened out. I've been playing so much Olaf that when I last used Morde I eneded up going DPS thinking it might be a counter to the other team's Morde when in reality it meant I'd be focused in a fight and die like a bitch. I also need to stop over extending, but I digress.

I played MF once and made Waff take over for me in the middle and he dominated the game...so I was close to being awesome that one time.

[Ashe]

Right on time for the MF nerfs! You are on the BALL.

[Kami]

Right on time for the MF nerfs! You are on the BALL.

GOD DAMNIT

Well it's a good thing I haven't bought her then. I also definitely do not keep track of the patch notes AT ALL.