You actually want me to...

This competition format can eliminate some overconfident teams and keep out those teams that suddenly become popular.

Overall, this competition format is advantageous to the competition area.

"To be honest, I'm already looking forward to getting to Worlds, but before that, I think we need to stir things up in the playoffs." Roland suddenly sighed.

"What? The playoffs haven't even started yet, and you're already thinking about the World Championship?"

"Looking to the future, if we want to win the championship, we definitely need to set our goals high. We can't just consider reaching the semifinals a success, can we? We're not EDG, what do you think, Knight?"

"Huh? Right." Knight, who had been stunned for a moment, immediately realized what Roland meant and agreed with him. Although he didn't understand why Roland specifically mentioned his name, he still agreed with what Roland said.

"You're quite strange. You seem to get really anxious every time LCK teams are mentioned. Looking at this year's MSC, it wasn't so bad. Teams like JDG have even beaten LCK teams, although they made quite a few mistakes."

“Then you’re wrong, dog.” With that, Roland raised his head and took a closer look at the group of external war gods in front of him.

The loss in S10 was partly due to TES's own poor performance, which cannot be denied. The loss in S11 was even more due to the team's top and jungle players making risky plays and the lack of coaching to suppress the mid laner.

As losers, they should have just given up and accepted the ridicule.

But after Roland witnessed DK defeat SN 3-1 in S10, and saw that S11 was supposed to be TES's season, yet this team didn't even make it to the World Championship, and saw his own four teams being repeatedly humiliated by other regions at the World Championship.

At that moment, Roland only had one thought in his mind: Why isn't TES here?

Despite TES's inconsistent performance throughout the year, this team has maintained a perfect record against LCK teams so far. Thinking of this, Roland took a deep breath and looked at his teammates, saying:

"Who wins in the LPL isn't really important to me. If my fellow LPL teams have a better chance of getting closer to that glory than I do, then I don't mind them stepping on my shoulders to help them, and I'll accept that wholeheartedly."

"but."

"LCK losing is very important to me, extremely important!"

Integration: Chapter Ninety-One: The Influence of Star Players

Upon returning to the club, TES immediately resumed intensive training.

Having played this far, TES has largely understood where many of their team's problems lie. Unlike most LPL teams, TES and IG belong to a different type of team. Here, I'll simply divide LPL teams into two categories:

One type is the pure laning team: These teams have strong individual players with a strong understanding of minion waves. They focus on early laning pressure and gaining enough economic advantage before the 14-minute plating ends to play the game. The advantage of this type of team is that they are strong in the early game, have great team fight coordination in the mid-game, and everyone has the potential to create miracles. They are typical of teams with a high ceiling and a low floor.

Another type is the team that focuses on team fights: This type of team emphasizes stability in the early game and is used to letting the mid laner sacrifice their laning strength to roam and support teammates, opening up the tempo from the side lanes, and then expanding their advantage by the Rift Herald at eight minutes. Of course, if they don't have the usual lineup, they also have room to drag the game into the late game.

These teams tend to have a relatively peaceful laning phase, are good at seizing opportunities, and usually put on a visually appealing team fight. However, their playstyle tends to be routine, and when they are at a disadvantage, it is difficult for any individual highlight moments to occur except for a player's "spark of brilliance." They have a low ceiling but a very high floor.

It's actually easy to understand. The two champions of S8 and S9 represent these two different types of teams, and subsequent LPL teams have basically followed the example of these two teams.

At this point, we have to talk about the influence of star players.

In the early days when Uzi carried the team alone, the LPL bot lane was never short of top AD carries. In S7, the LPL bot lane saw an explosion of AD carry players being discovered. For a list of specific players, please refer to my previous book.

After S8, due to TheShy's influence as the world's number one top laner at the time, Riot Games discovered that the top lane was a lane that could speed up the pace of the game and increase its entertainment value. As a result, the version was changed, TheShy's influence was unleashed, and all kinds of top laners began to shine. In the two World Championships of S10 and S11, the LPL's top laners never let the LPL down.

Even in the jungle position, under Clearlove's influence, players like Mlxg, Condi, and later Ning emerged and competed on the same stage.

However, the mid laner was the only one who encountered a problem.

Is Doinb's playstyle viable? Yes, it is.

Sacrificing himself to support the jungle and side lanes, helping teammates establish an early advantage, and then using the mid-game development period to run to all three lanes to catch up on development, this is a very good tactical system. If this system had problems, Doinb wouldn't have gained so many fans on foreign websites.

However, this strategy is extremely dependent on the current version!

Doinb plays support-oriented champions primarily because his playstyle has matured, and because he's getting older, this is the only way he can play (his debut champions are LeBlanc, Katarina, and Viktor). Even when facing LCK mid laners who might get picked off, he has no other choice.

But that's the problem: his influence in the LPL is too great.

Everyone will unconsciously gravitate towards the top spot. After all, if you don't learn from the S9 champions, are you going to learn from some unknown small team? That's impossible, isn't it?

Therefore, in S10 and S11, only a handful of mid laners still insisted on focusing on laning, and even those were not of pure lineage: FOFO (half, needing to take care of four wards), Black Angel (one-third, needing to take care of junglers), Knight (pure Earthbound), Rookie (carry, needing to do everything), and Scout (pure lineage).

There seem to be five, which seems like a lot, right?

However, if you're focusing on laning, you also need to consider the mid laner's champion pool.

What is meant by a mid-laner's champion pool? Let's say I allow a maximum of one ban for the mid-lane, plus a tacit ban like Twisted Fate or Galio, where if you ban one, I'll ban the other, and then consider picking one champion instead of banning it. That would eliminate four of the ten most popular mid-lane champions in the current meta, leaving you with six champions to pick.

Otherwise, if they do what WE's Ma does, banning Galio, Aurelion Sol, and Pantheon at the start, and then picking Twisted Fate, you won't know if the opponent is banning heroes or players.

So if you can't produce anything, then I'm sorry, you're just a liability, a weak point for the team.

When the mid-laner can get by and the opponents aren't strong, this might not be apparent. However, when it's time for you to unleash your power, you'll find that all you have in your pocket is a scabbard.

This is the influence a famous player has on the league.

TES is very clear about their strengths and weaknesses. Their strengths lie in their strong laning ability and fighting power in the first fifteen minutes. They are also top-notch at initiating team fights and have no problem with kiting.

However, the weaknesses are also obvious. Putting aside the players getting carried away, if Roland or Flandre doesn't initiate a good team fight and the situation is evenly matched, TES's team fight ability is not as good as other teams.

Because of insufficient cooperation.

Other teams use a standard tank/mage/priest/marksman/support setup, while TES has one support and three assassins. How can they possibly fight a head-on team fight? Unless they have an advantage in initiation or an economic advantage, a direct confrontation is just feeding kills to the enemy.

In other words, after playing for more than half a year, TES still has the same problem: once the game progresses to the mid-game and Roland's team fight initiation intentions are figured out, TES will have a very difficult time.

TES's response was as follows:

Practice like this for 180 days. Since it's impossible to be good at everything, just practice the one you're most familiar with to the peak.

So, JKL went crazy during scrims.

"Look at me! Please, please look at me!"

"Nobody watched me when I was playing professionally... Damn it... They didn't even watch my practice matches."

"Holy crap, I know exactly where the enemy jungler will come from."

"It feels numb when you pinch it."

JKL was exasperated. Other players' supports were always there to protect them, but the support he had trained for a whole year was nowhere to be seen during team fights. The two teams went from a 5v5 head-on battle to a contest to see who could kill the enemy's backline first.

Hearing his complaint, the rest of TES laughed out loud.

"Water, if one person charges in, it's feeding; if five people charge in, it's a team fight. According to the theory of relativity in the Rift, the slowest one will fall behind, and the backline will become the frontline and get beaten. The fastest one to charge in becomes the stable damage dealer in the backline. Either the enemy surrenders at 15, or we charge in two more times at 15 to turn the game around. So, have you learned it yet?"

JKL: ? ? ?

Integration: Chapter 92: Hand in hand, let's walk together, whoever cheats first is a dog.

Now, the LPL playoffs roster has been released, and there haven't been many changes since the previous season. The new "Four Kings" are among them, while the "Three Kings" are down to only WE, still in seventh place. The S9 champions, FPX, are at the bottom of the standings. On the other hand, LGD and V5 have broken through their own limits, reaching sixth and eighth place respectively.

Of course, TES played the last round of the regular season against RNG. Since it would not affect their points at all, RNG's idea was to play for fun and not reveal too much. So they played almost nothing in that game.

Fast forward to the playoffs.

Due to the introduction of the double-elimination format, TES has a built-in resurrection armor. They can first be in the lead and wait for SN to decide the winner against one of the teams. If SN wins, they will compete with the champion of the other half of the bracket for a spot in the winner's bracket.

Of course, if TES loses either of these two matches, they will fall into the loser's bracket. Even if they win both, they will eventually have to face the champion who comes up from the loser's bracket.

Since TES holds the Spring Split championship, theoretically they should be able to qualify for the World Championship unless they lose all their playoff games. Of course, if they do qualify that way, they will feel very embarrassed.

"So, we have to wait until the 22nd for our first match?"

"You could say that, so we need to find a team to play in the playoffs during this off-season. However, many teams have already gone on vacation, so it's a bit difficult to find scrimmages." White Crescent also seemed conflicted at this point.

In S10, there were quite a few top teams that failed to make it to the playoffs.

For example, neither Pig and Dog made it into RNG and EDG. Although Pig and Dog had particularly serious problems this year, as a powerhouse team, they have a system in place that can effectively help the team test results.

it's good now.

Pig and Dog were in a bad mood because they didn't make it to the playoffs, so you were too embarrassed to contact them. Among the teams that made it to the playoffs, you weren't interested in the weaker teams and didn't contact them much, and you were afraid of the opposing teams revealing secrets, so you didn't contact them much either. As a result, TES suddenly didn't have many scrims to play.

The coach was now in a state of confusion.

"Actually... could we contact some LCK teams?"

"We've already been in communication, and they're somewhat interested. We've also asked Tuo Zeyuan to contact GEN, but perhaps due to the differences between the regions, they're not willing to play many scrims with us. We're still a bit short."

"If it's just a little bit off, that's easy to handle. Leave the rest to me." Taking on this heavy task, Roland immediately opened a translation app, blocked a firewall, and sent a message to his "good buddy" on Twitter.

Yes, Roland can still schedule a game 2.

As mentioned earlier, Roland has a certain number of overseas viewers. Although he was surprised at where they came from, he didn't want to miss out on this free traffic, so he decisively took it over after discovering it.

then.

He got involved with Ah P and Jankos.

Today they're best buddies, tomorrow they're sworn brothers, the day after they're inviting each other to join their respective teams—these three are really creating hilarious entertainment in internet cafes. At first, LEC was wondering who this guy was, since not everyone has seen Banhuang's stand-up comedy.

But after watching the replays of TES's matches in the LPL, they were instantly captivated by Roland's playstyle.

This is... the legendary Asian Hi-Send!

After adopting this title, the LEC region grew to like him more and more. After all, his extreme eccentricity led to his madness, and no audience would refuse an artist who could bring them laughter on the professional stage.

Yes, there was no one there.

Now, this network of connections can finally come in handy.

When Roland from TES extended an invitation, G2 responded immediately, even making a high-profile statement saying that the LPL's championship favorites recognized G2's exceptional talent at a glance and proactively extended a scrim invitation.

It would have been better if they hadn't released it at all, but once they did, LCK couldn't sit still.

DWG: It was me, it was me first, I was the one who came first... Whether it was a scrim, a private match, or just because I like playing with TES.

GEN: Why did it turn out like this...? For the first time, I had an LPL commentator I liked, and an LPL championship favorite I could scrim with. Two happy things overlapped. And these two joys brought me even more joy; what I received should have been a dreamlike, blissful time... But why did it turn out like this...?

The moment the official Weibo accounts of the three top teams made their statements, public opinion exploded.

DRX, T1: What about me? You only invited DWG and GEN out of the entire region? What do you mean?

FNC and MAD: If you don't invite us to scrim this time, I think your status as a championship favorite might not be so strong.

TL, TSM: Ahem, actually we've been quite free lately.

PSG Region: ......

G2's actions and LCK's reaction have completely blown up the entire League of Legends community. TES was originally struggling with how to find players for scrims when there were no matches, but now, White Crescent is all smiles as he looks at scrim invitations from 11 regions (Vietnam forfeited).

Roland, who had just blown up the game, was left huddled on the sofa, trembling under the murderous gazes of his teammates.

"It's really not my fault. I only used a basic attack, and I didn't expect them to use all their ultimate abilities on me."

"Then just tell me if you started the group?"