My opinion on Team Curse and the welcome of their new Support player.

Earlier today was the announcement of Team Curse welcoming a new Support player to their roster. If you follow the European competitive scene, you may know him as one of the best Supports in that region. However, not only is he the best support, he has several different titles, best known as the Support Carry and the Thresh Prince for his amazing Thresh skills and his aggressive Support role. Yes, Gambit Gaming’s own Edward. 

I want to commemorate Curse’s manager, Liquid112, on achieving the ability to get an all-star player from another region to join a top team in the North American region. This has only been done one other time with CLG and the addition of Korea’s Locodoco for their Support player in December. I think this is good not only for Curse, but also for the NA region. Some may argue that Cop, Curse’s ADC, can be pretty passive at times, but some also say that it’s because Cop plays with passive supports. Edward’s aggressive prowess and aggressive champion pool is going to put Curse on the top of the chart for the Summer Split and hopefully more in their future.

One thing I’m feeling iffy about is Rhux. I know from all of Rhux’s old play as a Support player for Curse that Rhux isn’t the greatest Support. Here you have an unknown player who ends up winning Curse’s 1v1 tournament and then all of sudden gets a free Support position onto Curse. Later on, Rhux would be put as a sub for Curse while Elementz got his old position back. In January, Curse Academy was formed with Pobelter, IWillDominate, Altec, YoDa, and Rhux, where Rhux played Top lane. Anyway, Rhux just gets traded in and out of the Curse roster so much that I feel bad for the guy because he finally gets the chance to be on a big team, but then gets kicked back onto an amateur team and also a sub for Curse. 

Overall, I hope Curse does well with Edward. Edward is a strong pick to add to any team. I also hope that this change inspires other team managers to look at regional players and see if they can bring them to NA and vice versa.

For Curse’s own article on acquiring Edward, look here. Remember to tune into the NA LCS on June 12th!

Overview of the Season 3 Summer Promotion Series

 This weekend kicked off with the Season 3 summer Promotion series for the North American region. On the first day, the Challenger teams faced off in a best of three games.

The first match of the day was Quantic Gaming (formerly team Orbit). Quantic faced off against team Astral Poke that resulted in Quantic taking the first win with a 2-0 lead. Next, is Velocity eSports (formerly Dirt Nap Gaming) versus The Salad Bar. The Salad Bar picked up the first game but lost the next two matches to Velocity eSports, giving Velocity the chance to fight team Marn on Saturday. After the Velocity win, team Summon and Ranked 5’s winners Fidelis matched up and team Summon got the win with 2-0. The final match of the day would be between team DoubleBuff (formerly known as 1 Trick Ponies) and Azure Cats. Azure Cats bring home the win 2-0 and get to face CLG on Sunday.

After the Challenger matches were completed, the winners of those matches got to face the bottom two teams of the spring LCS and the two losing teams of the Playoffs. The matches played out to a best of five games.

Quantic Gaming got to face off against the bottom team of the spring LCS, team CompLexity. Quantic looked strong in all of the games they played and took home the next spot in the summer season, knocking CompLexity out 3-0. With their win against The Salad Bar the day before, Velocity eSports got its hands on seventh placed, team Marn. Marn played strong and definitely their best, however got the losing decision of going 2-3 against Velocity eSports. Since team Marn are now out of the LCS, word of Marn, their manager, is that the team will now disband (http://marnorz.blogspot.com/2013/05/so.html). Sunday started the final day of the Promotion series that consisted of matches of Dignitas vs team Summon and Azure Cats versus CLG. Since Dignitas lost against Good Game University on the first day of the Playoffs, Dignitas had to save themselves when brought up against team Summon. Dignitas played the best they could to take the win 3-1 against team Summon. Team Dignitas is back in the summer LCS! The final matches would become the strongest matches of the entire weekend with Counter Logic Gaming vs Azure Cats. CLG takes home the spot to remain in the LCS for the summer as they won against Azure Cats 3-0, giving Azure Cats no breathing room, much like Quantic Gaming did to team CompLexity.

With the Promotion series now over, the final teams that will be in the summer season are as followed:

Team Solomid

Good Game University

Team Curse

Team Vulcun

Quantic Gaming

Velocity eSports

Team Dignitas

Counter Logic Gaming

My Opinion on the LCS

I don't think the LCS is fair for competing teams nor the whole “Job Security”. The Season begins with a Qualifying/Promotion series to see which four other teams make it into the actual Season. With the Spring season now over, it begins with the summer Promotion series, where the bottom four teams of the Spring season now need to face one of the four teams that beat another qualifying team (8 qualifying teams in total, 4 teams from the bottom-four of the last season’s LCS).

I do have a conflicting pro/con of this. The Pro is that it allows new teams (the qualifiers)  to come into the LCS rather than the same eight teams that we see in the LCS already. The Con, however, is that a team that doesn't qualify for the next season’s LCS has to win either a qualifying event spot or get Top 5 in Ranked 5’s in order to place in the Promotion series.

Some teams might disband if they feel like they cannot get a high enough rank to place. Take for example, CLG. CLG lost the Playoff match against Vulcun 2-1. If CLG loses to Azure Cats tomorrow night, they might disband because of their recent lack of success and games won. This doesn't necessarily mean that the players on that team will retire, but it will set the players back. The disbanding team members will then have to find a new team and climb that Top 5 ladder or qualify within events just to only get into the LCS Qualifiers or Promotion series.

Even though it depends on the region, I’ll use North America for example, the teams aren't consistent enough. GGU, who placed 2^nd in the Spring Playoffs, almost beating TSM 2-3, were the team that got 6^th place in the spring season alone. If GGU can beat team Dignitas and team Curse, both 2-1 in the Playoffs, then it really does say something about consistency.  As I'm writing this, team Complexity just lost 3-0 to team Quantic, who is a qualifying team. Complexity did so well in the final weeks of the spring season but yet is falling short to a qualifying team that didn't even qualify for the spring Qualifiers.

I know that things change; like Quantic’s roster did with adding Meteos, Balls, and SneakyCastro, which help become a better factor for winning, but for the teams that don't have constant roster changes (CLG and team Dignitas for example), it might hinder that team’s future. If these teams don't improve on what is making them lose matches, they will either disband or will never be seen in the LCS again.

I hope this all makes sense, but I just don't agree with the format Riot is using for successful teams, especially if the region is not consistent. Maybe it might all change next season, for example, TSM. TSM was in 4^th place by the end of Week 9. With Dignitas and Curse losing their matches and TSM winning all five of their matches, it brought TSM straight into 1^st. One factor why this happened is because of their roster change of replacing Chaox with Wildturtle in Week 6. If TSM becomes consistent because of Wildturtle, then you have one more consistent team within the region.