Patch 4.1, Welcome back to the League of Draven

It took some time, and a significant cost increase on Trinity Force, before Draven finally saw his original debut in the competitive scene. Once he arrived, though, it was difficult to get through a day of games without seeing him. The Glorious Executioner was a favorite in the competitive scene throughout much of season 3 for his ability to absolutely dominate other ADCs in the laning phase. The incredible 45% AD scaling on Spinning Axes at level 1 combined with his stacking dot passive made Draven level 2 all-in tactics a common theme, and it often made up for his lack luster late game.

The popularity of Draven among teams like DragonBorns in EU and Dignitas in NA led to an impressive combined 32 bans and 23 picks across both regions in the inaugural spring split of the LCS, nearly 25% of all games.  Though he lost popularity in EU after DragonBorns was relegated, Draven continued to have intense popularity in NA among teams like TSM and Cloud 9 causing his pick/ban rate to increase to 37% of all games played in the NA LCS summer split. Draven played a clear part in these and more teams successes in the LCS, so much so that Riot began to consider him a problem champion. Thus came July, patch 3.09, Draven's new passive, and a sudden drop in his popularity in the competitive scene.

Patch 3.09 completely stripped Draven's old damage over time passive, in it's place came the League of Draven. The new passive gave Draven stacks of adoration for catching an axe or last hitting a minion, and those stacks were cashed in for bonus gold on champion kill. The new passive reduced Draven's early kill power, taking away the actually rather significant stacking damage over time from Draven's attacks. To make things worse League of Draven was not very efficient, because it only consumed half the adoration stacks on a kill early kills almost felt punished for the very low return on the passive. Patch 3.11 would improve the passive to it's current point, using all the adoration stacks as well as giving a 50g baseline for the passive, but by then the damage was done. A few picks still occasionally landed on Draven but for the most part the competitive scene had moved on, Cloud 9 was running their Ashe/Zyra duo lane and the Trinity Force users had risen to the top yet again for World Championships.

So after his fall from grace what is it that makes me believe Draven is due for a comeback? A combination of factors that have come together in the last few patches.

The first is the passive fix. Now that it consumes all stacks of adoration early kills no longer feel punished and the longer Draven is able to farm the more incredible a lead he can gain from a single kill. The effectiveness of the new passive is demonstrated quite well in this weekend's Cloud 9 vs Curse game where Sneaky is allowed to safely farm for quite some time on Draven eventually resulting in a 1272 gold bonus, roughly equivalent of 4 individual kills, from League of Draven on his first kill. That number is certainly a bit of an outlier but a similar total can reasonably be expected to be accrued over the course of a game thanks to the passive consuming all stacks of adoration.

The second major factor is the tower changes in patch 4.1. The old standard 2v2 bot matchups are more common and the bot tower is easier to drop now. That plays right to Draven's strengths as an unmatched lane bully. Now if Draven can get a quality all in at level 2 and either kill his opponent or force them out of lane he can make quick work of the enemy turret.

Finally the lineup of current favorite ADCs Jinx, Sivir, and Lucian, all have a very tough time dealing with Draven in lane. Jinx lacks mobility and her range doesn't out pace Draven's for several levels making her an easy victim. You can't spell shield Spinning Axes and that combined with higher damage output of Draven, plus Sivir's lack of mobility, spells doom for Sivir in lane. Lucian is the best equipped of the 3 to fight Draven, but Lucian's mana pool is quickly depleted and using Lucian's double shot passive requires getting in range of Draven's axes. All 3 of the currently most popular AD Carries have a much harder time dealing with Draven than champions with high mobility and ranged poke like Ezreal and Caitlyn, or strong disengage like Vayne.

With so many things once again favoring Draven, the surprise is not that Cloud 9 and Dignitas both brought him back in their matches this weekend, but rather that it took this long for Draven to make his return showing in the LCS.

Dignitas vs Cloud 9, what happened?

Like every game, It all started in Champion Select

Right off the bat we can see that Cloud 9 has made some crucial mistakes in champion select. First they allowed Scarra to have his Gragas which is a well known comfort champion for him. Second Cloud 9 picked Riven for Hai, a match up that worked for people like Faker in the past but remains a mistake for reasons I'll get into in a minute. Finally the Cloud 9 team composition is a mess. Leona is strong engage, Riven and Elise are great pick champions, Shyvana is a strong split pusher, and Lucian is a lane bully, there's no real synergy in the Cloud 9 team. Dignitas' team composition on the other hand is exquisite, they have tons of hard engage and a reasonable amount of disengage. Where Cloud 9's team has no clear goal Dignitas' composition screams that they want to be able to pick advantageous fights and escape from poor ones. 

Hai is Definitely not Faker

Everyone no doubt remembers SKT T1 mid laner Faker's Riven play destroying the mid lane and highlight reals hitting the front of the League subreddit multiple times leading into the Season 3 World Championships. Likely having seen the same plays as us Hai purposefully chose the Riven and expected to man-handle the no-doubt predicted Scarra Gragas. Unfortunately the Riven pick was not heavily prepared by Cloud 9 as some digging on Probuilds shows Hai has rarely played it in solo queue and a concentrated look at past professional games shows Hai has not run mid Riven during Season 3. 

Hai's lack of Riven experience quickly became evident as he made mistake after mistake. Scarra made short work of exploiting every mistake and setting Hai's Riven further behind. The gif below is the first time Scarra crushes Hai, off screen before it starts Hai gets chunked by a Gragas barrel and expends all 3 jumps of Riven's Q signaling to Scarra that Hai can be burst down.



A few moments later Hai returns to the mid lane and again makes the same mistake. In the gif below you can see it starts with Hai finishing his 3 jump of Riven's Q, he then uses his E and Scarra, knowing Hai has no more mobility skills left, immediately reacts and Dignitas secures another kill.



These continued mistakes by Hai and Scarra's relentless capitalization on them all but removed Hai from the game. Hai never does recover either, he ends the game an abysmal 0-7 on his first outing as mid lane Riven.

Sometimes Objectives just aren't Enough

Despite the early kills Dignitas picked up Cloud 9 actually possessed an early lead thanks primarily to well timed rotations allowing C9 to secure uncontested objectives. In the early game Cloud 9 would secure all three outer turrets to Dignitas' one, as well as the first two dragons of the game. Unfortunately thanks to reduced early gold values of Dragon, very close farm numbers on both sides, and Dignitas' staggering 5 early kills, Cloud 9 would only reach a peak gold lead of 1.9k. A lead that quickly evaporated when Hai was again caught by Scarra and killed allowing Dignitas to pick up the mid outer turret and their first dragon of the game. 

Cloud 9 would pick up a few more objectives throughout the game, even going so far as to have Hai and Sneaky back door the bottom inhibitor while Dignitas was picking up a Baron. Their best efforts were simply not enough to compare to the far superior fighting composition Dignitas brought to the table. 

Imaqtpie lives to Fight another Day

The fight that essentially secured the game for Dignitas was actually an attempt by Cloud 9 to force a fight. Seeing QTpie and Kiwikid pushing bottom lane, but critically failing to have knowledge due to lack of wards that Crumbzz is nearby, Cloud 9 attempt to dive onto QTpie in hopes of quickly burning him down. The problems with Cloud 9's composition quickly become evident. Both Hai and Meteos blow all of their gap closers at the very start of the fight just trying to catch up to QTpie and are caught by a Vault Breaker from Crumbzz. Sneaky and Lemonnation manage to catch up to the fight and things almost look like they'll go okay for Cloud 9, but again a lack of wards meant C9 is completely unaware of Scarra combing in from behind them to clean up C9's duo lane and make the fight  go 4-2 in Dignitas' favor.

Both teams willingly engage the next fight which happens a short time later in mid. Cloud 9 does their best dumping Lucian, Leona, and Riven ultimates in an attempt to kill QTpie but a clutch flash from QT dodges the Riven ult that might have finish him off. Dignitas clean up the fight without losing a single member allowing them to pick up Baron after which C9 never willingly engage another fight, and the game eventually falls to Dignitas.

A Taste of Their own Medicine

Going into super week few people had faith in Dignitas to win any match, much less a match against last splits reigning champions, Dig received a mere 10% of the fan vote for this match. Cloud 9's signature team fighting dominance made it difficult to bet against them, but Dignitas not only brought the better team composition they also executed it far better than Cloud 9. The early shut down of Hai exacerbated the issues with Cloud 9's champion picks and they found themselves on the opposite side of a familiar situation. A team with superior team fighting coming out ahead fight after fight. 

While the mistakes of Cloud 9 played a roll in their loss, it was Dignitas who exploited those mistakes. No level 1 cheese, no gimmicks, simply Dignitas refusing to give C9 an inch of breathing room. Now the focus is on next week and the question of if Dignitas can sustain the kind of coordination displayed in this game. If this Dignitas continues to show up to the LCS it's easy to see a future with them being a competitor for top 4 and victories a plenty. 

AP Teemo, Not Just a Troll Pick Anymore

The very first game of NA LCS, the much hyped face off between summer split champions Cloud 9 and the new and improved Team Solo Mid, became a whole new beast when C9 Hai broke out the AP Mid Teemo stunning crowd and casters alike.



"I don't really die unless he brings another person because I run barrier and flash." ~ Hai

For a long time in competitive play Teemo was considered a bit of a troll pick. People would hover over him but not pick him, and he rarely saw play outside of games that didn't effect tournament standings. Despite that he was never a bad champion. AP Teemo has always been a bit of a lane bully chunking out melee opponents and out dueling many top lane favorites thanks to his blinding dart, which has a ridiculous 80% AP scaling, and his intense poison damage.

Annie gets deleted by a Blinding Dart. 

Even many of the current popular mid lane champions like Gragas, Kassadin, or Nidalee have trouble dealing with AP Teemo because he's safe in lane against their low early damage, and Teemo's begun strangling the map with shrooms by the time they hit their power spike. Teemo was rarely played though because he is very susceptible to burst at all stages of the game and as a result offers little in a team fight, and once the enemy could afford to keep Oracles Elixir up the shrooms were easy enough to clear making Teemo sort of a 3 spell champion.

Season 4 is a whole new ball game thanks in large part to the vision changes which came in the preseason. The restrictions for everyone to only be able to have 3 stealth wards at a time meant Oracles Elixir was removed to avoid scenarios where teams were simply unable to ward. The red trinket was intended to make up for the lack of Oracles, and for the most part it does, except where Teemo mushrooms are concerned. The long cool down on the sweeping lens trinket makes it nearly impossible to clear Teemo shrooms.

"He can go 0-6 in lane but he has shrooms everywhere on the map and his team gets dragon, Baron, whatever they want because he has shrooms." ~ Hai

Now that his 10 minute duration shrooms are no longer countered with a simple Oracle's Elixir purchase Teemo creates immense map control. The enemy team can't walk through the jungle, circle around Baron or Dragon, or even step into the wrong lane bush without getting chunked by Teemo shrooms which easily passes 800 damage from a single shroom with only 3-4 items.

A single mushroom late game is devastating even to tanks like Nasus. 

The huge damage of the AP Teemo mushrooms makes it infuriating to fight against a Teemo when he's ahead. You can't engage on Teemo's team because of the health deficit, you can't pick up your buffs or contest objectives because of the very real danger of dying to Teemo shrooms despite him being no where near you. The only real way to fight against an AP Teemo is to hard engage, before your team trips on a shroom, and hope you can pop him before his team can react.

Thanks to his strangle hold on map control caused by the preseason vision changes Teemo can be a strong part of any siege composition, and with his ability to stand toe to toe in lane with most popular mid picks in the current meta Teemo could be a common contested pick on the current patch. That's assuming that other mid laners decide to pick up everyone's favorite yordle, otherwise it might simply be a permanent ban against Cloud 9, allowing Hai access to one more of his previous favorite mid lane picks.

EU LCS Super Week 1

The LCS is back in grand fashion this week kicking off with a super week that started in Europe featuring returns of the often hyped Fnatic vs Gambit and "El Clasico" SK vs Fnatic matches showings of the much anticipated "Super Team" Alliance, and rounded out with the first real test of newcomers to the LCS Roccat, Copenhagen Wolves, and Supa Hot Crew.

From the ashes of the pre-season Fnatic rises.
After getting swept 0-2 by Gambit at IEM Cologne, and Cloud 9 at Battle of the Atlantic, many people had begun to discount Fnatic. The first game of the first day of super week heading in was heavily believed to be the continuation of the dominance Gambit had been showing since IEM Cologne. Instead Fnatic showed just how far they had come and how well the new patch was working for them. More than that though, Rekkles finally got his opportunity to show the world exactly why Fnatic had patiently waited for him to turn 17 to join them in the LCS.

Plays like the above not only helped Fnatic end the super week with a flawless 4-0 start, including turning "El Classico" into El Stompico, but also allowed Rekkles and Yellowstar set a new LCS record for Kill and Assist (respectively) streaks without a death.Rekkles would get jinx and and survive 3 games before it was finally banned away from him by Millenium and he was finally killed by Millenium top laner Kevin.

Hype Train Derailed
The new Alliance team which took over the Evil Geniuses spot in EU LCS had been the center of a lot of hype, being referred to as the "EU Super Team" on Reddit, and going in people expected big results from a team filled with super stars. Unfortunately super star individuals still need team work to perform at the highest level in League of Legends and Alliance still has a long way to go.

All week long Alliance (in red) would get themselves caught in fights much like this one and a mix of positioning errors and poor calls would continue to result in any lead Alliance had developed in the lane phase being turned around by their opponents. Alliance end the week in last place with a dismal 0-4 record.

A new challenger appears!
While most were talking about the strong performances of Gambit and Fnatic, or the disaster of Alliance, almost no one was talking about new comers Roccat despite their 3-0 of NIP in the spring promotion tournament. Roccat made everyone sit up and take notice when they brought us a whole new kind of wombo combo, the Unstoppable Skyfall.

Team Roccat continued proved they weren't one trick ponies by breaking out a myraid of strategies and team comps in their 4 games. Though they did give up a single, very close, game to Copenhagen Wolves, Roccat ended the super week tied with Gambit for 2nd place at 3-1 and made it clear they were a team to be feared.

The end of week 1 and the future.
After four games for every team and 3 days of play the EU LCS standings are a bit of a surprise.

No one expected Alliance to fall so hard, and most were expecting Gambit to top the pile. The real test however will come in the next weeks as the teams learn and adapt to each other. If Alliance is able to fix their mid game problems they could easily be competitive as the split continues. More Jinx bans against Rekkles might make it a bit harder for him to carry Fnatic to an even longer undefeated streak. Most importantly, the question we all want to know is, will Darien force more Warwick bans?

EU LCS Replacement Play In Recap

The EU LCS replacement playin happened today with Ninjas in Pyjamas(NIP), Meet Your Maker(MYM), and Supa Hot Crew (SHC) playing a round robin to see who takes over the disqualified Lemondogs LCS spot. Unfortunately after 25 minutes of delay incurring several ban loss penalties

We are waiting on NIP to have all players in the lobby. They have currently lost 2 bans for lateness. #LCS #leagueoflegends
— Scott Parkin (@RiotaBhorsen) January 11, 2014

NIP now lost all 3 bans due to lateness.
— Leigh Smith (@RiotDeman) January 11, 2014

 Riot was forced to disqualify NIP due to their failure to field a complete roster.

NIP are disqualified from the LCS Promo for not fielding a full team in time for the match. MYM vs SHC in a Bo3 for final EU #LCS spot.
— Leigh Smith (@RiotDeman) January 11, 2014

According to NIP members the problem was a player failing to update his client before the match.

So we lost our 3 bans due to on of our players being late with patching. I feel so sad right now. 1 minute till we get Dqed
— Freeze (@FreezeLoL) January 11, 2014

As a result of the mishaps Riot changed format to a Bo3 between the two remaining teams MYM and SHC.

The first game started rather even between the two teams. SHC was able to pick up an early aggressive first blood thanks in part to MYM's support Libik not having the Annie stun prepped, but otherwise the lanes were relatively slow and farmcentric in the early game. Impaler the jungler for SHC made repeated visits bottom lane, at first there was not much achieved with his gank attempts, but they eventually resulted in a few more kills picked up and the first Dragon. From that point on the game was mostly about SHC's team play, they were constantly out rotating and out team fighting MYM. Despite some strong individual plays from MYM they were just never able to win a team fight convincingly. Even a desperation baron at 25 minutes was not enough to win a fight for MYM as they'd instantly lose 3 members to SHC's post baron engage. The Baron did allow MYM to stall the game for awhile, even pushing down two mid turrets, but it was not nearly enough to turn around the monumental lead SHC has accrued.  About 36 minutes into the game SHC would seize an opportunity to take baron and use it to push through for a strong finish to game one.

MYM made changes going into game 2, taking away Thresh and Vi from SHC, as well as bringing Yasuo to top lane. An successful extended invade from SHC managed to set Mokatte's Vi behind as well as take away vital flashes from MYM. Game two was much more fight heavy than the first; the teams wound up splitting 12 kills evenly between them before the first dragon fell. Had SHC not taken the early advantage of setting Vi behind and burning MYM flashes the myriad of early fights may not have gone so even and SHC may not have been able to steal away the first dragon and pick up a kill off the back. An advantage in hand SHC went to work on MYM pressing down towers across the map and eventually securing an ace in a tower dive top lane. A completely uncontested baron for SHC at 26 minutes and another 4-0 team fight victory at dragon was enough for the picture to be as clear to MYM as it was to everyone else, they surrendered  the 2nd and final game of the best of 3.

Just like that Supa Hot Crew are in the EU LCS. Three days from now they'll face off against fellow newcomers Roccat (who qualified as KMT) in the first super week of the spring split. A job many people lust over, and few get the second chance for that SHC just seized. Now it is on SHC to make good use of that second chance, and turn it into results in the spring split.

Embedded tweets property of the respective twitter accounts. 

CLG left without a starting Jungler after Dexter turned away at US border.

Today Marcel "Dexter" Feldkamp tweeted that he'd been denied entry to the united states including a night in jail.

Visa got cancelled. On my way Home again for nothing
— Marcel Feldkamp (@MarcelFeldkamp) January 3, 2014

I also had the pleasure to spend a night in a cell. Fuck my Life
— Marcel Feldkamp (@MarcelFeldkamp) January 3, 2014

CLG was quick to issue a few tweets to verify the situation.

To confirm, @MarcelFeldkamp got denied entry to the US, unsure at this point what our options are
— Counter Logic Gaming (@clgaming) January 3, 2014

We don't know why he got denied or how long till he can come back yet. His athlete visa needs to be approved before he comes back however
— Counter Logic Gaming (@clgaming) January 3, 2014

This unfortunately means that as of this writing CLG has no starting jungler for the LCS season which starts in only 14 days. With any luck CLG, Riot, and Dexter will be able to work things out with US immigration and get Dexter in the states in time for the LCS, but in case they don't I'm going to go over a few of the likely jungler options for CLG in the meantime.

#1: Brian "Trickz" Ahn. Many will remember Trickz playing for CLG during IEM Cologne 2013 back in November. While Trickz did occasionally seem shaky, likely due to his inexperience at LAN events, during IEM Cologne, his play was a large part in the success of CLG at the event. Gank pressure provided by Trickz helped CLG mid laner Link run rampant over superstar Fnatic Xpeke in two of CLG's three games. Champion picks during IEM also showed Trickz can play the current top tier junglers like Vi and Shyvana. Even as just a temporary fill in Trickz could go a long way to helping CLG start the LCS off strong.

#2. Michael "Bigfatlp" Tang. Bigfatlp has been an off and on staple of the CLG lineup for years, and served as CLG's jungler in the season 3 summer split of the LCS. The level one strategies that all members of CLG credited to Bigfatlp were an enormous factor in several CLG victories including both of those picked against Cloud 9. His immense game knowledge and dedication to research clearly outshine whatever problems the highly underrated Bigfatlp may have. The biggest problem with bringing back Bigfatlp yet again would be the tendency CLG has to fall into bad habits, and they simply do not need a repeat of the underwhelming summer split.

#3. George "HotshotGG" Geogallidis. Team owner and long time fan favorite HotshotGG stepped back from the team at the start of the Season 3 LCS summer split making way for Nientonsoh to take over in the top lane. Despite that HotshotGG has continued to play and stream League of Legends at a high level. HotshotGG has previous played jungle for CLG during season 2 and is well known for his fondness for the tanky farm heavy champions similar to the current strong jungle picks. The farm heavy tanky jungle meta is quite similar to the season 2 jungle HotshotGG was a part of. The return of HotshotGG to jungle could work as a short term stop gap while CLG waits for Dexter's visa to be cleared, and the fan buzz from the move could certainly help drive interest in the early weeks of the LCS.

Obviously these are not CLG's only options, there is the possibility of pulling up someone from the Challenger scene. One of these three options seems the most likely fill in for Dexter however, largely due to a mix of HotshotGG's sentiments on available NA talent and the fact that many players are tied up fighting for a place in the Coke Zero Challenger league. Whatever move CLG makes we'll certainly know soon as they've got to field a team for the first day of LCS on January 17th.

Embedded tweets property of the respective twitter accounts. 

2014 LCS Spring Split Preview

                The NorthAmerican LCS starts back up January 17^th with a super week of games so it seems only fitting that we take a moment to preview what we’re in for. The teams certainly haven’t made things easy for us, some like Evil Geniuses and Dignitas have only made it to the stage during the Battle of the Atlantic(BotA)/Spring Promotion Tournament back in December since the LCS regular season ended. Complicating things even more are the rash of roster changes, only Cloud 9 and XDG have the same returning roster, and Evil Geniuses is an entirely new team of reasonably known players taking over for the defunct Velocity.

                First up is the Cloud 9 HyperX- train, the undisputed kings of the NA LCS during the Season 3 Summer Split. Cloud 9 won over hordes of fans, after seemingly coming from nowhere, by going a mind boggling 25-3 in the regular season, undefeated in the NA playoffs, and earing themselves the first place birth into the Season 3 World Championships. After their underwhelming 1-2 loss to Fnatic in their only match at Worlds, and a poor 0-2 loss to Gambit at IEM Cologne some began to question if Cloud 9 had been figured out. At Battle of the Atlantic Cloud 9 gave us the clear answer, in a stunning 2-0 sweep they took revenge against the Fnatic team and made it very clear that C9 would be just as fearsome as ever in the 2014 season.

Match to Watch: Jan 17^th C9 vs TSM. Cloud 9 have been friends and rivals to Team Solo Mid since C9 first arrive in the LCS, in large part thanks to C9’s Manager/owner Jack Eteinne, and now their newly acquired Coach Dan Dinh, former participation in the TSM organization. This rivalry has a whole new face thanks to TSM’s new powerhouse mid laner Bjergsen, who has made the team appear even stronger than when they finished 2^nd in the NA playoffs and took games off top teams from other regions during Worlds. TSM’s new strength will be the first real test of Cloud 9 since BotA; it could set the stage for another epic win streak or tell the tale of a far more competitive NA LCS.

                TeamSolo Mid has long been a powerhouse team in NA, and despite being dethroned by Cloud 9 they’ve remained a serious threat and fan favorites. After a somewhat rocky Summer split TSM finished 2^nd in the Playoffs, took a game off Lemondogs during the Worlds group stage, and even forced a surprisingly close game against SKT T1, the Season 3 World Champions, during groups at Worlds. All of that was before the Acquisition of the star mid laner Bjergsen who’d made a name for himself in the European LCS as part of Ninjas in Pyjamas.  Since Bjergsen joined the whole of TSM has talked about how much of an improvement he’s made, and the team swept Lemondogs new lineup 2-0 during BotA.

Match to Watch: Jan 17^th C9 vs TSM, as mentioned earlier these two teams have been friends and rivals since Cloud 9 joined the LCS. This match will show if the new TSM has what it takes to rival Cloud 9, or if they will again sit in second place.

                XDG is the team formerly known as Vulcun, and the only team apart from Cloud 9 to retain the same roster they had during the Summer split of NA LCS. XDG is a bit of a wild card team, and has always been hard to read. In the Spring split of season 3 they narrowly avoided relegation with a last minute pickup of support Bloodwater. In the Summer split XDG finished a firm 2^nd in the regular season, including being the only team apart from CLG to take a game off of Cloud 9, but an underwhelming display during playoffs left them third place. During the group stages at Worlds and BotA XDG showed they still retained the problems closing out games they’ve had since the LCS started; a problem that has earned them the nickname “throwbargains” (a play on their name sponsor techbargains) among LCS fans on Reddit and twitter. The late game problems that still plague XDG make them a difficult to predict team, they could perform well this coming split or they could falter under the longer game times that have seemed prevalent in the new season.

Match to Watch: Jan 17^th XDG vs C9, XDG was one of only two teams to take a game against Cloud 9 in the Summer split. The star players and volatile record of XDG makes every one of their games hard to predict, but the fact they’ve actually beaten Cloud 9 means this match will be especially telling as to XDG’s ability to replicate past success.

                Where XDG is unpredictable, Counter Logic Gaming is anything but. Despite a roster of incredibly talented players, and a reputation as Kingslayers for their track record against top performing teams, CLG has routinely faltered at public events and against teams who’re clearly performing worse than themselves. During the Summer split CLG was the only team to take two games off Cloud 9 and beat TSM in all four of their regular season matches, they were also the only team to give up two games against the 5-23 Velocity. After losing to TSM in the playoffs and failing to make Worlds CLG picked up a new jungler and brought back former support Aphromoo. At IEM Cologne the team had an incredibly close series against Fnatic but ultimately lost despite one of the best performances of mid laner Link’s career. Another jungler change would bring former Lemondogs member Dexter over from Europe. Dexter made his best attempt to carry the games during BotA but the rest of CLG would fall into bad habits and CLG ended up losing 0-2 against Alternate. Some CLG fans like myself still cling to the hope that Montecristo’s in house training with CLG will turn things around, but for now the safe bet is to predict CLG to do well against top teams and underperform against lower rated teams.

Match to Watch: Jan 17^th CLG vs DIG, This really is the biggest match to watch for CLG fans and anyone trying to get a read on how effective Montecristo’s coaching has been. Dignitas has been notably underperforming. If CLG can’t win this game and DIG don’t go on a C9-esque winning spree it will be pretty clear that nothing has changed in the CLG house.

                Dignitas finished season 3 in 5^th place after a very rough Summer split. The team had been on a very clear down turn ever since the end of the Spring split of Season 3 LCS and things have simply not gotten better. In the off season DIG moved top laner Kiwikid to support and picked up Cruzer as their new top laner in hopes of promoting more team synergy and turning things around for the team. Their 0-2 display against Alliance at BotA leaves much to be desired.

Match to Watch: Jan 18^th CST vs DIG, Dignitas faces an unfortunately tough opening week for the LCS with matches against top teams. Their best hope for success outside of CLG’s typical faltering will be the game against Coast. Coast was forced to fight for relegation and was the only team in NA to go all 5 games against a Challenger team. If Dignitas has made progress on their problems since BotA this game against Coast will be the best chance to show they’re back on track.

                Curse is the first on our list of the teams fighting for relegation after their sixth place finish at summer playoffs. The team went through a massive overhaul in preparation for relegation that eventually settled on only Voyboy and Cop remaining from their Summer split roster, and only Cop retaining his position as Voyboy was switched to mid to make way for new comer Quas. The team performed well in the relegation matches defeating COGnitive 3-1. New comers Quas and Zekent showed exactly why they deserved to be on an LCS team, and Cop has continued to buck the formerly widely held notion of him as the “worst” Marksman in NA by out picking and outperforming the competition.

Match to Watch: Jan 17^th CRS vs CST, The Curse lineup’s main weakness is Voyboy, between the promotion tournament and his own soloqueue stream it’s clear that Voyboy is still adjusting to his new role in mid lane. Going up against a star mid laner like Coast’s Shiphtur will be a real test for Voyboy and Curse will struggle if he can’t manage to hold his own in lane.

                Coast has always been an inconsistent team, barely avoiding relegation in the inaugural split of the LCS, then landing in seventh place in Summer split only ahead of the abysmal Velocity. They hoped to fix their problems by replacing former Marksman DontMashMe, who had the lowest KDA in the summer split, with the relatively unknown Wizfujion. Despite requalifying for the LCS the intensely close 3-2 series against The Walking Zed makes it difficult to tell just how improved Coast really is.

Match to Watch: Jan 19^th XDG vs CST, the match against XDG is probably the toughest matchup for Coast in week 1, and it could go a long way to seeing what Coast has learned during their time in the North American Challenger League during the LCS break. If they can convincingly defeat XDG there’s a good chance Coast will be a highly competitive team in the Spring split.

                EvilGeniuses is probably the hardest team to predict on this list. Their spot was held by Velocity during the Summer split but that entire roster was dissolved. In its place the new Evil Geniuses was formed, their name sponsor EG had previously held a team in the European LCS with three members of this roster, Snoopeh, Yellowpete, and Krepo. The team rounded out the roster with the somewhat known Challenger player Pobelter in mid and new comer Innox in the top lane. The roster performed well in the promotion tournament, successfully holding the LCS spot against DTG, but it’s impossible to tell how the roster will match up against the top teams in NA until we see them play.

Match to Watch: Jan 17^th EG vs XDG, the very first match of the Spring split will tell us a lot about how competitive EG will be in the NA LCS. If EG can convincingly beat XDG it will likely herald the NA LCS being an all-out brawl between all the teams. If however EG is unable to perform against XDG it will be difficult for EG to break into the top 4 NA teams.

                On paper the Spring split of the NA LCS 2014 season looks more competitive than either split was last season. Thankfully we don’t have long to wait to see for ourselves as the action kicks off at noon Pacific Time January 17^th from Riot’s new studio.