C9 has been one of the most mentally fragile team in the lcs for a while. People can say well X and Y did well this year. And credit is due there but the harsh reality is that... they are mentally weak.
They cannot handle loss and maybe if worlds was a triple bracket elimination maybe then they can step it up but when the lights are on and they have one bad game... its a train wreck waiting to happen.
I would like Vulcan and Dom to stay. Vulcan had a solid year and while we did fall short I think Dom did what he could with the pieces he was given in a short split
pretty much agree. vulcan is our best player. also a mature solid voice. dom did a lot for the team but he can't get them to execute, they have to do it
Dom's drafting was absolute dogshit, including in the LCS. Dom needs major help with draft and his dragon stacking preference was massively telegraphed and probably the biggest reason they're going home
C9 led the LCS in dragons taken by minute 15. Regardless, the issue isn't just dragon stacking. It's the fact that the team fights for those later game dragons were executed so poorly.
You gotta pivot if you see your team failing the same way over and over IMO.
As a streamer, he was a condescending asshole but I honestly like Dom's personality as a coach.
Humble and hard working and he genuinely cares about his team.
He got one split as HC and had 2 pretty big roster moves (lost his shot calling ADC and a good team fighter) so some sort of dip in performance isn't out of the ordinary but people act like the team's macro strats and drafts were good and only the players individually underperformed when truthfully, there was failure all around.
Coaches can improve over time just like players so I don't think it's crazy to retain Dom. I want him to succeed on C9 but this year's performance was poor from him.
I can't believe someone wants to keep coaches around
I want a full reset, and not just the main coach and players; look at backroom staff. Some important roles have been filled by people who have only been around while we're failing, what are they contributing that's important enough to keep them?
The coaches that coached them to beat lyon. Set them to be TL, then also set them up to beat kc. Yeah keep the coaches. The players besides Vulcan all useless as fuck. Especially blaber
I just think C9 as a org has devolved so badly. Their League team shows this performance and their Valorant team is just as worse. As a fan, I'm not disappointed, I just lost faith in NA ability to win an international in league due to people like Jack allowing this to happen.
I think the coaches did a good job, the drafts were not the problem. The players are choking on stage every time, the individual play was horrible since the TL series
No way Yamato stays on unfortunately. It was already a huge ask for him to leave home and fly to LA. I would never try to convince him to sacrifice even more for this org, just to have another shit year.
Nah they should be able to play these kind of comps no matter what. Especially if they want to compete. The players are dog shit though. Thanatos invisible, blaber and Tactical super inters
I've defended Blaber for 2 years on this subreddit. But at this point, just blow it up. Rage sign 5 rookies and see what happens. Rolling the dice seems better than this.
Whatever we call it, it isn't a trait a jungler should have. It's a role that calls for versatility. Depending on the draft a jungler is forced to fulfill all kinds of different roles.
Oh I agree. I honestly thought it was a problem (and other on C9) have had for a while, hence why you see this seeming devolution into what looks like 3 soloq players and a duoq bot, playing about 3 different games in one game state. It's not enough to talk or game plan if someone is going to go off script because they see an angle no one is in position for to follow-up. Otherwise, you get these moments of funneling in one at a time like goons in a Bruce Lee movie.
Agreed. And not being able to speak the language of your sololaners probably doesn't help. Now that I think about it, C9 has just too many flaws lol. It might just be better to blow the whole roster up.
I think its time for Cloud 9 and Blaber to part ways. Blaber time and time again has shown he cant handle playing in big matches the past few years. Inspired has been running NA and Jose has shown he is a waaaay better jg than Blaber this season. This will be good for both parties as Cloud 9 can look for a jg or sign a rookie jg and let Vulcan be the main shotcaller and might motivate Blaber into improve if a big org like Cloud 9 doesn't see him as a top jg anymore
Eh I mean a lot has changed. We won 4 titles with this jungler and we have also bombed out to a 100T roster that got eliminated from worlds faster than we just did with this jungler.
I mean yeah. It may be time to move on, but I do think people just dismiss that as having never happened. He isn't NA Razork, he was really fucking good for 4 years.
And hasn't been good since. The game is different now, he is different now. No one denied the titles happens, people just aren't going to weight the titles from years ago to the poor results that have been consistent over the past few years.
Eh, I'd give Dom another year. He inherited a roster that had clear issues and at the end of the day, he did get better results than a year ago with more or less the same team.
I'd also keep Vulcan but that's mainly because NA support pool is absolute trash and you absolutely won't do better without importing (which is a waste). Everyone else should go. Massu should be the big target since his contract is up, that would leave us a lot of flexibility to find good top/jung/mid.
We also need to be comfortable with the idea that we go from a team that blows it in the big moments to team that doesn't make the big moments. But I think at this point, it's a risk that needs to be taken.
Plus didn't Dom just became the head coach in Summer? If I remember Inero was the head coach before he stepped down before the summer split correct? Hence why they went and got Yamato to be the assistant coach. Honestly I'll give both Dom and Yamato another year plus its the same line up as last year only they added APA at the beginning of the season but his champ pool was clearly small. Zven was still struggling and they brought in Tactical but he was just a Zven 2.0 especially during team fights. Loki come back in Summer but still struggling. At this point Vulcan is the player they should build around for next season. Everyone else should either go or be in the hot seat
You cant just change your draft expecting your players to choke, that just feeds into a feedback loop of players playing bad but now with a worse comp. They draft what they practice with, throwing in a new style mid series never works. They weren't going to win no matter how they drafted, if they picked a scaling comp, i would bet they would just get shit on in 20 minutes and never scale.
At the very least, C9 finally does have a good early game. They were so bad in the Spring, and Dom only got promoted to main coach in the summer. They gotta get rid of most of the other coaches, idk why they have like 4 or 5 coaches, but it has not amounted to anything.
Just give Blaber another year. And if it doesn’t work out, there’s always the option to give him another year. And if that doesn’t work, just one more year might do it.
Just casually forgetting his Karma games he's carried, his Seraphine, Renata, Bard or even the Milio he literally played game 1 of the same series. But yeah no, can't play enchanters. Honestly can't believe we're digging up memes like this from almost 2 years ago lol
The only person who actually has a brain in this subreddit lmao. Everyone saying he plays enchanters when he can’t lulu, nami, Morg, or any other real enchanter.
No way Vulcan gets a pass. He absolutely griefed on Naut. Land hook, 1 auto, then run away is soft inting. As naut you have to die to get stuns off in team fights.
Even if he “inted” that game, (which he didn’t) he was our best player the rest of the tournament by far. The Milio game is example one. Always in the right place at the right time, freeing up Tactical to carry. He destroyed Busio in pretty much that whole series
This has gotta be one of the worst takes I’ve ever seen. You think a Naut is supposed to somehow do more than ult/hook/auto one person?
He MIGHT get off a 2nd auto if they’re stacked and he auto resets with W but he’s never getting to another player without hook. Even flash auto comes out slow due to Nauts windup.
Especially building Mikaels first, he’s so squishy that he’s going to get one shot.
All these ppl saying coaches should be fired have no idea how to run a sports team: you build around the coach and a sports director. See Flyquest, G2, MKOI, even fkin KC. Players are the only thing we should consider switching, preferably building around Vulcan.
In my opinion, Dom is the closest thing we can get to an LS-like figure running the team: a great thinker and analyst of the game, let him build a squad how he pleases. And if it doesn't work, keep having faith in him.
NA needs people like Dom coaching. I've seen the scene for years, YEARS, and LoL discourse has always been stuck on demagogue rhetoric based solely on clout and results-based analysis: we win - team is good; we lose - team is bad, and completely ignore the process. Dom is one of the very few individuals who is not speaking Korean or Chinese who actively tries to understand how the game operates at a deeper level, and now that LS i barely active, there's no one left to push knowledge out there.
Changes do need to happen, but don't ask for Dom's head on a spike and then wonder why we can't get a NA good coach. I am convinced that, if we leave Dom where he is a do is bidding, he will turn into a figure like Hansi Flick, Pep Guardiola or Johan Cruyff.
I sweat its a player issue, dom worked around the terrible picks half of them played. Imo give dom full control next split like full full. Let him kick them all or the majority let him get a good adc. Kick tactical, kick tactical oh and kick tactical. Wait I forgot kick tactical
We need players that THIRST for a win and aren't afraid to lose. These players can't do ANYTHING no matter how draft goes.
Coaching wins draft? Doesn't matter, our players will get out laned regardless,
do nothing, and lose.
They can't fight 1vs1
They can't even fucking fight 5vs1
We're losing to fucking GUIGO JAX 5vs1
They're treating Guigo Jax like it's fucking Bin or something. We can't win with these dog shit players. Get rid of them please. We won draft several times but the players REFUSE to use their hands to play. I'm watching fucking Larva play with his feet except Larva can actually win while these guys just vomit all over their own blue and white T-shirts.
Its definitely not the coaching staff. We have seen coaching come and go with this Cloud 9 roster not performing. At some point its the PLAYERS who need to be held accountable for their performances. Blabers shot calling is bad, Loki's laning phase is bad, Tactical and Zven's positioning in team fights are horrible. The only ones I see that had a good overall year was Vulcan. Next season you build a roster around him and let him be the main shot caller. Thanatos I am open to bringing him back. But the rest of the rosters have to go
How can you blame Dom for the team being disgusting chokers? Tactical flashing in the TL game 4, Blaber brainless crab inter every other game, Loki/Thanatos inconsistency, only Vulcan is free from blame tbh
Dom and Yamato are fantastic coaches. Out of the 9 worlds games id say they won 7 drafts easily. The players just have no drive, no soul, no fire. Blaber needs to go, the experiment was over 4 years ago. Keep the coaches, blow up the roster. It literally couldn't be worse than this.
I mean I'd be fine with keeping Dom, Vulcan, Thanatos and Loki.
Under Dom the team objectively improved, their sidelaning got bounds better and they almost always won drafts. His game knowledge can't force his team to not shit themselves on stage.
Loki and Thanatos I think show they're mechanically very skilled and i think when they grief it's mostly them trying to overplay to fix a bad state.
I like Blaber but I think it's a situation that both the player and the environment has run it's course. I can even see him joining another team and doing well but I think the combination of him and C9 just has too much baggage that adds to the pressure of choking. I don't think this tournament is even on him at all but I think it's time regardless.
And Tactical..I mean I understand and agree with the swap for zven for skill reason but imo he was always a bandaid fix. He was already known for being a choker under pressure and he showed it again today. In a position like adc where you're expected to be the insurance can't have him flashing in at 5 hp, missing ziggs ult on stunned targets and getting caught on repeat in bronze level rotations multiple games in a row. And that's in the pressure of playing.....In the same arena they're used to playing in...
I think with Thanatos he needs to improve on are teamfights. His laning phase is fine, not the best but he is solid. Loki just came back in summer after returning from Korea so I am not opposed to bringing him back. They need to find a jg I prefer a rookie jg like Music from Tier 2 as for adc I definitely would look into Massu and see when his contract ends and then you let Vulcan be the lone shot caller. I dont know what the comms are like but if Blaber and Vulcan are shot calling it wouldn't surprise me if they were not on the same page at times
They need major change. I'm ok starting over but coaches aren't the issue. It's been like this for years. I don't expect anything will other than maybe Dom leaving.
I hope they let him build a team. I think these player have too much bad history and its no good anymore. Happens all the time in sports. I love Blaber but it's time.
Literally all they should do is replace Blaber with Gryffin. Let Gryffin learn more macro from vulcan. It sounded like Dom and Vulcan were on the same page and Blaber threw wrenches in that.
Okay but if they pick a lategame comp then they will fail at a random baron/dragon fight and lose while 4k up because it has happened many times in the past few weeks. Theres no drafting when the players play like this
Contractz would be a killer pick. He’s so underrated and a major playoff riser. He sucks during the regular season but at least he isn’t a perpetual choker when there are stakes.
Just disband the org from the league so I can just cherry pick a team that actually won’t just disappoint year after year after year, by keeping the same player that throws year after year after year.
tbh I am a huge Zven believer for the time he was on the team with Rookie Thanatos & Loki. He's a big voice, this team didn't need that. I think Zven on Flyquest would flourish on the younger Flyquest roster and provide a ton of needed direction.
it just hurt so much to watch tactical fumbling around on the pick when you have, what might legitimately be the best ziggs in the world sitting on your bench lol
If you thought about this for more than a second you'd realize how obvious subbing tactical for APA is, and how easily the decision to just first ban ziggs becomes. Now C9 is stuck with Apa as their adc for an elimination game.
If you go back to when APA was legitimately a top tier mid, the meta was trist and corki, and he spiced it up with ziggs. Is APA just an ADC in denial?
Jack's too much of a cheap bastard to do anything. He'll do nothing and gaslight the fan base into thinking that next year is different. Rinse and repeat every year.
C9's Valorant team is the sole reason why I fell off that entire game lol. I was so excited when it was announced, watched Cloud9 put out the worst fucking teams imaginable, and that completely killed my hype for the game so I stopped watching and stopped playing lol.
I'd like to see at least Dom, Vulcan, and Loki stick around. Feels like shit today but I don't think you can totally discredit them finally making it to playins in the first place.
That’s a very short sighted view amplified by frustration. Blabber was playing well, as was Vulcan. I still think Loki is good and will keep getting better. Tactical showed his typical hot cold and got caught, definitely a weak link. I think the biggest issue is Thanatos has zero idea how to team fight. He’s always relied on winning lane and bullying the rest of the game, but the amount of times he was chasing kills instead of working with the team all year just shows he can’t work within a team well.
Today blabber was, yesterday and against Lyon the second time blaber was mostly decent. If we replace him, it has to be for the right player, not just ‘get rid at any cost’.
If our solo laners are even just okay either today or yesterday, we make worlds proper.
they need an adc who will not make the wrong decision in every important moment. i hate to say anything positive about kc, but caliste even when playing poorly in the first two games and getting dumped on in lane, when the games hit the critical stage, he was clutch when they needed him and didn't needlessly die before the fight even started. Tactical plays teamfights like he has a cone in his screen and can only see whats in front of him; he mispositions so much and gets blown up instantly.
Blaber did not play well. When KC and Furia were putting him behind Blaber clearly had no idea what to do which caused him to make mistakes and get caught
Tbf I do like Thanatos. I think him and Loki are promising. I'd give them till First Stand to show me something with a new jungler (I think changing Blaber will require massive strategy changes that's why I'm willing to hold out)
Loki is garbage. Jack being the nice guy he is took back the player who went AWOL on them 2 weeks before winter split. Mental midget who couldn’t even start for low tier LCK teams came crawling back for a quick paycheck
They're all strong players and we've seen that through the year but C9 really needs the Inspired treatment--a leader in game that just tells them what to do and lets the team hands diff everyone else. Vulcan is experienced but he's too soft spoken to lead in game. Blaber has always done best focusing on his mechanics while letting someone else dictate the flow of the game, like Nisqy or Zven. Loki and Thanatos are rookies playing a game in a completely new country and learning a new language. And I'm not really sure where Tactical falls.
Say what you want about Zven or APA's mechanics or performance from seasons ago; they're both outspoken players in game and when we lost games with them at least most of the time it feels like the team had a vision and had just had issues executing on the vision. Meanwhile this iteration of the team feels like they cannot adapt to any changes that happen in game and are lost the second something goes unexpected. It's like they're just praying that laning well and stacking drags will automatically win them the game and have no idea how to play out mid and late game to convert their lead.
The state of the team now is like putting a new driver into a racecar, it doesn't matter how much horsepower the engine has or how much downforce the car generates if the driver doesn't know how to put the car into gear. And we keep trying to swap out tires or put on a new body kit when what we really need is someone who actually knows how to drive the car
"Its not him! Its everyone else around him making him play bad!"
Funnily enough, it would most likely even benefit Blaber as player to leave and see perspective of other teams and maybe even become stronger player on another roster
But paycheck stealer doesnt wanna change and Jack is too afraid to kick goldenboy out
I know everyone is yelling to blow up the roster and replace everyone with young NA rookies. but flyquest literally did that this year and proved that its hard to find top elite NA players to fill the roles. You need people with some experience. I think at most TOP and Support should stay the same.
It’s so funny, I came in here saying the exact thing before this performance and you guys were relentless on me about how it was different this time. It’s never different! Time for change.
As a c9 fan i hope they move on from blabber we have kept him around for abit too long everyone agree’d ln this at the start of this year. Maybe we could get contractz? Who would you guys recommend? Also who would be another change?
Dude idk. I like dom, I think there’s no better option for support or jungle than Vulcan and blaber in NA. No one’s even close to blaber besides jose and inspired who won’t leave their teams. Zven is just not good enough hands, tactical is not good enough brain, Thanatos is no brain, Loki doesn’t know what to do. I’m not sure how to fix this team but there’s no easy options. Need upgrades everywhere, but there’s literally no upgrades available in NA, we’d have to import. But then what positions?
Everyone’s calling to replace Tactical. I’m not saying I disagree- he definitely has major positioning issues- but like.. who replaces him? I think he looks better than Zven. We don’t have any import slots and I don’t know of anyone domestic who would be an upgrade.
Sure, you could say replace Loki with a NA mid and import our adc, but what NA mid replaces Loki? Again I think Loki looks better than APA.
Could replace Thanatos and free up an import slot that way. I don’t love this tho bc Thanatos is a mechanical beast and I think we can continue to develop his team fighting. But I think the NA top pool is a lot better than mid or adc.
There’s is the route of getting someone young/new and unproven, which I think is fine. However NAs farm system is lowk dog.. so.. idk. TLDR I think the solution isn’t as obvious as people think.
I have started saying this ever since late 2020. I have legit no idea how tactical still manages to end up on rosters.
I would go as far as to say that he was never a good adc. He had ONE GOOD SPLIT and that was in spring of 2020, he was originally an academy player. But Doublelift was extremely lazy, didnt play solo queue, and quite literally said on stream that he doesnt care about MSI. So they bench him for tactical, and of course tactical plays well, any adc would out preform doublelift when he clearly mentally checked out.
And it seems like ever since then, every team just rides on the fact of "ya but remember that one split that he out preformed doublelift when TL benched doublelift!?"
maybe I just havent followed LoL esports as much as I should have, but I have a hard time believing this region is so beyond doomed that tactical is the best option, no way this region is THIS doomed, right?
Considering it was the summer spilt and you couldn't bring in a rookie from nacl and put that much pressure on them yes he was. C9 was in a fucked postion going into the spilt. The fact they got this out of him is a god send
I don't think Tactical was a major issue here. I really liked his play, mostly, besides the one Caitlyn flash vs TL. I thought his play was a breath of fresh air compared to Zven. I wouldn't mind upgrading him but I thought most of his "bad" deaths were the rest of the team totally selling him out.
I don't think anyone really looked good today tbh, aside from Vulcan. Very annoying after everyone had pretty good showings yesterday.
I think Tactical had a pretty solid playoffs, he did very well the first Lyon series, had the Caitlyn mess-up vs TL, and then got little support the second Lyon series.
What's MOST annoying about this series (and, arguably Lyon Round 2) is that this is a good team. Lyon and TL are good teams that can both threaten to get into knockouts at world's, and C9 played them both very well. We showed excellent poise during the playoffs. This is a very frustrating series but there's also no obvious way we improve the team by replacing a player. Everyone wants Blaber's head - Blaber outjungled Inspired and Yike in recent weeks. Tactical is getting slammed - he outplayed Calliste yesterday 3/5 games.
Honestly I just think Furia hard counters us. We struggled against their tankier tops (which weren't getting played by other teams) and that exposes a lot of draft and comp issues across the team. If most of our comps are poke / spikes of damage, then that doesn't do well against these beefy bruisers.
Unpopular opinion, keep everyone but be flexible with adc. The highs of this team are very high. The unfortunate reality is the standard of a good team is higher than it has ever been. Vulcan has CoreJJ level leadership. Blaber is a jungle goat and has more understanding of the game than everyone on this subreddit calling for his head combined. Thanatos and Loki have some of the most legitimate skill ceilings in the west. The coaches are innovative and still learning to understand the strengths and weaknesses ofthe players. Tactical or Zven doesn’t really matter. Both are great players but lack that’s x-factor. If you think a better team is going to magically manifest, fair enough. Thought being the first team out of worlds after being a favorite in playins but the reality is that it is a lot harder than it looks from our perspective. Been a fan since the miracle gauntlet and I stand by this team from what I feel is a rational perspective. Totally understand the frustration, but get used to it if you’re a true C9 fan. High highs and low lows has always been a staple, just like any sport team.
Glad people are willing to admit Dom is a fucking shit coach. Allowing unpracticed Lilia game 5, picking difficult to execute comps for a team as sloppy as this, ABSOLUTE INSANITY.
Crazy that you even need to explain to people that coaching isn't only about creating a strategy. This team had LS as coach at one point and you'd think people understand that Coaching goes beyond understanding draft.
The strategies were not the issue. The players fucking inting throughout the game. Tell me you dont watch or play lol without telling me. Any team would gg on those comps easy
Having zero scaling with a group of known inters is fucking ridiculously stupid. If Dom couldn't see that his team constantly throws and needs as much buffer with scaling IT IS HIS FUCKING FAULT.
Says the one who thinks the coaches are the issue. Maybe go outside play on some competitive sport or esport then come back. Cause you are going full retard and it doesn't look good on you
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u/Kurumi_Tokisaki 5h ago
C9 has been one of the most mentally fragile team in the lcs for a while. People can say well X and Y did well this year. And credit is due there but the harsh reality is that... they are mentally weak.
They cannot handle loss and maybe if worlds was a triple bracket elimination maybe then they can step it up but when the lights are on and they have one bad game... its a train wreck waiting to happen.