Joushi Esports LJL Roster
The other day, I posted a question on Twitter. If you were trying to win worlds with an
LJL roster, who would it be?
While we consider this question, gotta lay down a couple ground rules.
1. The roster has to follow the rules of including no more than 2 imports
2. Only players who played in LJL 2020 are eligible to be considered
3. This is not a popularity contest, we're focused on trying to find results, not who
we like best
Before I give my answer to the question of who would be on Joushi Esports, I want toposit a couple of theories and use it as a lens through which we can examine someteams.
The first theory is simple. There is a finite amount of resources in experience and goldon the map, and you have to allocate it in the most effective way. Players can beloosely plotted along a spectrum of resource intensiveness, and a team with fiveresource intensive players will struggle to actually support all of them. While not exactly
identical, players can also be thought of as 'carries' and 'supports' regardless of theposition that they play. Carries tend to require a lot of gold and experience to function
well, while supports tend to thrive with much less, and giving them more gold andexperience doesn't increase their effectiveness nearly as much.
The second theory is also simple to explain, but hard to execute. In order to build themost effective possible roster, you need to pick a solo laner and a jungler, determine
how they want to play the game, and then build the rest of the roster around them.
Ideally, this solo laner is a strong carry player who gets better the more resources theyare given. The jungler can be a carry or a support, but they have to play in the same
way that the solo laner wants to.

Why a solo laner and not bot lane? Simply because by virtue of playing in a solo lane,
you get equal gold and greater experience than an ADC because you're not sharing itwith another player.
With this in mind, let's examine a few teams briefly.
We'll start with what has been one of the most successful examples in League ofLegends history: Huni and Reignover's Fnatic.
Before joining Fnatic, Huni was a virtual unknown. After joining in 2015, the team got
2nd in Spring, 1st in Spring Playoffs, 3rd at MSI, went undefeated in Summer, wonSummer Playoffs, and got 3rd at Worlds 2015.
Since then, Huni and Reignover performed well in NA, but failed to replicate the samelevel of success. After leaving Immortals, Reignover's career was unimpressive, andHuni only recreated similar results when he was on SKT with some of the greatest
players League of Legends has ever seen.
To put it simply, Febiven, Rekkles, and Yellowstar are all good players, but pale incomparison to Peanut, Faker, Bang, and Wolf. Pobelter, WildTurtle, and Adrian areprobably comparable to the Fnatic roster on an individual level.
I propose that the difference in play styles that the teams went with. Huni was allowed
to be the primary carry of Fnatic, with Febiven and Rekkles being very self-sufficient,
without a lot of jungle attention paid to their lanes.
In contrast, the team of Elements in EU LCS 2015 Spring, which had recently
rebranded from Alliance, added Rekkles to their team. A move that almost everyone
believed was a stronger player than Tabzz, went from winning EU LCS 2014 Summer
Playoffs and Summer Season, to getting 7th. If they upgraded their players, why was
the result so much worse?
Because player skill is not the primary determining factor!

We can even see this in the LJL Summer 2020. On paper, DFM and Sengoku Gaming
have the best players. But they both lost to V3. Individual player skill can't be the only
determining factor.
Briefly, DFM as a roster has been built around the core of Ceros and Yutapon forlonger than the LJL has existed. If we accept that the team is built around Ceros, andSteal as the jungler supports the way that Ceros wants to play, we see that the teamfunctions pretty darn well. Both the top lane and the bottom lane are incredibly selfsufficient and are the primary carries, as well as the primary recipients of gold andexperience. The team has been domestically dominant for years, with this being theirfirst loss in playoffs finals since 2018. The model clearly works. However, they areclearly not very competitive on the world stage, and I posit that a major reason is nottheir player skill.
Additionally, Sengoku Gaming is a team that spent a huge amount of money to import
Blank and Pirean, as well as grab some of the best domestic talent that isn't on DFM.
This team did take a Bo5 off of DFM last split, but they lost 3-1 to V3 and 3-0 to DFM. A
major problem is this team doesn't really have an identity. All of their players demand alot of resources. They are very talented individually, but this problem means thatagainst teams that are even vaguely coordinated and not individually outmatched theyfail.
V3 has a very clear identity. The team is built around Bugi and Archer, who are very
resource intensive, and strong carries. Ace, Paz, and Raina give up a lot to empower
these players. While individually, I would argue that the team is weaker than either
DFM or SG, they still manage to pull through because their players function welltogether to have a basic game plan.
So the question becomes, with all of this in mind, we are looking to build an LJL teamaround a carry midlaner with a supporting jungler, and one of the side lanes serving as
a mid-to-high resource intensity with carry potential.
To build the core of the team, we obviously need to start with the mid we are building
around. There are really only two options, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise:
Aria and Dasher. They have very similar laning stats across 2020 and 2019, and I
would argue that Aria has had a stronger team around him throughout 2020 and alsobenefited from not playing top lane for a split. Head to head, Dasher also beat Aria inSummer Playoffs.
I'm a big fan of Dasher, and he has shown himself to be more well rounded in hischampion pools, so I'm gonna pick him.
Next criteria: a supportive jungler that supports mid lane in 2v2s and will give resources
to empower this player.
There is no option here other than Steal. Bugi and Blank are way too greedy, andwould force us to pick supportive side laners in ways that would weaken the team as awhole.
After that, we have to decide if we want to play towards the top side or the bottom sideof the map, and with both of our import slots already used, we have the following
options:
Top: Evi, Paz, apaMEN
Bot: Yutapon, Yutorimoyashi
I will argue that Evi is a better top laner than either Paz or apaMEN, but can't be pairedwith Yutapon because that leaves us with top, mid, and bot all competing for limited
resources. apaMEN also doesn't play weakside very well, where Paz does.
So we can take Evi + Yutori or Paz + Yutapon, and again, I would argue that thedifference between Evi and Paz is a greater difference than Yutorimoyasi and Yutapon,so I'm going to go with the Evi + Yutori pair.
That leaves us with support, and again with no imports available, our options are
realistically Enty, Raina, and viviD.
Yutorimoyasi hasn't really played with Raina, and statistically he has performed betterwith viviD, so honestly that's really the deciding factor for me here. I don't think there's
a large enough difference otherwise to make an overwhelming argument in one of theirfavor, so I could honestly be convinced of any of them.

So what does that look like overall? I present to you: Joushi Esports
Top: Evi
Jungle: Steal
Mid: Dasher
AD: Yutorimoyasi
Support: viviD
It's important to note here that this is NOT who I think is the best individual in every
role. They aren't individually dominant, while all very good. Instead, this is a team thatcan consistently play towards their strength in the top half, while bottom lane is able towithstand pressure pretty well while still being relevant with relatively little gold.
I reject the idea that Japan doesn't have enough talent, just that it's locked up in DFM
who has reached their cap with their current roster.

Author: @Joushi_TV
Publisher: lolninja.net