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!

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.

Post-Week 10 NA LCS

     With the closing of week 10 of the NA LCS, we have seen many upsets and victories as the eight teams try to make their way to the top. The LCS format is that the top two teams will get semifinals spots in the Playoffs. The third through sixth spots get to play in the quarterfinals (the first matches). The bottom two teams will have to play in the Promotion series along with the two losing quarterfinalist teams and the amateur qualifying teams. Below is the Playoff bracket found in the LCS rulebook.

 The current and final power rankings of the NA LCS are as followed:

Team SoloMid	21-7
Curse Gaming	19-9
Team Dignitas	17-11
Counter Logic Gaming	13-15
Team Vulcun	12-16
Good Game University	11-17
Team MRN	10-18
CompLexity Gaming	9-19

Week 9's power rankings were:

Curse Gaming	16-4
Team Dignitas	16-5
Team SoloMid	15-7
Counter Logic Gaming	10-11
Team MRN	7-13
Team Vulcun	8-15
CompLexity Gaming	6-15
Good Game University	6-14

 
Things to note in Super Week 10:

• TSM became #1 after a perfect week, winning all of their matches.

• Curse Gaming on the other hand, won only one out of five of their matches. Curse Gaming could not drop below third place because CLG could not get enough wins to achieve third place, unless TSM won none of their matches.

• Dignitas also only won one out of their five matches. Ironically winning against Curse. This would put Dignitas in third place.

• CLG won two matches against Vulcun and Dignitas and lost three matches to Team MRN, GGU, and TSM.

• Vulcun would lose to CLG,  and win against Dignitas, Curse, GGU, and Team MRN.

• GGU wins Curse and CLG while losing to Vulcun, TSM, and CompLexity.

• Team MRN wins against CLG and CompLexity while losing to Curse, Vulcun, and TSM.

• CompLexity wins Dignitas, GGU, and Curse while losing to TSM and Team MRN.

On a final note, the Spring Playoff schedule has been updated on Leaguepedia.

Quarterfinals

• Dignitas vs GGU
• CLG vs Vulcun.

Semifinals

• Curse will face whoever wins against Dignitas and GGU.
• TSM will face whoever wins against CLG and Vulcun.

Promotion Series

• CompLexity
• Team MRN

Have both been knocked down to the Promotion bracket

-MotionM

Quick edit: Leaguepedia had their brackets wrong that said TSM will face Dig or GGU in the semifinal brackets of the playoffs but it's really Curse vs Dig or GGU and vice versa.