RIP
For all the prep they seem to make when expecting some comps it's still surprising, even after three seasons, to see them stick to strats that don't work.
They either looks like geniuses that knew all along or a really inflexible team that brute forces their way to victory, or in this case defeat.
I'm guessing that LTJ's not going to be in the starting lineup for the next matches...or will he...
I hope I'm wrong but LH will make it out of groups. Same thing happened last season. It's when they're down that they start rolling.
I don't believe that Meta Athena will be able to compete against LH, so this makes their game v Runaway that much more hype. Season 2 grand finals rematch.
Apex is a phat PogChamp tbh.
It seems EscA lost his confidence in playing DPS heroes except Sombra. That might be why he continued to play Sombra in almost all situations even when it seemed quite evident Sombra would not work (for example, in Ilios against Pharmercy). Whoru was their main DPS for the season 2 while Gido played the role for the season 3, and Lunatic-Hai was the champion of those 2 seasons. So I don't understand why they put LTJ in the starting line-up instead of either Whoru or Gido. LTJ was away from professional matches too long.
Lunatic-Hai is still the strongest team in the world but personal relationships among EscA, ryujehong and LTJ that have continued for several years might lead to their decline, I guess (ryujehong said not so many days are left for him to play as a professional gamer and therefore he wanted to bring LTJ back to the team to play together once again to the end).
I don't get why LH doesn't bench Esca AND LTJ... Aren't Whoru and Gido signed to the team? Haven't both of those two players consistently shown better competency at DPS? A lot of comments say, "take off LTJ and put in Whoru/Gido" but I say take both Esca and LTJ off cause they both just don't make the cut...
Well esca does most of the shot calling for the team, so it makes sense why they didn't bench him. I don't know why they didn't replace LTJ for gido after losing the first map. Gido just proved himself in season 3 finals to be a pretty solid tracer, and I bet they would've won the match with gido. However, lunatic hai will probably be fine, as long as they don't lose to reformed Runaway.
I think the main reason they did not replace LTJ was because they didn't want LTJ to be a scapegoat. Yeah, it is true that they might have won the game if WhoRU or Gido subbed in for him. But if they were able to win by replacing LTJ, people would have blamed him and it would've just started the case of Esca #2 again. I think LH wanted to believe in him and show that they can recover from early losses of the maps like they always do, which unfortunately, did not turn out to be the case this time.
This might sound like a stupid decision to most people, but this is how Lunatic Hai operates. They seem to value positive team atmosphere more than short-term good results. It would have been ideal if LH was able to take the match with LTJ since that would have allowed second chance for him to improve in the next match. But because of this loss, people will blame him for any failure of LH from now on. But being Lunatic Hai, I think they might try giving him another chance yet again. We will see whether that decision will cost them further or not.
Our friendly neighbourhood hero TISrobin311 translated a short explanation by Zunba of why he believes they had so much trouble against MVP Space, and that their coach told Miro not to chose them in the group selection.
Reddit thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/6uphzr/zunba_briefly_explains_about_their_match_against/