Starting with Zaozi Ge, a dream lineup

Chapter 243 The stronger the wind blows, the more my heart races!
"We definitely have enough points to qualify for S8. As for whether we get the first or second seed, it doesn't matter. But have you ever thought about this: if we can maintain our previous record after the nerfs, what awaits us?"

As Li Luo explained in detail, the people present finally understood a little bit.

Conceal your talents!

If RNG wants to win the S8 championship, their enemies are not only these clubs and professional players, but also Riot Games' nerfs.

The better RNG performs before the final patch is determined, the more severe the nerfs to RNG will be in the final patch.

By then, it will be incredibly difficult to quickly master the version and win the S8 championship.

Thinking about it this way, it's better to start practicing some fancy moves now. Although the results may not be great, as long as Riot doesn't target them, once the S8 patch is determined, RNG can start to exert their strength.

By then, it's impossible to suddenly change the finals version to target RNG's chances of winning.

Chris offered a fair assessment:
“That works, but if we do it this way, the pressure from the outside world will be immense. I’m worried you won’t be able to handle it. After all, a Grand Slam might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a team or a player.”

"Moreover, this playstyle is somewhat reminiscent of how we played in Season 3 and Season 4 in our region. I'm worried that you won't be able to adjust to it during the finals."

The old Royal Club from Seasons 3 and 4 were a group of reckless brutes who prioritized fighting and were even more impulsive than they are now.

This aggressive style of play, which won against Europe and America, resulted in a crushing defeat against South Korea.

LCK's operational system is based on waiting for the opponent to attack, and then seizing the loopholes in the opponent's attack to launch a counterattack.

High error rate and low tolerance for error are the most obvious drawbacks of the previous rough playing style.

"That's right, this style of play will definitely not be countered, and I can guarantee it will remain one of our trump cards in the finals."

Li Luo nodded, acknowledging that this style of play was easily exploited.

In S8, G2 was the best example. As a dark horse, G2's unconventional tactics made it impossible for Riot Games to counter them, and they became one of the winners of the patch, defeating RNG, who had been severely nerfed at the time.

"But this playstyle is very effective for the growth of players. In the early game, by constantly invading and plundering a lot of kills and resources, we can meet the resource needs and tactical importance of our envisioned 'three-core' strategy. This way, even if one lane fails to get ahead or is targeted, the other two lanes can step up and take over the game."

The typical IG-style playstyle means that there is no need for tank heroes, front-line heroes, or even late-game heroes. Instead, the team chooses a strong lineup in the early and mid-game to gain an advantage, and then takes advantage of the situation to win the game in mid-game team fights.

"What do you guys think of our playstyle in the third game of the finals against Korea?"

Li Luo continued to ask questions in return.

"That's right, they were very aggressive, and they even messed things up in the mid-game."

As they talked, everyone became clearly interested in Xiaohu's self-talk.

Bai Xing, who had been listening nearby, also came over and gestured for Li Luo to continue, looking on with curiosity.

"As for the pressure~ that's easier to deal with. Since we're already in the eye of the storm, let the storm rage on!"

Looking at Bai Xing, and recalling the promise he made with that man during the preseason, Li Luo smiled meaningfully.

Tactics are tactics, and training is training. After a brief brainstorming session, we discussed our ideas on how to play next, and everyone expressed their willingness to try this new style of play.

Of course, this is also directly related to Uzi's influence within the RNG team.

If it had been Letme, Xiangguo, or even Xiaohu who brought this up today, things wouldn't have gone so smoothly. The whole team being willing to play according to one person's vision is itself a form of obedience.

Changing a player's playing style is even riskier than replacing them with a different player.

Replacing someone with a new person is like replacing a tire or the body of a car; after a short break-in period, it can continue to be used.

However, changing the style is undoubtedly a modification and upgrade of the original parts of the car. Professional drivers don't have access to mechanical data, so if they exceed the limits of modification, it can easily backfire.

All I can say is that it's the trust built up from winning the S7 championship, the MSI championship, and the Asian Games championship!
Everyone wants to win!
Even a team like SKT has failed to change its style over the years, so the difficulty for RNG to change is self-evident.

After proposing the core tactical ideas that would later become the hallmark of G2, the coaching staff and the entire analysis team needed to refine them and then pass these core ideas on to the players so that they could become familiar with and adapt to them.

Seeing everyone going to free-ranked games to practice the heroes they had come up with, Li Luo also opened ranked games, ready to play a few.

After hesitating for a moment, I didn't choose to go to the Korean server, but instead went to the Chinese server.

It seems like it's been a long time since you've done a live stream, huh?

The last time I streamed was before the Spring Finals; I streamed for a while.

After that, I participated in MSI, then relaxed, and after returning to China, I immediately went to Jakarta for various selection training matches to participate in the Asian Games. As soon as I got back, it was the intense summer tournament again. In the blink of an eye, the last time I did a live broadcast was at the end of April, and now it is the beginning of July.

The lives of top professional gamers are busy and boring.

The live streaming contract that was previously signed with X-Fish has been refrained from being pushed by X-Fish to make up for lost time, clearly indicating that they are aware that RNG is not in a good position right now.

After logging into my X-Fish account in Notepad on the desktop, I was shocked by what I found.
After the last live stream ended, the number of viewers in the live stream room was 880 million, but now it has more than doubled, reaching 1800 million viewers.

To put this number into perspective, even in 2020, F-Timo, the streamer with the most fans on X-Fish, only had a little over 1900 million fans, and it's almost 2000 million.

Now, I'm about to break that record at the beginning of 2018.

Is League of Legends really going to change its own popularity?
After searching around, Li Luo was surprised to find that his number of followers had indeed become the highest in the entire internet.

As for the League of Legends section, below him is Wuwukai with 1270 million views.

The difference in attention between the two, nearly 600 million, also illustrates the vast difference between this Asian Games and the previous one.

In the League of Legends section of Douyu, a male streamer who looks like a baboon is dramatically playing Dou Dizhu (a popular Chinese card game) in front of the camera, with a League of Legends ranked queue in the background.

Seeing the ever-increasing popularity of the live stream and the explosive response to the show, Wu Wukai was secretly delighted, showering the audience with gifts and making him overjoyed.

After losing another game and losing nearly two million Happy Beans, Wu Wukai looked extremely sad and sat in front of the screen staring blankly, his expression one of utter abstract art.

But then, a long-lost ID suddenly popped up in Wu Wukai's friend list, making him so excited he almost jumped up.

"Holy crap, it's come back to life!!"

"Wow, how many years has it been since the puppy logged into the Challenger tier?"

"Hey, isn't this the genius AD carry who said he was going to build a dynasty but lost two in a row?"

"The return of the missing!"

One second the viewers were interacting with Wu Wukai's abstract art, the next second it was like Mentos being poured into a Coke bottle—they instantly erupted into chaos. Seeing the situation escalating, Wu Wukai quickly switched to a black screen to prevent viewers from seeing anything that could further fuel the controversy.

Wu Wukai felt immense gratitude towards the puppy, and a voice within him constantly echoed:

"He promised me that he would let me go back to RNG to play this season!"

Therefore, even though the outside world is in a lot of turmoil, Wu Wukai has no intention of staying out of it; instead, he has plunged headlong into this quagmire.

"Hey Kai, wanna duo queue for a couple of games?"

"Oh, right, let me check WeChat."

Almost immediately, a surge of blood rushed up from his lower abdomen, causing an abnormal flush to appear on Grandpa Kai's dark face.

With trembling hands, I opened WeChat and saw the familiar profile picture followed by the message I had been longing for:
"Chris will submit his application to the league tomorrow. Get ready and report for duty in a few days!"

At this moment, Wu Wukai could no longer contain his excitement and stood up in the live broadcast room to roar.

In an instant, it was as if a baboon's nest had been disturbed; the comments in the live stream chat were like snowflakes, with dozens of messages being sent every second.

"Ahem, this puppy here wants to duo queue for a bit. If you like watching our collaborative streams, please subscribe."

At the same time, Li Luo also opened his live stream. With the hype from Wu Wukai, the live stream reached two million views in almost a minute, and it was still rising at an astonishing pace.

Even though RNG lost two games, the invincible spirit they had built up in the first half of the year made all the viewers think that this was just a temporary setback. They enthusiastically sent comments and various gifts to express their love for the players.

Looking at so many lovely fans, Li Luo was filled with emotion.

"Hello everyone," Li Luo greeted, then tried to chat with the comments, but quickly realized he couldn't keep up with the speed at which the comments were scrolling.

The live stream had just been connected and the traffic pool hadn't even been connected when noticeable lag appeared.

"Okay everyone, let's hold off on giving gifts for now. This is getting stuck. It's been a long time, but you're all still so enthusiastic!" Seeing this, Li Luo could only quickly join Wu Wukai's group and signal to start the game so they could let the game do the talking.

During this period, he plans to change his style and try to reach the top spot in the Chinese server.

Looking at the queue that had already started, Li Luo casually changed the title of his livestream and said, "I'll be playing on the Chinese server for the next few days, let's see how many days it takes to get to number one."

"???!!!!!!"

"Is this even human language?"

"Bringing someone along for ranked matches? Is this some kind of weight training session?"

"To be fair, reaching the King rank in the Chinese server isn't difficult, but getting to number one... well, you'll have to ask the top-tier players if they agree."

Various comments flooded the screen.

With XFish connecting its server traffic pool resources, the live stream finally returned to normal speed. At least with the chat turned off, there were no problems with the picture quality.

High-level matches are inherently slow to queue, but he hasn't played in the Chinese server for a long time and has dropped to Master. However, his Super account has a hidden MMR, so even with a Grandmaster-level player like Wu Wu Kai, the prediction time still exceeds eight minutes.

Normally it would be fine, but with so many people watching, Li Luo knows he can't afford to have an awkward silence.

"Come on, let's have a vote today! Everyone vote for the heroes from the previous few games. Whoever you choose, that's who you play. I'm bringing Kai in so he can play with me, haha."

Wu Wukai was brought closer to the team's voice chat.

"Hello, hello, can you hear me, little dog?" Wu Wukai's excited voice came through the headset.

"Let's switch positions and go bot lane together for a couple of games to practice our teamwork."

While the outside world hadn't yet grasped the meaning behind Li Luo's words, Wu Wukai instantly understood and immediately switched his position to the bottom lane.

The two started chatting, but everyone was completely baffled.

Especially some viewers who had just become fans of the Asian Games had no idea who Wu Wukai was.

"What is Uzi saying? Who is he chatting with?"

"Wh1t3zZ? Uzi's former teammate?"

"Holy crap, these two are talking nonsense. Does this mean Wu Wukai is going to go back to RNG to play mid lane?"

"No way, no way, even a Grandmaster can compete?"

Listening to the two men's tactical exchanges, quite a few people understood the meaning behind their words and made uncertain guesses.

Before the first game even started, the number of viewers in the live stream quickly reached 1000 million.

"Come on, there's only half a minute left, I'm closing the session now." After glancing at the voting results, I realized that there was no point in even looking at the comments; they were scrolling too fast for me to keep up with.

In this ranked game, Li Luo and Wu Wukai both chose to play support in the bottom lane. However, after being matched with the team, Li Luo found himself filling in the mid lane, while Wu Wukai went to the jungle position.

Normally in the Chinese server, even if he doesn't want a position, his teammates will let him play. However, he's playing with Wu Wukai (55kai) and wants to see how well Wu Wukai has recovered his skill level. He declined his teammates' offer and banned a hero without a hero.

"Everyone wants to see me play this! To be honest, I haven't played this hero yet since it came out!"

The chat was full of all sorts of comments, including AD champions like Vayne, Kai'Sa, Ezreal, and Oma, as well as top lane champions like Fiora, Riven, and Renekton, but the voting result was unanimously "honest".

The newly updated hero, Pyke, the Bloodharbor Ripper, leads the second-place Vn18394 by a significant margin of 46350.

"This hero is a support, okay? I'm a mid laner, too."

As they were talking, looking at Parker's profile picture, a sudden inspiration struck them.

When Pyke was first released, he was considered a bug in the current version. However, as Riot Games continued to nerf him, by Season 10, he was rarely seen in the mid and top lanes.

Even in the support role, Pyke is rarely seen.

However, in this version, Pyke hasn't yet shone in the mid lane. Even before he was brought out by G2 in the S8 World Championship, this champion hadn't really entered everyone's field of vision.

"Alright then, since I'm the most devoted to my fans, I'll play a mid-lane Pyke for everyone."

Thank you Hu Ge灬 for the 10,000 coins! Thank you to all the readers! Thank you for voting with your monthly tickets. Every single ticket is my greatest support. Thank you all!!!

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(End of this chapter)