Hey guys, it’s Toxin! For the first time ever, BOL has decided to roll out a diamond league as one of three leagues that they offer in the amateur scene. While there was a ton of hype surrounding this new elo bracket, not much has been spoken of it since then. Today, I’ve been tasked with introducing you all to the teams and telling you how they stand in the league currently. Fair warning, I probably have never interacted with any of these people, nor have I watched their games, but I will do my best to highlight some things that standout to me. Let’s get into it. 1. Radiant Storm Horizon
I’m gonna be honest, the difference between Number One and Number Four on this power ranking list is not that big in my eyes. In my opinion, I think that any of those can end up winning the entire league depending on who shows up on any given week. That being said, right now my top team is Radiant Storm Horizon. Although they completely blundered Week One versus Ram Ranch, they have made a few roster moves since then that have taken their level of play up a notch. After that crushing defeat, they swapped out their top laner and jungler for improvements that led to a victory over Predictive Gaming Anubis. In the next week, they swapped out their starting adc and their jungler again to come up with their latest edition of the roster. To me, it seems like as the season goes on, this team continues to refine its roster in order to come up with the best possible version of itself. Seeing how their results have done nothing but improve since then, I think I’m on board with this style of team building. Player to watch: Presidium As one of the initial members of this roster, Presidium really has only had one poor performance this season so far. Their Leblanc and Viktor play has stood out as one of the better performing mid laners in the league. My only question is whether or not he can play other champions. It seems that he picks a champion he’s comfortable on regardless of matchup. This can be a great thing, as his team knows exactly what they are getting out of him in every game and can structure their team comps accordingly. That being said, it could get rough if he runs into a player that has a counter for both of his two champions, or if he starts to get banned out.
2. CB Gaming
Next up is a familiar organization to the BOL scene, that being CB Gaming. This org is known for putting together some pretty strong lineups year in and year out, including the dominant CB Rush in the Plat division and the second place team from last gold season, CB Rangers. This roster also looks extremely strong, as they are currently the top team in the standings. In addition, their only loss came off of a Game three forfeit to Rat King Vis and The Knights of Amouranth. This series was tied at one win a piece heading into game three, but I guess CB Gaming had one of their players unable to play game three and ended the series on a premature note. This asterisk next to their loss can be seen in two ways. On one hand, you can argue that there is a good chance this team could have won in game three and be undefeated right now. On the other, you can see this as an inability for this team to field a roster. Personally, I lean towards the former, but it won’t look good if they start running into a pattern of not being able to field players. Player to Watch: HowABThatFF
I think that by looking at CB Gaming’s match history, the pop off player on this team is their jungler, HowABThatFF. This man plays a variety of different assassins, including Kha’zix, Kayn, Ekko, and the honorary assassin Vi. If this player can get a lead, he will win the game for his team easily. But if he struggles, I feel as if this team has a really hard time getting across the finish line. The good news is that the jungle meta is starting to incorporate many more assassins, including Qiyanna, Talon, and Zed. These champions will only add to this player’s champion pool and make him a bigger threat moving forward.
3. Predictive Gaming Anubis
While it may be a little weird to find Anubis here, let me explain. This team currently sits in sole possession of 5th place in the standings with a 1-2 record. That being said, their losses are quality losses; they have only lost to Radiant Storm Horizon (ranked number one) and CB Gaming (ranked number two). In my opinion I feel that PG came out of the gate with probably the hardest schedule they could have possibly gotten and were able to take each series to three games. Once this team started to play some of the lower teams in the league, such as their matchup last week, they were able to stomp in two quick games. This team is scaling, and if they can win this week versus Ram Ranch, they’ll most likely end the season with a 3-2 record. Player to Watch: Omnivamp When looking at this team’s games, it kinda seems like their players are very coinflippy. Cpt Goofy and Sir Butternubbs are two players that can absolutely carry a game for the team if given the correct amount of resources. Wall of Hallal seems to be a gank machine, as most of his picks thrive off of creating chaos in the early game and getting his greedy side lanes fed. But at the end of the day, I think that the reason this team can get away with their greed is mainly in part to Omnivamp. This player leans into the scaling mid laner persona that gives his team some sort of ticking time bomb win condition in the late game, with picks such as Kassadin, Corki, and Viktor. This way, even if his team completely monkeys around in the early game, this team still has a chance at winning.
4. Rat King Vis and the Knights of Amouranth
First of all, this team has the sickest logo in the league hands down. Whoever made that logo needs a raise, I’m not gonna lie. Secondly, for my sanity I’m gonna try to shorten this team’s name to K&K to try to give equal representation to both the King and the Knights, but I definitely am not repeating that team name ten times! Anyways, I think the main reason why K&K find themselves in fourth is due to their wins kind of having asterisks in my eyes. On one hand, they beat CB Gaming, which is a pretty big accomplishment. On the other hand, they ultimately got the game three win off of a forfeit, so it’s hard to say if they would have actually won that last game or not. In addition, their other win was against Glacial, which is the clear worst team in the league. Finally, their loss was an utter stomp at the hands of the team that currently sits in 5th in the official standings. This team has potential for greatness for sure, there is no question there. But personally I need to see how they fare against their next two opponents to really get a read on how strong they actually are.
Player to Watch: EvLKn1GhT
I think the lane that you really have to focus on when watching this team is the bot lane. Their summoner names literally personify this team’s identity, as their adc is the Rat King himself and their support has knight in their name. Today I want to point out the latter of the two, mainly due to their presence in the ban phase. In their last matchup, both Soraka and Zilean were taken off the table for EvLKn1GhT, which led to the downfall of this team. I think that in order for this team to succeed, this player needs to have a third pick in his pocket that can perform to the level of these other two champions. Lulu is close, but maybe something like Sona would be better? We’ll find out if he can come up with an answer this week.
5. Ram Ranch
In third place for my rankings is Ram Ranch, which I got to say has a pretty fantastic logo. I think this team is a little hard to rank right now, but the reason I have them rated so highly is due to their 2-0 takedown of Radiant Storm Horizon. On one hand, that victory over the current number one rated team means that they deserve this ranking. On the other hand, that roster they beat has 3 different players on their starting roster, and the fact that their other victory is over Glacial (in a three game series no less) gives me pause to rank them any higher. On top of that, they recently got smacked by CB Gaming last week. If they can beat Predictive Gaming Anubis this week, I think they can easily climb the rankings. But otherwise, I see them pretty locked into the 5th.
Player to Watch: Wurtles
For Ram Ranch, I think that this team wins or loses based on the performance of their mid laner, Fulltimemagister. That being said, I really want to take the time to point out Wurtles on this team. The reason for this is due to the fact that he may just be the best top laner in the league. Although he doesn’t standout as the 10-0 hyper carry player, I feel that his ability to generate gold on more teamfight reliant picks allows him to be the backbone of the team. His play directly contributes to Fulltimemagister being able to carry the game.
6. Glacial Commandos
Unfortunately, there really isn’t much to say about this team. They have not won a single series so far. They have only won a single game this season so far. They originally used to go by Catalyst Frost, but it seems that the original team completely dropped out of the league in exchange for this completely new roster. I think that if this team is able to win both of their next two series, there's a slight chance that they are able to squeak into the playoff. That being said, they have to beat CB Gaming this week in order to make that dream have some weight behind it. Hopefully we can see them come into this week at full strength and maybe clutch out a victory.
Player to Watch: MrUnfortunate
I’m not gonna lie, there’s not really a player that sticks out as a consistent force on this team to note. For that reason, I really want to focus in on the one win this team was able to get, in which they played a style that involved playing through their ADC. From what I can tell, they picked champions such as Shen and Xin Zhao to really focus on 4 man ganks in the bot lane after level 6 in order to get MrUnfortunate ahead. I think that if they can recreate this style of play more consistently, they should be able to stand a chance against the rest of the teams moving forward.
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