...And in this case had a choice. Watch the TFT streamer championship thingymajiggy, or track down the channels to watch the LCS Academy matches. I chose the latter because while I do enjoy watching streamers play TFT, I have no investment in any of them whereas I actually have some investment in watching teams play League, in this case the match being Flyquest Academy versus Echo Fox Academy.
I watched on Flyquest; no commentators, but it's literally the only stream that doesn't have followers-only chat (and I'm not going to follow a stream I watch maybe once a month for a single game and then not again for like another month, just to chat), so I actually spent time in the chat. (Helps that the channel actually talks back, too! Most channels if you talk about something, you don't really get feedback but there I did!)
A few of the comments said that the match felt like a solo queue match, and made comments along the lines of the academy match basically being bronze compared to the LCS. It was a little hard to argue; there was absolute bloodbaths that in the pro play you don't usually see happening in the midgame and both teams made a fair number of mistakes.
I pegged the match's wincons for the teams fairly early; for Echo Fox to win, they needed Yusui's Qiyana to dominate (and for a while, she was!); for Flyquest to win, they needed Revenge's Aatrox to dominate. As it turns out, with Revenge winning lane and at one point almost winning a 1v4 against him...Flyquest achieved their wincon much easier, although at one point Yusui did destroy basically the entirety of Flyquest with Qiyana's ult (like I said, both teams made mistakes...and one of Flyquest's mistakes was grouping up...against Qiyana, one of the best champs at getting a pentakill for when you group up like that).
I started typing this waiting for the CLGA versus 100 Thieves Academy match to start and it looks like it's getting underway soon. I can say that, draft-wise, both teams picked stereotypical power picks for the most part, but that purely from the draft CLGA has the better comp overall. That's by no means a victory, so we'll have to see what actual play does for them, but in the mean time, I actually came here to talk more about TFT believe it or not.
I blogged about it yesterday, about how you can be screwed over by just outright plan down bad luck. That does remain true (particularly egregious: every. single. time. I am among the first picks in the carousel, there's no spatulas for me to grab and often no champions I wanted to grab; every. single. time. that I am at the top and get last pick, there ends up being like three spatulas I can't get, recurved bows I don't get, and champions I want yet don't get), but there is some skill involved in the game.
If you are so inclined to, you can force basically any comp of your choosing, but this strategy is somewhat less viable especially if the comp you want is a lategame specialty one (e.g. six glacials, six nobles, six yordles, six knights). You need to survive to get far enough, and if you take too much damage, it is often impossible to win even with a fully online comp. If you have a comp that wins 9/10 matches but you've only got 40 health, you still end up losing because you're going to face 20 matches and lose 2 of them and in those two losses you lose said 40 health.
Usually, once you get the hang of it, it's better to just go with the flow; see what items you have and what synergies you can aim for on your earliest T2 units, more or less. It takes some getting used to, which is where the skill comes in, but it's something that I've more or less got the hang of.
Mind you, even if you have a fully online comp, every comp has a counter. You can have 11 units, five full synergies, most of your units T2, some T3s, even have items that theoretically are OP on your team...and hardcore lose against a team that counters you. For instance, assassins instantly deleting your whole team; glacials freezing your whole team; some comps have disgusting items combos that simply. won't. die. I've faced a literally-invincible Shyvana and a literally-invincible Swaine. Both of these, post change which theoretically nerfed the ability to do it.
But no, I had the misfortune of facing a Swaine who every time he transformed had an item combo that would bring him to full health and keep him there until he de-transformed and in spite of having my primary damage dealers alive he recharged his ult before I could knock him down, rinse, repeat. (Kinda regret not noting the items on said Swaine, because I love shapeshifters as a comp and if I could remember it then I could use it myself.)
The Shyvana similarly was fed with items that healed her faster than I could damage her. It was two different games this happened in, mind you, and once again I kinda wish I remembered what items were used. (I suspect the hex gunblade item was one in both cases but am not positive.)
MY POINT BEING, sometimes even if you have a bustedly broken comp which shouldn't lose...you face off against a bustedly broken comp which shouldn't lose...and in that exchange either one of you is wrong or you tie and both lose health and unless you have more health than your opponent, eventually, ties are still a loss for you as that chip damage adds up over time.
Also, placement can be a big thing; timing can be a big thing (I've lost matches because I was HALF A SECOND TOO LATE in buying me the champion who would've upgraded my carry; I've lost matches because I got my comp fully online in the last possible second...but ran out of time before I could place the units accordingly); you need to be fast on the draw and know where to place things to counter the enemy.
I can do that when I'm in a 1v1 or when every living player aside from me is using the same comp which theoretically has the same placement, but because I don't know who I'm going to face until I'm facing them I can't use optimal placement against my opponents because I can't figure out a universal best placement because there is no such thing, only a best guess at a generically-better one.
And that I'm PRETTY good at. Not perfect, I sometimes trap my units in areas where they can't attack (and thus never get to use their ult), so I do make errors (although sometimes it's not my fault and units which should attack and have literally no reason not to...don't, and I HAVE lost games from this much to my chagrin), and I kinda hate when I run a comp heavy in melee units because when I do they often run out of room to attack my opponents (on that note I also hate when I have no frontliner in my comp because you need SOME melee units to not have your ranged units instadie and yet sometimes I'll have matches where I have T2s for like six different ranged units and not a single T2 for a melee unit).
Butyeah. There's still skill involved, and there's skill that I am reasonably competent in. I doubt I'll climb up too high, and I might fall down back into iron briefly from a bad single game, but I do think that given the benefit of time and enough matches, I'll climb up higher. Probably to silver. I legitimately think I'm a better player than bronze would indicate, but I doubt I'm good enough to get beyond a low elo because while I'm better at TFT than I am at league and think I am reasonably competent, I'm not competent enough to be among the best.
I watched on Flyquest; no commentators, but it's literally the only stream that doesn't have followers-only chat (and I'm not going to follow a stream I watch maybe once a month for a single game and then not again for like another month, just to chat), so I actually spent time in the chat. (Helps that the channel actually talks back, too! Most channels if you talk about something, you don't really get feedback but there I did!)
A few of the comments said that the match felt like a solo queue match, and made comments along the lines of the academy match basically being bronze compared to the LCS. It was a little hard to argue; there was absolute bloodbaths that in the pro play you don't usually see happening in the midgame and both teams made a fair number of mistakes.
I pegged the match's wincons for the teams fairly early; for Echo Fox to win, they needed Yusui's Qiyana to dominate (and for a while, she was!); for Flyquest to win, they needed Revenge's Aatrox to dominate. As it turns out, with Revenge winning lane and at one point almost winning a 1v4 against him...Flyquest achieved their wincon much easier, although at one point Yusui did destroy basically the entirety of Flyquest with Qiyana's ult (like I said, both teams made mistakes...and one of Flyquest's mistakes was grouping up...against Qiyana, one of the best champs at getting a pentakill for when you group up like that).
I started typing this waiting for the CLGA versus 100 Thieves Academy match to start and it looks like it's getting underway soon. I can say that, draft-wise, both teams picked stereotypical power picks for the most part, but that purely from the draft CLGA has the better comp overall. That's by no means a victory, so we'll have to see what actual play does for them, but in the mean time, I actually came here to talk more about TFT believe it or not.
I blogged about it yesterday, about how you can be screwed over by just outright plan down bad luck. That does remain true (particularly egregious: every. single. time. I am among the first picks in the carousel, there's no spatulas for me to grab and often no champions I wanted to grab; every. single. time. that I am at the top and get last pick, there ends up being like three spatulas I can't get, recurved bows I don't get, and champions I want yet don't get), but there is some skill involved in the game.
If you are so inclined to, you can force basically any comp of your choosing, but this strategy is somewhat less viable especially if the comp you want is a lategame specialty one (e.g. six glacials, six nobles, six yordles, six knights). You need to survive to get far enough, and if you take too much damage, it is often impossible to win even with a fully online comp. If you have a comp that wins 9/10 matches but you've only got 40 health, you still end up losing because you're going to face 20 matches and lose 2 of them and in those two losses you lose said 40 health.
Usually, once you get the hang of it, it's better to just go with the flow; see what items you have and what synergies you can aim for on your earliest T2 units, more or less. It takes some getting used to, which is where the skill comes in, but it's something that I've more or less got the hang of.
Mind you, even if you have a fully online comp, every comp has a counter. You can have 11 units, five full synergies, most of your units T2, some T3s, even have items that theoretically are OP on your team...and hardcore lose against a team that counters you. For instance, assassins instantly deleting your whole team; glacials freezing your whole team; some comps have disgusting items combos that simply. won't. die. I've faced a literally-invincible Shyvana and a literally-invincible Swaine. Both of these, post change which theoretically nerfed the ability to do it.
But no, I had the misfortune of facing a Swaine who every time he transformed had an item combo that would bring him to full health and keep him there until he de-transformed and in spite of having my primary damage dealers alive he recharged his ult before I could knock him down, rinse, repeat. (Kinda regret not noting the items on said Swaine, because I love shapeshifters as a comp and if I could remember it then I could use it myself.)
The Shyvana similarly was fed with items that healed her faster than I could damage her. It was two different games this happened in, mind you, and once again I kinda wish I remembered what items were used. (I suspect the hex gunblade item was one in both cases but am not positive.)
MY POINT BEING, sometimes even if you have a bustedly broken comp which shouldn't lose...you face off against a bustedly broken comp which shouldn't lose...and in that exchange either one of you is wrong or you tie and both lose health and unless you have more health than your opponent, eventually, ties are still a loss for you as that chip damage adds up over time.
Also, placement can be a big thing; timing can be a big thing (I've lost matches because I was HALF A SECOND TOO LATE in buying me the champion who would've upgraded my carry; I've lost matches because I got my comp fully online in the last possible second...but ran out of time before I could place the units accordingly); you need to be fast on the draw and know where to place things to counter the enemy.
I can do that when I'm in a 1v1 or when every living player aside from me is using the same comp which theoretically has the same placement, but because I don't know who I'm going to face until I'm facing them I can't use optimal placement against my opponents because I can't figure out a universal best placement because there is no such thing, only a best guess at a generically-better one.
And that I'm PRETTY good at. Not perfect, I sometimes trap my units in areas where they can't attack (and thus never get to use their ult), so I do make errors (although sometimes it's not my fault and units which should attack and have literally no reason not to...don't, and I HAVE lost games from this much to my chagrin), and I kinda hate when I run a comp heavy in melee units because when I do they often run out of room to attack my opponents (on that note I also hate when I have no frontliner in my comp because you need SOME melee units to not have your ranged units instadie and yet sometimes I'll have matches where I have T2s for like six different ranged units and not a single T2 for a melee unit).
Butyeah. There's still skill involved, and there's skill that I am reasonably competent in. I doubt I'll climb up too high, and I might fall down back into iron briefly from a bad single game, but I do think that given the benefit of time and enough matches, I'll climb up higher. Probably to silver. I legitimately think I'm a better player than bronze would indicate, but I doubt I'm good enough to get beyond a low elo because while I'm better at TFT than I am at league and think I am reasonably competent, I'm not competent enough to be among the best.
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