The high water mark for North America was certainly 2014 as evidenced by their highest win percentage at Worlds to date in a previous article. Since then, CLG has lost to an international wildcard team almost in mocking tribute to 2014’s Alliance, formerly CLG.EU. While the Brazilian teams as a whole have gotten better, taking down a flagship squad from a major region is the definition of an upset.

Consider the argument that NA lacked a scene that had any sort of rivalry. In the first half of the 2015 Season in NA, every team struggled to figure their own team identity. Problems ranged from figuring out how to incorporate foreign talent to trying to gain some sort of consistency. TSM was unrivaled for the spring split, though teams like CLG and C9 (with Hai still on the roster) gave them some trouble. They still dominated that split yet crumbled at MSI, and never recovered to that level of dominance afterwards.

Gravity dominated for the most of Summer Season afterwards, but were crushed under the weight of their own pressure at the end of the split and during playoffs. However, CLG remained strong for the first time since the LCS, showing both a strong regular season and a strong playoffs performance. At Worlds, they played and drafted uncharacteristically below their regular performance. As soon as CLG showed that they couldn’t run certain team compositions, they were done...zo. In hindsight, that was rather typical for CLG, albeit a delayed crash in their performance.

The point is that there was never a rivalry in North America this season. It was made up of teams dominating and crashing on their own only for another team to take their place at the top and follow suit in falling from grace.

Even in older seasons it was hard to clarify whether or not North America had a true rivalry going on. In NA’s most successful Worlds performance, NA looked better equipped to deal with international teams than any other year. It would be a fool’s word to insinuate in any fashion that NA could have won that year, but since it was NA’s best year it’s important to figure out what happened. LMQ was what happened to North America in 2014, and they helped transform the top North American teams into relevant teams.

LMQ’s Dance

Now, where does LMQ play into all of this? When LMQ came into the NA LCS for the summer split, they looked dominant. Everyone had already known about them from the challenger scene and knew that the players were strong. LMQ destroyed a lot of teams in the NA LCS, but they were far from perfect. They were rarely the best undisputed team but very strong and few teams knew how to keep up with them in the game. What was different about them?

The answer is the fabled “Chinese aggression”. It can be annoying and an oversimplified method to describe it like that, but if you dissect that meaning a little more, you get a picture of LMQ. They were proactively aggressive, always taking initiatives on moves around the map. This doesn’t mean that they’re constantly going for kills unless those kills would allow them to take objectives. Early dragons at the 6 minute mark, aggressive jungle warding, aggressive counter jungling from 2 or more members at once from LMQ…

They were tough to beat. When any team is faced with a strong opponent in their leagues, the weaker teams will eventually learn how to adapt to that sort of play or they’ll learn counter strategies to beat that team and incorporate what they’ve learned into their own play.

Curse became very aggressive in their games against LMQ and others towards the end of the summer split such as forcing early dragons or aggressively ganking/skirmishing in the river. TSM, on the other hand, learned a little bit better on how to foresee these moves and respond accordingly with the improved Lustboy+Amazing vision control compared to TSM at the beginning of Summer when they had Gleebglarbu. Due to their aggressive warding, they were able to stay as safe as they could until the 20 minute mark before they started to group. Even so, LMQ matched up against them remarkably well.

Last but not least, Cloud 9 was able to incorporate some of LMQ’s play into their own. C9 has always been the team where even if they were behind in gold would just out teamfight their opponents. For example, if they were down 5,000 gold, they would still win these fights convincingly . This was almost a trademark from them (if Moscow 5 hadn’t been so good at this back in Season 2, C9 would have been one of the first teams if not the first to be able to consistently pull that off). C9 was a bit passive in the early game, opting to take a slower approach until the 15+ minute mark and then grouping as five and destroying the game after that.

However, as the split progressed, they became more and more proactive in their gameplay and were better able to deal with the aggression from LMQ early, even if they weren’t completely dominated by the Chinese team. This helped them for Worlds when they faced off against teams such as Alliance and Najin White Shield in the group stages of the 2014 World Championship.

Death by Stagnation

Do not mistake these words: LMQ themselves were not the key to making NA as a region better. A Chinese team isn’t the key to making a region better either. Nor is it an abundant amount of imported talent that makes a region better. What matters the most is that a region is made competitive by multiple teams who can vie for the top spot. In Korea, SK Telecom T1 #2 was a dominant team internationally but they were not always dominant domestically. Even when SKT looked incredibly dominant upon their debut, they were taken down by MVP Ozone, and rivaled by the KT Rolster Bullets of 2013. All those teams pushed SKT T1 #2 to be better every time, and SKT T1 #2 pushed those teams to be better as well. That can be evidenced in 2014 when SKT T1 #2 had a perfect Winter OGN but were quickly outclassed by everyone else in Korea in 2014 for both Spring and Summer.

Minus Fnatic’s total dominance in 2015, Europe had been seen as chaotic for a long time, where every team was taking wins off of each other for the majority of 2013 and 2014. North America has almost never experienced this sort of competitive climate. In 2012 TSM was completely unrivaled after picking up Dyrus to replace TheRainMan. An argument can be made that CLG was their most contested rival, taking them to multiple third games in BO3 sets across tournaments, but CLG was also absent for a lot of that season due to their two trips to Korea. They dipped in overall power after Saintvicious went to Curse, as shown by their third place finish at the NA regional finals.

In 2013, TSM dominated the first ever LCS split after their acquisition of WildTurtle. However, when Cloud 9 entered the LCS, they didn’t even hold a candle to them. No one improved in 2013 a result of C9’s dominance. TSM constantly struggled in the summer split afterwards with a 50% win rate but still destroyed the playoffs until they got completely swept to C9. Arguably they were beaten even harder in these games than in the regular season games; either way, they lost to the same tactics, showing that they didn’t adapt. In 2012, 2013, and 2015, North America never sustained a competitive rivalry in the region and they were the same years (not including the first season) where NA performed abysmally at Worlds. NA, simply put, is too top-heavy in the grand scheme of things to keep up with other regions as a season progresses over a year. Their top teams don’t grow and that is something to worry about.

Stay Determined

When you present a problem and line out the evidence, you also present a solution to the problem. The solution to NA’s consistently weak finishes is to be able to sustain a competitive scene that constantly makes the top teams grow. A dominant domestic performance is not enough for a team to do well at Worlds. Historically, a lot of the top international teams have had enough losses under their belt domestically before dominating the world stage, but evidence from their games also suggest that they learned from their mistakes in those losses. The only team in NA that learned from their losses (or comeback games) in recent years was Cloud 9. They’re also the only team from NA to actually have positive results at their worlds performances in years where their dominance was never questioned.

The real problem is that there’s no step by step guide to creating a competitive scene like that. There’s no step by step guide to to not have your bottom teams be crushed by one team at the top. In spite of this,  there can be guidelines and goals. Organizations should learn how to incorporate imports and make them a part of the team. Teams should strive to actually learn from the best and study footage of any team that’s better than them. That includes watching foreign regions, which a fair share of NA teams have admitted to in the past year. It is tough because it is impossible to write on how to make a team better as there are different variables to account for, whether it’s team synergy or coaching style or one of a hundred thousand internal or external factors that affects a team’s play.

In the coming year, a lot of NA teams have shaken things up. TSM has an almost entirely new lineup, CLG booted Doublelift, NRG has joined the scene backed with the power of the Sacramento Kings and so forth. Teams like these, the middle of the pack teams and the newer teams, must rise to the challenge of the 2016 season and all be reasonable contestants for the top spots in NA.

In light of the reality of the situation for NA, we must look forward and push our region to be the best it can and that can’t be done without at the least recognizing where NA has failed before. Work towards the future; it’s the most you can do for your region.

Connect with the author at @StevenNoogs.  Images courtesy of RIot Games.

MIssed part one? You can read it here.