Introduction

     My name is Tommy Shumate. I've played League of Legends for about five years, and I've followed the professional scene for about three years. During the LCS Spring Split of 2015, I created a fantasy team with some of my friends and in the name of competitive spirit, I decided to do some research. The first article I read on Lolesports.com showed me the point differensial of winning teams vs losing teams and nothing else, having three of the best top laners listed as Dyrus, Balls and Wicked for garenteed wins as a part of their respected teams.
     I after I drafted ten players, one half of my team was either part of Cloud9 or Elements. After one month I was curious why I wasn't scoring points and I found a larger pattern to scoring points. In fact if I had done more research I would've discovered Millenium, a losing team had scored many more points than any other team, including all of the players from the teams I was told to draft.
     Hoping for change, I have seen the same ideas portrayed on Lolesports.com, such as Incarnation being predicted to be the highest scoring mid laner over Bjergson, Febiven, Fox, Betsy, Soren ect. despite the strongest score predictors being heavily out of his favor. Cloud 9 had 12.3 kills per game, which is 15th highest in the two LCS divisions out of 20. Not to mention he is taking the position of a split pushing on a team where unless Meteos was on Reksai does not have one to rely on, so you would assume he would be a split pusher and thus have a smaller kill participation than other mids. Needless to say, despite Incarnation being respected as an amazing mechanical player, his fantasy stats should not even be in comparison to someone like Febiven, who will almost certainly have a higher kill participation on a team that has 19.4 kills per game, a 58% higher kill per game stat than Cloud 9.
     Another example I saw was Meteos, the highest projected scorer in the jungle for week one with 40 projected points. Someone I consider to be the most mechanically skilled jungler in the entire LCS on one of the best teams in Western League of Legends. The problem is, he farms in the early game and Cloud 9 constantly avoids fights and so his fantasy points from the last split suffered just as I predict they will suffer this split.
     To be completely honest I am writing this blog because I love League Esports and I obsess over numbers and data. I love being a part of a community I benefit from and I think the Lolesports website is misinforming its readers, which is not a bad thing but is very annoying seeing how easy it was to draft three Fnatic players in four different Leagues, mostly because each player despite being on the same dominant team after outscoring every other team were not considered Elite enough to be placed as the highest projected scorers of their positions.
     I have constructed my own prediction system for weekly points based on matchups and for seasonal points, both based on past data. I will post blogs about the LCS until I see absolutely no one cares (hopefully not). I would love to talk to anyone about anything I post and anyone can add me in game using my username Toizoel or Email me at Tishudays@gmail.com although I would highly prefer in game questions from a live user on Riot's chat service.

The Previous Split and how it Factors in

     The previous split contains The MOST accurate data concerning how the current split will go for players on your team. If your player is on the same roster, you can expect very similar results. If your player is on a different roster or an unknown roster, there are no garentees. I see similar rosters as similar playstyles and thus, no reason to believe consistency is not inherently garenteed, although it is not always, just a very safe bet.
     Any slight change in a roster can cause a shift in fantasy points.  For instance, Fnatic during Spring Split 2015 had a safe AD Carry, Reliable mid with an agressive jungler and role swapping support.  Their most valuable resource was consistently Huni, a God tier top lane carry with a reliable champion pool and a team that understood he was a consistent top lane carry in a region where that did not exist. They had the freedom to forge a meta game revolving around Huni reminiscent of the Eastern teams we all love to see destroy eachother at every world finals. This meant fantasy gold for owners of any Fnatic player last split, but this split there is uncertainty. Fnatic is a smart team that knows what they have in Huni, and now in Rekkles. Rekkles will demand resources just by virtue of team resume. Suddenly, to me as I see it Fnatic has a very juicy split push option, and that will be Huni. I can't assume to know how team management is planning to use their new resource in Rekkles but I would not be surprised to see more split pushing, less team fights and more cross map objective control. Would this lead to less team points? Maybe, less Huni points? Perhaps. All I'm saying is Huni was number one on my draftboard when Steelback was in the bottom lane, and Rekkles scored my team 27 more points than his teammate as my first overall pick in this week's matchup.
     Roster changes often lead to playstyle changes and playstyle changes can lead to a very good player on a very good team underperforming in a fantasy situation. XiaoWeiXiao for example left LMQ where he was the split's MVP and moved to TIP, a similar team with a different roster and although they performed very well and I still believe XWX is a high quality player, he produced low fantasy totals last split despite a high scoring team. I think this is a perfect example of a team's playstyle change leading to a potential drop in a player's fantasy points. In this instance I believe that in the Summer Split of 2015, Freeze and Sneaky are safer picks than say Piglet, Doublelift or Altec, for example. If you are looking for safe in the carry positions, look for high performing players who have teams that understand the carry centric roles they are playing.
     The dynamics of carry roles, supporting roles and even team scoring are very unique from one another and your player's fantasy totals can be effected by the difference. I look forward to going over each of the dynamics in upcoming blogs to help readers fully understand how it effects their team and how it can positively effect decisions they make during draft and free agency as a predictive force for fantasy scoring. If you have a fantasy team from the previous split, you can access the previous split's stats through Lolesports.com. This can be your greatest resource for creating an advantageous team.

This is Why I Started Blogging

     I think this is very misleading, it's not based on evidence or research but based on opinion. I do not know this writer and whether he wrote other posts similar to this that ruined my first fantasy team, but this post will be dealing with this page written on Lolesports.com. If the hyperlink in the title does not work use the url: http://na.lolesports.com/articles/fantasy-lcs-draft-guide-2015-summer-split to see what I am talking about. And yes, I am spending my time criticizing another writer's advice about fantasy esports. This may mean nothing to anyone but me, but I found it extremely annoying to find this site's inaccuracies and so I'm hoping others reading this may have had the same feeling. My criticisms of this page include an overall lack of useful information and in-depth analysis, clumping NME and TDK together as one and many of their picks along with the explanations.

     I have learned there is a very indirect science to predicting player scores based on data that most definitely does exist. Almost all of the explanations on this page include a vague reasoning that almost sums up to "why not". The writer includes Freeze as an avoid pick despite having the same reliable carry centric roster and scoring in the top three of all ADCs in the last split. The reason why he later explains is because he believes, despite no evidence besides the replacement of MYM with Origen that EU is now a dominion of high level teams in which the Copenhagen Wolves cannot be expected to compete with, much less score fantasy points against. 

     The writer's player jusification for Jwaow as a value pick for cheap is the fact that he played poorly and stuggled to hold onto a starting position for a MYM team that could not find the wins to avoid immediate relegation at the end of the split. This would probably land Jwaow around my top 19 or 20 pick for the top lane, something I have not put thought into for the reason that it does not matter. In any league, mid lane and ADC flex pick options are favored for high projected points and so you can assume everyone should have two of each by the end of the draft. This means that, along with starters in every role, by the time the tenth pick roles around in an eight team league there should be anywhere from 5-12 top laners left on the board. (5 being the unlucky number you are at when the 7 other players in your league all pick a top lane sub before you do and you still feel like it's a good idea.) The bottom five top laners for the week two matchup according to Lolesports.com include Dyrus, Flaresz, Youngbuck, Gamsu and Steve. If you added Jwaow to that mix I would advise you to pick him 5th/6 only because Elements management is notorious for replacing top laners who don't perform and he has no security over Gamsu and Flaresz and he is outright outclassed by Dyrus and Youngbuck. This begs the question how is this a value pick? 

     The writer says "If you can't grab Xpecial or Bora "YellOwStaR" Kim for your support",

which leads me to think he actually believes Xpecial is a better pick than the likes of Gosu Pepper or Lustboy, despite all evidence and data from the previous split suggesting otherwise. I mean, it's okay to believe anything and to take risks on someone but to tell people it is "the way to go" despite evidence that suggests otherwise. Now I would expect a reasonable person to take a risk and to stick their neck out on their own draft, but to tell others to based on a hunch that Liquid is a much different team than they've always been to the point where a Xpecial is able to outscore a Lustboy or Gosu Pepper over an entire split is just irresponsible. 

    Let's go over NME and TDK... "Enemy Esports (NA) and Team Dragon Knights (NA) looked strong in Challenger, but are mostly untested against tested LCS teams. Draft them with tempered expectations, and keep an eye on them for Week 1 pickups if they look strong"

Here the writer goes into teams that "looked strong in challenger" but any research or viewing of the NA challenger playoffs would tell you these two teams are on a completely different caliber of play. Even without knowing the Visa situation TDK is going through, any effort at all would lead the LCS fan to understand a distinct difference in the skill level of these teams. 

     I don't know this writer, and so I did not refer to him as Josh Augustine. I have nothing against him, I'm fairly certain we would have a lot in common, I've never come across his work in the past but I thought I'd go deeper into why I think this style of Esports article is misinformative to the casual fan looking to draft a team to beat his friends.

   EU LCS vs NA LCS

   If you're like me, you live in North America, you play on the North American servers and you cheer for the North American teams no matter who they are, during any international tournament. However, statistically speaking European players will most likely score, as they did last split, more points than NA on a 1.1:1 ratio. This is in no way garenteed, as there are many worthwhile fantasy teams in North America to pick from, but in many common scenarios EU players you can choose from will consistantly outperform NA players of similar regional fantasy caliber.
   Imagine this: you are in a later round, (depending on how many players are in your league) you notice that the players from Fnatic, TSM, Origen and TIP are drafted. Who is left to pick from? Statistically speaking, the highest predictor is kills, making all those teams fantasy gold. Not knowing the player's exact role in the team, your safest option is the team with the next highest kill per game rate of the previous split. Of this past draft, the Summer Split of 2015, the next five highest teams in that stat are all from the EU LCS. Gambit Gaming at 16.2 per game on a roster improvement, SK Gaming at 15.9 on a roster loss, UOL at 15.3 with the same roster, Copenhagen Wolves at 14.8 with the same roster and H2K at 13.9 with the same roster. The next highest being Team8 with 13.7 kills per game. I would advise anyone to pick a player from the first five teams instead of a hometown favorite like Doublelift or Sneaky on low scoring teams.
   EU likes to fight. Early game mid game late game, and there aren't many exceptions to this rule. While many NA teams want to fight, a week against Cloud 9, CLG or TSM will leave a middle of the pack team grasping for air as they are outrotated and demolished in a 9-1 defeat after losing the objective game. Elite teams like Fnatic and H2K in EU may have the resources as a team to play a game this way, but have shown through many games they would much rather dive your turrets and trade kills before trading objectives, which means your fantasy player will likely not be starved points even in a losing effort.  A game in which your team loses 12-23 in the kill score will score as many points than a game in which your team is Cloud 9 and they win 10-1. Assists are worth three times the punishment for deaths so you should not be worried about your player dying or your player's KDA. (Sorry Forg1ven and Sneaky fans)
   During certain matchups I would say it is in best interest to start NA players over EU players, from a very basic overview. But each week you have a 1/5 chance to play vs Cloud 9, TSM and CLG who have consistently shown do not die without necessity or without thought. I would avoid matchups with these teams as a rule of thumb whenever possible.