A Weekly Recap of Happenings in League of Legends (11/25/13-12/7/13)

Hello all, Alex here again with another update on what’s been happening in League of Legends news! There’s been a lot going on in eSports, from IEM Singapore to Week 3 of OGN Champions Winter; everyone is preparing for the official arrival of Season 4.

Today, I will be recapping and covering more on Patch 3.14, the past week in eSports, and taking a look at what’s coming soon to the Rift!

1v1 Me Bro!

As we bid farewell to One for All, a new featured game mode is on the horizon. As stated in a recent update:

“You’ve shot off five Final Sparks and achieved immortality through constant Chrono Shifts, but now it’s time for a Showdown. For the next Featured Gameplay Mode, you’ll be able to duel it out with friends and foes alike on an icy battlefield that promises contests of epic proportions. With three paths to an honorable victory, will you go full ham and draw first blood, waveclear your way to 100 CS or channel your inner Ziggs and demolish the turret before your opponent? If you queue up with a buddy for the beatdowns, you’ll notice that you need two kills to earn the dubya, or the two of you can combine to hit that century CS mark…”

“Sharpen your swords and ready your hextech revolvers. The Showdown approaches this Snowdown.”

There will be two new modes available: 1v1 and 2v2. In a 1v1 match, the first player to get first blood wins, while in a 2v2 match, the first team to get two kills wins. Get ready guys!

Patch 3.14: Still Adjusting

So now that we have had some time to (hopefully) begin better adjusting to the preseason changes, we have also seen some tweaks come out to address initial balance problems with certain items (cough Face of The Mountain & Targon’s Brace). As competitive play switches to 3.14, more balances and changes will most likely be addressed.

However, the next issue of concern lies with vision. The vision changes seem to have brought about a stronger resurgence of champions like Rengar and Evelynn, and some players have voiced concerns about the power of stealth champions in the current state of the game. What to do against champs with stealth? And while I’m thinking about it, what about the reappearance of champions like Shyvana, who has incredibly fast clear time even in the new jungle. Shyvana in particular has high innate tankiness and the ability to break through to the backline of an enemy team, making her incredibly disruptive and difficult to deal with. I caught a vlog by the General OddOne himself the other day, and it helped give me a little more information about these champs in the jungle and a few more.

Helpful Links – Jungle and Support Changes/Thoughts from the Pros

Foxdrop shares his opinion on the current state of Season 4 jungle items and some of the issues here .

shares his opinion on the current state of Season 4 jungle items and some of the issues . We’ve all been seeing support Annie for a while; have you been curious on trying this yourself? Well, watch a game played impaKt style

This article

IEM Singapore 2013

After an amazing weekend at IEM Cologne, the action moved quickly to IEM Singapore, again featuring both a Pro and Amateur bracket.

Within the Amateur bracket, South East Asia was looking strong, and it came down to a tough Grand Finals match up between Hong Kong Attitude and CGA Legends. CGA Legends took home the Amateur Tournament prize of $20,000 and a 2-1 victory over Hong Kong Attitude.

IEM Singapore 2013 Final Amateur Bracket

The Pro bracket was a bit of an upset with Invictus Gaming taking down Korean powerhouse CJ Entus Frost with a 2-0 victory and securing the $25,000 prize. Well played by both teams and I look forward to many more surprises in Season 4!

IEM Singapore 2013 Final Pro Bracket

All IEM Singapore VoDs are available on ESL Tv’s Youtube and our writer Jera did an awesome write up to go along with the games, which you should be sure to read here!

DreamHack Winter 2013

After a disheartening experience at IEM Cologne, SK Gaming dusted themselves off and went on to gain a hard-fought victory in DreamHack Winter over KMT, going 2-1 and taking home $10,500 in prize money. With their new mid-laner Jesiz having to fill in the big shoes Ocelote left behind, SK Gaming will be looking to reclaim their position in the EU LCS this season.

NACL All-Star Day

December 2nd was a fun night as the All-Star Game, All-Star One for All, Casters vs. Players, and Casters vs. Subscribers games were played! You all voted for the All-Star players and it was a great event to watch. All the videos are available for viewing on the NACL Twitch channel.

OGN Champions Winter: Week 3

This week was particularly exciting considering that this week’s games would be played on Patch 3.14, bringing the Preseason updates to the competitive scene. What better place to witness this first unfold than at OGN Champions Winter? If you’ve been worried about vision changes and whether or not, for example, pink wards are still viable in this tumultuous Preseason time, check out this article. Pink wards are still being used and trinkets can indeed be successfully and correctly utilized at the competitive level. There is still hope!

Moving onto the first day of gameplay itself: there was a lot of hype surrounding this week’s match-ups. Charlie from our eSports team spent a long night writing up an analysis on the first KT Rolster Bullets & Najin Black Sword game, complete with runes and masteries, so be sure to check it out.

The second highly anticipated match up featured a battle between SKT T1 K vs. CJ Entus Blaze. We’ve got you covered here as well; Charlie wrote an in-depth breakdown on the strategies, thought processes and highlighted differences between the teams which allowed SKT T1 to take a 2-0 victory over CJ Blaze. You can read about the first game here.

Coming up in eSports

NACL Week 8 will be a packed two days between December 10 th and December 11 th , with 16 games – The official schedule can be seen here .

will be a packed two days between with 16 games – The official schedule seen . OGN Champions Winter will be back on December 11 th through December 14 th , closing out Group Stages. Quarterfinals will begin on December 18 th . The action can be watched on the OGN Twitch channel live here .

will be back on closing out Group Stages. Quarterfinals will begin on The action watched on the Twitch channel live . NA & EU Group Stages and Qualifiers? – Need some more information about what’s going on and the structure? Check out these links: NA Group Stage EU Group Stage



Snowdown Showdown 2014

The Legacy Vault will open up once again when the Snowdown comes to town, as well as several new champion skins and a wintery ward skin.

I have been looking forward to these new skins ever since I first laid eyes on Winter Wonderland Lulu – Want a preview of what’s in store? Check this video out!

Riot Games Internship AMA

Have you ever dreamed of working for Riot? Want to get a jump-start by getting involved via an internship? Riot Games will be hosting an Internship AMA on Thursday, December 12th to answer questions about these opportunities. Applications for the 2014 Summer Internship Program are now being accepted – Think you’ve got what it takes? You can find more information and apply now on Riot’s website.

Helpful Links – Incase you missed this:

Yasuo AMA

A few days ago, the Riot team did a Reddit AMA discussing the new champion Yasuo. I learned a few neat things about Yasuo, including the origin of his name:

“Yasuo means honest or peaceful one in Japanese. There are a number of different characters that can be used to write it, but we went with this one: 康夫. The first character can be interpreted as “ease” or “peace” and the second simply as “man.” The name is fairly common in Japan, but has fallen in popularity over the last generation or two. The reason we went with a name meaning “peaceful one” for a guy who killed his own brother is in part the interesting juxtaposition, but also because Yasuo is not his birth name. Yasuo was wild when he first came to the sword school and, as was common practice for them, he was given a new name when he joined. In an effort to steady his wild nature, he was given the name Yasuo, which in our world (because Japan/Japanese doesn’t exist in Runeterra) means calm. We’re not revealing his birth name yet, but [it] definitely wasn’t peaceful.”

Battle of The Atlantic

Coming up just before the holiday season is Battle of The Atlantic, featuring games played in both Cologne and LA. The official schedule was posted here on the official eSports page. Tickets are now available and you can find more information on the official page.

If you hadn’t heard about it, you’re still not too late. Cursemas is still in full swing and there are still three days of gifts left to be had! Be sure to follow SaintVicious and get in on these last few days of Christmas giving thanks to Curse!

LCS Streaming Policy

When Riot unveiled their new policy mandating that professional players competing in Season 4 would not be allowed to display or advertise certain games while streaming, the public outcry was swift and critical. Games such as Dota 2, Hearthstone, World of Warcraft, and many others were on the list of “banned” games, and Riot came under fire by many for this decision.

However, upon consideration of the responses and concerns raised by players and other companies alike, Riot has rescinded their original statement, re-allowing players to show other games during their stream time:

“After reading all of your comments and having a LOT of internal debate over the last 24 hours, we’re going to be changing the LCS team requirement to something that more closely matches our intent. While under contract to the LCS, teams and players can’t accept sponsorship from other game companies to promote other titles. Besides that, they are free to stream any games they want.”



“Besides that, they are free to stream any games they want.”

I believe that this reversal was a wise choice on Riot’s part, helping streamers maintain the freedom to enjoy their stream, entertain fans, and keep some measure of difference between personal time and strictly professional practice time.

If you missed any articles we published, here are links to them so you can check them all out and stay up to date on Cloth5 content:

Thanks for reading, and see you all next week!

Special Thanks To:

Mark Cupp: My main graphics man.