Reflecting on what went wrong last split

It took me a while to reflect on the past split and gather my thoughts because this split was a wild ride for me, after it was over i felt like i had all the tools and conditions to produce results and yet we ended up getting relegated anyway. I had the necessary support, i had great players, great staff to help me and yet i was unable to make them into a team, which is why in our last games together we performed worse than we did in our first ones despite the 2 months of training in-between. This thought would not leave my head after the split was over so i had to get to the bottom of this, figure out what did i do wrong so i never make the same mistakes again. This is what the post is about, if anyone expected drama then i'm sorry to disappoint you but this is not a Donezo Manifesto.



The org:

The first thing that came to my mind when i heard that the spot is being bought by a team named Mysterious Monkeys was "who are these guys and what's up with that name" I'm sure i'm not the only one, most people seem to have this first reaction. I've been in the scene for a while, i had my share of experiences with shady orgs so i had my guard up from the start since i didn't know what to expect.

What i ended up getting was an overwhelming amount of professionalism, straight forward communication and a lot of support. Once the spot transaction was over they had the contracts ready within one day, they had computers set up in the gaming house in 2 days and we were already flying there on the 3rd. This was extremely important because the spot selling deadline was less than 2 weeks away from the start of the split so the more time it would take to figure out these details the less practice we would get. In the following weeks they provided us everything that we needed in the gaming house to make our stay as comfortable as possible. Over the duration of the split they helped us as much as they could and spared no expenses while doing it. I wish them well and i hope they stay in the scene because they deserve it.



The players:

The roster originally consisted of 5 rookies so it was up to me to guide them in their journey in LCS, unfortunately i did not succeed as it is apparent from our results. On top of being a roster of 5 rookies we had to find a new jungler in only few days and then had around 10 days to practice before we played our first match in LCS, the time was not enough and we were not prepared and it showed. The biggest problem we had to face was the synergy between Jisu and Lamabear which i tried to fix but it was too little too late, every game we lost everyone felt that we were getting one step closer to relegations even though the split just started. We had created an environment of fear after just 2 losses which in turn lead us to 2 more losses right after. I failed to stop the seed of fear from spreading to everyone in the team and the organisation and i failed to bring results so the roster change is on me, as someone experienced in LCS i knew that a rough start is not something to cry about and just a chance to learn and improve, i knew that there is no reason to fear relegations when the split just started, hell there is no reason to fear relegations at all... there is no shame in playing in relegations either, its just another competition where you need to prove yourself and not the end of the world. My failure was that despite me knowing all this i failed to relay my knowledge and experience to the others and so i failed Jisu and Lama resulting in them being replaced shortly after.



Jisu:

He is a beast top laner and he managed to solo kill best toplaners in Europe 1v2 multiple times in his only 4 games in LCS despite being left alone in toplane without any help. I know i should not have favorites but i really enjoyed coaching him because his learning attitude was great and he had so much trust in me... i could see my teachings being implemented on day to day or even game to game basis through him and it made me proud being a coach.



Lamabear:

He was a part of our original MFA roster before he got banned and he really surprised me with his game knowledge and skill in scrims back then, unfortunately the months of competitive ban took a toll on him, while he is a talented individual he was not ready to enter LCS back then and i was not smart enough about jungling to help him with it directly. He was replaced without the chance to adjust and improve but i am sure he will be back in LCS one day.



Amazing:

He brought to the table exactly what the team needed which is strong in-game leadership and deep understanding of the game. When he joined, playing became so much easier for everybody else in the team because he would shoulder every burden he could in and out of game even to an extend where it harmed his own performance on stage and his health.



Kikis:

He brought professionalism to everything he did. Starting with his attitude in the game and multiple notes on his screen after every game and ending with waking up early to play more solo queue and being always on time to every scrim meeting and discussion we ever had. I always believe that the best way of helping people is leading by example so i always tried to wake up the earliest to prepare for the upcoming day of scrims and i have to say he made it difficult for me to outdo him and show a good example.



Dreams:

He is basically a sponge that absorbs all the knowledge and information thrown at him, to begin with he was a mechanical monster and then he also learned how to shotcall and lead a team, he is growing stronger by the day and once he learns how to balance mechanics and shotcalling everyone will be able to see his brilliance.



Yuuki:

He is full of contradictions and inconsistencies... He is old and mature yet his mechanics are top notch as if he was 18 years old, he is extremely passionate about the game and winning and yet he doesn't blame anyone but himself for the losses, he believes he is the best and yet he tries to improve every single game and watches his EVERY SINGLE REPLAY, he acts tough and mean but is probably the nicest teammate i have met and super reliable in times of crisis. The only thing consistent about him is his performance which stayed on a high level throughout scrims and official matches regardless of the problems we had as a team.



Cozq:

He is the guy who changed and improved the most during this split. His talent and mechanics were excellent to begin with but with his new found attitude he will be able to clear the inconsistencies that he had in the past and show his true skill in the future.





The staff:

Compared to challenger series split where i had to manage, clean, cook, scout, prep, analyze, coach and mentor by myself this split i could breathe freely and focus almost completely on coaching all thanks to the great helping staff that we had.



Grievance:

Appart from being an excellent manager who took care of all our needs and made life much easier in the gaming house for us he also played a really important part in mentoring the players and improving their mentality both in and out of game.



Kanani:

He is a great analyst that did everything that was asked of him and was fully devoted to the team, he was only limited by my failure to make use of his talents so he was stuck with jungle pathing and ward heatmaps for the most of the split.



As for me there are two very big mistakes that i did which impacted our results heavily:

1) I went in with a plan of making the team well rounded so i started with the basics which we practiced every week over and over again. Now i still think that this is the right approach for a new team, before you can hope to develop your own style you first need to learn the basics and be able to play the game by the book, in its simplest and purest form. The mistake i made was to go for this approach with only 10 days to go before the split started, which is nowhere near the time a team needs to stabilize and become solid in fundamentals. What ended up happening is us losing every game and players losing confidence, feeling that the training is ineffective because of our results which in turn made the training actually ineffective. When you practice something and you keep losing naturally it will feel like you are practicing the wrong thing so you will always look for a different problem to fix which lead to us jumping from fundamental to fundamental without mastering one to the end and by the time we learned something new the old would be forgotten. So while the split itself is plenty of time to practice and become a solid team if you consider that all of LCS teams have already long mastered the basics we started the race with a huge deficit so the result was for us to become a simple basic team that is much worse than the rest in their own style and we tried to play that style. If i were to re-do this again i would have prepared some sort of cheese and practiced a specific comp for the first weeks of LCS to build confidence first and then and only then start working on the basics and expand the champion pools to enable more flexible styles, given the situation i think that this approach would be ideal. I like to think about coaching in long term but sometimes you need to focus on short term to make it possible and this was one of these times.



2)As the split went on i fell into one of the simplest traps out there, one that i have fallen as a player too. I focused too much on picks and bans. My general ideology is that when a game is over you first break down everything that went wrong and could be fixed in-game and only then take a look at pick and ban to see what could you do better to make it easier for your team. Once we had lost enough games and there was no apparent improvement i started losing confidence in myself so i started looking how to fix the area i have the most control over, which is the pick and ban. While on paper this sounds just fine the trap is the following: once you focus too much on picks you start reviewing them before you break down the game and, before you know it, all the problems start pointing to the picks themselves and nothing in the gameplay gets fixed. This was an unhealthy attitude that i developed towards the end of the split, i lost confidence in myself and my picks so after every week's loss i would change the pick priority completely, most of the times taking priority in the champions that beat us, which is obviously silly and has no other result but to make the team go in circles. After a while i even started picking the strongest picks "on paper" which means ignoring the player's strengths and weaknesses and trying to get the strongest meta picks out there which once again means that we were just a copy of the other teams that was much worse at playing their style than they were. The climax of this problem happened in relegation matches versus NIP where i got completely lost in our priorities and had no longer any idea what is a good pick for us and what is not, the drafts versus NIP were a disaster and i hold a huge part of the burden of us getting relegated.



Of course there were more issues than just those two and i could probably write a book about this split and maybe one day i will but this is enough for now because these are the things that i wanted to get off my chest.This is not a goodbye letter, I am determined to learn from my mistakes and come back better and stronger next year even if it means making my way up from challenger series again so stay tuned for more news!

Reply · Report Post