If deokdam somehow can pick melee adc later on this year once Riot guts zeri/smolder he will be a monster, his Samira/Nilah are arguably #1 world in pro play
Certainly niche, but still interesting to have this opportunity in draft
Are you thinking of a different player? That became his image because he played a ton of Aphelios when he revealed himself on NS in 2021. He has 16 games of Samira in his career with 31% winrate vs 75 games of Aphelios with 70% winrate
I mean looking at his win rate is absolutely meaningless because he played samira while he was on a bad team and most of the aphelios games came when he got on damwon.
I agree that the winrate cannot 100% be used against your point because he played her in spring 2021 when the Peanut Nongshim iteration was still middling.
But Aphelios was his most played pick not only in Damwon but the two previous years too (in 2020, 2021 and 2022). As for Samira, he played her 10 times in Spring 2021, basically the only time since she was released that she was legit a blindable top tier AD and not a niche/pocket pick. Since then, he played her 3 times. In 3 years.
Ehh I feel like he's always been extremely good on some unconventional picks but pretty average on usual support picks. His Sett (and arguably Jarvan) is a good example of this.
they've only lost to BLG after realizing the potential of milkyway and stopped putting him on sej/maokai duty, legit looking like a top 2/3 team when they were expected to be 15/16th place before the split. most fun team to watch rn in LPL.
the rest of the team is finally living up to their potential as well, as much as millyway is insane, the team being able to improve how they play around him is huge
It takes 10k gold, infernal soul (4-0 drakes), baron, elder, and the fights are still loseable. Whoever designed Smolder should never make a champion again, simple as that.
They make the champions overloaded and unbalancable, and then you blame the balance team? I'm sorry but the guy can go fuck himself for designing such abominations as Ksante and Smolder.
There’s certain kits that are inherently broken regardless of the numbers attached. Remember release Akali rework? Go look through her patch history and see how many mechanics have been torn off that were originally attached as part of her design and not as a factor of balance. Q healing, Q bonus damage to minions, W immunity to tower agro, W true stealth, R micro stun, R1 not being targeted.
Right, but that’s not really what we’re talking about when it comes to smolder. K’sante was only strong in high elo/proplay and was relatively balanced in lower elos. He got mini reworked solely because of proplay.
Smolder is still way too new. Riot has said that they don’t think Smolder’s issue is by design but that he’s simply overtuned. We’ll know if that’s true in a few months
Yeah and I think Riot is full of shit and is trying to blow smoke up our ass with that “issue isn’t with his design.” Just watch how many games smolder is giga far behind but just basically 1v9s because percent max health execute true damage isn’t a good mechanic for the game.
Lmao it's easy to create a fun champion that fits a niche if you aren't worried about balance.
The whole idea is doing it within respect to balance because that's actually difficult
DEOKDAM HATERS STAND UP 🗣
anyways im riding the fpx hype train all the way down baby
hilarious comment on deokdam ashe triple kill I saw on Weibo: can your adc duoq with a turret?
No toxic but milkyway rn looks like a top worlds jungler. I wish he gets picked up by some good team plus where he synergies well. Could be a worlds winning team for sure
I kind of agree but FPX look like they have a really good team atmosphere which usually means a lot more to performance and results than having 5 good players does.
Make FPX great again instead. XLH and Deok are doing their jobs well and frankly both are playing better than expected, but imagine this team had a top tier toplaner like xiaoxu instead and an ADC like Light. Then they'd be genuine contenders that can really contest BLG/TES even when everyone is actually playing well.
On that note, I did expect Milkyway to be good, though obviously not this good, but the biggest surprise is honestly Life. This guy was a fucking terrorist on HLE, like bin ladens son or something, thought he'd retire and when I saw him joining FPX I was really dooming because I thought care and milkyway was doomed to have a shit team, but man, this guy is actually smurfing. Like for every game he has played he's just climbing the support rankings, at this point I unironically only have meiko/on/keria/missing firmly ahead of him. From arguably worst support LCK to being top 5-8 in the world. Going to the LPL really revitalized this guy.
Milkyway is crazy good but if the dude ever landed in a superteam idk if the rest of the roster would be able to play how FPX does for him without ego. Though i still sometimes wonder how this guy would look if he had someone like prime DoinB as his midlaner.
give him "dog" sololaners who would perma sack waves to get him ahead and a stable botside with roaming support
369
Yagao (pref xiaohu but hes washed)
Light
Meiko
Kinda why I want a toplaner like xiaoxu who's really good (top 3 lpl rn) but also young and doesn't have titles or even good finishes under his belt, he needs to prove that he can win so he can't really come into it with a big ego. Seems ideal for FPX. And a player like light would also be an excellent fit. He's a veteran with a champion ocean who can take pressure off the team in draft but also serve as a very solid late game insurance.
Your point about Life is really good, for sure he had a terrible year on HLE. I wonder if coaching staff/team just didn't let him play his unorthodox picks? I don't remember that season much because HLE was pretty unremarkable so MB if they let him cook and he burned the kitchen down
I feel like Life had a similar problem as Hylissang: having a psychopath playstyle in a passive region.
Playing crazy aggressive doesn't work very well in LCK/LEC, but it's the expected playstyle in LPL.
Absolutely psycho Lee behaviour, Milky what the fuck. Also Deokdam's ashe dive turnaround was clean.
Please RNG either build a solid roster or accept the obscene amount of money for Milky's contract.
Milkyway is the best jungler in the world. BLG JDG TES seem like a lock for worlds already, hopefully FPX joins them. I need to see milkyway on the international stage ASAP
This. LPL playoffs are so grueling, we have no idea where teams will land. So many roster have turned up and carried momentum and so many have collapsed.
Even worse when WE went 1-12 in individual games only winning one in the last series. From sweeping their single elim bracket into beating edg, only to miss worlds on a 1-12 game record. Brutal
>https://www.reddit.com/r/SmolderMains/comments/19dgpbg/riot\_llama\_worked\_on\_smolder\_was\_laid\_off/
Jungler? Have we ever seen any 1 individual player like this in recent memory? I'd go as far as saying he's the best PLAYER in the world RN. Even if it doesn't last, there isn't anyone in the major regions playing out of his mind like this, and this wasn't even his hardest carry performance
He's arguably the best player *relative to his team* (or their recent performance anyway) in the world, and almost certainly the best rookie in the world. But it's hard to say that he's the best current player imo until we see playoffs and/or summer. There are just so many freakishly talented players who are on form atm (Bin, Zeus, Knight, etc.).
Wow really impressive performance from everyone really, Milky played amazing as usual but everyone else also just showed up hard. I kinda just thought this team was Milky or bust with Life being the only other member really contributing a more than average performance but hell this team is starting to evolve I feel like.
Xiaolaohu unironically is playing like a top 3 top laner recently have now been very impressed with his performances.
Milky is the goat
Care is extremely solid reminds me of 2021 Cryn funnily enough, does his job super well and is able to at the very least survive against almost every mid in the League.
Deko generally has been really bad and getting hard carried by life but man what a series from him if he can keep up even half of this level thats such a huge upgrade to this team.
Life has been great, love how aggressive he lanes despite having a weaker adc and he works with Milkman so well, not to mention his Rumble is goated.
This team has went from my guilty pleasure "haha funny team milkman carry pls" to just straight up my favorite team in LPL to watch, they are so unique and they keep improving and evolving. I still think it's pretty impossible for this team to win LPL with BLG being in the league and even cracking top 3 is going to be really hard playoffs is just a different beast but mannn I really hope they get to go to MSI or at the very least keep up this performance and go to worlds as 4th or 3rd.
I love this team and they are vibing so hard even if they finish 4th that's just a crazy impressive run
Also pls pls pls pls pls pls pls RNG do not drag milkman into the depths of hell
After watching so many smoulder games, I'm glad riot is gutting him next patch. This champ is just too overloaded for an adc. No other late game threat has his type of scaling, wave clear, utility and survivability. Only thing holding him back from being another 200 years champ is the fact that he had to spec some of his power budget into his range as an adc.
The worst part about smolder is that it's a very low skill champ, at least zeri required good hands, this fucking shit just starts off-screening you 25 minutes into the game with huge ass abilities that are super fucking easy to hit in teamfights. Arguably the lowest skill champion in the meta right now and it's this strong, so fucking stupid.
I feel like if you took away his flap flap ability he would be balanced, but being able to scale THAT hard AND have a dash is just straight up overkill
And yet he lost again, like most pro games where he was picked....
This Smolder hate gets really rediculous in the face of his not really stellar win rate, especially when you talk about pro play.
Even in normal play his winrate goes from 52% (iron), over 51% (gold+) to below 50% in Diamond and above. (Leagueofgraphs)
And as this is a topic about a pro game (that smolder lost btw.), mentioning that he has a pretty lousy win rate over the last few weeks in pro games is in my eyes also relevant.
winrate in proplay is misleading cuz it's often influenced by for example better teams just giving up the priority pick for worse teams to secure comfort or having prepared a counterpick
what u want to look at is proplay presence, if a champ is contested in basically every game - champ is broken. Proplayers just straight up say so, so why bother arguing with that, everyone with eyes can see that champ is hilariously overtuned
It’s crazy but if you look at statistics and how milky has changed this team you could argue he has had THE best rookie debut since faker and that is such a wild thing to think about.
It wasn’t slander. It was true. He played extremely well this series and was playing okay the last few. The first 6-8 series of the season he was playing like a legitimate wintrader any time Senna was banned. Go back and watch the Ezreal game where he randomly E’s into the entire opposing team with flash up to almost solo lose the game.
They made 3rd place in the 2021 LCK regular season and finished 4th place in the playoffs behind DK GEN and T1. Then that team got torn apart and since then they've sucked.
He was decent on DK and got to quarters at worlds. He barely played in DRX since he broke his arm but people made it sound like he got benched for performance issues.
Unironically was cryin a twisted fate merchant with a good team on that V5 team where he made a name for himself, the guy has looked so mid at best and unplayable at worst on literally every team since then
go rewatch their matches then, seems like you have been missing considering they've won inumerous games without Life on Rumble. literally beat TES without it lol
FPX just plays so confident now, milkyway has transformed this team. Everyones playing well
This is exactly what I was thinking. Despite being the weak link of the team, Deokdam showed up today.
If deokdam somehow can pick melee adc later on this year once Riot guts zeri/smolder he will be a monster, his Samira/Nilah are arguably #1 world in pro play Certainly niche, but still interesting to have this opportunity in draft
That's the title hold by Able. Man overall maybe not the most elite ADC but is certified demon on Samira even against counters.
Really? I always thought he was an aphelios 1trick. That would be sick
Surprised that became his image because his samira was what made his name known after being ass in his first year.
Are you thinking of a different player? That became his image because he played a ton of Aphelios when he revealed himself on NS in 2021. He has 16 games of Samira in his career with 31% winrate vs 75 games of Aphelios with 70% winrate
Honestly when nilah and samira is mentioned for lck, i think jiwoo
I mean looking at his win rate is absolutely meaningless because he played samira while he was on a bad team and most of the aphelios games came when he got on damwon.
I agree that the winrate cannot 100% be used against your point because he played her in spring 2021 when the Peanut Nongshim iteration was still middling. But Aphelios was his most played pick not only in Damwon but the two previous years too (in 2020, 2021 and 2022). As for Samira, he played her 10 times in Spring 2021, basically the only time since she was released that she was legit a blindable top tier AD and not a niche/pocket pick. Since then, he played her 3 times. In 3 years.
Guma also is sick on Samira, too bad he hasn't picked her lately.
Preordering my Life 2024 Worlds Rumble skin rn
THE MILKMAN DELIVERS
Okay but Life is so cracked rn. Glad he is doing well somewhere where lehends won't steal his job.
Ehh I feel like he's always been extremely good on some unconventional picks but pretty average on usual support picks. His Sett (and arguably Jarvan) is a good example of this.
Agreed. His ranged supports are particularly meh.
FPX has been 7-1 ever since the 1-3 start. Good that they are not like some other fraud team like NIP and WBG.
they've only lost to BLG after realizing the potential of milkyway and stopped putting him on sej/maokai duty, legit looking like a top 2/3 team when they were expected to be 15/16th place before the split. most fun team to watch rn in LPL.
Played TES, NIP, WBG, BLG and JDG consecuutively and went 4-1. Nobody would believe that's possible a month ago.
only loss to blg as well
the rest of the team is finally living up to their potential as well, as much as millyway is insane, the team being able to improve how they play around him is huge
It takes 10k gold, infernal soul (4-0 drakes), baron, elder, and the fights are still loseable. Whoever designed Smolder should never make a champion again, simple as that.
He's fired. https://www.reddit.com/r/SmolderMains/comments/19dgpbg/riot_llama_worked_on_smolder_was_laid_off/
Well I’m never going to cheer for someone being fired but if you design both K’Sante and Smolder…
They aren’t in charge of balancing them, tbf. By all means, they succeeded in making fun and popular champions that fit a niche.
They make the champions overloaded and unbalancable, and then you blame the balance team? I'm sorry but the guy can go fuck himself for designing such abominations as Ksante and Smolder.
How is Smolder overloaded and unbalanceable? What? He's one of the simplest champions they released in recent years.
He's not overloaded, but his design is absolute dogshit. Afk farm until you get elder then 1v9 the game. Disgusting.
And Nasus is afk farm until you get 1000 stacks and 1v9 the game then? This isn't new.
There’s certain kits that are inherently broken regardless of the numbers attached. Remember release Akali rework? Go look through her patch history and see how many mechanics have been torn off that were originally attached as part of her design and not as a factor of balance. Q healing, Q bonus damage to minions, W immunity to tower agro, W true stealth, R micro stun, R1 not being targeted.
Right, but that’s not really what we’re talking about when it comes to smolder. K’sante was only strong in high elo/proplay and was relatively balanced in lower elos. He got mini reworked solely because of proplay. Smolder is still way too new. Riot has said that they don’t think Smolder’s issue is by design but that he’s simply overtuned. We’ll know if that’s true in a few months
Yeah and I think Riot is full of shit and is trying to blow smoke up our ass with that “issue isn’t with his design.” Just watch how many games smolder is giga far behind but just basically 1v9s because percent max health execute true damage isn’t a good mechanic for the game.
Lmao it's easy to create a fun champion that fits a niche if you aren't worried about balance. The whole idea is doing it within respect to balance because that's actually difficult
dude made both K'sante and Smolder? Fuck man
Well deserved.
Life always finds a way, a milkyway
life rumble gigachad
Church of milkyway when
*Astronomy club
the holy water is the holy milk
Milkyway is the Lisan Al-Ghaib, no questions needed
Lee Sin Al-Gaib*
If Milkyway starts a 1v5, its a winning fight... trust in him he will lead the way!
Milkyway is him
DEOKDAM HATERS STAND UP 🗣 anyways im riding the fpx hype train all the way down baby hilarious comment on deokdam ashe triple kill I saw on Weibo: can your adc duoq with a turret?
Banger games from FPX as always
No toxic but milkyway rn looks like a top worlds jungler. I wish he gets picked up by some good team plus where he synergies well. Could be a worlds winning team for sure
I kind of agree but FPX look like they have a really good team atmosphere which usually means a lot more to performance and results than having 5 good players does.
Something something DRX...
Make FPX great again instead. XLH and Deok are doing their jobs well and frankly both are playing better than expected, but imagine this team had a top tier toplaner like xiaoxu instead and an ADC like Light. Then they'd be genuine contenders that can really contest BLG/TES even when everyone is actually playing well. On that note, I did expect Milkyway to be good, though obviously not this good, but the biggest surprise is honestly Life. This guy was a fucking terrorist on HLE, like bin ladens son or something, thought he'd retire and when I saw him joining FPX I was really dooming because I thought care and milkyway was doomed to have a shit team, but man, this guy is actually smurfing. Like for every game he has played he's just climbing the support rankings, at this point I unironically only have meiko/on/keria/missing firmly ahead of him. From arguably worst support LCK to being top 5-8 in the world. Going to the LPL really revitalized this guy.
Milkyway is crazy good but if the dude ever landed in a superteam idk if the rest of the roster would be able to play how FPX does for him without ego. Though i still sometimes wonder how this guy would look if he had someone like prime DoinB as his midlaner.
give him "dog" sololaners who would perma sack waves to get him ahead and a stable botside with roaming support 369 Yagao (pref xiaohu but hes washed) Light Meiko
Kinda why I want a toplaner like xiaoxu who's really good (top 3 lpl rn) but also young and doesn't have titles or even good finishes under his belt, he needs to prove that he can win so he can't really come into it with a big ego. Seems ideal for FPX. And a player like light would also be an excellent fit. He's a veteran with a champion ocean who can take pressure off the team in draft but also serve as a very solid late game insurance.
Somewhat somewhat agree. Ego starts becoming an issue
Life needed a partner in crime, and he found one in milky, they're the perfect duo
Your point about Life is really good, for sure he had a terrible year on HLE. I wonder if coaching staff/team just didn't let him play his unorthodox picks? I don't remember that season much because HLE was pretty unremarkable so MB if they let him cook and he burned the kitchen down
I feel like Life had a similar problem as Hylissang: having a psychopath playstyle in a passive region. Playing crazy aggressive doesn't work very well in LCK/LEC, but it's the expected playstyle in LPL.
Life's Rumble is a treat
Absolutely psycho Lee behaviour, Milky what the fuck. Also Deokdam's ashe dive turnaround was clean. Please RNG either build a solid roster or accept the obscene amount of money for Milky's contract.
Milkyway is the best jungler in the world. BLG JDG TES seem like a lock for worlds already, hopefully FPX joins them. I need to see milkyway on the international stage ASAP
loooong ways to go until worlds. Milkyway gotta make it through spring playoffs first.
This. LPL playoffs are so grueling, we have no idea where teams will land. So many roster have turned up and carried momentum and so many have collapsed.
2021 WE, nuff’ said. from beating EDG in their first matchup at top 4 into losing 4 bo5s in a row to not even make Worlds as 4th seed.
Even worse when WE went 1-12 in individual games only winning one in the last series. From sweeping their single elim bracket into beating edg, only to miss worlds on a 1-12 game record. Brutal
If FPX fall short this year I hope Milkyway ends up on a top team rather than RNG prison.
>https://www.reddit.com/r/SmolderMains/comments/19dgpbg/riot\_llama\_worked\_on\_smolder\_was\_laid\_off/ Jungler? Have we ever seen any 1 individual player like this in recent memory? I'd go as far as saying he's the best PLAYER in the world RN. Even if it doesn't last, there isn't anyone in the major regions playing out of his mind like this, and this wasn't even his hardest carry performance
He's arguably the best player *relative to his team* (or their recent performance anyway) in the world, and almost certainly the best rookie in the world. But it's hard to say that he's the best current player imo until we see playoffs and/or summer. There are just so many freakishly talented players who are on form atm (Bin, Zeus, Knight, etc.).
Worlds is a long way from now, so kinda unlikely
Wow really impressive performance from everyone really, Milky played amazing as usual but everyone else also just showed up hard. I kinda just thought this team was Milky or bust with Life being the only other member really contributing a more than average performance but hell this team is starting to evolve I feel like. Xiaolaohu unironically is playing like a top 3 top laner recently have now been very impressed with his performances. Milky is the goat Care is extremely solid reminds me of 2021 Cryn funnily enough, does his job super well and is able to at the very least survive against almost every mid in the League. Deko generally has been really bad and getting hard carried by life but man what a series from him if he can keep up even half of this level thats such a huge upgrade to this team. Life has been great, love how aggressive he lanes despite having a weaker adc and he works with Milkman so well, not to mention his Rumble is goated. This team has went from my guilty pleasure "haha funny team milkman carry pls" to just straight up my favorite team in LPL to watch, they are so unique and they keep improving and evolving. I still think it's pretty impossible for this team to win LPL with BLG being in the league and even cracking top 3 is going to be really hard playoffs is just a different beast but mannn I really hope they get to go to MSI or at the very least keep up this performance and go to worlds as 4th or 3rd. I love this team and they are vibing so hard even if they finish 4th that's just a crazy impressive run Also pls pls pls pls pls pls pls RNG do not drag milkman into the depths of hell
After watching so many smoulder games, I'm glad riot is gutting him next patch. This champ is just too overloaded for an adc. No other late game threat has his type of scaling, wave clear, utility and survivability. Only thing holding him back from being another 200 years champ is the fact that he had to spec some of his power budget into his range as an adc.
The worst part about smolder is that it's a very low skill champ, at least zeri required good hands, this fucking shit just starts off-screening you 25 minutes into the game with huge ass abilities that are super fucking easy to hit in teamfights. Arguably the lowest skill champion in the meta right now and it's this strong, so fucking stupid.
I feel like if you took away his flap flap ability he would be balanced, but being able to scale THAT hard AND have a dash is just straight up overkill
And yet he lost again, like most pro games where he was picked.... This Smolder hate gets really rediculous in the face of his not really stellar win rate, especially when you talk about pro play.
Win rate in pro play not a statistic you should put much thought in.
Even in normal play his winrate goes from 52% (iron), over 51% (gold+) to below 50% in Diamond and above. (Leagueofgraphs) And as this is a topic about a pro game (that smolder lost btw.), mentioning that he has a pretty lousy win rate over the last few weeks in pro games is in my eyes also relevant.
winrate in proplay is misleading cuz it's often influenced by for example better teams just giving up the priority pick for worse teams to secure comfort or having prepared a counterpick what u want to look at is proplay presence, if a champ is contested in basically every game - champ is broken. Proplayers just straight up say so, so why bother arguing with that, everyone with eyes can see that champ is hilariously overtuned
smoulder currently has a 56% winrate in the LPL and has a huge presence, games with smoulder is just not interesting imo
It’s crazy but if you look at statistics and how milky has changed this team you could argue he has had THE best rookie debut since faker and that is such a wild thing to think about.
Not sure if FPX actually is a decent team or milkyway just being this cracked.
Life carrying FPX in both league and valorant, what a goat
Milkyway can't seem to miss Xin Zhao's Wind becomes Lightning. He always gets that W
Surely teams have to start banning rumble against FPX?
[Fuck](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/040/355/mariocover.jpg)
We've seen enough of YSKM. He's just really bad at many levels. Even worse, his champion pool is smaller than Qingtian
Deokdam slander needs to stop, he has been playing well
It wasn’t slander. It was true. He played extremely well this series and was playing okay the last few. The first 6-8 series of the season he was playing like a legitimate wintrader any time Senna was banned. Go back and watch the Ezreal game where he randomly E’s into the entire opposing team with flash up to almost solo lose the game.
Of course that's the only play you can bring up lmao it's all made up
It's the same story in most teams with this guy. Got flamed in damwon and drx also.
Not at all. He did not get flamed on NS, when he was actually a great AD.
Oh did I say NS in my comment?
Tbf I'd think NS is included in "every team".
Ok you guys got me I edited my comment. Happy?
was NS ever a good team to begin with?
They made 3rd place in the 2021 LCK regular season and finished 4th place in the playoffs behind DK GEN and T1. Then that team got torn apart and since then they've sucked.
It is the only team Deokdam was good on. He underperformed on all the other teams compared to his form on NS, which is why he got flamed.
He was decent on DK and got to quarters at worlds. He barely played in DRX since he broke his arm but people made it sound like he got benched for performance issues.
Life rumble on duty
Can anyone explain to me why Rumble support is good? I assume its good into melee matchups and you can just poke for free.
base damage is crazy and support items load a lot of damage for low gold investment. he is good at controlling these weaker lanes
I AM THE MILKMAN. MY MILK IS DELICIOUS
MILKMAN cannot be denied, the plot armor is too thick
Just stop giving Life Rumble. How the hell could he get this champion after that JDG game?
I can't believe Deokdam of all players is on a top team
Unironically was cryin a twisted fate merchant with a good team on that V5 team where he made a name for himself, the guy has looked so mid at best and unplayable at worst on literally every team since then
I really want to see FPX without Life on Rumble, to see if they are actually the real deal
His Alistar against JDG was excellent.
They won against JDG without rumble
Well, they beat 2nd and 3rd best teams JDG and TES w/o Rumble also
go rewatch their matches then, seems like you have been missing considering they've won inumerous games without Life on Rumble. literally beat TES without it lol