League Rundown - Episode 520: Duffy’s been gone a month and League already died

[00:00:31] Speaker A: At the table with Messiah tanking it up. [00:00:34] Speaker B: I do not believe he just leaves. I cannot understand this game. [00:00:46] Speaker A: Unicorns of love. It was the nexus. [00:01:07] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to episode 520 of the League rundown. This episode is lovingly entitled. Duffy's been gone a month and league already died. It's because it's going to be the LEC playoff preview, and that's it. We got no League of Legends to cover in terms of actual gameplay from our usual LEc and LCS leagues, so it'll be a little looser of an episode. Little, maybe quicker. And definitely more silly. I'm your host, Kangas, and I'm joined by four esteemed co hosts. [00:01:37] Speaker C: Up first, the ever present Jackson twitch TV Jackzoman. I made Emerald. Come watch. [00:01:44] Speaker B: How's the ranks grind been? [00:01:46] Speaker C: I made Emerald. [00:01:47] Speaker B: Let's go. Yeah, and then I got demoted out. [00:01:51] Speaker C: Of it, and then I made it back again. [00:01:54] Speaker B: Wow. A roller coaster of emotions. Well, make sure to follow him on twitch to follow along with his ranked shenanigans. But we also have joining us as always, he's slickle. [00:02:04] Speaker D: It's Bickle for anybody that's looking for something to fill that League of Legends hole in your heart. Check out the captain Flowers iron five v five show match he posted on YouTube. Phenomenal. [00:02:17] Speaker C: Yes. [00:02:17] Speaker B: I haven't got a chance to check it out myself, but I've heard that it was hilarious. Raz in particular was apparently just a character on that entire stream. So excited to check that one out. We also have joining us, Mister Mazel Piel. [00:02:31] Speaker E: Hello. Excited to be reunited with you, Kangi. But excited to get to talk with you guys tonight. With some previews, potentially. [00:02:40] Speaker B: You're also the only one with actual league games to talk about because LPL. [00:02:45] Speaker E: I am. [00:02:47] Speaker B: So we're gonna catch up on all that in a little bit here. But before that, our final host, it's Mister Hawk. Well, you didn't say come up with something cooler for you. Yeah, I don't know. [00:02:59] Speaker A: You didn't say what? To stay in this week at least, so that's good, actually. [00:03:04] Speaker B: Happy to see you this time. [00:03:05] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:03:05] Speaker A: Yeah. But you'll come up with something, you know, it's gotta. It's gotta flow off naturally, so. [00:03:11] Speaker B: Yeah, it's like, you know, old enough to drink, young enough to play with chalk. It's hawk. Something like that. [00:03:18] Speaker A: That's crazy, bro. [00:03:21] Speaker B: You know, again, we'll workshop it. [00:03:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I definitely work in progress. I don't think you want to. [00:03:26] Speaker E: I don't want to go to that workshop. [00:03:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, well, like I said, there's not a lot of league to talk about this week, so let's get into the news to start things off. First off, Lecithin returning July 12, so we will be able to preview what the beginning of playoffs should look like and our expectations for it. But lcs, we're gonna have to wait for quite a while. It was back July 20, but I believe there will be some like fun content show matches this week to tide us over until next week when the official summer season will pick back up. LCK happened bickle, do you have any updates for how LCK is looking and what the standings are currently like in summer split? [00:04:02] Speaker D: Not a damn thing has changed since we last checked in. There were games last night and that's about it. T one came right back out from the break, nearly lost to bro, but took out the win and KT beat one of the bottom teams in the league. So nothing too chaotic or exciting going on. [00:04:21] Speaker B: Is KT making a resurgence in summer? [00:04:23] Speaker D: No? Okay, fun matchups for this week though. We get Gen g versus dK on Saturday. [00:04:31] Speaker B: Okay, that'll be fun to check that one out. If you want to watch an LCK match, have that on your calendar. LPL was also playing and has been playing. So Mazelle, catch us up on the happenings in the LPL specifically for me. Remind me where we are in the kind of like weird summer format because I know it's kind of confusing stages. [00:04:49] Speaker E: So we have made it to the rumble stage. This is the second stage of the split. Teams have been split up into two groups, group ascend and group nirvana. Group ascend having nine teams, group nirvana having eight, consider them as a and b. So the top teams from the placement stage, at least the top two teams for most groups and the top three for group D, made it to group ascend. And all the teams that did not make it made it to group nirvana. Now, moving forward from that, it's all best of ones, best of threes, but single round robin. Top seven teams from group ascend qualify for playoffs. The bottom two teams from group ascend and the top four teams from group Nirvana go to a play in stage to playoffs. And bottom four teams are eliminated from summer and will not be seen again until next year. [00:05:40] Speaker B: That is. Dude, that's so brutal for the teams in that Nirvana group. And is that where the nirvana memes that I've been seeing have been coming from? [00:05:49] Speaker E: Yeah, it's pretty funny. It's not. It's funny because they adapted it to the, like, english audience, because in China, it was originally considered. I think I talked to you about it, but it was like, originally considered gonna be like rise for the top group and then Phoenix for the second group and then path of nights for the play in stage. So it's gonna be like all the history of the LPL world champions, but. [00:06:13] Speaker C: Yeah, they're just encouraging these teams to come as you are, dude. [00:06:18] Speaker E: Nightmare makes jokes and puns about it all the time. There was one game where he literally just went back to back, like five different song names in the same sentence, like, wow. [00:06:28] Speaker B: I've seen a longtime friend of the podcast, Kelsey Moser, tweeting about this. She's just tweeting out the dictionary definition of what Nirvana means. So community's been having a lot of fun with it. Is Twitch chat doing stuff with that? Is this just like a coffin? [00:06:45] Speaker E: Fortunately, our Twitch chat has been emote only since we don't have a mod team. So it will always be until we get a mod team. [00:06:53] Speaker B: Well, we'll have to figure out. [00:06:54] Speaker E: There's a lot of emotes, though. A lot of you. I do want to give a quick breakdown of the actual group setups, though. So group ascend. Right now, the top two teams are anyone's legend and LNG, BLG and top esports have obviously not played any games yet. FPX are zero two. Right now, we have some big games coming up. Al versus JDG will be this Sunday, so the 14th, which will be really, really good series. Group Nirvana, everybody's played a game at least. RNG are zero two, as expected as they have been. A dumpster fire all split. And right now, OMG Ra and team, we are the ones in first place. All at one and zero. Most of the teams have played two games. Unfortunately. Ultra prime, a favorite from the group stage, or at least the placement stage, is zero one now and got zero two ed in their game. So not feeling too good on that, but that's a little bit of the catch up. [00:07:50] Speaker B: Cool. Yeah, it's still pretty early, so it's kind of hard to tell, like, who's the best right now because we haven't seen a lot of teams against each other, and single round robin's always going to be tough for that anyway. But yeah, LpL definitely making things interesting with their format. [00:08:04] Speaker C: If that's the catch up, does that mean that the rest of the news is the mustard? [00:08:09] Speaker B: Boo Jackson, why did you feel that? [00:08:13] Speaker E: Don't hate on relish. Leave that out. Then you got throwing in the other condiments what are onions? [00:08:18] Speaker B: Huh? How about Sriracha? [00:08:20] Speaker E: Sriracha? [00:08:21] Speaker B: Sriracha's come into the public zeitgeist. Lettuce included in this. [00:08:25] Speaker E: Sliced tomatoes. [00:08:27] Speaker B: I don't think lettuce counts. [00:08:29] Speaker E: It does, though, because it's a Chicago dog, isn't it? It's like lettuce. [00:08:33] Speaker C: This is how the listeners know that we don't have a lot of stuff. [00:08:36] Speaker E: To cover this week. I'm trying my best here. All right. [00:08:40] Speaker B: Okay. But lettuce is not a condiment. No, we gotta settle something here. Are we talking toppings or condiments? [00:08:45] Speaker D: So for anybody wondering, a classical. The Chicago hot dog has yellow mustard, white chopped onions, bright green pickled relish, a dill pickle, spear tomato slices, pepper, and celery salt. [00:09:00] Speaker E: Dang. It was celery. It wasn't lettuce. [00:09:02] Speaker B: Oh, sorry. [00:09:03] Speaker C: It's not celery pepper. [00:09:03] Speaker D: It's a pickled pepper. [00:09:05] Speaker E: It's green. Yeah, they are awful to eat, by the way. [00:09:09] Speaker D: Not even ketchup. [00:09:11] Speaker B: It's like one of those burgers. Cause you have just way too big to even think about eating. How are you supposed to approach this? I'm intimidated by those when they come to Joe steak knife in them. [00:09:21] Speaker E: At that point, I want to make a. Some kind of meal with all the pre condiment stuff. So, like. So you don't have ketchup, you have tomatoes because. Ketchup. Ketchup just have mustard seeds. You need mayonnaise. You put eggs. I mean, I guess you need a combo of eggs and chicken. So then you get your protein. Cause then that's how you get mayonnaise. [00:09:46] Speaker B: That sounds like one of those, like, chef shows where there's, like, a challenge of, like, makeup, make a hot dog, but you can only use the. The core ingredients of the condiments. That'd be really interesting. All right, we'll be on that later. Again, not a lot to talk about. So we are milking this for as much as we can, but there is a couple other bits of news to talk about. First off, 30, where we have, like, we should just have a segment called Surdy watch on the show at this point, because we've talked about him so many times. He's been kind of on Twitter, blast off on socials for a lot of cool achievements. His latest one, he's a top laner in Nacl, in case you haven't heard his name. A lot of people expect him to make lcs anytime now, but he just hit the solo queue. LP record highest ever for Na or EU. West at 21 54. That's crazy. [00:10:36] Speaker E: That's crazy. Yeah, yeah, that's. That's just so insane. I also, like, really quick that ls was like, commenting on somebody else's tweet that was talking about Serdi should be at lcs or whatever. And then Siri went and commented on, lsst, coach me, please. And I just love that. Come on. The guy's too much. [00:10:57] Speaker A: I think it's so interesting, too, that Serti is apparently so far above the rest of the ladder. He's like 500, 600 LP up on. I think Tony Top is number two right now that he only gets red side in his games because for whatever reason, that's the way that the algorithm works, which probably actually helps a lot when you're playing. Playing top lane. But yeah, still, I mean, the guy is a fucking grinder. [00:11:18] Speaker C: Specifically, it puts the slightly higher MMR overall on the team on red side as an intentional, like, trying to offset the blue side advantage that is perceived. [00:11:29] Speaker B: To be perma counter pick. Let's go. That's how you do it as a top planner, I guess. Just grind LP and then your games get easier. [00:11:37] Speaker C: Only if you're literally at the top of the ladder. [00:11:40] Speaker B: Fair enough. Probably not. [00:11:42] Speaker A: Just break the lp record and you'll have. You'll be able to do that, no problem. [00:11:46] Speaker B: Yeah, it's that simple. But I think it's so cool that, like, we're in the year 2024. It's what, season? 14 since this game had a ranked ladder. Now, I know that we've introduced, like, it's changed. It used to just be diamond. It was, like, the highest you could get to. But that we just broke a record in 2024 is still really cool to me that there's players willing to grind for that. Now, the question is, is it more impressive or less impressive, though? Because from my understanding, there have been, like, maybe it's arguable that the ladder is less competitive now than it was in, like, 2018, 2019 when we had a bigger player base. But I don't really know enough about the player base to speak confidently on that. [00:12:25] Speaker A: I mean, I don't either. But the fact that he's, like, I just said, five or 600 LP up on number two surely means this is more impressive, right? Like, surely. I know there's, like, lp inflation and, like, all that kind of stuff right now or whatever, but, like, I feel like it's not even about breaking the record, it's just how much higher can he get than everybody else? I think that's what makes it crazy. [00:12:51] Speaker D: He is currently 537 LP above rank number two. And you guys mentioned the disparity between red side versus blue side. He has played a total of 307 ranked games. 212 of them have been on red side. 66. [00:13:10] Speaker B: That's like two thirds. [00:13:12] Speaker D: It's absurd. [00:13:14] Speaker B: That's a lot. Yeah. Shout out to 30. I mean, it's not just this record that he broke, it's the fact of, like, all the other cool stuff that he's been able to do, like hitting GM on. Was it. Was it hitting GM or Masters on 100% win rate on an account? [00:13:28] Speaker D: I think it was Masters. [00:13:31] Speaker B: Okay, maybe masters. But either way, he also hit like. I think it was. He hit GM in like 50 games or something crazy like that with like a 73% win rate on one account. He's just been grinding and showing, you know, what the power of being a good player on the Siloq ladder can do for your brand because we felt that he was lcs ready for a while, but funnily enough, he's got way more people talking about him from this than from winning an ACL multiple times. Yeah, cool. Well, now let's move on to the next bit of news. There's a bit of drama going around at the collegiate scene in North America. Sea Lul and Sea vowel had. Apparently this information has been known by the teams for quite a while, but it's just hit the public sphere with a tweet that came out and essentially the trophies that the teams are handed when they win Celol and Cval are basically props that Riot uses to just demonstrate, hey, you won. But that's not the actually trophy that they get. Typically in the past, Riot would then ship them the trophy, but this year, teams were made aware after winning that they would have to pay for their own trophies, and they are not cheap, let me tell you. If you want to go check out the actual tweet itself, I don't remember exactly the number, but it was somewhere around like ten k is kind of the expectation for the base, plus the big gem that goes in there. That's a little ridiculous to expect, but outside of just the ridiculousness that the teams didn't know until after they wondez, bigger implication that hawk, I'd love to hear your thoughts on, because I know that you're very close to this product and that riot just doesn't really support collegiate starting this year. It's been a very recent thing, like we've seen it kind of closing to a more narrow support, but this year it's just really? Nothing, right? Yeah. [00:15:24] Speaker A: I mean, the whole reason that GG tech now, like, exists, which, for those that don't know at the beginning of 2024 or not even at the beginning of this academic year, so it would have been, like, last fall, they offloaded their all riot, scholastic, which was their previous collegiate thing, they offloaded all that onto GG Tech, and GG Tech's, like, been the company in charge of it with the intention of, by the end of this year, completely removing themselves from any sort of involvement in it. And we're basically at that point now, the really long story short, without getting too in the weeds, is that GG Tech has done an absolutely terrible job of doing anything with this product whatsoever. They have basically kept it on life support. They've not done anything to try to enhance it. And even though my expectations are low, I mean, making the teams pay for the trophy is kind of crazy to me. Like, you know, the teams basically, like, I got to watch all this unfold. Cause I. In the Boise discord, they, like, had one of us with all of us and the teams and all that. [00:16:26] Speaker B: Because you were there to cast the seasons. [00:16:27] Speaker A: Cause I was there to cast the finals. Yeah. And so they're basically like, great. So, like, when do we get our trophy? And they're like, we're gonna give you details about that in a few weeks. A few weeks go by, and they're like, all right. It's gonna cost x amount of money to. Here's the company that makes the trophy, you know, and Chu, the director of SLU, is kind of like, what? And, yeah, I mean, I don't know, man. I just feel like the team won a trophy, you know? [00:16:57] Speaker B: Like, they. [00:16:58] Speaker A: It's. What do you think they're playing for, bragging rights? Like, yeah, okay. They get scholarship money, as well. And, like, you know, they go in the record books. But, like, you know, I think of, like, in universities, like, back at. At Elon, which is the college I went to, you walk into the gym and there's, like, a trophy case, you know, like, it's not that hard, man. [00:17:16] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a bummer, basically. Riot, cutting all budgetary support. It was a subsect of esports, which is a subsect of greater riot. They just. You know, it was one of the departments that got hit with the big budget slashes, and Gigi techs get a lot of pressure on them now because either they pay for it and lose a big chunk of their own money, or they don't pay for it and they take the big pr hit. Either way, people are not happy, and it feels like a really rough situation. So I think Tizza, who used to be in charge of all things collegiate at Riot games, he put out a retweet of the initial post that was put out by college e news. I don't really know this page, but I suppose that they do a lot of collegiate esports news. But he just was kind of giving some more clarification of how people were let go, how budgets were cut, and how unfortunate the situation is, because people that were handling collegiate really cared and loved the product. They're just not there anymore, which is a bummer when you don't have people to do the job. Yeah, the job won't get done. [00:18:23] Speaker E: But. [00:18:23] Speaker B: Yeah, Jax just added me saying subset, not subsect. I don't know words, man. I only get paid to say them and talk. But it's okay. That's the collegiate drama. There's one other bit of news. I don't know if we can call it drama because it's not like a big lead up into a big disappointment, but it is a disappointment regardless. Apparently, Riot Games is working on, like, a smash bros. Clone, and we only got news about this because we got news that it has been scrapped, which now I feel entitled to a Riot games Smash bros. Clone. And I'm very disappointed by this news. How's everyone else feeling about it? [00:19:05] Speaker A: I don't really care, man. I didn't have time to get hype for it, so it's like they took away something that I was never going to get. You know, Steve, if you went up to me right now and you were like, hawk, I'm taking away your ferrari, I'd be like, ah, fuck, man. That. I didn't expect one anyway, so, yeah, it's kind of. Kind of where I'm at. [00:19:23] Speaker B: What if I said that it would have been a really nice Ferrari and you would have loved it, but I actually have to keep it for myself now. [00:19:32] Speaker A: But they're not keeping it for themselves. That she's never going to even materialize. [00:19:38] Speaker B: Yeah, whatever. Whatever. I needed the money from the raw materials to build my Chevy later. [00:19:45] Speaker D: I mean, they showed us what we needed the money for. They're using the money to put Kangas into two XKO. [00:19:52] Speaker B: True. Yeah. Braum was announced. That's pretty exciting. It is interesting that they were making a, like, smash bros. Clone while also making a fighting game. You can have your own opinions on if Smash is a fighting game or not, but I think it makes sense that they would drop it. But it raises the question. This is my question for everybody in the community. Discord, let me know. If you had to pick a League of Legends IP clone game, which would you pick? A kart racing sim, an RTS, or an advanced wars type game? Let us know in the discord. Also shout out to the discord if you want to join and join in on the discussion and all the shenanigans that we have. You can find the link in the description wherever you are listening to this podcast. Yeah, we'd love to have you also shout out to people in the discord that are fantastic in the community. Jax in particular, we got some folks that put together pickums and fan every single week. You want to give some shout outs? [00:20:44] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:20:44] Speaker C: So mini quant in our discord puts together pickems every week in the LCS and LEC channels. Come predict the games and see if you can predict better than the hosts do because it's not hard. We're idiots. [00:21:00] Speaker B: Hey, are either Hawk or Lenin still up there? I haven't really been paying attention. [00:21:05] Speaker E: Good still. [00:21:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I had a pretty bad final week of the regular season. [00:21:12] Speaker B: I'm going to go back at some point and look at percentages and then we're going to try and by the end of the summer have actual kings. [00:21:18] Speaker A: Of I think Mazelle is definitely beating me right now for sure. Like I said, I had a bad final week of the regular season, but I'm doing overall okay. I also realized that the last time we had LCS predictions, I changed my fly quest over dig prediction to a dig over fly prediction because I let myself get gaslit into thinking that dig would win and I feel like, like I knew fly was gonna. I don't, I don't know why I changed my prediction, but I'm pretty sure is me. Oh my God, I changed it. [00:21:54] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. You know, it's fine. Sometimes you just, you win some, you. [00:22:00] Speaker E: Lose some, you lose some, you lose some. [00:22:02] Speaker A: Damn. All right. That's like such a negative outlook that. [00:22:06] Speaker B: That is a bit of a negative outlook, but you can still bring your predictions back specifically because we have some predictions this week. LeC playoffs are right around the corner. They will be starting for summer this weekend. But before we get into the matches and our predictions themselves, we want to take some time to just kind of recenter as to what the summer playoffs means in the grand scheme of world's qualifications. Lec will have three teams qualifying for the world championships. But we haven't talked in a while about kind of the point system that exists in the LEC with their three splits. So, Jax, this is the part of the episode where I throw it over to you, give a little tutorial, catch us up as to what the system is for, how the three teams from Europe are chosen, and let us know who's in the lead so far in this point system. [00:22:53] Speaker C: Sounds good. So, first of all, whoever wins the summer split is guaranteed to go to worlds. They're not guaranteed any specific place. They could be the third seed, but they will go to worlds as at least the bottom seed. Then, after summer split, we have the season finals. [00:23:16] Speaker B: Ooh. [00:23:18] Speaker C: G two has already qualified for the season finals because they've won both winter and spring. [00:23:23] Speaker B: Yeah, the winner of each split auto qualified. Right. But since they took both, it's just them that qualifies. [00:23:28] Speaker C: Correct. So g two will be at the season finals no matter what. Cause they made this playoffs. That's the other qualifiers. They had to make this playoffs, which is eight teams. It's not a high bar. The top three teams from this summer. So the summer champions, number two and number three, will automatically qualify for the season finals, whoever those are. After that, however many spots remain. Cause if g two is one of those three, then we only have three teams at that point. However many spots remain, we'll go to the next highest championship point totals of the remaining teams until six slots are filled. And that's where things get interesting, because two of our teams in playoffs right now, Giants and Carmine Corp, do not have enough points to make it into the season finals. Unless they do really well in summer. And then they'll get in through top three, presumably. [00:24:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Specifically, Carmine Corp has zero points earned from either winter or spring. Giant X has, like, 30 and 35, which are two of the lowest that you can possibly earn. So, yeah, despite how good they might be looking now, comparatively to the rest of the teams, they did so poorly the previous splits that they really hurt themselves. [00:24:52] Speaker C: So that means if Giant X and Carmine Corp do not do well in playoffs, like, get top three, specifically, our season finals will be g two. Fnatic BDs, mad lions, heretics and sk. That's the most likely scenario. But it's not the locked scenario. Because if Giant X or Carmine corps do manage to get into those top three, or in specifically the case of heretics or SK, just place, like, two ranks higher than them. Like, they could get fourth. If SK and Heretics are 7th, 8th. That's enough. Yeah, that can be what changes the standings. Technically, fnatic, BDs and Mad Lions are not locked into the season finals yet, but it's very likely because they have 225, 222 hundred points, respectively, whereas heretics is the next highest at 130, as the minimum they can get. Those are all minimums because they've already qualified for summer. So they're getting at least 45 points in summer. Here's the other part. And this is why it matters. Even for Fnatic, BDS, and Mad Lions, who are probably making season finals no matter what seating is determined by the championship points as well. The top four teams in championship points get to be in the upper bracket. The bottom two championship point teams of the six that make it start in the lower bracket. Here's where it gets extra silly. The winner of the season finals is our first seed. The second place team is our second seed. If the winner of summer is not one of those two teams, they're our third seed. Otherwise, the third place team is the third seed, and the winner of summer gets whatever they earned in season finals. [00:26:43] Speaker B: Okay, interesting. [00:26:44] Speaker C: That's why the. The winner of summer is not guaranteed a specific seed, but they will be at least the bottom seed. [00:26:53] Speaker B: Okay. Wow. It. It seems simple. There's a lot of moving parts to it, but essentially, the better you do consistently in playoffs, the better chance you have of making this, you know, season finals. Top six teams in the season finals are where you need to be. So you want to be top six in the LEC at the end of the summer split. Now, it's good for the teams that have been doing well, like you said already, fanatics, BDSS, right? Like, they. They've earned a lot of points. They're already in really good spots. G two's already locked from winning some splits, but the ones sweating our giant X and Carmine core, who will need to do well in this playoffs, make very deep runs in order to get into that top six, while also kind of at the same time, hoping that teams like SK, like team heretics, like even MDK, fumble the bag and then give them that opportunity to catch up because they could do well. But if those other teams also do well, it might not even matter because they couldn't score enough points. [00:27:54] Speaker C: So with that specifically, Casey must get top three. Like, there are scenarios if enough other teams fumble where giant x gets in without top three, Carmine Corp must get top three or their season ends. That's it. [00:28:07] Speaker B: All right, pressures on. Let's see how likely that is as we bring our attention now to the first weekend of playoffs in the LEC and kind of give our thoughts on how likely it is that teams like SK or Casey could make that miracle run push. I don't know if I call it a miracle run for SK. Their work's not as tough, but either. [00:28:26] Speaker C: Way, as expected, SK is just in like. Yeah, it requires crazy shit for them to have to work for it, you. [00:28:34] Speaker B: Know, the LEC bracket for playoffs, by this point it's pretty much the same that we've had. It is a double elimination bracket starting off with best of threes and then we'll transition to best of fives once we get into the top four teams, I believe. Yeah. So for the first round of playoffs, based on seeding top versus bottom and throughout, we will start off with one of the seatings much closer to each other as our opening day, first day, first series, we have SK versus team heretics. Now we're talking about how important it is for SK to get wins. This is also one of the team's team heretics that they're very close to in overall points. SK is at 125 and team heretics is at 130. So, like, if they win this, it's pretty much guaranteeing that they're able to keep that spot so big for them. What do we think across the board for predictions here? We all believe that SK can do it. Two o's across the board except for Hawk. With the two one, you're given a game to team heretics. Is there any reason why? Do you think it's like team heretics side or do you think it's SK side? [00:29:37] Speaker A: I think team heretics has shown at times competence and especially like they had a good final week and I think SK is still really good. I don't know. I just feel like heretics has good enough individual players, like when they all come together and have a good day that like, screw the day. They just can all come together and have a good game and probably stack up with heretics. Sorry, stack up with SK. [00:30:04] Speaker B: You give them the one if they just get that one good game. But overall we still have faith in SK being the ones to advance. Really great for them. Now, this next one also very important because giant X still technically in the picture, they're not that far behind SK and Team Heretics either in terms of total points or 110. SK is at 125 and 130. But they got a tough round one opponent. It's Giant X versus fanatic, who, you know, I say a tough round one opponent, but if we just look at recent performances, they're on a bit of a loss streak. They went zero three in their last three LEC games. So let's talk about our confidence here. A lot of two ones still in Fnatic's favor. Myself, Bickle and Hawk thinking it's a two one. Mazelle and Jax a 20. Jax, why do you think a confident 20 despite how shaky Fnatic have looked lately? [00:30:51] Speaker C: Because fanatics had a week to get it together. They're fanatic and they're just way the fuck better than GX. [00:30:57] Speaker E: Exactly. [00:30:59] Speaker B: Okay, fair enough. I still think GX's solo lanes have shown a little promise but yeah, not enough to take the series. Which means the GX will have to find a deeper playoff run in the lower bracket based on expectations. Sorry. That's also the second day of competition. I should have said that. So we're into the second day. That's the first series of the second day. Second series of the second day we have g two versus KC. KC with a whopping zero points. Championship points minimum 45 just because they made it to summer playoffs. But they are at the lowest and we have two o's across the board. But I'm just going to. Does anybody have an argument as to how casey can pick up a game? Any way that a game can be picked up here? Jax, you got your finger up. [00:31:51] Speaker C: G two does a full g two and just fucking insidraft completely and plays it like they had an advantage from the get go in their draft. [00:32:00] Speaker B: They pick brand and zyra. One goes support, one goes jungle. [00:32:05] Speaker C: See, I think that's fine. What they'll do is they'll pick three losing lanes in a low impact early game. Like low early game impact jungler. And then play like they're at a lead from minute one and snowball themselves a loss. That's the only way KC wins a game. [00:32:22] Speaker B: They're going to go like cassandra top karthus, jungle like corki into the tristana mid lane and then like senna comp bot lane or something stupid. That does not sound at all like g two. But maybe they do something like that. Okay. Yeah. 2 hours across the board for that one. Which means that we're now into the winners the second day. Sorry, what was that? [00:32:45] Speaker D: You missed a series. [00:32:46] Speaker B: Did I miss a series? I missed the series. You're right. Oh. That's why I was confused with the fnatic versus Gx. I was looking at the bracket, not the list of days. Haha. Well, we're going to time. For some reason everybody, for some reason. [00:33:01] Speaker C: Riot chose to have one of the teams from the top half of the bracket and one of the teams or one of the matches from the bottom half of the bracket on day one and then the other side for day two. I think they just wanted fnatic and g two to both be in the same day. [00:33:16] Speaker D: I think it's technically because SK and BDs are the number one and number two seeds and therefore if they win, they get an extra day to prep for their next round. So it's a. It's the top two seed advantage technically. [00:33:30] Speaker C: Is that why that makes sense? But also that's stupid. [00:33:33] Speaker D: Pulling something out of my ass, to be honest. [00:33:36] Speaker B: I mean, hey, but it smells alright. [00:33:38] Speaker A: So you know, it's all right. [00:33:39] Speaker B: I hate that. But you know what? [00:33:42] Speaker C: I think that has to be the episode title now. It smells all right. [00:33:49] Speaker B: Okay, well, now we got that out of the way. We're time skipping back to day one. So day one is SK versus team heretics and then it's BDs versus MDK. Thank you, Bickle, for catching that, that we did skip a series. We have BDS across the board with only myself and Mazelle giving a game to MDK. Bickel, what are your thoughts on BDS? They're looking like one of the strongest teams coming into playoffs, besides maybe g two. And I still think SK there's arguments for, but kind of. What do you think? Are they the competition for g two right now? [00:34:25] Speaker D: I don't think there is competition for g two right now, but BDS has just been consistently solid for honestly quite a bit. Now that they've just been one of these upper tier teams that's always competing for like 2nd, 3rd spots, trying to get to worlds, they're looking good as usual. It's just can they manage to break the g two curse that always exists? And I do find it funny that we all agree there's a top four in the LEC because all of our first round predictions are identical in terms of teams. [00:35:00] Speaker B: They actually are. I'm happy to point that out. I did not notice that. It's SK, it's bds, it's fanatic, it's g two. Which means we're all going to look foolish when inevitably at least one of these is an upset. There's no way that we go four for four as an entire podcast, but this is expectations, at least based on what we saw in the regular season. So that is day one, sK team heretics and Bdsmdk. Day two is fnatic, GX and G two KC. Now we're on to day three, which is the winners of the first two days of competition. Then the week following that, we'll get into the losers bracket, but for now, we're still in the winner's bracket. So up first if we all think it's SK versus bds. Or is it? No, no, it's not that. It is SK versus fanatic. [00:35:51] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:35:52] Speaker B: Oh, my God. This is confusing me. Okay, so it's gonna be SK versus fanatic as the first round winners for all of us because we all have the same predictions. But this is where things start to differ. We do have myself, Bickle, and Hawk with SK taking the series, but Jax and Mazelle still have faith in fnatic again despite their slump. Jacks, do you still basically, same reasoning. You think that they're just going to have had time to recover? [00:36:17] Speaker C: Exact same reasoning, except that SK is good enough that they will legitimately just take a game. [00:36:22] Speaker B: Okay, see, I think the fnatic is not going to have as much time to recover as you're assuming and that they are not going to look any better than they did at the end of the regular season. I actually don't think that they've had enough of a break to really, like, work on the issues and if anything, they might, you know, be even more tired going into this playoff scenario. So I think SK is advantaged here. Hawk, what are your thoughts? [00:36:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I feel similarly. I also think it's really funny that all the people that gave Giant X a game are the ones predicting SK here. I think fnatic is absolutely cooked. They, for their last few games that they have played on any sort of stage have looked like garbage, if I'm being completely honest with you, and like, yes, they can fix it. But I do think skt. [00:37:10] Speaker B: Whoa. [00:37:11] Speaker A: Hey. SK is a very strong team and I think if, like, fnatic continues to not have any dog in them, they just will lose this series. I have a sk 20. I think fnatic. Yeah, similarly to you. I don't think like that a week to scrim here is going to bring. [00:37:31] Speaker B: Them back to form and that would mean SK are, I'm pretty positive, based on the rest of our predictions, just locked for that playoffs scenario, that world's playoff scenario. So that'd be good news for SK. Our second series, though, on that third day in the LEc is g two. And we're all assuming it's taking on bds turning into el classico lite in the LEC. I would say we've seen this matchup a couple of times now, but we all think g two takes it. I have it. 20 bickle jacks. Agree. 20. Mizell and Hawk have it. Two one. Hawk, I'm going to throw it to you. Why do you think we're able to see a game picked up by bds? [00:38:11] Speaker A: Remains to be seen in domestic play. How much further above the rest of the region g two is? I know we had a conversation two episodes ago about whether or not it's a one team region and we were like, hey, until someone takes a series off g two, then yes. And so for that reason, I can see the 20 predictions, but I do think bds will be competitive with them. And I think g two, even though they are still the best, they have to be on form to win g. [00:38:43] Speaker D: Two also feel like the team that can and occasionally will drop a game to anybody. So I can completely see this being a two one. [00:38:53] Speaker E: I think that's, for me what it is, because I think you're either going to get two things, you're going to get more consistency because of more games, or you're going to get a little bit of fall off in certain games because of either wear and tear or just the schedule itself. I think they're willing to draw the game, but I don't think that means we're not going to get a dominant g two. I just think there's going to be a game that doesn't go their way. [00:39:17] Speaker A: Okay, I like that explanation. Just a game that doesn't go their way. [00:39:21] Speaker B: Can't believe we weren't willing to give KC the same amount of also pole. [00:39:27] Speaker A: But okay, look, also, here's what I'll say is when bds, bg two in the regular season, like, it was not a good game from g two. However, ice did ice g two. So I think he's got enough dog in him to try to do the same thing in, like, one of the games. Now, that was because g two, like, had zero dog in them whatsoever and didn't try to do anything in that game except for five, v five into a jinx. But, like, I think BDS is a good enough team where they can set up their very, very strong ad carry for success. [00:40:01] Speaker B: Yeah. And that would mean if everything goes according to the predictions that we have, it is most likely g two versus sk in the upper bracket finals. Maybe fnatic is in there if mazzella jacks are correct. But I think no surprise there that, like, you know, hey, it's top four teams from the regular season are going to be the ones advancing. And then, you know, g two versus take your pick from the other side. It does still feel like, g two is heads and shoulders above the competition right now. [00:40:30] Speaker D: Minor thing, that if this plays out the way we think, especially in round one, I think we then get team heretics versus GX in the lower bracket, which is basically whoever wins makes season finals. Assuming K Corp doesn't go on a miracle run. [00:40:46] Speaker C: Yes. [00:40:47] Speaker B: That would be very interesting. Yeah, because Giant X is currently 20 points behind team heretics. And just that one win based on the points system. Yeah, I believe that 20. Exactly. Vitality or, sorry, not vitality. Giant X will jump up there. Vitality is out of the conversation because they didn't qualify for playoffs. They're at 115, which is just below the cutoff, which kind of sucks for them. But I'm sure y'all talked about that last week. [00:41:13] Speaker C: We won't see them until January. [00:41:16] Speaker B: That's ridiculous, man. [00:41:18] Speaker A: That's like six months away. [00:41:19] Speaker B: Yep. [00:41:21] Speaker C: They're gone for six months. Them and rogue just, poof. [00:41:26] Speaker B: Hope they earn those paychecks. Okay, that's. That's it. Wow, look at that. See, that's why we talked about random bullshit for the first, like, 15 minutes of the episode, because there really wasn't actually much to cover here proper. But that is week one of playoffs for LeC, at least our expectations of it. [00:41:45] Speaker C: So, listeners, if you enjoyed us talking about random bullshit for our news segment, subscribe to the Patreon. So you can get shit like that every week. [00:41:53] Speaker B: Oh, God. Yeah, we talked about even weirder shit in the bullshittery part of the episode, which, by the way, if you do subscribe right now to the Patreon, we are a little bit behind on those still. Me and Duffy are in a holy war with Patreon customer service to get the account transitioned over to me. So again, thank you so much for your patience. Everybody who's been asking about when the Patreon episodes will get uploaded, we have them all banked. We have the footage. It exists. We just have not been able to get it uploaded because, of course, Duffy's been busy getting married, and I do not have access. So just hang tight with us for a little bit longer, and we should have those up. But thank you for those that do support us. If you do want to help support us. That goes towards the bullshittery episodes. It goes towards our amazing audio editors monthly stipend that we give him to make sure that we sound crisp and good. And also, we're banking a little bit for some fun community events that we will be announcing post worlds. There's going to be a big off season, and my goal is to use the Patreon funds to do some fun stuff to involve you, the community and interact more with the greater League of Legends community as well. Thank you so much for sticking with us, everybody. That's going to be it. It was a short episode, but I'm happy to with what we were able to cover. And we will be back with Lec playoffs this weekend and actually be able to talk about some League of Legends games for next episode. For now though, we love you and we'll see you next time. [00:43:18] Speaker C: Bye bye. [00:43:19] Speaker B: See ya.