I mean, what have you been playing
a lot in solo queue recently?
Supports just feel really like, whatever.
I just play anything.
Just like whatever I feel like I want to play...
When you're this good, you just kind of play whatever
and it just works and it's just... -[Laughter]
No, that's the issue. It's like, I don't feel like anything's
strong enough for me to be like
I want to first pick this champion.
It's like, I'm feeling Braum right now.
Or I think they'll probably counter pick me with Morgana
so I'll just pick Morgana.
They all feel the same thing, it's just I don't really
feel the impact. It's like can I play well enough?
Can I share my lane? If I can, then I'll pick it.
Yeah, so Worlds is happening right now.
Huge diversity on one side of the spectrum, right?
The whole... The lauded 72 unique picks and bans
which is... It's cool to see, for sure, but
it's not all like rainbows, right?
Like on the other side, we have 200 percent pick ban
characters in Gangplank and Mordekaiser
and our jungle diversity is kind of not great
right? As far as that goes. Mid lane's got something
like 22 unique picks in mid lane, right?
Jungle's kind of nowhere near close, right?
So, I don't know. How is Worlds for you guys?
It's been great so far for me.
I have mixed feelings on it though
because it's one of those things where you come in
and as a player, I look at what's happening with
we don't know the tournament meta
we don't know how to lock things down
and if this is a powerful pick or not
and that's painful for the player.
As a spectator though, I get to watch it and be like
72 champions! I get to see so many different
champions in the hands of professional players
it's actually quite exciting to watch
but I know that it's a pain point for them
so it's kind of that mixed feeling place where
I stand on both sides of it
in Esports and the spectator.
You just... Yeah, have one foot in each.
I'm torn, yeah.
I wonder, do players feel like it's distinctly unfair
because both sides are equally unaware of what
the correct picks are, right?
Is this like a... This is an issue of we're not being
treated correctly or like... Cause I know there's
a lot of sentiment that it shouldn't be this disruptive.
Well, I think a lot of it comes down to luck
when it comes to these tournaments, because
obviously there are going to be teams
that can adapt better, that's for sure, but there's
also teams that have done really well in previous
patches that should be able to showcase that
at Worlds, but that isn't the case, because this
huge patch and they weren't able to adapt to it.
So I think I would definitely agree that the balance
state of some of the last updates we did were like
pretty far off, no question.
I think in terms of like, a strategy of
is it good to make really disruptive changes
before a tournament patch?
Here's what I would think on that.
I think there are a lot of people who look at the
70 plus champions and say
there's champions only getting played, because
people don't know what to do.
Right.
It's like a... It's a totally new world.
That was a very bad teleport Jayce pick
or something like... You wouldn't see that
that was a wasted pick.
On the other hand, we would say there are picks
like Anivia, who you wouldn't see that pick
if people had time to really develop the meta
and they would know, ban Anivia if you're
picking Darius or something like that, right?
So there are different types of things from the
unsolved meta that we see, and so there's kind of
two ends of the spectrum, right?
There is, we have no idea what to play
we see a lot of champions or there is, we know
exactly what to play and it's Elise and Gragas
and that's really boring too
and to me I'm curious which one is the more
interesting game for people, right?
Yeah.
I think the most interesting game for myself is
one that... This buzzword gets tossed around
all the time. Strategic diversity is actually a thing
and strategic diversity is actually kind of
a tragic term now, because it suffered from
semantic satiation where people say it so much
it's lost it's meaning.
This term means that there are so many different
things that you can do. Split push is viable
stopping the enemy strategy, sieging, doing all
these different things and that's what I'm seeing
at Worlds personally. I'm seeing Veigar get picked
because he's a great sieger, I'm seeing Anivia get
picked, because it works very well into Darius
and that kind of, almost rock, paper, scissor
kind of a basic way to break it down
-Yeah.
I think is something that is the most enjoyable
for me to watch, because it means people are
already playing the game when they first
load into champion select.
I actually don't think the strategic diversity was
really that big at Worlds. It's just, you either have
a fight comp or a kite comp. That's kind of what I saw.
It's different from what it was, I think, the last few months
but it was... It's just different too and so not that
big of a change in my opinion. Like, you still don't
see juggermaw anymore. You're just seeing kite or fight
and I don't like that. I personally like to see balance
come from champions that are strong
but have weaknesses and right now because of
champions like Gangplank, who honestly
he doesn't have any weakness.
He has a long range, does massive damage
can kite you. How can you kill him? Like he has...
He has to get through champ select, so that's his weakness.
-And like, what? One of his arms isn't real?
-So, there you go. He's got a robot arm.
I do have to kind of contest this point though
about the strategic diversity.
I think we have seen juggernaut compositions
we've seen a lot of things that even assassins
are coming back into mid lane, because we've
given them these tiny little buffs like Zed, like LeBlanc
and I feel like strategic diversity doesn't always
just come down to this is a siege comp
this is a poke comp, this is a kite comp
it's the intricacies of how they execute on that.
Like, we're seeing Riven top now, we're seeing it
a lot more often. We're seeing things that
kind of accomplish the same thing, like it is
a siege comp, but in slightly different ways, right?
An Ahri mid is slightly different in terms of what
power it's going to bring, than a Diana mid, right?
Just very slightly. Tristana AD carry versus having
a Jinx AD carry. They accomplish the same thing
but they have different strengths and weaknesses
in slightly different ways.
I want to move us off this conversation
and kind of get into the next thing here
which is the only other thing that Worlds
has kind of taught us, you know, outside of like
the pick/ban situation that we're talking about
in changes is the widespread use of teleport, right?
And this is been a thing for, I want to say, almost
two seasons now the top lane's been like
okay, last year there was some tension between
ignite and teleport. You had guys like Save
in the top lane playing ignite Shyvana, ignite Renekton
and they'd do work
and you come into this season, it's like, not only
do we have two, sometimes we have three
sometimes four, sometimes three on one team
-Yeah.
that we saw in quarter finals, right?
Didn't work out as well, but it was still kind of a
neat idea, right?
And so it's like... -You have to use them.
And then throw in a Twisted Fate, I'll throw a Shen
ult if you want on top of that, right?
Right, just like globals forever, so you know
break it down for me like, what is going on
with all these teleport picks?
As an AD carry main, I love having 10 people
in my lane a minute before, so...
Well, you're the objective.
So, right, yeah actually...
And they revolve around you
Yeah, it is...
So there you go.
It's fun to be the king in chess.
So, I think...
The queen is more fun actually.
The queen is a lot more fun.
Well, that's the support.
No.
[Laughter]
We're the pawns. We stand in front of the kings
and die for you.
The queen is Darius, let's be real here.
[Laughter]
Okay, alright, alright, let's pull it back.
He's coming... Yeah.
Let's pull it back.
We kind of already knew teleport was a dominant
summoner for a large part of the season in top lane
and we haven't done a great job of supporting
you are the, I want to interact with my team top lane dude
who brings teleport and the, I want to 1v1 you bro
the ignite guy with top lane.
We haven't supported that guy in a couple of years.
When mid lane is taking teleport every game I think
it's really clear that that summoner is way too general
purpose and has no real clear weaknesses.
You can pressure the map throughout the game
with it, you can also have better lane pressure sometimes
depending on how the first, you know, sets of summoners
are used and like when combat summoners already don't
tend to scale well into the late game, and if they're not
even overtaking them in the early game
we know something's off, right?
Right.
So, teleport clearly needs an adjustment for one thing.
And you aren't just pressuring your lane
you're pressuring other lanes, which I think is not
a good thing to... Yeah, you're feeling it.
[Laughter]
I don't think that's a great thing to have
and we've always kind of... When we have powerful
globals in the game, Twisted Fate ultimate, Shen ultimate
we just knock back the timer on it. We're like, let's increase
the cooldown on this, but it still ends up not doing the job
because it's just so powerful to end up in these lanes
very early on to influence them and it's paralyzing
to the people in those lanes.
So, let me... I'll push back a little bit on cooldown
not doing enough, because to me on bot lane
I'm like, okay, do we see the jungler? No. No window
to fight here. Okay, we see the jungler, but TP is back up
right? Okay, that window's gone.
And the window never comes up for me, right?
But a small adjustment in how long those cooldowns
are available would probably change a lot in how I get
to be aggressive.
Right now, the way I look at TP is that you pick it not to
win in lane, obviously some cases you can with it
but it's more so you can have more numbers on the map.
People are using TP as an extra member for your team
to get there to any fight needed and you can have
you know, anywhere. TP is global. You can't ever fight
because you know they have TP. It's tough to not only play
but how do you fix this? It's like, do you want to
get rid of it completely or, you know, are we just going to
let it slide?
The thing that might help here is that the map is...
Has been asymmetrical before 20 minutes
for a really long period, right?
Dragon's bot side, top side is nothing
so why wouldn't I teleport away from that?
Like, I'm not giving anything up.
Yeah.
Maybe something needs to be there that you'd have to
actually give up, right? For you to not want to teleport
away from that lane. That might change the equation
for you a lot.
Right, okay, well, moving off of teleport
since we're not going to kill it, but probably going to
take it down in some form.
We'll probably poke it a bit.
Yeah. I want to address Mordekaiser
because this character, right? If you've seen Worlds
big deal. If you play League of Legends, you know a lot
about how Mordekaiser is kind of affecting the game
right now, and we have nerfs for him this patch.
He is...
A nerf?
Yeah.
Unless you count the name too.
Yeah, well the name... No. That's a buff.
That was the mightiest of nerfs.
Yeah, I'm just saying he now gets half of the bonus
experience that he got when he kills stuff, right?
So he's not sharing as much, he's not scaling as hard
and I want to know, do we think this is going to change
Mordekaiser significantly? Does he still need more?
Is this a step in the right direction? What do you think?
So, right now Mordekaiser, what's annoying about him
is that he does the jungle camp one of the quickest
so he gets to lane fast, first, pushes really, really quickly
gets more XP than you, so he's going to hit these little
power spikes before you and gets a free dragon
because he's going to push you in and he has an extra
member on his team for however long dragon is there and
it's just, his weaknesses aren't apparent.
It's hard to chunk him.
You either pick against him or if you don't pick against
him, then you're going to be pushed into your turret
24/7 and it sucks to play against that, I mean
it feels great to play Mordekaiser, I mean don't get me wrong.
[Laughter]
But I just hate seeing him, just because there's no
counter play and... But adding some extra... nerfing him
a little bit does add some counter play, but I don't see
this changing him in the direction that I would like to see.
I think, for one, one thing I think that actually will
this will do a lot in is, I think we've all been in a lane
where we killed Mordekaiser and he came back and
beat us to 6 and killed us, right?
I think that is one case that actually is going to be gone
and I think it's a significant one that beating him down
actually has some weight, right?
I don't know if it actually is enough to move him off
of being particularly oppressive bot lane and
for one, for someone who basically says
if I get a dragon, I win.
It might be a little too free for him to get the dragon
right now, still. I think maybe we would address one
of those in a more significant way.
On the other hand, I think maybe there are elements of
this experience bonus that would be really cool
in League of Legends maybe like, across the board.
Maybe if Mordekaiser wasn't the only example of this
maybe if items did this or maybe if we looked at
different ways to make different types of champions
viable bot lane, that would be interesting
and as it stands right now, Mordekaiser is the
first try at that. To say, we don't want to necessarily
have to send a marksman bot and this is the
unique thing that guy does, so I don't think we
want to chase that away entirely, but it is kind of
hard to find that sweet spot where people feel like
they can do something about it, so...
Yeah, I guess moving on, I just kind of want to move back
in time one patch to talk about Darius
because we haven't really had a chance to really address
those nerfs. You know, people saw them
in the patch notes and they're like, you know
first off, thank God, but then second, I'm still
going to ban him every game, but it doesn't feel
like that's actually playing out the way people
may have thought, right? Like, we may have
put a dent in him from what I understand.
Yeah, I mean, I think people will see this
in the next days and weeks. That patch actually
did work and he took a big punch I think and he's
definitely not the same dude he used to be.
Still probably pretty strong.
He was never the same after that nerf.
[Laughter]
Something different...
He's just a little duller.
But I think if you look at what the affect he's had
on our game for Worlds, I think him being the anchor
of the meta where you know a team's going to
pick Darius and you need to have a plan to deal with it.
By the way, the plans you have to deal with it
are actually pretty rich.
I think that's been a really cool thing
for our game overall.
I think it's been extraordinarily successful as people
get to see him in professional play
and then they get to bring that in solo queue
and slowly, but surely lower his win rate
because they're like, oh yeah, this is how against Darius.
I don't have to trade against him, I can seed the lane
I can play against his weaknesses late game
but also the nerf was kind of a different nerf
for what people would be expecting.
They're expecting like, a damage nerf or a heal nerf
but this is kind of a smart way of going about it
where his success cases are harder to get to.
It's kind of like a more skill capped Darius
where it's much harder to get three people
inside of his Q. It's much harder to keep
multiple people next to him, because the Apprehend
slow went down.
So his 2v2 is 3v3, his dream scenarios
actually got nerfed a little bit and had their skill
ceiling raised a tiny bit as well, so I thought that
was really healthy for the direction to take Darius in.
That's really what should be the case
strong champions with strong weaknesses
that are fun to play and also a little hard
to play now too. I mean, that's what I want to see.
I want to see hard champions be hard and be strong.
I also think that when you get the ideal scenario
you should feel rewarded for getting it and being like
I'm a good player, I did that. As oppose to
That was a gimme. I just spun on them and healed, right?
Yeah.
So, lining that up, that's a more visceral feeling
for me that I'm actually like, I am a good Darius player
instead of, I'm just a Darius player.
Alright, so how many games is Fanatic going to
beat SKT by?
In the finals. - Negative three.
Damn, that was quick.
[Laughter]
Alright, guess we're done here. -Damn, got em. Okay.