I think now would be a good time to talk about playoffs, and how I feel about the disappointment of defeat.
I had been daydreaming for months about playing at Worlds -making a clutch play in front of everyone as they screamed and chanted my name. I put in more work than I've ever put in before just for our playoffs match against TSM. Allstars training looked like a boy scout meeting compared to this. Never in a thousand years could I have imagined Season 3 World Championships without me. I'm Doublelift, the trademark trashtalking AD carry who has no map awareness but always plays well. Sure I have bad times when I choke and play like shit here and there, but I don't think anyone can honestly say another AD player has outperformed me throughout Season 3. Who could deserve to go and represent NA more than me? But now I realize none of that is important.
When we lost, and my dreams of sick hype plays and sweeping everyone aside were crushed, I thought for a long time about what this really means for me. I've been a pro player for more than 2 years now, and this is the first big event I couldn't go to despite wanting it so much. I've also never won a single LAN throughout my career, so I feel like a fraud in the sense that I can never claim to be any good just from my terrible record alone.
People will call me cocky, delusional, and full of myself, but I think I played well against TSM. I could only identify a handful of mechanical mistakes throughout the series, and I felt like my Ashe performance was pretty good for the amount of time I had been practicing her. We played ok as a team despite having some choke moments under the pressure, but TSM played much better. It's hard for people to admit when a team played better than you, but TSM has better playcalling, lane rotations, and map control than us right now. I'm glad the better team won and will represent NA at Worlds. This way, we won't look retarded like last season.
The bottom line is that you can almost never look good when you're losing. People will always be critical of the losers, and point to the winners and say "Look! They do it this way and they WON, that means it's smart and good, and your way is stupid and bad." The time has finally come when one star player can't win a team-based game just because he's better. Just look at Froggen, who is probably still the best mid (or tied) in EU despite people desperately trying to prove otherwise because other teams win and Froggen's team loses. CJ Frost might not make worlds, and people might point to Madlife's losses and talk about how he's slipping up and other supports have surpassed him. People just love to hype up the winners and downplay the losers, and that's expected.
But my greatest fear is not that people will echo the opinions that I suck, that I'm washed up, or that my ego clouds my play. At any point, the hivemind's opinion changes with a single good play or bad game. My greatest fear is the day I stop being relevant as a pro - and not competing in Worlds is the first step in that direction.
I think CLG hasn't stuck with the same roster for more than half a year for the last 2 years, but this time we actually all get along and are willing to put the work in. Monte is a great coach, Kelby is a great manager, and we've actually started to fix problems that seemed unfixable for my entire duration on CLG. For a 3-month old team, I think we did ok this split. Maybe Season 4 we can stop being such a disappointment to ourselves, and more importantly to our fans.
