Seraph is a good player, but not a carry

I'm not posting this on gp10 since this is more of a rant than an actual article. Followers of me on Twitter will probably have read the many comments I've made regarding Seraph and how he isn't a carry player. The topic of Seraph as a carry and the overall overrating of him as a player from fans is possibly the one thing that tilts me the hardest in LoL analysis.



I want to briefly lay down my thoughts on Seraph as a player and explain why he isn't a carry. It's important to note that their recent success (going from barely qualifying for the Challenger playoffs to making the LCS) has come in large part because they are no longer using Seraph as a carry player.



Seraph fans seem to have this bizarre belief that Seraph is a player who should receive high farm pressure and high jungle ganks, and he will proceed to carry the game when given these resources. This isn't true for several reasons. Seraph is a very poor teamfighter and while he is a strong 1v1 duelist he has poor map awareness on split pushes and will consistently be caught out. Without full split pushing or teamfighting skills there is literally no reason to funnel gold onto this player. (He was a decent teamfighter on Lissandra, but that is the only pick he has shown strong teamfighting on and she is no longer in the meta.) Fans that praise his Nidalee split push performances against Fusion and Winterfox must have been watching different games than I was. He lost lane on the pick vs. two very poor top laners and proceeded to fail multiple split pushes, only taking multiple towers after extremely poor calls from two Challenger-level teams with very poor decision making. I don't think TDK is making the play-offs, but if they do Seraph's bizarre insistence on picking Nidalee once a series is going to cost them against teams that know what they are doing.



This brings me to my next point, the strange idea that somehow CLG should have given Seraph more resources to carry. Doublelift was playing extremely well in Season 4 and more importantly, they literally lost every single game that they tried to funnel resources onto Seraph. Because of his aforementioned poor teamfighting & split-push awareness (he never knows when people are coming to him, I thought this was a communication issue on CLG but it's the exact same thing on TDK) putting a lot of gold onto Seraph never worked out for CLG to the point that they nearly lost to Curse Academy with Cris when they tried to let Seraph carry in Games 1 & 2. Yes, CLG lost badly in the playoffs but if they had let Seraph carry they would have become a middle-tier Challenger team...which is exactly what TDK was when they tried to let Seraph carry.



To me the worst part about this Seraph carry myth is that it overshadows what his actual skills are as a player because his fans are so desperate to pretend he is a carry top laner that they are ignoring his actual strengths. While Seraph definitely needs to sharpen up his 1v2 laning (he is worse at it than the much-maligned Avalon and was terrible at it on CLG too) he is an extremely strong 1v1 laner and is one of the best players I've seen at abusing his range in ranged vs. melee match-ups. (His Gnar is a treat to watch in the laning phase.) His Teleport usage is also quite good. While he is a poor teamfighter, he usually makes up for it by Teleporting into extremely advantageous teamfight positions. He can transition these strong skills into good 1v1 scenarios and can sometimes even outduel enemy champions when behind in gold when he is given one of his comfort picks. When opponents send multiple players to kill Seraph, his teammates can then take objectives elsewhere. When CLG used Seraph as a lane dominant low-farm role player and "bait" for opponents they were one of the best teams in the LCS. He balked under this style but during TDK's play-off series vs. Fusion and Winterfox they used this exact style to get wins over teams that they looked far worse than when they used Seraph as a carry. (Funnily enough, in the series against Enemy Seraph went big and tragically couldn't carry with his huge gold lead...coincidence or recurring fact over his entire career?)



If Seraph can embrace this role as essentially a "Darien-lite" kind of player, he will be extremely good. He has a lot of talent in specific areas but he isn't a carry player in spite of how hard he and his fans try to push this image - his teams only started seeing results when they moved to farm away from him and onto some random who is probably best known to fans right now for building Essence Reaver. When he said TDK listens to his ideas, I really hope his idea was to bring Alex Ich on board and not for him to play Nidalee once a series....unless his skills in his weak areas improve he will be best served sticking to his current role on TDK.





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