The Western Breakdown #6
Welcome to Week 6 of the Western Breakdown! I’ve got my final exam for my summer course this week, so I’ve gone with an LCS-only feature, with a primary topic about the terrific upgrades to the LCS broadcast this year followed by a smaller analysis of my favorite match of the weekend (C9 vs FLY). Genuinely didn’t realize how many nice things I have to say about the changes to LCS, so this became longer than I thought it would be, but it’s all stuff I’ve wanted to talk about for a while.
LCS broadcast is just smurfing
Normally I write about things that happen in-game for this series, but I’ve been wanting to discuss the massive upgrades to the LCS broadcast this year. For years, the LCS has been called formulaic, boring, and mild, especially in comparison to the LEC’s more experimental, creative vibe that emphasizes the unique skills of their talent — Vedius and Drakos are terrific songwriters and rappers, apparently. For a long time, I held the same criticisms of the LCS, especially with the boring off broadcast content that grossly misused the entertainment skills of their incredible talent.
I mean, the only non-broadcast LCS content I watched before 2022 was The Dive and the occasional voiced-over recap of a play from that week, whereas I still rewatch LEC rap battles, cold opens, and such. Last year, it was pretty much a ritual for me to mute the stream and tab over to Netflix as soon as the Nexus exploded, because the analyst desk segments felt like copy/pasted masterclasses in blandness. Since the changing of the guard with the new LCS commissioner, Jackie Felling, she and the LCS have made an open commitment to revamping content and committing to community connection — generally working to get rid of the detached, corporate vibes that plagued NA LoL.
Last year, the rebrand and format change brought with it an absolute flood of content, with Lane x Lane, Next Level, Replay Files, LCS ICYMI, and Masterminds — on top of old content like weekly promotional videos, The Dive, and This or That. This year, every single one of the new series were axed, despite receiving significant praise (primarily for The Replay Files’ creativity and Next Level’s integration of community leaders).
It seems that the focus has moved back towards the “normal formula”, with resources being recommitted towards honing the broadcast segments into something interesting — it makes sense to centralize your efforts on the primary way your audience consumes the LCS product.
This year, Waiting Room has become something I look forward to before LCS, because instead of recapping the strands of narrative around the different teams in the league, it feels like the highly entertaining talent is finally able to *be highly entertaining*. The non-corporate feel here is really important, but it’s hard for me to nail down exactly what’s working — between the more casual set, open discussion of team drama, and Twitter hot takes, there’s a lot of new things happening.
The casual set helps more than you’d think (a Psych major can contribute here, if they’d like), helping it feel less choreographed than a broadcast like the LEC. TSM’s “struggles” become a topic that should be just a little taboo, but they’ve been completely willing to discuss the outcomes of the Regi investigation, criticize the lack of communication by the organization, and the scattered controversy that seems to follow the org — it takes a pretty significant change to let the talent speak so freely, considering the history of the LCS broadcast. I’ve also hugely enjoyed their “discussing Twitter” segment, which can be drama around announcements or dunking on the tweet I ratioed Cubby for.
The main catalyst for this piece, though, was the incredible use of Bwipo and Fudge on the broadcast over the last two weeks. They bounced around the Analyst Desk, Casting, and each did a player interview, and I’m convinced that this is the proper way to bring fan favorites onto the broadcast. Fudge’s tier list of top laners was equal parts entertaining and informative, and both players were candid about the struggles their teams have had, able to be honest because of their natural charisma. And, as Reddit and Twitter repeated to death, watching players interview each other is an absolute treat, and having these two players debut the format was a terrific choice. Closer will be on next week, and I’ve gotten it confirmed that LCS is looking to make it a weekly tradition to have a pro player on broadcast.
Quick aside — the LCS has started featuring 1 minute videos submitted by teams at different points in the broadcast, and they’re basically small featurettes designed to give players a little more personality and branding. FLY had a terrific one early on in the split, which taught people how to pronounce “toucouille” (apparently took-nasty is allowed), and CLG had a super endearing one about Palafox’s Gamer Attic where he apparently chills between scrims. These have been wonderfully fun and absolutely created fans for the smaller teams who rarely get the opportunity to demonstrate their personality.
For years, the LCS and LEC have released weekly promotional videos for the weekend, with the LEC choosing to highlight the “Match of the Week” and LCS choosing to promote different highlights across the weekend. Usually, these are some of the most cut-and-dry content in all of esports, because while they might be entertaining and high quality, promo videos are usually formulaic mashups of interviews and bass boosted clips of a caster smurfing while a player does something largely unimpressive. Especially last year, the tone opted for in these videos was highly corporate and informative, largely lacking the emotional value or player connections you want with something like this.
The promos and teaser videos this split have been in a completely different league (here’s last week’s), focusing on specific players, narratives, and creating an emotional drive over some terrific music. Less than a month ago they released the most viewed video on their channel of all time, “Tomorrow We Fight”, a combined homage to the old generation of LCS legends and a honorific of the young upstarts overwriting their legacy. It’s genuinely beautiful in visuals, music, and composition, and is deserving of every bit of the praise and attention it’s received.
The last thing I want to say is that I’ve personally appreciated the hell out of the new LCS commissioner’s active presence on Twitter, and her willingness to ask for advice directly from fans. If you don’t follow her (@JackFellingX), you’re actually missing your chance to give your input about the LCS product directly to someone who listens and acts upon fan sentiment. I cannot count the number of times I’ve seen her reply “Looking into this!” or “Great idea! I’ll make it happen!” or something to that effect — though it may not seem like much, this kind of transparent willingness to adapt to the community is incredible and should be recognized for the immense value it creates.
C9 vs FLY, and its greater implications
On Saturday, I got into my car to drive home after watching the Champ Select for the opening matchup. I confidently tweeted about the disgusting draft gap in FLY’s favor, and the C9 fan in me sulked that they were going to lose in the same way G2 had the hour before. Coming into the R5, FLY had 3 blindable OP’s (Poppy, Taliyah, Sivir) with Jax and Taric for additional scaling and sustainability, against a mixed engage comp that had no pressure to stop them from waiting 40 minutes for a free win (or so I thought). Then Blaber locked in Olaf.
In hindsight, the Poppy-Taliyah-Sivir core on FLY has its gameplan completely shattered by Blaber’s pick here — Taliyah and Sivir rely on creating and maintaining space between them and their opponents, but Olaf run through their deterrents at Mach 5 with little issue (as does Gwen). Poppy outduels most junglers in the early game, but since Olaf turns the early 2v2s and 3v3s on their head, she finds it much harder to get to her “guaranteed utility” level of tankiness.
It’s also a stylistic advantage into FLY, who often rely on their all pro mid laner to work with Josedeodo during laning phase (toucouille is statistically ~even in CSD10, XPD10, GD10), and then hyperscale and function as a core carry (second only to POE in Damage % and Damage % post 15). To beat Flyquest, you either need to smash toucouille in laning phase, which no LCS mid can do consistently, or shut down every play he makes with Josedeodo. C9 went for the latter.
On Sunday, toucouille counterpicked jojopyun’s Azir with Akali — which has become fairly normal as a trade off across LEC and LCS — and pretty much proved the weakness Cloud9 exposed.
Azir pushes in Akali for the whole laning phase, but she has lethal threat on him pretty much all the time, so she wants a jungler with guaranteed setup to give her the window she needs to start running the lane. However, Lee Sin is considerably weaker in the 1v1 and 2v2 than Wukong, and is usually the one who wants a mid lane partner with solid setup for him, so the mid-jungle is beyond fragile already. Additionally, despite Johnsun getting a surprise kill in a losing lane after Danny overstepped, FLY still indexed into pressuring Impact’s Sejuani and getting gold on Philip’s Aatrox — a macro misstep considering Aatrox will never be able to enter a fight against Kalista-Renata, and Aphelios is the actual win condition in the game.
I don’t think FLY is a weak team, and this game hasn’t significantly changed my predictions for their split outcomes, it’s just reinforced them. They average negative CSD15 and G15, with the second lowest average Gold at 15 minutes in the league (ahead of IMT). It honestly makes a lot of sense — Johnsun sits around third on most positive stats (DMG%, G%, CSD15, XP15), along with Danny, Berserker, and FBI, but he moves away from the elite company in Death%, where he’s also 3rd.
I like Flyquest as a squad, but watching this team feels like watching Misfits for the last year (if Vetheo was partial to control mages), where they just draft scaling and wait for the enemy team to trip over their own shoelaces so that their star mid laner can pounce. I expect them to keep looking like Misfits, which is to say that they’ll be just as ineffective in BO5s as MSF was in Spring.
Thank you for reading this patriotic edition of The Western Breakdown! I do these every week and love talking about lolesports, so I appreciate you taking the time to consume the content.
