Hello, my friends, long time no see! I'm asking your forgiveness for not writing here for so long - I really needed all the time and strength I got to not fail myself, organisation and the team on the long run from the last place of the LCS to somewhat decent level of a team. And after we got to that point - I couldn't force myself to write anything again. For a long time you could only hear about me from some short interviews or rare answers on my ask.fm . But finally I collected my thoughts and want to share them with you about what really was happening with me and the team all that time.
So, lets begin at 8th week of the 2014 Summer Split. After poor performances of the team for a long time, our organization decides to try something new in terms of roster - to change me and Darien for someone else. I'm not going to debate this decision, though in the end it paid off, I'm just going to clear some of our main problems, as a team, that kept us from performing better for the whole time our team exists.
Let me depart a bit from the main story to express what was happening to me and my thoughts for as long as Loulex was defending the honor of our team for me, and a little after. I at that time had a few options for further career development, some of which included the much desired by me participation to the World Finals. Therefore, even though the replacement has hit my ego - it was not so critical. Especially because I finally got 5 or so days of rest, and I immidiately left my city with my beautiful gf to visit her relatives at their village, far away from our city, its suffocating urban air and the Internet. During those few days I really had a good rest, and I had time to weigh all the "pros" and "cons" of options for my future.
Upon my return to the city, I was offered to go back to the main roster, but with one change - there was no Darien anymore. It was a big hit - no matter how much I liked Genja as a man, Darien became my biggest "bro" in our team. Despite our periodic rough controversy because of differences in the game, he was the only one who could always incite me on some fun activity outside of LoL. His replacement meant 50% less pleasure from communicating with teammates, even though the atmosphere in the team was already "dry". It was sad to try to continue my journey with Gambit without him, but I decided to give it a chance. Atleast to see how the trainings will go, because I still had a plenty of time to decide whether I stay or not.
Renewed trainings showed me that NiQ, during my absence, has moved from a state of constant silence to a state of constant constructive talking and Kubon was really showing a desire to work hard and to try to get better. In the future Kubon turned out to be one of the most positive guys in the game I have ever met to this day.
Now back to the above-described problems of the team. There were many, but the basic ones are now visible to the naked eye:
Our map-movements were always something intuitive and were never prepared in advance. Which is why, at some point, the teams that got helped with this aspect by the coach, or by any of the players, have started to excel us in the control of the map. Due to the lack of coach there was nobody to unite the actions of each player of our team in a single system, that's why there were so many un-sync movements, backs, warding and pressure(as an example, Darien often died at one end of the map from 2-5 ppl for nothing, because on the other part of the map teammates were not yet ready to take a couple of enemy turrets for such an insolence. etc.). Also, the team didn't have a clear shotcaller and all the decisions were usually made by democracy. As a consequence of the latter, often we were missing opportunities of building up an advantage, and often we were making mistakes and giving up players/turrets for free. The problem was that it was impossible to find a good Russian coach. But Genja and Darien didn't speak English, which meant we couldn't take an English-speaking coach too.
So the trainings with new toplaner were going and I was more and more realizing the importance of a good coach. Also I noticed the potential of the current roster to succeed if it keeps moving in the right direction. So I decided to ask the organization whether they share my opinion about team's needs to jump back from the last spot to the top contenders, before making a decision about staying in the team, or not. It turned out that they agree with me and that they'd look for a good coach in the near future. After that I decided to leave my desires of pursuing my goals in other teams aside, and to fully focus on improving Gambit and myself.
Of course we didn't get a coach or the gaming-house in a moment, but everyone of us really wanted to prove that we still worth something and to not finish the split as the last place. First our LCS games with this roster we still lost, but we kept training hard and on the final week we showed something really impressive, for me: we won 3/4 games against decent teams and also a tiebreaker for 7th place, which gave us an opportunity to choose an easier opponent for relegation matches.
Not long after the end of the summer split, I learned that Genja is not going to play with us anymore. Again, it was painful - both guys whom I truly trusted and whom I respected the most were not in the team with me anymore, and it was kind of depressing. But there was no time to be sad - it was necessary to find a new ADC as soon as possible. After a couple of weeks of training with different players, we came to the conclusion that Chris(Pinoy) suits for this position the best out of all the candidates we had. I liked his approach from the begining. I honestly at first imagined him as 22-24 yo because of his tranquility and steadiness.
We trained hard whole month before relegation matches, and got a huge amount of fun from being in LA and just from being as a team together. I truly enjoyed the time after we got used to each other in that roster.
Then there were relegation matches. It was frightening to lose the first game of such an important bo5, but we realised really fast that the only dangerous weapon of our opponents was Orianna, banned it, and confidently won the remaining games 3-0. I got only positive emotions from LA, huge amount of them, to be honest. In one part due to extremely friendly fans, in other part because of the team and all the memes we discovered and used in that trip.
After a long rest after quilifing to the LCS, IEM Cologne appeared on the horizon - our only chance to get to the IEM Championship in Katowice. At that time organization lost Kubon, but thanks to curcumstances Cabochard was still a free-agent and he became a great addition to our team as one of the main carries, which we so lacked, and also he was a toplaner 0 (playing around top was my most liked thing in the game, after farming jungle). About this time we finally started to train with the coach - Jordan(Leviathan). He helped us with basic understanding of the objective control and some other nuances. We were ready to IEM - we had a plan for every game, a good champion pool on everyone, and a large number of early-game strategies, which gave us small benefits almost in all the games we played. Our good preparation and execution led us to the first victory on IEM with a new roster. It was amazing - I did not expect us to play so good on a pretty big tournament with so many new players in the team.
After IEM we got a well-deserved rest, but returned to training for the LCS Spring too late to have a good preparation with all the problems we faced in our gaming house on arrival. It was a shame to catch a 0-4 lose-streak again. But after those two weeks of suffering, Jordan finally arrived to the GH and started to work with us. He got a big impact on the team moral, and a small, but positive, impact on team's strategic approach. Simultaneously, the Internet has became decent and we finally started to train properly. The most painful was to lose that 5th game in a raw after the long game with a big advantage on our side - it almost shattered our faith in the victory, but Jordan did not let us lose heart and the next day we scored our first victory in that split, but not the last in the win-streak!
During that win-streak we tried our best, particularly in terms of pick/ban phase preparation. Even against Fnatic we got relatively easy victory after baiting Huni on Maokai, and disabling ReingOver's strongest champions. But right before that week with game against Fnatic, NiQ got to go to the hospital in Poland, which is why we urgently had to find a replacement, and we decided to try Best simply because there was almost nobody else at that time.
Once Betsy appeared in the team - the amount of information on the status of the mid lane lowered, but the pressure he applied on his line and the map with his roams was very noticable even in his not best games. When it became known that NiQ had to stay in hospital for one more week - we asked Betsy to stay, and he, in spite of his planned vacation with his family, agreed to play with us. After another 2-0 week with Betsy, NiQ got better and we faced a difficult situation of choosing between two midlaners. After discussion, we concluded that Betsy fits better into our play-style, and also he was training with us last two weeks, while there were only 10 days left before extremely important IEM Katowice. At this point, unfortunately, our coach, for some unknown reason, stopped working and pushing the team to the better results. I assume he just didn't know what to improve in the team after he has done everything he knew. So the team started to practice on its own, w/o coach's help, just like it was before we even had a coach. On the individual skill-only training it was impossible to compete with teams, which also trained strategically, so we started to slowly slide into the abyss, dispite winning scrims just through our player's personal skills. As a result, we failed miserably on Katowice.
Closer to the playoffs organization has decided to take emergency steps and to add William to our coaching staff. That helped, of course, to prepare for the playoffs throughly in terms of picks/bans and it improved our communication in the team, but there was no understanding of the game and mapmovements given to the team from him, so it was not enough. Since the strategic preparation of the team remained at the "zero" point - we managed to win only one game against UOL and then almost put the squeeze on the second one just due to individual superiority over our rivals on almost all the lanes. But then enemies avoided all the unfavourable early-midgame skirmishes which we could snowball the game from, and easily got other 2 games by outplaying us mapmovement-wise, because we were absolutely bad at them.
It was a shame to lose in the first round of playoffs, but well, we had to move on. On arrival to home from playoffs I was trying really hard to figure out what our team really lacked to win, because everyone seemed to work hard, William didn's slack too, but in the end we still lost... At that time I didn't relize how well you can strategically prepare the team from just a coach position, because everything I knew about coaches was from my personal expirience with the guys, whom we already tried. But in the end I came to the conclusion that only a good coach with excellent understanding of the strategic part of the game could help our team to achieve any results in the future. I immidiately came with this idea to the organization and they agreed with me. After that it only remained the most important thing to do - to actually find this "excellent" coach. Emoticono smile
After the great vacation in mid-season came time to come back to practicing for Summer Split. During the break, the organization had the opportunity to get one of the best, by personal skill, european adc.
With time for training came the time to look for a coach. It was hard to understand how good were candidates just in the Internet. Especially because our practices were disgusting because of controvercy between teammates and difficulties in solving this problems while everyone is at their hometowns.
In the end we decide that Shaunz is the best out of all. I liked him at once because of his straightness, even though he didn't impress me with his undestanding of the game at first.
When the time of Summer Split has come we weren't ready at all. Besides above-described problems, the Internet was shit when we arrived to GH and as the result of all of that we sadly lost two first games of the Summer Split.
On the second week Shaunz arrived and Internet problems were solved. Finally I saw some flashes of hope among apathy and depresson of the first weeks of trainings. Kevin surprisingly had a really good knowledge about how the team should move on the map, how to trade the objectives and he was able to chew this information even for die-hards.
As the result we were prepared better for the second week, but were facing stronger opponents. Dispite every possible effort to win we failed to achieve the desired. Nevertheless I saw team improving day by day and soon I thought we'd be able to beat any opponent. I was right - since third week we started winning more often. Proper training paid off. The new thing for me was becoming a shoutcaller. It was very difficult to play on LCS in same way as in scrims or as I perform when I give all the attention to my own role. Now in some situations on map I couldn't find a good solution in the right moment so we were paying for this with our time or something more. But more I got used to my new role in team the easier it became. The question was only if we got enough time to achieve a teamwork and solve conflicts, so we could be 100% prepared for the important games.
When the time to play those games has come, in two days before them we learned out that Forg1ven got suspended for four games...
**Though I was sure, that Forg1ven got his punishment absolutely deserved, still, I want to comment on this wonderful decision from Riots. I have a few complaints to them about this:
- Why, if you warn the organisation about probable suspention of one of their players 3 weeks before, the decision about this is made two days before the games?! This time is not enough to get visa for substitutes - okay, organization can make it for everyone in advance wasting time and money for no reason. But how to justify the fact that the team does not know whether to practice with subs or will it be a waste of time and they'd better train with the regular player? How organization should not waste time of it's players on useless things such as practice with substitutes they are not even sure they're gonna play with, if the "execution" is planned on TWO days before important games?!
- Riot said that they punish the player, not the organization. From the above it is clear that the organization is suffering a lot bigger than the player sitting on the bench and just waiting for teammates to play the games he is banned for. What's the point? To punish the player, not the organization, you can ban him convenient for the team, but inconvenient for the player (for example, the beginning of the next split), or find a more appropriate form of punishment. I absolutely do not agree with the time they chose to make this decision and therefore with their reasoning, but I'm just a player - not in my power to change something in this case.**
...Thanks God we got 3 sub ADCs and the teams we were gonna face were kind of equal to us in terms of strength. The day before first game we learned that 2 of our subs cant come because their organizations didn't let them and Genja has no visa (2-5 days requirs to get it) and the best option was to take Moopz (main support) as an ADC and pray. We swallowed this situation. Trained as much as we could after Moopz arrived in GH, and went to play the most important games of this season.
In the first game we had an advantage on top side and despite the superiority of the enemies on the other side of the map we turned the game around through flank-TPs from Cabo and kept snowballing on opponent's mistakes. As a result we got two inhibs and one nexus tower. And after that I failed to find an optimum solution to the situation we've been to, which was 5-man nexus push with superminions and Banner buff. After that we stucked in the late-lategame with a support on ADC against experienced in this stage of the game team. We still could've won, but I didn't stop Cabo from a risky TP on the ward behind enemies without vision onto them. As a consequence of that we hit absolutely desperate situation in which we got bare base and zero Nashor vision with enemies ready to take it. Herewith our adc blue trinket was on the cooldown. The only option was to try to rush their base but I failed to notice this opportunity and facecheked the bush hoping they were already making Nashor. But they were trapping, so I got killed. We lost the game which crippled me because I did not hold the responsibility of shoutcaller entrusted to me and, in addition, played badly in terms of mechanics what didn't affect the game that much but offended me myself.
After loss to EL team was dismoraled but we handled it together before the next day started and were ready to play against H2k. Unfortunately H2k were stronger than EL strategically and advantage Cabo got this game wasn't enough to win them. Odoamne was playing supersafe after dying a couple of times and under his teammates protection, and our botlane couldn't create enough preassure to dive enemies with Cabo's TP or destroy any tower on their lane. As a result of it there was no way Cabo could transition his strength, so the advantage we got with him was basically useless. Slowly we got crushed by opponent's good vision and map control and we couldn't do much about it given the circumstances. After this defeat we lost all our chances on play-offs so we decided to go to a bar to not indulge in grief in gaming house. I think we've spent our time there very nice. Thanks esports Meltdown bar for a good mood and assistance in order not to lose the team spirit.
Now we got a short break, preparation to relegations and vacation after them. After I returned to my hometown I got some rest, chilled a bit, spent some time with my relatives and played some soloQ. Soon I am planning to make some streams and after the relegations I'll maybe stream with schedule. We will see.
I'd like to say BIG THANK YOU to all those people who are still with us for supporting me and my "NEVER LUCKY" team in social networks, by personal messages and ofcourse by coming to events. If we can overcome all this difficultes by making the right decisions, next split I swear you will have reasons to be proud for rooting for us.
Special thanks to Moopz for supporting us in our darkest times, despite the offered ingame role and the importance of the game which he took a part in and showed himself good for a player who does not play this role.
Thank you very much to Kevin (Shaunz) for the insane amount of work you did instructing us to the path of truth and for all the patience you payed for this. Thanks to my girlfriend for waiting me home for all this time, supporting and protecting me from haters. Also thanks for been next to me on the last week of LCS when the clouds were gathering over the heads of our team and for setting the good mood to me and my teammates after last lose.
Thank you very much to all my teammates for fighting next to me for our last chance of making it to playoffs. And I hope we will still fight together in the future.
P.S. Since LCS is finished for us and everyone in soloQ already unraveled my secret account, but the community reproached me in been low elo scrub which plays only ARAMs, I'll share my smurf with you: 
P.P.S. If you have any questions - feel free to ask them on my ask(ask.fm/theDiamondprox). I'll try to answer as much as I can.
pero muy buen resumen gracias
