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.

Week 10 NA LCS Super Week

It is now the 10^th week out of 11 weeks for the LCS. This week will be the super week for both NA and EU teams. The super week will consist of 20 matches. Through the last 9 weeks, we saw Curse take the lead. With the score of 18-5 that puts them in first place. Now the second place position is tied up with Dignitas and TSM with a score of 16-7. CLG is currently in 4^th place with 11-12.

Starting on Wednesday, April 17^th at 1 PM PDT (4 PM EST), kicks off the first match of the super week with team Complexity versus team Dignitas. On Friday, April 19^th, there will be 8 matches to be played instead of 6. The matches that will not be played between Mrn VS Dig, TSM VS Curse, Vulcun VS TSM, GGU VS Dig, and Complexity VS Vulcun.

The matches that are being played and their times are listed below:

Team 1	Team 2	Day	Time
Complexity	Dignitas	Wednesday	1 PM EDT
MRN	TSM	Wednesday	2 PM EDT
Complexity	GGU	Wednesday	3 PM EDT
CLG	TSM	Wednesday	4 PM EDT
Curse	GGU	Wednesday	5 PM EDT
CLG	Dignitas	Wednesday	6 PM EDT

Team 1	Team 2	Day	Time
Vulcun	MRN	Thursday	1 PM EDT
Complexity	TSM	Thursday	2 PM EDT
MRN	Curse	Thursday	3 PM EDT
Vulcun	GGU	Thursday	4 PM EDT
Dignitas	Curse	Thursday	5 PM EDT
TSM	Vulcun	Thursday	6 PM EDT

Team 1	Team 2	Day	Time
MRN	CLG	Friday	1 PM EDT
Curse	Complexity	Friday	2 PM EDT
TSM	GGU	Friday	3 PM EDT
Dignitas	Vulcun	Friday	4 PM EDT
GGU	CLG	Friday	5 PM EDT
Dignitas	TSM	Friday	6 PM EDT
Complexity	MRN	Friday	7 PM EDT
Vulcan	Curse	Friday	8 PM EDT

-MotionM