The gaming scene in League of Legends is growing every year, and the best teams in the world are constantly looking for new talents. The American team “Team Liquid” had also been looking around at the beginning of the year. After the team relied on Europeans in 2022, they were now set to bring in import players from South Korea in 2023. But it went wrong again.
Was this TL’s strategy? In 2018 and 2019, Team Liquid dominated the USA, becoming champions 4 times in a row. Back then, they relied on players like Doublelift, Xmithie, or Impact. A mix of Americans, Europeans, and South Koreans. But for some time now, things have not been going well for Team Liquid.
In recent years, Team Liquid relied almost entirely on European mercenaries: they wanted to build a “super team” with experienced stars. Team Liquid brought in the Belgian Bwipo, the Danes Santorin and Bjersen, and had the French bot laner “Hans sama” under contract.
However, Team Liquid (TL) could not deliver the desired performance in 2022 and consequently parted ways with many players. The long-time LoL veteran Bjergsen was equally dissatisfied with his performance.
Subsequently, TL decided to form a new team. They brought in one of the most successful players of 2022: the jungler Hong “Pyosik” Chang-hyeon had won the League of Legends World Championship last year. Additionally, they brought in another Korean, Park “Summit” Woo-tae, to the team. The two players Haeri and Yeon were promoted from TL’s Academy team.
The uniqueness of the team: all 5 players spoke Korean. 3 of them come from South Korea, while two others have Korean roots.
South Koreans are generally considered “the best LoL players in the world,” not just because of Faker.
The team with the Korean top stars, however, could not score points in the American league. They only managed to finish in 8th place in the group phase of the LCS and thus missed their chances in the playoffs. They performed worse than the team did last year.
However, the pros are still optimistic.
This year, Riot Games tried a different type of cinematic for the introduction:
Player reports how difficult it was to get back up
What went wrong with Team Liquid? CoreJJ explains in an interview that the TL players invested the most time in practice games among all LCS teams at the beginning of the season (via Dexerto). Yet, this time is only worth as much as the result they achieve with it. Because even with the practiced strategies, they could not win many games.
In the interview, the supporter reported that the team had trouble getting back on their feet after the initial weaker phase.
He also mentioned that the players’ mentality was broken after the first defeats. This negativity carried over from game to game, especially when the players suffered losses even with strong champions.
A significant problem was that communication within the team was not consistent. Although there are no language barriers in the team since all players communicate in Korean, they do not discuss the games enough.
Everyone speaks Korean in the team – but everyone speaks too little
What are the chances for summer? For the summer split, the players must learn from their mistakes. Throughout the season, different champions are strong periodically. Recently, the traditional support champions have been pushed off the lane. Through errors and changes of champions, TL was able to gather enough information and particularly reflect on their lost games.
The players analyzed the data that showed they did not play well with specific combinations, such as Nami and Lucian on the bot lane. CoreJJ mentions that this was mainly due to communication issues. The players should engage more intensively with the results.
For the upcoming tournaments, they are confident that despite their mistakes, they will manage to execute good plays. For the summer, it remains to be seen whether the team can regain its footing and find new winning strategies that they can handle well.
In Europe, there is a team facing similar difficulties: LoL: Team has 2 stars, but only one plays – Rekkles demands a starting place, Fnatic lets the German go
