There's a lot to dislike about ESL's best-of-one group stages, as used in IEM Katowice—competition is often volatile, especially with lane pushers where there are balance disparities based on what side you start on or whether teams run into each other in the first two or three minutes of game-time. It could've been worse, sure, as the double elimination format means a team has to screw up twice before they're truly knocked out, and if you're that shaky on the international stage, you weren't set to win it anyhow.

But while the group format itself was unimpressive, the results coming out of it was amazing. Upsets all around: white was black, up was down, Korean teams actually lost, and everybody was chowing down on apple pie in the end. It was easily the most exciting League of Legends tournament in a while—and though the sub-optimal group stage format puts a lot of its results into doubt, there were lessons aplenty to be learned from its outcomes.

Even gods bleed

CJ Entus getting knocked out: fair. Among the OGN regulars, it was widely recognized that their standings in their home circuit was a bit deceptive: while they weren't Samsung-level bad (and imagine saying "Samsung-level bad" just a few months ago), their early-spring performance was now overshadowed by an extremely rough latter-season patch. Calling them "tepid" would be doing them a favor, with the only decent performers being Coco and—to the consternation of everybody that's ragged on him last year (including me)—Space.

Yes, we're talking about the team with Madlife and Shy, the superstars of Season 2. No, neither of them are anywhere near at an acceptable level of play at the moment. CJ Entus getting knocked out of groups wasn't entirely expected (KT Rolster Bullets and SKT T1 K were both in dire straits when they swept their IEM tournaments), but if there was going to be any team to disappoint South Korea it was going to be them.

GE Tigers, though. What? Really? They haven't dropped a set against anybody in South Korea! They were supposed to yawn and steamroll over China's Team WE, who had replaced their mid laner and support literally days before the tournament! Instead, for the first time since 2012, an international tournament with Korean teams failed to have a Korean finals.

Suddenly, blood is in the water, and everybody's a shark. The great exodus of 2014's paid off, alright—it might not necessarily make China more competitive (Team WE was wrecked by North America's Team Solomid 3-0, and haven't made as much of a splash back home in the LPL), but it sure as hell has made Korea weaker. Where once even their lower-tier teams made everybody else look laughable,

Has South Korea's esports golden age run its course?

TSM! TSM! TSM!

Given the nature of international competition, the death knells of one region's supremacy usually means another coming up in its place—and North America has been waiting with bated breath for years for their turn. They lost their grasp of it wwaaaaaayyy back in Season One, when the European metagame that made permanent the distinct roles of League of Legends ended up with Fnatic and Against All Authority in an all-European finals, found themselves in shockingly short measure in Season Two, when the Taipei Assassins demonstrated the value of a truly professionalized training environment, and the next two years were basically KeSPA flexing their muscles.

Each and every time, in each and every season, Team Solomid was North America's best hopes and most popular team. Sure, their innate American-ness might be a tad questionable—the team now consists of two Danes, a Korean, a Canadian and a Dyrus—but with their victory at IEM Katowice, the organization's finally cemented a long-pursued global leadership.

Coach Locodoco's done a continent proud. The biggest criticism against TSM, prior to Katowice, was a notable binary in their play patterns: either Bjergsen went off, or the team suffered. But while they're still centralized on his success, their dependency was notably lessened: Santorin and Lustboy, in particular, had astounding performances, promising a tactical breadth that will prove all the more vital in future tournaments.

Western whiplash

Of course, it's one thing to say that TSM's a major Worlds contender now. It's another thing to say that their success is reflective of the western circuits.

Case in point: the poor European teams. SK might be struggling, but they're still among the top three teams of the EU LCS right now. And Gambit, while comparatively low in the standings, is the opposite case: their ranking belies what has been solid and increasingly respected performance over the last month. Yet in neither case was success found on the international stage, as both China and Taiwan caught them by surprise, knocking them straight out of the groups stage.

At least SK had an excuse: after soundly thrashing the Yoe Flash Wolves, with Forgiven demonstrating his usual muscular prowess down in bot lane, they weren't expecting the rematch to be quite so vigorous. Unfortunately, while the GE Tigers might not have gotten past the 11th-place Chinese team, they did run over the European hope just fine—and that was all the inspiration that the Wolves needed to tear out their hamstrings.

It's even worse for Cloud 9, though—at least SK Gaming got a win at all. But the once-brightest of the recent generation of North American teams have definitely lost a lot of their luster. Balls and Hai have been struggling valiantly to stay abreast of their peers back home, but seemed like outright liabilities on the most recent world stage—facing the Tigers was a harsh lesson in their shortcomings, and losing to the Wolves was salt in the wound. And if Cloud 9 was doing so badly, the rest of the North American scene sitting under them from 4th and onward have reason for concern: they might be the biggest fish at home, but the rest of the world makes them look like mere minnows.

Ray of hope

I'm going to fanboy a bit, and you're just going to have to deal with it: the Taiwanese scene has waited two very, very long years for this moment. We've had to deal with the idiosyncrasies of Southeast Asian esports for years, sit through mind-numbingly inevitable and soullessly rote wins against the Bangkok Titans and Singapore's part-timer teams for months upon endless months, bear with the retirement of our best and brightest players, and a steadily growing sense that our one victory back in 2012 was just a fleeting dream.

We were beginning to believe the derision coming from our western peers: that we were irrelevant, a has-been wildcard region, and that our seeds and tournament presence would've been better-given to a Chinese team across the Strait, or up north to Korea. LMS? Yoe Flash who? Didn't the Taipei Assassins fail to win a single game back in Season 4 Worlds, where even Brazil managed an upset?

Wolves. Yoe Flash Wolves. Know that name. Without the yoke of Southeast Asia's "ten hours a week is a good scrim schedule, right?," with four good teams and three improving rookie teams to practice off (we try to pretend Dream or Reality doesn't exist), it turns out that Taiwanese teams are actually dangerous! Dangerous enough to catch Europe's best off-guard. Dangerous enough to flip a game against North America's top three.

Dangerous enough to be TSM's only real challenge throughout Katowice.

Steak. Karsa. Maple. NL. Swordart. My boys'll be there for the Mid-Season Invitational, you can bloody well count on it. Sleep on them at your peril.

We will have our day again.

I know two particular stories of League of Legends coaches, and the reaction to either seems to tell a lot about a player's mindset. In either story, neither coaches are ex-pros, at least not that of LoL itself. One speaks of disharmony between the coach and players, who hold themselves to be (at least historically) their region's foremost experts of the game. The coach was hired for form's sake more than anything else—a de facto manager and coordinator of scrims, but whose opinions of the game were distrusted at best. After all, he wasn't even Diamond, much less Master or Challenger, so what was his opinion really worth?

The other coach wasn't highly-ranked either. Yet the treatment from his players, all high-level tournament names, was near-cultlike devotion. They looked to him for instruction in everything—how and when to answer press, when dealing with sponsors, when boarding planes...he wasn't their boss or their father. He was their coach. You don't question the coach.

One team's western. The other team's Asian. You can probably guess which one, and which has done better internationally.

Is there some magic secret to coaching? Something that makes them somehow better than the players that've spent years playing the game at the highest level? Probably not. It's not as if Faker's coaching OGN winners—or even Toyz with GPL or LMS leaders. Actually, the Season 2 world champions have been the only ones that've dipped their toes into coaching, and generally to lackluster results. Stanley's Hong Kong Attitude: failed. Lilballz's Midnight Sun: still rookies (though decent for what they are). Game expertise isn't the same as leadership capabilities—and even shotcallers make poor coaches, because leadership isn't the same as telling people what to do.

What is coaching, then, if not game expertise? Why aren't good players naturally good coaches?

Point of view

Technically, everybody in a lane-pusher has full and unlimited view of the map. Vision is shared among teammates, and unless you deliberately chose to lock it, the camera is generally on free movement. Yet viewpoint is incredibly subjective from player to player—mainly as a matter of priority and training. Playing midlane means minimal exposure to the head-to-head dynamics against Maokai, or how to survive one-on-two or one-on-three when cornered. And the AD carry probably isn't going to care over-much about general vision theory and strategy, except to not step into random bushes on their lonesome.

There's also the limitations of exposure. Tournament players are going to be a lot more focused on local rivals than what's happening elsewhere—there's just only so many hours in a day to focus on anything else. Similarly with matchup considerations. Ex-pros like EU LCS caster Deficio outright state that tunnel-visioning is a concern for pro players, where their direct experiences with what works occludes what's possible.

The coach covers for that. It isn't his or her job to refine mechanics to Faker-level perfection. Nobody can play the game for you (and it'd get you booted off the circuit for account-sharing anyhow). But the direct tradeoff for focused skill development is tactical and strategic overview. If anybody thinks they can dedicate 10 hours a day to practice and still have time (and mental energy) left over to concoct world-tier strategy, they're flat-out kidding themselves. Execution is never the same thing as strategy.

Yes, the coach needs to understand the general framework, limitations and capabilities of and within the game. Strategy cannot be conducted without knowing what your pieces are capable of, or that of the opposition. But it isn't the general's job to know how his soldiers swing their swords, only that they do so at the right time and place.

And it's the soldier's job to trust that the general knows where and when that is. That their coach's put in the hours (and, if necessary, hired the analysts) to crunch the numbers and learn the habits and trends of their opposing numbers. That while the players might be called upon to advise them on specific opponents and the results of field tests, the coach has final say on the overarching strategy they utilize—because while they're scrimming and solo queueing, he's the one conducting the HUMINT necessary to turn their skills into success.

Of one mind

I know a story even more appalling than the cultural clash of the first two. Of a team on the verge of making it big, beating back every Challenger to come within a shot of the topmost pro circuit of their region. A team that's trained for months—and in a fit of hubris, threw it all away. For what? For the right to stay up at 4 AM the morning of the final qualifying match? For the right to booze it up and relax just when they were on the cusp of victory?

Worse is that their so-called "life coach" let them.

The coach isn't your friend. They aren't the team's secret-keeper. They're not there to hold your hair back when you yack into the porcelain after a victory celebration. Their job is to turn a team of solo queue stars into a finely tuned engine of conquest. There's a reason why the most successful coaches have generally been older (in conventional sports, a lot older) than the people they mentor: we're conditioned, even grudgingly, to respect our elders, and to be more serious in their presence. And we're conditioned, inversely, to take less shit from those younger than ourselves.

The coach's guidance isn't just on what champions to practice, and where to drop wards according to the team's jealously guarded and maintained timing playbooks. It's also on them to define the spirit of the team—whether it be a China-like aggression, or the deliberative patience of the European teams, but always focused and driven regardless of their situation.

In many (most) cases, that requires the exact opposite of chumminess. Discipline is a pain point, especially when coordinated across an entire team. But there is simply no choice: victory has always gone to the more disciplined team, and the coach must be both enforcer and exemplar of that ideal. And their lust for victory must be shared by all under their command.

The other side

Granted, somebody's gotta watch the coach too. There's no financial endeavor without its corruption from on-high. The history of commodotized music's been of managers handing their artists, flagging from cross-continental road trips, nondescript baggies of white powder that'll "perk them up." Sports medicine goes through regular cycles of self-flagellation for its complicity in feeding athletes various performance enhancers in search of that elusive edge against the competition—and don't think that the athletes themselves don't at least suspect that the injection might not just be "vitamins," accepting with a wink and a thin veil of plausible deniability that this is just the normative approach to professional competition.

Naturally, this approach mainly favors the rich and well-off teams that can afford the doctors involved. And for esports, it begs the question how many teams and coaches are writing off a nondescriptly titled budget line that correlates to their team's purchase and consumption of Adderall or Provigil.

There's a mutualized relationship in any form of governance. The players must submit to discipline, if victory is their aim. But the meaning of their victory is altogether too easily lost. Especially in esports, whose double-digit work days leave even professional athletes appalled at how much of the players' early 20s are thrown away into the competitive grinder, burnout is a massive risk. There must be a reflected trust—not just that the coach can rely on the players to follow their stratagem, but that the coach won't waste their players' efforts in the process.

It's when that bond of mutual trust and respect is perfected that we'll see more western victories. Everything else's just details in its creation.

Games companies hiring (and occasionally firing) games industry veterans isn't usually anything noteworthy or dramatic. Given the industry's tendencies to inflate and deflate in regular cycles, shedding and absorbing workers like some sort of anthropophagus sponge (and—importantly—making it very difficult to transition from desperate work-seeking contractor or freelancer to careered staff ahem), the interest is mostly academic when a known name among the circle of developers moves to a new shop. Not quite so with Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street, back in early last year.

World of Warcraft's former Lead Systems Designer and Riot's current Game Designer lead is, to put it mildly, something of a controversial figure. He was the public figurehead of some of Blizzard's odder design and balance decisions over the years—or, to put it more plainly, the lightning rod for all the hate when everybody but Frost Mages and Hunters get hit with nailed nerfbats. Naturally, his presence at Riot was met largely with trepidation, as there's plenty of overlap between old raiders and arena players with current summoners. For most of last year, this wasn't much of an issue—even the massive across-board changes in 2015 were met with cautious optimism, as it happened with the last competitive season's changes as well and it ultimately worked out.

Then 5.4 hit, and everybody's baying for his blood again. And, honestly, as bad as the patch is for the jungle, the lack of champion diversity and the inherent problems with the jungle probably isn't his fault—and would exist even if he wasn't hired.

The problem with LoL's jungle predates Ghostcrawler—and, in fact, is baked into the fundamental structure of the game. There are two rules that govern how a champion scales over time. First, a champion must absorb experience from slain units, and second, they gain gold from slain units. Self-evident, sure, but for how the metrics and expectations of both rules are established: not from the rate in which they clear jungle camps, but from the steady stream of minions in each lane. The basic design for champions and interactions assumes a trade-off between farming and fighting measured in millisecond windows: punches thrown while waiting for another minion to be low enough for a last-hit.

At first glance, you'd think this would favor the jungler. Laners occasionally die in fights or have to recall to heal off damage, losing experience and gold to unattended creeps in the process. But because there's no distinct separation between laning and fighting, it takes multiple deaths for them to really start to fall behind their counterparts. A jungler, however, can fall behind just by doing what they're supposed to: picking fights to balance out uneven lanes and establishing map control against the enemy team. Neither of which are conducive to actually farming.

Furthermore, an unharassed laner can farm uninterrupted and indefinitely. Unless they're absolute novices, they generally know to stay behind their own minion line so as to not pick up NPC aggro. Junglers, meanwhile, have no choice—especially on the 5.x patches, where the damage has almost fully reverted back to their Season 2 values. After just a couple camps, it's time to recall and heal, greatly cutting into their gold and experience gains compared to laners.

At face value, the answer seems obvious: increase gold and experience per jungle camp, and the jungler can maintain parity. Except that this, too, is a na ve impression—a game focused around damage means any particularly good sources should be diverted to the carries instead, and we saw exactly this happen in prior seasons. The mid laner would take Wraiths (now Razorbeaks) and Ancient Golems for the buff, the side laners would take the respective camps closer to their lanes, and the jungler would be left with red buff (until the AD carry starts to take it) and Wolves.

In short, the fundamental priorities and design of the game actively work against jungle balance. When the jungle is abundant, junglers are paradoxically starved and forced onto gold-sparse utility junglers while their own teammates steal from them. When the jungle is sparse, only a handful of carry junglers are viable, as only they can both clear camps and gank hard enough to stay on top of gold and experience (as we currently see in 5.4). All of these problems existed before Ghostcrawler. The problems with the jungle has been with League since Beta.

The solutions, however, didn't start appearing until Ghostcrawler was on board.

Greg Street was hired in January 2014. Enough time, I think, to have had input in two major changes to the jungle. The 2015 changes involved two major overhauls to the jungle: first, to replace Spirit Stones with Machete-based item builds that alter the mechanics of Smite (in at least two cases, allowing it to be used as combat utility spells against enemy champions). Second, that all forms of Smite now have triggered effects when used on jungle creatures, reminiscent of the changes made to Nunu's Consume all the way back in Patch 3.7.

The latter change, in particular, solves or allows for the solvency of the aforementioned income/priority tensions between the jungler and his teammate. It is now always unquestionably beneficial for the jungler to have the non-buffed camps. While it's still better for the mid laner to take blue, and for the AD carry to take red later in the game, it is now always better for the jungler to take down everything else. Gromp and Krugs give them better combat presence, while Razorbeak and Wolves grant them free vision control—all of which can only be accessed to the dude with Smite. While laners can still occasionally take camps, it's most beneficial for them to time it when the jungler's going to be on the other side of the map anyhow, so that it'll respawn by the time they visit that lane again—overall a more harmonious state of affairs for everybody involved.

The most important change, however, is definitely the itemization. Yes, 5.4 kind of screws it over a bit—the implemented change cost to switch from one form of second-tier machete to another explicitly impacts jungle flexibility. But outside of that, the new system promises some real answers to the riddle of a viable jungling environment. The Spirit items were hard stat tweaks, which didn't really help to address what were mechanical deficits in the jungle design—a utility bonus, however, opens up a whole new vista of design options.

For instance: the new Bami's Cinder item currently on trial in the Public Beta Environment creates a jungler-only Sunfire Cape on the cheap. Though less effective than the actual item in combat, its 50% damage bonus to minions and monsters partially solves the farming-speed dilemma that has kept traditional junglers like Amumu and Maokai out of their prior roles for the last couple of years. Ranger's Trailblazer, released in 5.1, also does a good job of solving the sustainability problems facing more fragile junglers by granting a burst of health and mana upon use. And while it's been heavily nerfed, Stalker's Blade's Chilling Smite was clearly intended to solve combat issues for champions like Shyvana, who have plenty of damage but little in the ways to pin down a target.

It's unfair to criticize Ghostcrawler for the fundamental issues in the jungle. It might also be too much to credit him for the increased design space for their problems—after all, League's design and balance team is far more than one man or woman. But it was under his tenure as design lead that Riot has finally established the framework for a solution to the jungle riddle. The appropriate response to that is accolades, not scorn.

League of Legends is the most-played game in the world. It s also, like Dota 2 and other lane-pushers, incredibly deep, with more than a hundred champions and layers upon layers of systems and strategy. The common wisdom is that lane-pushers are so complicated, they re often intimidating and drive away potential new players. At a GDC 2015 talk on Tuesday, Riot Games lead designer Ryan Morello Scott had an interesting take on that common wisdom. Short version: he thinks it s wrong.

I feel that paradox [between complexity and accessibility] exists, I think the way we analyze it in this industry is intuitive, but I don t think it s correct, Scott said. Let s think about games that are really culturally relevant to us as gamers. That we talk about 10 years later, we talk about them as big pieces of what we re thinking about. Counter-Strike. Starcraft. Halo series. Games like this. These games all have depth depending on what you want in a game...that s what makes popular games. All those games require mastery.

Our assumption from the get-go is that players desire mastery. It s one of our core pillars of League of Legends and Riot in general. With that, we think the paradox is actually: if you try to make your game broadly appealing first, and then make it deep, you fail. Because you re building on a weak foundation. There s nothing to hold up the house. Accessibility s great, but it can t be the foundation of your game. If you build depth first, and make a game that s rich in decision making, highly challenging, lets you master things over tens or hundreds or thousands of hours, then go, okay, we ve made it, great. Now how do we make it so it s more [approachable?]

I think those games, in the long-term, are much more popular...There are people here still playing Counter-Strike. That game is 16 years old. It s because the mastery is that rich. That s how much I think our brains are hardwired to want to learn, to want to overcome. If you deliver that to players in ways that are fun and satisfying, I think it's a mistake to underestimate that people are smart and want to learn. If you assume they don t, I think that s underestimating what players are capable of.

It s an interesting explanation for why games with especially high skill ceilings—games that reward mastery over a span of months or years—tend to foster passionate communities. Lane-pushers like League of Legends and especially Dota 2 are often criticized for their complexity, but Scott made a thoughtful point about two aspects of MOBA design: complexity and depth. They might sound like the same thing, but he had a good argument for why they re separate concepts, and why depth is more important than complexity.

Complexity and depth have a relationship, but they re not the same thing, Scott said. Complexity is a cost, and you try to pay the littlest cost you can in complexity to get the most depth. So if you [say] I want this depth, how do I care that the gameplay systems around the depth are the most understandable versions?

The gameplay mechanic of denying—killing your own minions to rob the enemy team of the experience and gold they d earn by getting the kills—came up as an example of complexity that didn t add much depth, which is why Riot removed denying from the game during its beta. Dota 2 players may disagree, but Scott had an argument for denial s removal.

I think some explanation is important on that, he said. It s kind of like, the analogy I would use is, you want to add skill to the game, you want to make sure skills will be tested. So think about last hitting. You re trying to manage minions. That s taking your focus, and while you re doing that you have an enemy trying to disrupt you. Denying is actually the same skillset you're testing. [Killing] minions, being pressured by an opponent, watching your health, things like that. It double dips into the same skillset.

So does it create a higher skill ceiling? Yes. But it tests the same skill twice. Is it also superfluous? We thought, yes. It adds complexity, but it adds low depth.…The cost to benefit ratio for how much it adds weight to the game s back, versus how much more it allows for the mastery of the players is low, so that s where we started making cuts.

So, high skill ceilings and games that encourage players to commit hundreds of hours to master them? Great. Except a skill ceiling that s too high can add messy complexity while gaining minimal depth. As difficult as lane-pushers are to play, designing them is clearly a whole nother level of tricky.

When the usual stream monsters and Reddit commentators speak about bad picks and poor champions, there's usually an unspoken caveat: these champions are bad compared to other options. Being an unspoken caveat, it's also one that's often forgotten—hyperbolic terms like "useless" or "does negative damage" gets flung around to the point that it's easy to forget the context in which they're judged by.

Which is why the new Nemesis Draft mode is so bloody brilliant. I love it. It pains me to know that it's only here on a temporary basis, because it's been direly needed as an object lesson to the player base—hopefully it'll be something they put into regular rotation.

The gist is: it isn't the champion's fault that you're losing lane or your teammates are doing badly. The worth of a tool is based first and foremost on its craftsman. Sure, a hammer forged from good iron might be better at beating things in than a rock you picked off the ground. But the difference between your grandfather's hammer with the well-worn wooden grip stained by decades of sweat and labor, and the sleek one with the ergonomic grip from a $1000 toolset, is that the former was used by somebody that knew what the hell they were doing. You, on the other hand, just spent $1000 to build a shoddy birdhouse!

Let's take some recent games for example. I keep seeing Taric banned—that is, with the Nemesis Draft, you ban to keep your opponents from giving you something that sucks instead of, as with normal play, to keep them from taking something good. In one game, he slipped through and fell right into my lap.

I proceeded to pick up double-kills in lane, and chase whole teams around with the threat of a Dazzle. I tanked literally everything they threw at me, heedless of any of their threats. Taric is terrific—at least from a team-oriented perspective. Radiance gives so many free stats it's obnoxious, and his passive basically acts as a Sheen, which (naturally) worked especially well after I built the actual item, laying waste to anybody I could Flash onto for a close-range stun.

Or Maokai, in another game. Who gives people one of the tankiest possible top laners in the game in Nemesis Draft? Did they think that the recent prevalence of Irelias, Gnars, Lissandras and other high-damage fighters in the current metagame meant that Maokai was weak? He spent months at the top of the charts as one of the most devastating presences in teamfights—and nothing about that's changed, merely the strategic emphasis at the uppermost levels of the game.

On the flip side, I really wish people would stop letting Sona through. As a former Bronzie that dug himself one game at a time out of the 800 Elo trench (back when Elo was still a numerical value), I know better than most just how effective Sona is, even after her rework—especially after I figured how to make her into an off-carry. Put a Sheen on her, and she's ripping health bars apart every time she hits her Q. No, dude, treat the songstress with respect—just because you think it's funny to force them to play a support champion as an AD carry doesn't mean she isn't really freaking effective as an AD carry, given the great interaction between her low-cooldown abilities and Sheen-boosted auto-attacks.

What Nemesis Draft teaches us is the wide gulf between champion reputation and actual capability. It reminds us that a lot of the roster's only weak because Riot hasn't gotten around to nerfbatting the hell out of Ahri, Gnar or Kalista yet. But when you remove the S-tier champions from contention, seemingly useless champions suddenly find themselves leaders of the pack, if only its players properly understood how to utilize them in combination with other rarely-used options.

Now, that's not to say that all champions below the common tournament-tier choices are equally valid. There are definitely some ways to abuse Nemesis Draft to really frustrate your opponents. But it's less about choosing specific champions and choosing common (and detrimental) champion qualities. For instance:

1. The Unruly Mob: a team without reliable Crowd Control is a team asking to die—repeatedly. Though giving them Fiora, Lucian, Ezreal and other high-damage champions seems like a somewhat self-destructive course of action, they're also champions that have traditionally required a lot of peel and front-liners to be effective. On the other hand, if your team was granted anybody with a root, stun or knockup, especially as an area of effect, all that damage can be (relatively) trivially shut down...assuming you were all smart enough to build tanky against such a team.

2. The Pacifists: The other end of the scale's champions that do have a lot of utility, but hit like wet noodles. Alistar, for instance, simply doesn't have the ratios or qualities in his spells to be anything but a front-line tank—though he is, of course, very good at that role. Same with Nami: she might be able to single-handedly orchestrate the outcome of a fight with good Aqua Prison and Tidal Wave placement, but the high cooldown of her spells and weak autoattacks makes her an especially poor choice as a mage or carry.

3. Purebreed Problems: What happens when a team only has magic-based damage? Well, if your team wants to win, it probably means that everybody, including the support, has a Null-Magic Mantle after their first recall, and Locket of the Iron Solari gets built extremely quickly. Similarly, you can feel the palpable frustration when an all-AD team runs headlong into multiple Randuin's Omens. Forcing the enemy team onto solitary forms of damage makes it braindead easy to build against them, giving you a statistical advantage even if you can't quite secure a strategic one.

4. Knives in a Gun Fight: There are few things sadder than an Udyr with a whole bunch of items that has to wade through slows, roots and Elder Lizard buffed autoattacks to get close to his target. With no gap closer, no ranged abilities and only a small movement speed booster, Udyr might as well be a kite played with by the enemy AD carry and mage. Though ranged champions tend to be designed with a glass jaw in terms of defensive stats, they nonetheless hold an inherent offensive advantage against melee-range counterparts, and one accentuated the more skilled the player is at positioning and movement options.

5. Urgot: ...okay, fair, maybe there is such thing as a truly useless champion.

Feel free to give them Elise too.

Riot Games has pulled back the curtain on the newest League of Legends Champion: Bard, the Wandering Caretaker, a mightily bearded "celestial vagabond" tasked with maintaining the cosmic equilibrium of Runeterra. Hey, nice work if you can get it.

Bard is unique, in that he's the first support who gains advantages simply by moving around. His presence causes sacred chimes to appear on the playing field, and collecting them gives him a brief burst of speed, experience, and mana. He also attracts Meeps, small spirits who travel at his side and throw themselves at his targets when he attacks, dealing extra damage; the more chimes he collects, the more Meeps that join him, and the more dangerous they become.

Mobility is obviously Bard's game, but he "fires out solid poke whenever he's in lane thanks to Cosmic Binding," Riot wrote in the new Champion's description. "Though it deals meaningful damage on its own, the slow (and if procced, stun) give Bard surprising ganking potential, particularly when used in conjunction with Magical Journey. Enemies will have to think twice about escaping through the bottom and top lane brush when Bard can pin them to the nearby wall with a well-placed Q."

Bard works particularly well with Caitlyn, Udyr, and Amumu, but he has trouble with Rek'Sai, Draven, and Leona. "Bard roams to empower both himself and his allies. Each chime he collects soups up his Meeps passive, and as he travels, he s incentivized to help out his other lanes and jungler with Caretaker s Shrine. Crucially, they don t require him to hang around, so Bard can pop into mid, drop off a shrine, then carry on towards top on the hunt for more chimes," Riot's Rabid Llama explained in the Champion Insights section of the Bard page. 

"Each chime gives him a short movement boost (so he can jet around at a decent pace), experience (so he doesn t miss out on too much minion xp), and mana. All this means he s rewarded for roaming, and can (hopefully) leave his marksman during laning without handing them a big fat death sentence."

Catch all the details on the Wandering Caretaker at LeagueOfLegends.com.

'Spectate Faker' is a Twitch stream that uses OP.GG to broadcast the matches of League of Legends pro player Lee "Faker" Sang-Hyeok. It's a simple enough concept, and yet the stream has sparked controversy—with Riot's president, Marc Merrill, saying it "reeks of harassment and bullying.".

The source of the problem is an exclusivity deal between Faker and streaming service  Azubu—one of a number of exclusive deals the site has with Korean e-sports pros.

Azubu went so far as to send a DMCA notice to the Twitch stream's owner, "StarLordLucian". New problem: Azubu doesn't own the content being streamed by Spectate Faker. While they have exclusive rights to broadcast Faker's streams, Spectate Faker isn't a direct re-stream of that perspective—rather, it's the view from a sanctioned third-party client. That footage is owned by Riot.

Here's where things get a bit complicated. Riot's own terms of service claim the following:

"We ll start with our golden rule you can use League of Legends IP as the basis for a fan project that you re giving away for free or that s only generating ad revenue ... as long as you comply with the guidelines outlined below for using our IP. As a matter of fact, as long as you comply with our Guidelines, we think it s great if you create awesome, free and original content for League of Legends fans."

"StarLordLucian" claims that his stream follows those guidelines. He describes Azubu's DMCA takedown request as "illegal," and claims the only ones with the the ability to end the stream are Riot themselves. To verify this,  the Daily Dot spoke to an actual real life lawyer, Bryce Blum, who largely agreed with SLL's statement. Blum's conclusion: "That content isn t Faker s to license—it s Riot s."

So far, Riot hasn't issued a takedown request. But let's go back to Marc Merrill's statement. The Riot head took to Reddit to explain his thoughts on the issue:

"If you can't see how this potentially harms Faker and/or anyone else in this situation, then that is more reinforcement that we need to take the appropriate action to protect players from this type of unique situation.

"As to the comments about our API, of course we want 3rd party devs to do cool things with spectator. But when people utilize one of its components to harm / harass an individual, then we need to potentially re-evaluate our rules."

As for "StarLordLucien's" position, he has posted on Reddit numerous times, most recently with the following:

"I know some people will disagree with this and bring up ethics, but I think this whole issue is about a lot more than Faker. It's about Riot not enforcing their own legal terms of service. It's about a co-owner of Riot Games being completely out of touch with esports and the spectator mode. It's about a company (Azubu) issuing a false DMCA claim for content they didn't even own. These are issues that will affect the future of the game and the spectator mode. All of this needs to be debated for the future of League of Legends and esports.

"Right know nothing my stream does is illegal or against the League of Legends terms of service. Riot can always change their terms. And Riot can DMCA my stream at anytime, as they have the power to put any League related IP or Project to an end.

"If Riot does DMCA my stream that will be the end of it, I won't counter them or try to make a new stream. But I won't be listening to anyone else from Riot or on Reddit lecture to me about morals anymore. To those people I say, I'm doing this stream because I can legally and it's allowed by League of Legends' legal terms."

Finally, and most recently, Faker's team, SK Telecom T1, have released their own statement through their Facebook page:

"First of all, SKT and other pro eSports teams have started streaming business last year to help ensure stable environment for players to play professionally. Not only has the streaming deal expressly helped with players' with their professional activities, it also has been a good medium through which a pro gamer's value is recognized.

"Unfortunately, some of the fans have been re-broadcasting Faker's (and other SKT T1 players') games through the spectator mode, and this has negatively affected players' streaming business. Faker, a member of the SKT T1, also expressed discomfort over the current situation where his summoner name and videos of his games are being broadcasted with no consent.

"SKT T1 team and its players truly appreciate the fans' fantastic support and interest. However, we would like to politely request the re-broadcasting of our players' games without our consent to be stopped."

Thanks,  PCGamesN.

By Joe Skrebels.

It s a sign that things have got out of hand when you start offering people rewards for staying within the law. Riot Games recent decision to give exclusive League of Legends character skins to those who hadn t been banned in the previous 12 months has the air of a dystopian future where good people get sent to prison because it s the safest place going.

MOBAs have long been the world s greatest source for creative takes on being told to kill yourself—the intense need for teamwork, huge time commitment and highly specific tactics becoming the crucible in which anonymous internet dicks are forged. But with the meteoric rise in popularity of online games as a spectator sport, companies are forced more and more to consider how to keep their chatlogs as clean as their bugfix lists.

Curbing bad behaviour is a constant battle for many game developers, says Hi-Rez Studios Austin Gallman. A lot of research has gone into finding the best ways to do this. I don t feel that anyone has really found the perfect solution yet, but having a punishment/reward system certainly helps.

It seems that the traditional system of temporary and permanent bans simply isn t effective enough in a world where games have the populations of countries, and where players—so often spun into a frenzy of competitive ire—have the mouths not just of potties, but of entire sewage reservoirs.

For a company like Hi-Rez, the problems become clear when you look at its games slate. With even automated ban systems requiring a human support response, and players from across the world working their way onto the naughty list, multilingual teams need to be assembled, growing as the games do. That s not to mention the different kinds of bad behaviour that different games engender.

MOBAs are typically more team-oriented, Gallman explains, so we ve seen a bit more in the way of poor behaviour with Smite than we did with our shooter titles. Cheating, however, is a different story entirely. Attempts at cheating were much more common in our shooters. Working on online games for so long has helped Hi-Rez cultivate a good sense, and an efficient system, for punishing infractions, but the tide now seems to be turning towards a more holistic approach.

Obviously, it is near impossible to eliminate bad behaviour in games entirely, Gallman adds, but cultivating a fun gaming environment is always step one. We also think it is important to model positive behaviour via Twitch.TV streaming of the game, game-oriented video content, and other community oriented activities.

Riot s Pavlovian be good, get nice things approach is the kind of positive-reinforcement ethos that the industry seems to be pushing.

Simply teaching people that good behaviour is the norm, and creating role models for younger players, could be the way forward for an industry plagued by literal problem children—and including Riot s Pavlovian be good, get nice things approach is the kind of positive-reinforcement ethos that the industry seems to be pushing for as of late.

But it s by no means the only way—at least not if you ask CCP. The EVE Online developer s famously laissez-faire attitude to its bewilderingly enormous universe extends to its punishment policies, too. In a joint statement, Sigur ur varsson and Dav Einarsson, men with the privilege of having the job titles of senior and lead game master respectively, explain: Many actions lie outside what we consider to be fair play, especially with regards to socially unacceptable behaviour, but EVE Online remains unique in the sense that we have an extremely relaxed ruleset that governs the way the game is played. Many actions that would be a bannable offence in other MMOs are often considered fair game in EVE.

Theft, corporate espionage, piracy—this is the stuff of EVE legend, and the kind of high-level assholery that would have you out of most online games at the push of a Del key. In the cutthroat world of Icelandic space warfare, however, it s par for the course. Accepted wisdom would have it that lugging around a cargo bay filled with real cash is just begging to have it stolen by either other players or the cruel pull of the void.

This doesn t mean that anything and everything goes—CCP s ban protocols are regularly updated and robustly enforced, and, as they put it, our players are extremely creative, and often find ways to breach our policies in ways that we could never imagine (see the above boxout for more on that). The key to EVE s relatively sedate community is acceptance of the fact that it s not the developers who will cause you problems should you ever step out of line, it s the other people playing the game.

varsson and Einarsson again: Promoting largescale warfare and violence in EVE Online is a large part of the game. Regardless of this, for the most part our community remains extremely close-knit, civil and friendly toward one another. This tends to be due to the fact that in EVE, reputation is everything, and can make or break your career in New Eden. With this in mind, our community tends to police itself. EVE players are free to use any in-game tools to wage war and aggress each other, and we recommend that they resolve their differences within the game environment.

While the methods taken are wildly different, there s a parity between Hi-Rez and CCP s approaches, and one that marks the biggest swing in policing online gaming. Whether it s by staying hands off or reminding players that playing nice is the way to have more fun, both companies are creating a status quo, boundaries that players can understand intuitively simply by participating in the community enough. To co-opt the words from some old book: give a man a ban and he ll be salty for a day. Teach a man what will stop him getting banned and, with any luck, we ll all avoid our grim prison-planet future.

[Correction: A previous version of this article erroneously placed CCP about 2,200 km east of Reykjav k, Iceland.]

Riot Games is dropping hints about a new champion for League of Legends with a cryptic tale told over a campfire on the top of a tiny mesa.

"Stories are not just history. They can be so much more," the preview site states, as nightbirds call in the background. "They nourish your mind and, if told well, can even fill your belly. Some tales are warnings, reaching across time. Others uplift our souls from the yoke of everyday burdens. We laugh at fools, cheer heroes, and curse villains until the fire burns down to embers."

It goes on like that for awhile, with references to the Frozen Watcher, the Fall of Shurima, and the Shattered Crown, none of which offers a whole lot of insight to casual observers. The final page is equally enigmatic, but it does at least offer a vague hint as to what's coming.

"There was a time, not long ago, when this constellation was absent from the night sky," it says. "Some call it the Mountain Shrines or the Great Caretaker. Those of us from the floating villages know of an older name, a name that speaks of a universal truth. The name we took from our kind: Bard."

Predictably, there is much speculation underway, but little in the way of consensus: Mount Targon or Ionia, Jungler or Support, Aatrox or Ao Shan, nobody knows, and for now, Riot isn't saying. There is, however, a Wonder Above wallpaper, dug up by PCGamesN, that I think we can all agree is quite lovely. Get it here.

See that unhappy looking fellow above? That's Nautilus from League of Legends, and he's about to be immortalised in the form of an artificial reef. When statues and plaques don't cut the mustard, only an artificial reef will do.

Riot's Oceania office announced the news today following last month's Ocean Week, which tasked Summoners in the region to contribute at least 275,000 points over the course of a week for a variety of prizes. To the surprise of no one, the champion-themed artificial reef stretch goal was unlocked in just three days, and Nautilus was voted from among three champions. Fizz and Nami lost out.

As for when the reef will appear, Riot is currently consulting with an artificial reef company and a marine biologist in order to determine where on Australia's east coast ol' Nautilus should go. That means it's probably a little way off yet, but once finished every contributing player will have their name etched into the reef. 

Since opening a Sydney office last year, Riot has expanded its League of Legends presence in Oceania, most notably with the new Oceanic Pro League.