Reign of Gaming

They are improving, but mostly individually. From the team perspective only TSM has the playstyle and the consistency over a longer duration to be really a threat to Asian teams.
NA teams always had the problems after 20 minutes that they don't know what to do.

EU on the other hand is knows for their great teamplay with Fnatic and GG. They play their style when they are together like no other team.

So NA needs to be careful, cause they have actually a huge advantage over the EU team in this tournament, an advantage that they won't have when they will clash again with their normal teams.

Upset in the All-Star match. And that is all. The overall teams are not as solid by far except for TSM while EU has at least 2 if not 3 teams that are able to play in the Asian lvl.

the difference is that both wont get that one spot for the S3 WCS but NA does have at least the second best team out there they could have. EU has not even a team that makes it into the top 4, and that is what matters in the end. How good are your real teams.

EU didn't train as much, but what did it help NA? They still wont win, so they only trained their 5 players to play together against 5 other players that will never play together again. NA did got nothing out for all of their effort.

Yeah, that is definitely a problem. SV is a great jungler in the end, but no shoutcaller. Not cause he makes overall bad desicsions, but cause one of them often costs you the game while you need 100 to win the game.Crs had a good LCS start cause of their J4 + Taric comp and cause the other teams weren't as prepared. Nyjacky and Voy looked way stronger at the beginning, too. But their main problem always seemed to be that they have no clue how to win much even when ahead. All they did was win lanes and stomp or lose games and stall till their stronger team fight comp with J4 + Taric could win a fight.

Benching Elementz was one thing. He is no Xpecial, but he can play on the same lvl as Aphro or most others and he has some sneaky picks if needed (like the Fiddle who won them a whole lane at 2:00 with his lvl 1 E). But he has to take the blame for Crs getting worse and for these 2 games. Like you said it: He is the shoutcaller and he either does it right or let it be.

But the thing is that it is true. It is not the language barrier, but that they have no shoutcaller and no training together (at least not much). NA flew in a lol analyst to help them. They had a bootcamp. EU didn't really put too much effort into preparations.

Also EU has still at least 2 teams that can beat Asian teams.
NA has probably one: TSM. And that is not even sure.

He didn't try to help Dyurs. He stepped right into the lane and did try to CS while standing right next to Dyrus. In the end both underestimated the flamespitter.

But the second game Dyrus had great teleports and ults. That Xpecial tower rescue together with Dyrus ult onto Nasus was great. That DL play top with Dyrus coming in with his ult also. And his ult that he canceled where the enemy catched them with the Sona ult mid lane. Great from Scarra and Dyrus to show enough threat to force them to back off. Dyrus also had that 1v2 lane against Sona and Cait, one of the scarriest combos early game and that with Malphite. Saint also had a good start with his ganks and the first tower dive did look really well played.

But in the end they did stopped their whole game after the first baron attempt when they got that Nasus kill in the end and forced Ryze to use TP.

Korea seems to be the favourites for the tournament and EU didn't have any bootcamp nore an analyst. They knew that they had communication problems and no shoutcaller, what is a huge disadvantage. So in the end you could say that it was predictable, even when they seemed to have a good chance in the first game at the start.

But NA: The first game was lost and it was ok, but then the steal and the comback to not even 2k gold difference with 38k vs 40k and that fight. But ok, they lost and had a second and great game, till the 15-20 mins, when NA didn't seem to have a shoutcaller either. Wasting time, not even trying to push or gain control. Everybody actually played really well till they tried baron for the first time after the huge mistake of the chinese team top against DL. But after that, the team didn't seem to have a clue how to play lol when you are ahead. It looked like Curse in the last weeks of the LCS.

But props to DL, Dyrus and especially Xpecial.

There is no health stacking meta. Healths is needed on most champs, but stacked only on some (Voli).

champs like Nasus, Renekton, Singed, ... want a lot of Armor/MR to get tanky with a normal amount of HP.
Getting Randuins + Sunfire is not really health stacking. It has at least as much Armor as HP and an AS slow. Warmogs + Sunfire + Bullwark + Solari + Randuins could be called health stacking, but there are still tons of Armor and MR in that build.
Frozen Mallet + Warmogs + Spirit of the Ancient Golem + 3 other items is the only real comobo that you could call health stacking except from builds with only HP items.

And you always want Penetration. Not too early on an ADC, but the enemy tanks will get Armor, and you want to get through that even if it is only 150.

I had so much fun with a random team yesterday. We had won the game already.
10k ahead, 1 inhib down, only 2 nexus turrest still there.
All we had to do was push with all 5 people mid and get the other 2 inhibs. What did our team do?
2 went top. The other 2 got cought mid and tried to survive. I managed to get there fast (was right behind them to not get in danger, but being able to help), but the 2 top didn't move. We lost mid and the 2 top were still slowly pushing before going b.After we were 5 again, we tried it again. The 2 now spread out to push bot and do drake while we had 0 Vision in the enemies jungle. I tried to get from mid over there (huge mistake without vision) and got caught by the enemy team that wanted to sneak onto the one that pushed bot. We still got them below 50% with 4 people (the 2 from mid game and the one from drake) and only I died while my whole team had all their skills up and where nearly at full HP. Now they thought they could fight 4v5 cause they were clearly able to do it. But the bot lane pusher (Jayce) didn't want to get to them (he had already 15 sec to move before that). He started porting b.

Another example came from my friends. 3 of them are Diamond and they have on gold player. Now they used another Diamond player and thought it would work. It did go ok, but not great. Now they wanted me to come back (i made a pause for some weeks) and try it. We won 7 games in a row. I am in no way as good as the other player, but I talk with them and I make the calls. they know me and know what they can expect from me and what they can't.

What do I want to say with that?
Consistency comes with teamplay. People have to listen to good calls, and maybe even to some that are bad. Together you win games. Seperated you will lose games.
Searching for people you can play with is hard, cause it means you should have a pretty similar schedule for gaming and you should be able to become friends. Your playstyle should fit and you should make one a shoutcaller (even in duo queue).
Playing with a friend that is not on your skill lvl or plays different from you can be hard and it can happen that you start blaming them.Ask some people in your games that may not be the best, but have a similar playstyle. Try it with them and maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't. Search means you have to do something.
Sites like TeamSummon.com (there are more than one as far as i know) are good to start with, but they are like dating sites: For some people it works, but for most the oldschool method is better.

If you play on the EUW server, I'm sure i can help you a bit. I have a lot of friends from Bronze to Diamond and some of them are always looking for a duo queue partner or a 5th man.

Ryze is still awesome and very solid.
In tournaments you see him less cause of the early game pressure. He is not too fast and has a pretty low range. He is also still squishy and can't spam his skills as he wants to cause of the low mana and the bit higher CDs (no 10% CDR from Q).

But in solo queue he is still super strong. A player that knows him well can carry most of his games with him. His SS are more flexible cause he doesn't need ignite as much and he has the most flexible item build cause you can take mana or AP for dmg (both are pretty equal for dmg).
His late game scaling got hit a little bit in S3 with the overall max mana changes (most items have less max mana like tear, sheen, Frozen heart, ROA, BV, ...), but with Muramana, ROA and AAS being better overall, he still has a great. He only needs to focus more on certain items for certain stats (Muramana for the highest dmg, ...) instead of building everything with mana + defensive stats and dealing increadible dmg and being super tanky.

One change that would be a decent nerf to his status as being super solid and strong would be the murmana change from the PBE (deals physical dmg instead of magical). That change would make sense for the item cause it is an AD item in the first place and nearly only used on Ryze of all the magical dmg champs (buffst to Jayce, Urgot and other AD champs, but a nerf to Ryze).But in the end it would probably only reduce his DPS and he would skip that item and get other stuff that is good for him.

For tournaments i would love to see the muramana change + an increased early game strength for Ryze.
How? More mana early game.
Mana: 286 + 53*lvl (from 250 + 55*lvl)
Late game the value would be equal, but the litttle bit increased mana would make him a tick safer in the lane especially against the higher ranged targets. It would be 2 more dmg on his Q and W, what is not a significant amount especially after some lvls. And the higher mana is mainly better lane pressure or CSing under the turret. It would be only one more skill useable (not even a full skill).

I would let it stay at 35-135 base dmg (down from 45-145) and only increase the AP ratio to 0.45. It would be nearly the same nerf, but her early game would not suffer as hard while the increased ratio still increases her dmg at 200 AP.
The current PBE version seems to be pretty ok for the base dmg (260 is not really low and the 290 currently are too much), but i feel that her early game poke suffers a tick too hard from the 10 less base dmg arleady at rank 1. That's why i would chose the other value for overall 280 base dmg and a 0.85 AP ratio.

OR 45-125 + 0.5 AP ratio (even stronger than the only one at lvl 1, but falls off slowly).

The ult nerf is ok. You wait for 3 maks and then you go for the kill. Up to 95 sec early game is not really high for an ult.

But overall, only the ult nerf is a real nerf and that one is not really a problem, but something that should have been fixed a long time ago.
The Q will always deal more dmg after 200 AP. It is a decent early game nerf, but she can still CS with it and is a pretty safe laner with shroud and her sustain.
And after the mid game it starts getting better. It will be a nerf to the gunblade build, but a decent mid and lategame buff to the AP build.
One Rabadons + runes + masteries and you are at a higher amount of dmg with Q than you were before.