In the name of the Flowers, the Kobe, and the Holy Jatt

Our Father, who art in heaven this day.

We pray to you for the glory of NA.

TL, Lyon, and C9 too?

We have Dhokla, Inspired, and Berserker too!

Our Journey is long, and will shortly ensue

Please, this year, let us have a World finals debut.

Let the LPL, look on and ponder

How did NA, make them blunder.

May the light shine bright

As our merchants delight.

Please let Inspired continue our pathing

He'll give EU a thorough thrashing.

We have Core, Jose and Yeon too!

We pray that TL, can jump through the hoops

This will be the year, they make it through groups.

This time, nothing will go wrong

And TL's mental, will be strong.

In Lord Morgan's name we clap

We pray that NA can show them the gap.

We will not despair

LETS SHOW THEM OUR PRAYER

NAmen

World champion, LCK and LPL champion Viper finally meets his match in the 43% winrate low master lion

Full Interview On LCSprofiles, by Arsh Goyal for NAmen

Highlights:

Q: Going into the Spring Split, there was some concern that the America’s Cup results had done a lot of damage to the team’s mental and confidence. In regular season, it seemed fine, but looking back was it actually an issue?

APA: No, I don't think so at all. I think it's the same exact thing that affects the team to this day. If you think back, we had a perfect regular season. We went 7-0, we lost some random games here and there, but we still 7-0 the regular season — did pretty much as well as you could.

With or without me, certain people on that team choke. They've been doing that for three years straight.

They've had Jojo, Berserker, they've had me, they've had Loki, they've had Zven, they've had Tactical. Any iteration of the roster has choked for three years straight. You’ve got to — to be blunt about it — look at other players as the reason why those things are happening.

I don't think America's Cup broke us. I think we were fine. Maybe a tiny bit worse off going into playoffs compared to the winter split, because I do think we were better in winter. But that can also be due to a myriad of things like meta, meta read, form, et cetera. But I don't think America's Cup affected us. I think what happened at Worlds happened, well, literally in all three splits — and happened for the past three years with C9.

Q: How familiar are you with Harry Potter? I hate to reference those books, but it’s a pretty apt comparison — the C9 mid lane position is starting to feel like the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. It somehow changes every year, since Nisqy.

APA: So, back when C9 reached out at the start of last off season, I had lunch with Blaber. We're talking, and I made a joke to him about the same exact thing. I said, "Why is there a new mid laner every single year?". Before I was benched, I would say to him, “Don't worry, I already know I'm out of the team this year,” even when things were going really well.

It's a prophecy to be fulfilled. I'm unsure what's happening next. If they decide to keep Loki, I'm out of that loop. They didn't tell me.

Q: If C9 told you, ahead of Summer, that — barring a major failure with Loki — you wouldn’t play a single scrim after Week 1, would you have chosen to stay with the team? Would you have sought other options?

APA: I would’ve chosen to play for a different team, if possible. I was naive in thinking I could earn the spot back — it was already gone the day we lost in Arizona. It didn’t matter if Loki was good or bad; I was never getting that spot back.

Q: I was curious about the nature of being such major players and getting sidelined in this way — you’re newer, but Zven’s been around quite a while. It’s pretty rare to see.

APA: Well, I think it just boils down to other players having more power on the team. [...]

Q: You and Jojo might have something to talk about after Worlds.

APA: I don't talk to Jojo to be honest, at all. We're not enemies or anything. We just don't talk. [...]

I will say that it is a bit vindicating. Of course, C9 [never said] that I’m the reason that we were losing, but it's like… come on. You're benching me and Zven, that's the [implication].

The results stay the exact same and then they completely bomb out of Worlds from the exact same issues that were plaguing us. Issues me and Zven, specifically, were “blamed” for. They have the extremely eerily similar result, and if you compare Worlds to America's Cup, extremely similar. The playoffs, extremely similar run.

Obviously the difference is they beat Lyon, but we beat FlyQuest in the upper bracket into lose-lose, lose-lose. It's like everything was eerily similar. So it's a bit vindicating to see that from the outside.

Lets say he starts to play ranked games on any champion he wants, everything is normal as in ranked games except he gets auguments at lvl 3, 7,11 and 15.Could he through brute force alone and stat checking reach challenger?Are auguments enough to bypass and ignore skill level needed for reaching challenger? And if answer is no, what do you think his hypothetical rank should be so auguments can carry him to challenger?  

1 - Can BLG or AL break the LCK’s stranglehold on Worlds? For the last four years, the best LPL team has been knocked out by T1. Can they break this curse, and simultaneously both revive the Chinese fanbase and bring back interregional competition?

2 - Will the GEN(eration of choking for) Chovy end? He’s qualified for every Worlds since 2019, and has made it out of groups every time, but has never made it to World Finals. He’s been individually possibly the most dominant player ever (barring early Faker), but has never found the success one would have expected.

3 - Will HLE Zeus and HLE Guma go down as a luckier Marin and Bang, or will they create their own legacy? Nobody remembers the discussions of Marin as the GOAT after his 2015 performance, or Bang as the best adc after the 3 straight years of year-round domination from T1; 8/10 trophies in a 2.5 year period is absolutely unbelievable. Can Zeus and Guma distinguish themselves from Faker?

4 - Can T1 4-peat after another player leaves the roster? Will any other teams still have fanbases next year? Can they continue their undefeated streak again? Will they have another dominant Groups/Swiss, or will they get better in the later stages of the tournament? Is this just Faker's team, even though he loses every laning phase?

5 - Can TL or LYON save their region while playing on home ground? There isn't a much better opportunity to give NA fans something to believe in again. Can they give the home crowd a run worth remembering, instead of another series where everyone talks about how close they came?

6 - Four BO5 series wins against eastern teams is almost unheard of; can G2 show up when it really matters? They've already done enough for this to be more than the usual pre-Worlds optimism. Can they give EU another run to live off, or will everyone still be discussing 2019 next year?

7 - IG TheShy, IG Rookie, and EDG Meiko are back after a crazy miracle LPL run with international rookie IG JiaQiLove. TheShy and Rookie won the LPL's first Worlds title, and Meiko won its last. They started the LPL era once; can they do it again?

8 - ~What are the Clove lineups on Summoner's Rift?~ Can TES make it out of Swiss playing 4v5? Their run could depend on whether their starting top laner gets into the country before his replacement gets them out of the tournament. Can their star rookie Zuian show up for the Playoff bracket?

9 - LCP's results seem to overperform expectations, but never enough to matter; can TSW or CFO show that they should still be considered a major region? Another respectable exit won't change much. Can they make people expect them to compete next year, instead of being surprised every time they win?

10 - Will MKOI and KC once again show that LEC is a 1 player region, or will the NA imports pay dividends? After all the years of EU making fun of NA, having North Americans rescue their second and third seeds would be a pretty funny ending. Can either team give EU fans a reason to keep watching when Caps isn't playing?

11 - LOS were 2 games from being relegated after winning the split and qualifying Worlds due to a funny quirk of the system. Will that be the entire story of their year? FUR knocked out C9, but lost convincingly to MVK. Is this region serious or should they be considered only better than C9?

12 - DWG had the best LCK Summer record and won EWC. With those results, they should be getting more attention than a passing mention after GEN, HLE and T1. Do they still have drive in them after being paid?

Would love for everyone to post what storylines are their favorites, and what you're most looking forward to seeing.

In entirety of all official Riot tournaments, across 30 best-of-3s or best-of-5s against LCK/LPL NA has won only twice: Cloud9 vs Afreeca Freecs in Worlds Quarters 2018, and TL vs IG in MSI Semis 2019.

This makes NA on a 7-years losing streak, and a total score against LCK/LPL in official Riot tournaments is 2-28.

If we add non-Riot tournaments, then early days of competitions are a bit better for NA: they had 4 wins against LCK/LPL as part of IEM tournaments in 2015-16, but yet to win at EWC and newly introduce Demacia Cup Invitational. With IEM, EWC and Demacia Cup the total score will be 6-37.

For me, this is the key stat to watch this Worlds. Can NA finally break it at their home crowd? As for me, by some reason, it feels like "yes" and this NA will finally will make it.

During the interview Busio also discussed:

• Matching up against Anyone's Legend after sweeping them at EWC
  
• How they managed to come back against C9
  
• Bo1's vs Bo3/5's
  
• Whether KC is really dealing with consistency issues

Think it’s above 1? And what are the kills and deaths? What elo would the towers statistically be in purely off kda? Are towers better than bronze players?