[LOL] Very hopeful for CLG this split

The team will need time to gel and play better. They have tilt issues, you can see it in the cams, but Weldon can help with that.

It was nice to see them put up a fight and be aggressive vs TL, instead of rolling over and dying. Poe had a strong presence on Orianna and did very well vs Jensen. Hope Wiggly/Darshan and the crew improve but they will need more time. We also need Stixxay to step up, his performance was not good.

I know some people here are on suicide watch cause we've been losing for so long... But I am also fairly optimistic, I feel like this team has a higher ceiling and are in a good spot to improve. The only problem is that other teams will be improving as well.

I think POE could have ulted better in some teamfights.

While I'm still not very convinced by either top laner, I think that the rest of the team and especially the coaching staff is something we should have faith in. Getting Weldon was HUGE and I feel like not enough people appreciate it. If Irean gels with him, we would have one of the stronger coaching duos in the LCS.

Gonna be devil's advocate here regarding the Optic game and the Xerath pick specifically: I don't think it was as bad as it was made out to be. If you check out some of CLG's interviews post Week 1, Weldon even talks about it here with Locodoco about the Xerath pick and how it was something they had planned, and how the pick is strongest when CLG is the aggressor. From a mentality standpoint, I really like this - purposely picking a comp relying on hard aggression/engages for the first game of the split is a great way to help your team learn how to pull the trigger, which is the first step to becoming a proactive team going forward. Jumping into the game, CLG drafts Akali, Sejuani, and Rakan as a heavy all-in team, with the idea that Xerath will support them from afar. I think you can see CLG really using the strength of this comp pre 17 minutes, such as this fight here where they lock down one target with the Sejuani and the Rakan so that Xerath can pick them off. However, post 17 minutes you can see that Optic begin to become aggressive, and CLG starts to get engaged on rather then forcing fights, which is where the Xerath pick gets exploited, such as this dragon fight. From this point onwards, I feel like it was up to Akali, Sejuani, and Rakan to continuously look for fights and engages, but overtime our team became much less pro-active and allowed Optic to gain confidence to force fights for the rest of the game - resulting in our overall defeat.

I really do think it came down to CLG picking a draft where they were meant to dictate the game, but lost because they didn't do that enough. Is that bad and are we garbage? I don't think so - it's a great starting point for the coaching staff to start from because we know the issue. While I like and appreciated the draft in this game, with hindsight maybe CLG could have also drafted some kind of protection for Xerath, perhaps putting engage on Stixxay with Ashe and putting Biofrost on Morgana/Tahm Kench so that the weakness of the pick is covered up. But growing pains are a thing, and I'm sure CLG can work off this to come back stronger.

TLDR: I think the Xerath pick could have worked, but did not because CLG was too reactive and not proactive enough. I don't think CLG are garbage, I think they tried something, it didn't work for a clear reason and now they can work on that issue. It's Week 1: Have some faith guys - isn't that why we're all here?

Well PoE is known to bust out weird shit. And he usually does well enough with them. I remember that one time he shat on us with ezreal mid...I think PoE is a confident player that will say what he wants to play into whatever matchup he is forced into. I think PoE tonned that down a lot sunday and we looked better.

The biggest issue I saw with the team on a macro level was the setting up for objectives. The vision was set well by the jg and supp, but I kept seeing the other team engaging 10-30 secs prior to drake spawn just to chunk a player down and force CLG to retreat. I think the team needs to understand this, and I was happy to see Irean talk about it during the insights video. I think TL had superior communication and understanding of the game and it showed, but I think the game was still winnable and we can take games away from other contenders that are not as macro savvy as TL. I think if FB was on a tank and wiggily played a tiny bit better, then we couldve won that TL game.

I agree that there are things to be hopeful about.

I think this is wishful thinking. If you go back to the optic game you can see that after the ambush around second dragon, CLG lost map control in their red jungle and pretty much never had minions across the river for the rest of the game. Even after the picks and getting towers in mid, they made no gains in vision, and then basically bled out until the bad engage that ended the game.

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They made good use of the xerath to generate splitpush value, but it didn't net them long term benefits, because they didn't prioritize vision when they had enemies on the fountain.

CLG hasn't yet demonstrated that they know how to close out a game. They need to improve drastically if they expect to contend with teams that know what they're doing.

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I wouldn't be surprised if they made those improvements, but to call these games hopeful is a big stretch to me.

I thought the team looked pretty good in the second game in a macro sense, especially considering it was TL. It really felt like a couple micro based things in team fights could've pulled that game out, easily.

Our macro game seems fucking awful lol

Our macro doesn't seem so bad but why the hell does CLG always shoot itself in the foot during draft? I never see top teams losing in draft, they could proceed to feed the entire early game and still win mid or late because of draft.

I don't really think this is the case, majority of time both drafts are okay. It's just the losing team's draft gets more exposed. If CLG won with Xerath, everyone would be praising the unique draft.