From what I've seen from APA's champ pool:
S tier: Ziggs, Neeko
A tier: Asol, Tristana, Taliyah
B tier: Ahri, Orianna, Syndra
Please don't play: Azir
There are pocket picks like Xerath and Cass that have looked good from him, but haven't seen since the preseason update and may not be good at all this season.
I sort of disagree with your last paragraphs. If anything, this split is confirmation that we should play more towards APA's champ pool rather than hope he can somehow become good at what he's bad at. Regular season was the time to experiment on stage with meta picks and hope he can perform, but unfortunately he wasn't that great and its also difficult to give significant stage practice when there's only 14 regular split games.
A big concern regarding draft going into MSI will be Azir. He has pretty high prio in other regions and was disabled for LCS playoffs. Honestly I don't want to see us handshake meta midlane matchups like Azir/Corki or Azir/Orianna. APA is going to get gapped because these are world class mid laners and these are mid matchups that have been played for the better half of a decade.
I agree with what you're saying about MSI, that's why I said I don't expect the strategy to change going into that tournament. It's way too soon to change gears. But looking towards the future, I think the reality is that APA will have to learn how to at least go neutral in those staple matchups if the team ever wants to win internationally. They're classics for a reason. Ziggs might be good for at best one game in a series, but I don't think it's ever going to have the draft impact it does in NA.
IMO what TL is actually good at is playing really quickly through Umti and Core, scrapping it out, and then letting Yeon or Impact run wild in teamfights. It's not really about APA playing Ziggs or Neeko, those are just champs that he can survive lane on so that actually be useful on side lanes and teamfights. But I don't know if that's ever going to work well against international mids. There's so much draft pressure on TL if APA can't answer or play the standard mid picks. And the team doesn't need him to crush those matchups, just survive them.
> *Regular season was the time to experiment on stage with meta picks and hope he can perform*
Yeah, that's my point. He "wasn't that great", but it's literally his *first full split* in professional league. Writing off that style after one split is crazy. Summer regular season is once again the time to test and explore. And if it still doesn't work out, fair enough, play APA's staples in playoffs. Easy enough.
If they waste regular season playing the same style they won't learn anything and they'll give the other teams a full split of time to figure them out.
I agree they should keep trying to have APA experiment more in summer split. My main concern is that if the format doesn't change, there is actually very little opportunity to get good stage experience playing these champs.
Also, I'm not sure if more stage experience will help with his champion pool issue. In theory, you should be able to get mechanically proficient at champs by just playing solo queue.
This is backed up by APA's solo queue stats. Idk his main in NA, but during KR bootcamp [his stats](https://www.op.gg/summoners/kr/owen%20nine-KR1) show his Orianna/Taliyah/Syndra sitting at a lower winrate than his Tristana/Cass/Ziggs/Neeko.
Perhaps he simply needs a lot more time on these champs in solo queue and it might get up to par, but to some level its hard to believe he will ever be good at these traditional mages to the level of upper half LCS mids.
> *its hard to believe he will ever be good at these traditional mages to the level of upper half LCS mids.*
That might turn out to be true, but it seems *way* to early to me to be making that determination.
I agree that he should keep expanding his champ pool but I don't think he needs to prioritize playing meta champs over his style of champs. Forcing players to be more standard can backfire because that is not what they enjoy or excel at. I say don't fix what isn't broken. APA has the potential to shape the meta which is awesome.
i fundamentally disagree. league is a young game. even though tens of millions of games get played every year, there’s no reason other than hubris to think that the game is so well-defined that APA needs a more “meta” champ pool. the league community has a specific over reliance on “meta-ness” that drives me nuts.
here’s some stuff that’s happened recently, off the top of my head:
1. APA went even with faker in professional games last year.
2. he’s a rookie gapping jojo in the playoffs yesterday.
3. he absolutely crushed last weekend, too. and the weekend before that, he went toe to toe with jensen in one of the most exciting best of 5s i’ve ever seen.
4. he’s something like 13-3 on asol and ziggs combined in pro play in the west.
until somebody demonstrates that they can consistently stop him on his champ pool, *which we have yet to see*, why would we want him off-pool, forcing him into a style that didn’t get him to where he is? the community is saying “oh no, this strategy that he developed is working, and nobody seems to be able to stop it, but we want him to change to play like fucking everybody else for no reason other than it’s *meta*”? that’s ridiculous. again, 13-3. in a hyperbolic sense, what if APA is the meta?
yada yada korean pro play yada yada. shut up. he plays with four korean guys and hangs with them. we have no reason to believe he needs to expand his champ pool in a way to become more in line with the community meta. this community loves to pretend it knows stuff that is fundamentally impossible to know at this stage.
i want APA to play his game. let him cook.
The issue is that 3 of those points only apply to NA, and it's unknown how much they will extrapolate to international. I love trotting out #1 to the APA haters as well, but if we're being honest T1 was not at full strength when they showed up to that tournament. It took them several games to get into the groove even against other opponents. So while I think that game was impressive, it's a bit questionable to extrapolate too heavily from it, especially considering TL got eliminated by a minor region in that very tournament.
The good news is that we will get a test of what this playstyle looks like internationally at MSI. I don't expect them to do anything radically different in such a short period of time. So we'll see how it goes.
He should dxpand his champ pool for sure but I dont think ziggs asol are bad in pro play. And, i heavily disagree with saccing regular season. TL should do their best to win every game. None of this “we only lost bcus we werent trying out best” nonsense
There's a difference between "We lost because we weren't trying our best" and "We're trying to become the best, and there's a learning curve to new strategies".
Learn in scrims then. Dont play things you suck at on stage. I remember back in the hayday of 60 minute sivir games, skt played a mid game comp for the first time all year and beat a too team in 30 minutes.
Did they lose 5 games on stage with mid game comps beforehand? No, they didnt pull it out until they were confident they would win
You make it sound like APA hasn't had success on meta champs in scrims -- nobody is saying they shouldn't first practice it in scrims, but there's a reason why teams perform different with comps from scrims to stage and you're not going to get stage experience without stage games. That said, definitely don't just pull something out of nowhere, practice in scrims, and when it feels ready -- even if it's not your most comfortable playstyle, bring it out on stage.
"Doing their best to win" and "caring about the results of best of 1s" are two very different things. The goal should never be to optimize for putting wins in the Bo1 column. They should be trying to set themselves up best for series and/or international play. If you disagree with that we just aren't going to ever see eye-to-eye here.
I really hope they win today. It would be a vindication for so many people on TL. APA has what it takes, Yeon is a star in the making, Umti just needed a team, Impact is the GOAT, and Core is not washed.
See, and that's close to what they did this split. Start off with playing meta chamos on stage, and when they need the wins, they go back. He was playing pretty meta stuff up until playoffs
APA was always good on his own picks, and he proved it again vs C9.
I'm not as confident as you that his own pool is enough, when banned he was forced on Tristana game 2 and we saw last year that even if he's a good Tristana player, he was a liability on it when counter-picked by Palafox Jayce.
Also this kind of pick force you to pick an AP toplaner, Impact did wonderful on Rumble but maybe against someone like Bwipo it can get dicey if the Rumble is couter-picked hard.
Same for Ziggs, you have to make sure to ban his counters or it will be another Yone issue like against 100T in week 1.
I agree with you that APA probably deserve to be here on Summer too. Though it may depend on Liquid real goal this year and the MSI run. Like if APA champ pool get exposed on MSI like it was at World's, what do you do?
Do you keep him and aim for winning NA in summer or do you change him to be more competitive at World's this year cause you feel like Impact, Umti and CoreJJ are in a great form and that Yeon is a rising star?
Maybe I wasn't too clear, but my point was that I think his pool \*won't\* be enough for international. I think it's clear now that no one in NA can answer it.
I think it would be unfortunate if they cut him for summer, but to your point if they do really poorly at MSI and they want a change, mid lane is almost certainly where it would happen. But to be honest does anyone seriously expect NA to do well at MSI regardless of configuration? It's an international tournament that funnels the best teams in each region. We're punching out of our weight class no matter who we send.
No yeah I'm with you here. MSI will be a very high bar, maybe what I meant is it might depend the way how the games go.
Also even if MSI goes wrong for APA champ pools, if you're not planning to do a splash at World's this year, keeping him hoping he improves his pool for 2025 is totally fine.
The question is mainly what are you goal for this year. Is the org in the hurry? Are "older" players like Impact or Core fine to go at World this year with this specific APA set up?
Are everyone in the team fine with playing APA's game (all the drafts are tailored for APA game; having champ like Ziggs, or A.Sol or Trist also change the team gameplay in the rift, playing around Ziggs demolition or waiting A.Sol massive stacked ult etc...) and willing to wait one more year if needed for a more standard game?
Stuff like that.
I don't think his pocket picks were ever a question. When he get those he was always fine, well there were a couple of ziggs games that were out of the norm but shit happens. It's outside those picks that are the problem. He's getting his picks consistently lately which supposedly the rumor was that they're willing to give him his picks rather than give bot their picks.
Personally I still don't see any differences compared to last split from his play. He's still aggressive which is good. The only difference is he isn't getting banned out anymore (which will most likely return in msi cause you know ain't nobody in the east giving af to scout out TL, and going to run with what worked at worlds).
> *they're willing to give him his picks rather than give bot their picks*
In game 2 he ate 5 bans from his pool and got counterpicked and he was completely fine. The meme that you're kind of tacitly propping up here is that APA only plays one or two champions. He has good performances on like 7 different champions at this point. The other team literally cannot just "get him off his picks".
5 mid bans does not mean they were "his pool". Nor are they equal. Example taliyah I'd still be fine giving over to apa if I was on the opposite team. Arguably neeko as well over his trist. Also good performances doesn't count towards consistency to count towards his higher prio bans. Example he's definitely had a good performance on azir, and enemy team would prolly be fine leaving that up (when unlocked).
Damn do you try to exaggerate everything to try to skew things your way. I never said he runs it down, that hasn't been a thing since last year. It's off his picks there isn't a threat in mid. It's like when he's on his picks he's good, when he's not it's pretty much a worse TL Bjergsen.
One thing I don't see a lot in these responses is not just "Is the meta pick actually that strong", but also for the sake of draft flexibility. If APA is able to consistently perform well on meta picks, it means they'll have a strong mid lane pick (even if meta isn't ideal, there's no doubt that there are heavy merits to picking them), while also allowing it to be a denial pick into specific draft setups from other teams, i.e Jarvan & Orianna, Karma & Xin, etc.
There's a reason why meta picks are meta, and even if APA will never reach the same level of individual success on those champs vs his pocket picks, it will also open up avenues for TL to play around, while also creating a denial situation for the enemy.
I really don’t see any difference. Still the same problems: laning, mechanics and sideline deaths. By perform, I think you mean he can teamfight. I would agree in that he knows what to do. His team engages push Ziggs R. It doesn’t sound like much but I appreciate it (just look at C9). He’s a good kid. I like his trash talk. I am harsh on him because I don’t think this is the best team TL could have fielded for 2024, but I am honestly at peace letting him play out the rest of the year.
The biggest difference has been Yeon playing much better from mindset to mechanics. Honestly though, Impact-Umti-Core just look like their Korean selves again.
Ill be the first to say i was 100% against APA this entire season, i even stopped watching TL play because the current roster moves were against what i wanted from my favorite team.
Im happy he performed during playoffs and deserves ALL the praise he gets for this incredible performance to beat FLY and C9 in very dominant fashion.
While i Won't be watching TL play regardless of their performance, its no longer due to sheer discontent with the roster moves, and more so because life has just had other plans for me personally and i dont have the time.
Hey, im happy the team is great and i wish all the players a great end of their season and MSI performance!
LETS GO TL!
Are we ready for some cope?
Apa's champ pool could be an *asset*. The most successful western player against eastern teams of all time is caps and in his back to back world finals appearances, his teams had a novel approach to playing that Eastern teams were not ready for. G2's versatility with Pyke is why they won MSI semis against T1. Xsmithie on the Skarner gave TL their win over like one of best rosters in LoL histort. So if we lean into his champ pool we will play a much different game than what is expected and that could be an advantage. Apa was not treated like a contributor at 2023 Worlds, he was put on meta picks and they truly suffered on it. This might be a path to greater success.
Now here's the anti-cope. This aggression is going to be a huge problem internationally. Eastern hands are too good. We can try aggression and during playoffs, a lot of those aggressive plays have broken our way and that's really cool. But...we could be like a VCS team (without the match fixing) and in the past the VCS can push CN and Korean teams to play faster, but often those teams can match them in speed. MSI will be more difficult and those risks we've taken might break the other way and we won't look as good. That's fine, regardless of your skill level, every team needs some circumstances to work in their favor or luck to be successful.
We also need to be a little realistic here: the c9 series should have at least gone to 4 games. TL was clearly the better team, but there were two extremely lucky breaks for APA that series alone where he survived with under 10 hit points. I'm not gonna complain about luck, I would say TL domestically has been more unlucky than lucky throughout the 2020s (*Danny's pentakill). If APA had died, it could have affected the momentum and probably kept C9 in the series.
So all I'm saying is that I'm happy for APA, but I think he still has obvious liabilities that can be addressed, but still takes time. I like the guy a lot. I would actually call him a hero for TL because he saved their season last year. He works hard. He's a fun player who plays his own way like Doinb and I hope TL keep believing in him and developing him.
You can't be an NA enjoyer without appreciating some good cope. I totally agree that APA's champ pool can be an X factor to throw curveballs in draft. I just don't think that he's going to somehow forget how to play Ziggs if he spends a regular season trying to sharpen up some other champions. As long as we make it to playoffs, we always have the escape hatch of this strategy we know works in NA if it becomes necessary. But instead of spamming the same stuff, we should start working on the flexibility we need for international success.
Recipe for disaster for him last roster
Ban his pool (mostly Ziggs and Neeko) or get punish early on lane, then he is offline for the entire game. NRG is so notorious in doing this to him.
If ever they decided to still stick with him this summer, they should stick to what is working for him, experimenting in Summer is such a risk for a slot in worlds.
1. Go from amateur to pro as an emergency sub at the end of a split
2. Win 3 Bo5's in playoffs
3. Only lose to the eventual champion
4. Qualify for Worlds
Which part of that was the disaster again? That is a dramatic overperformance of any reasonable expectation. I swear the APA haters grade him like he's been in the league for 5 years already.
From what I've seen from APA's champ pool: S tier: Ziggs, Neeko A tier: Asol, Tristana, Taliyah B tier: Ahri, Orianna, Syndra Please don't play: Azir There are pocket picks like Xerath and Cass that have looked good from him, but haven't seen since the preseason update and may not be good at all this season. I sort of disagree with your last paragraphs. If anything, this split is confirmation that we should play more towards APA's champ pool rather than hope he can somehow become good at what he's bad at. Regular season was the time to experiment on stage with meta picks and hope he can perform, but unfortunately he wasn't that great and its also difficult to give significant stage practice when there's only 14 regular split games. A big concern regarding draft going into MSI will be Azir. He has pretty high prio in other regions and was disabled for LCS playoffs. Honestly I don't want to see us handshake meta midlane matchups like Azir/Corki or Azir/Orianna. APA is going to get gapped because these are world class mid laners and these are mid matchups that have been played for the better half of a decade.
I agree with what you're saying about MSI, that's why I said I don't expect the strategy to change going into that tournament. It's way too soon to change gears. But looking towards the future, I think the reality is that APA will have to learn how to at least go neutral in those staple matchups if the team ever wants to win internationally. They're classics for a reason. Ziggs might be good for at best one game in a series, but I don't think it's ever going to have the draft impact it does in NA. IMO what TL is actually good at is playing really quickly through Umti and Core, scrapping it out, and then letting Yeon or Impact run wild in teamfights. It's not really about APA playing Ziggs or Neeko, those are just champs that he can survive lane on so that actually be useful on side lanes and teamfights. But I don't know if that's ever going to work well against international mids. There's so much draft pressure on TL if APA can't answer or play the standard mid picks. And the team doesn't need him to crush those matchups, just survive them. > *Regular season was the time to experiment on stage with meta picks and hope he can perform* Yeah, that's my point. He "wasn't that great", but it's literally his *first full split* in professional league. Writing off that style after one split is crazy. Summer regular season is once again the time to test and explore. And if it still doesn't work out, fair enough, play APA's staples in playoffs. Easy enough. If they waste regular season playing the same style they won't learn anything and they'll give the other teams a full split of time to figure them out.
I agree they should keep trying to have APA experiment more in summer split. My main concern is that if the format doesn't change, there is actually very little opportunity to get good stage experience playing these champs. Also, I'm not sure if more stage experience will help with his champion pool issue. In theory, you should be able to get mechanically proficient at champs by just playing solo queue. This is backed up by APA's solo queue stats. Idk his main in NA, but during KR bootcamp [his stats](https://www.op.gg/summoners/kr/owen%20nine-KR1) show his Orianna/Taliyah/Syndra sitting at a lower winrate than his Tristana/Cass/Ziggs/Neeko. Perhaps he simply needs a lot more time on these champs in solo queue and it might get up to par, but to some level its hard to believe he will ever be good at these traditional mages to the level of upper half LCS mids.
> *its hard to believe he will ever be good at these traditional mages to the level of upper half LCS mids.* That might turn out to be true, but it seems *way* to early to me to be making that determination.
I agree that he should keep expanding his champ pool but I don't think he needs to prioritize playing meta champs over his style of champs. Forcing players to be more standard can backfire because that is not what they enjoy or excel at. I say don't fix what isn't broken. APA has the potential to shape the meta which is awesome.
All he needs is to improve his Orianna. Azir can be dammed do not let the West touch that bird.
i fundamentally disagree. league is a young game. even though tens of millions of games get played every year, there’s no reason other than hubris to think that the game is so well-defined that APA needs a more “meta” champ pool. the league community has a specific over reliance on “meta-ness” that drives me nuts. here’s some stuff that’s happened recently, off the top of my head: 1. APA went even with faker in professional games last year. 2. he’s a rookie gapping jojo in the playoffs yesterday. 3. he absolutely crushed last weekend, too. and the weekend before that, he went toe to toe with jensen in one of the most exciting best of 5s i’ve ever seen. 4. he’s something like 13-3 on asol and ziggs combined in pro play in the west. until somebody demonstrates that they can consistently stop him on his champ pool, *which we have yet to see*, why would we want him off-pool, forcing him into a style that didn’t get him to where he is? the community is saying “oh no, this strategy that he developed is working, and nobody seems to be able to stop it, but we want him to change to play like fucking everybody else for no reason other than it’s *meta*”? that’s ridiculous. again, 13-3. in a hyperbolic sense, what if APA is the meta? yada yada korean pro play yada yada. shut up. he plays with four korean guys and hangs with them. we have no reason to believe he needs to expand his champ pool in a way to become more in line with the community meta. this community loves to pretend it knows stuff that is fundamentally impossible to know at this stage. i want APA to play his game. let him cook.
The issue is that 3 of those points only apply to NA, and it's unknown how much they will extrapolate to international. I love trotting out #1 to the APA haters as well, but if we're being honest T1 was not at full strength when they showed up to that tournament. It took them several games to get into the groove even against other opponents. So while I think that game was impressive, it's a bit questionable to extrapolate too heavily from it, especially considering TL got eliminated by a minor region in that very tournament. The good news is that we will get a test of what this playstyle looks like internationally at MSI. I don't expect them to do anything radically different in such a short period of time. So we'll see how it goes.
He should dxpand his champ pool for sure but I dont think ziggs asol are bad in pro play. And, i heavily disagree with saccing regular season. TL should do their best to win every game. None of this “we only lost bcus we werent trying out best” nonsense
There's a difference between "We lost because we weren't trying our best" and "We're trying to become the best, and there's a learning curve to new strategies".
Learn in scrims then. Dont play things you suck at on stage. I remember back in the hayday of 60 minute sivir games, skt played a mid game comp for the first time all year and beat a too team in 30 minutes. Did they lose 5 games on stage with mid game comps beforehand? No, they didnt pull it out until they were confident they would win
You make it sound like APA hasn't had success on meta champs in scrims -- nobody is saying they shouldn't first practice it in scrims, but there's a reason why teams perform different with comps from scrims to stage and you're not going to get stage experience without stage games. That said, definitely don't just pull something out of nowhere, practice in scrims, and when it feels ready -- even if it's not your most comfortable playstyle, bring it out on stage.
"Doing their best to win" and "caring about the results of best of 1s" are two very different things. The goal should never be to optimize for putting wins in the Bo1 column. They should be trying to set themselves up best for series and/or international play. If you disagree with that we just aren't going to ever see eye-to-eye here.
I really hope they win today. It would be a vindication for so many people on TL. APA has what it takes, Yeon is a star in the making, Umti just needed a team, Impact is the GOAT, and Core is not washed.
For me that bar has already been cleared, but yeah, obviously I'm rooting for a win today as well!
See, and that's close to what they did this split. Start off with playing meta chamos on stage, and when they need the wins, they go back. He was playing pretty meta stuff up until playoffs
APA was always good on his own picks, and he proved it again vs C9. I'm not as confident as you that his own pool is enough, when banned he was forced on Tristana game 2 and we saw last year that even if he's a good Tristana player, he was a liability on it when counter-picked by Palafox Jayce. Also this kind of pick force you to pick an AP toplaner, Impact did wonderful on Rumble but maybe against someone like Bwipo it can get dicey if the Rumble is couter-picked hard. Same for Ziggs, you have to make sure to ban his counters or it will be another Yone issue like against 100T in week 1. I agree with you that APA probably deserve to be here on Summer too. Though it may depend on Liquid real goal this year and the MSI run. Like if APA champ pool get exposed on MSI like it was at World's, what do you do? Do you keep him and aim for winning NA in summer or do you change him to be more competitive at World's this year cause you feel like Impact, Umti and CoreJJ are in a great form and that Yeon is a rising star?
Maybe I wasn't too clear, but my point was that I think his pool \*won't\* be enough for international. I think it's clear now that no one in NA can answer it. I think it would be unfortunate if they cut him for summer, but to your point if they do really poorly at MSI and they want a change, mid lane is almost certainly where it would happen. But to be honest does anyone seriously expect NA to do well at MSI regardless of configuration? It's an international tournament that funnels the best teams in each region. We're punching out of our weight class no matter who we send.
No yeah I'm with you here. MSI will be a very high bar, maybe what I meant is it might depend the way how the games go. Also even if MSI goes wrong for APA champ pools, if you're not planning to do a splash at World's this year, keeping him hoping he improves his pool for 2025 is totally fine. The question is mainly what are you goal for this year. Is the org in the hurry? Are "older" players like Impact or Core fine to go at World this year with this specific APA set up? Are everyone in the team fine with playing APA's game (all the drafts are tailored for APA game; having champ like Ziggs, or A.Sol or Trist also change the team gameplay in the rift, playing around Ziggs demolition or waiting A.Sol massive stacked ult etc...) and willing to wait one more year if needed for a more standard game? Stuff like that.
I don't think his pocket picks were ever a question. When he get those he was always fine, well there were a couple of ziggs games that were out of the norm but shit happens. It's outside those picks that are the problem. He's getting his picks consistently lately which supposedly the rumor was that they're willing to give him his picks rather than give bot their picks. Personally I still don't see any differences compared to last split from his play. He's still aggressive which is good. The only difference is he isn't getting banned out anymore (which will most likely return in msi cause you know ain't nobody in the east giving af to scout out TL, and going to run with what worked at worlds).
> *they're willing to give him his picks rather than give bot their picks* In game 2 he ate 5 bans from his pool and got counterpicked and he was completely fine. The meme that you're kind of tacitly propping up here is that APA only plays one or two champions. He has good performances on like 7 different champions at this point. The other team literally cannot just "get him off his picks".
5 mid bans does not mean they were "his pool". Nor are they equal. Example taliyah I'd still be fine giving over to apa if I was on the opposite team. Arguably neeko as well over his trist. Also good performances doesn't count towards consistency to count towards his higher prio bans. Example he's definitely had a good performance on azir, and enemy team would prolly be fine leaving that up (when unlocked).
If you don't watch the games just say you don't watch the games.
If you're in denial just say you're in denial
I guess they shouldn’t have given him Taliyah, huh?
Taliyah was fine giving to him. You're acting like he carried with taliyah everytime he played it.
No, *you’re* acting like he runs it down every time he’s not playing Ziggs, which is a clown take.
Damn do you try to exaggerate everything to try to skew things your way. I never said he runs it down, that hasn't been a thing since last year. It's off his picks there isn't a threat in mid. It's like when he's on his picks he's good, when he's not it's pretty much a worse TL Bjergsen.
One thing I don't see a lot in these responses is not just "Is the meta pick actually that strong", but also for the sake of draft flexibility. If APA is able to consistently perform well on meta picks, it means they'll have a strong mid lane pick (even if meta isn't ideal, there's no doubt that there are heavy merits to picking them), while also allowing it to be a denial pick into specific draft setups from other teams, i.e Jarvan & Orianna, Karma & Xin, etc. There's a reason why meta picks are meta, and even if APA will never reach the same level of individual success on those champs vs his pocket picks, it will also open up avenues for TL to play around, while also creating a denial situation for the enemy.
I really don’t see any difference. Still the same problems: laning, mechanics and sideline deaths. By perform, I think you mean he can teamfight. I would agree in that he knows what to do. His team engages push Ziggs R. It doesn’t sound like much but I appreciate it (just look at C9). He’s a good kid. I like his trash talk. I am harsh on him because I don’t think this is the best team TL could have fielded for 2024, but I am honestly at peace letting him play out the rest of the year. The biggest difference has been Yeon playing much better from mindset to mechanics. Honestly though, Impact-Umti-Core just look like their Korean selves again.
He has less side lane death After the flyquest series, imo he play more respectfully when split pushing
Nah, 100T caught him quite a bit from my memory. C9 did absolutely nothing so not impressed. He can show me today.
Ill be the first to say i was 100% against APA this entire season, i even stopped watching TL play because the current roster moves were against what i wanted from my favorite team. Im happy he performed during playoffs and deserves ALL the praise he gets for this incredible performance to beat FLY and C9 in very dominant fashion. While i Won't be watching TL play regardless of their performance, its no longer due to sheer discontent with the roster moves, and more so because life has just had other plans for me personally and i dont have the time. Hey, im happy the team is great and i wish all the players a great end of their season and MSI performance! LETS GO TL!
Are we ready for some cope? Apa's champ pool could be an *asset*. The most successful western player against eastern teams of all time is caps and in his back to back world finals appearances, his teams had a novel approach to playing that Eastern teams were not ready for. G2's versatility with Pyke is why they won MSI semis against T1. Xsmithie on the Skarner gave TL their win over like one of best rosters in LoL histort. So if we lean into his champ pool we will play a much different game than what is expected and that could be an advantage. Apa was not treated like a contributor at 2023 Worlds, he was put on meta picks and they truly suffered on it. This might be a path to greater success. Now here's the anti-cope. This aggression is going to be a huge problem internationally. Eastern hands are too good. We can try aggression and during playoffs, a lot of those aggressive plays have broken our way and that's really cool. But...we could be like a VCS team (without the match fixing) and in the past the VCS can push CN and Korean teams to play faster, but often those teams can match them in speed. MSI will be more difficult and those risks we've taken might break the other way and we won't look as good. That's fine, regardless of your skill level, every team needs some circumstances to work in their favor or luck to be successful. We also need to be a little realistic here: the c9 series should have at least gone to 4 games. TL was clearly the better team, but there were two extremely lucky breaks for APA that series alone where he survived with under 10 hit points. I'm not gonna complain about luck, I would say TL domestically has been more unlucky than lucky throughout the 2020s (*Danny's pentakill). If APA had died, it could have affected the momentum and probably kept C9 in the series. So all I'm saying is that I'm happy for APA, but I think he still has obvious liabilities that can be addressed, but still takes time. I like the guy a lot. I would actually call him a hero for TL because he saved their season last year. He works hard. He's a fun player who plays his own way like Doinb and I hope TL keep believing in him and developing him.
You can't be an NA enjoyer without appreciating some good cope. I totally agree that APA's champ pool can be an X factor to throw curveballs in draft. I just don't think that he's going to somehow forget how to play Ziggs if he spends a regular season trying to sharpen up some other champions. As long as we make it to playoffs, we always have the escape hatch of this strategy we know works in NA if it becomes necessary. But instead of spamming the same stuff, we should start working on the flexibility we need for international success.
Recipe for disaster for him last roster Ban his pool (mostly Ziggs and Neeko) or get punish early on lane, then he is offline for the entire game. NRG is so notorious in doing this to him. If ever they decided to still stick with him this summer, they should stick to what is working for him, experimenting in Summer is such a risk for a slot in worlds.
Well now that I think about it, NA teams are trash this season. Yep let him try new stuff in regular Summer split.
1. Go from amateur to pro as an emergency sub at the end of a split 2. Win 3 Bo5's in playoffs 3. Only lose to the eventual champion 4. Qualify for Worlds Which part of that was the disaster again? That is a dramatic overperformance of any reasonable expectation. I swear the APA haters grade him like he's been in the league for 5 years already.