Champions Queue was set up as a means for North American pro players to get high-level practice in a low ping environment.
But Golden Guardians support Kim “Olleh” Joo-sung thinks not enough pros are playing Champions Queue. On talk show Summoning Insight, hosted by Christopher “Montecristo” Mykles and Duncan “Thorin” Shields, the 27-year-old wondered what pros do after scrims are over.
“The fun fact in North America is, 12 to 5 p.m. you play scrims, and then… it’s free time [after],” said the pro player, who finished second on the Champions Queue leaderboard for Split 1.
However, not everyone agrees with him that all pro players should play until 1 a.m. every day.
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GG Olleh wishes more pros will play Champions Queue
The Korean player was confused about pros not playing Champions Queue. When it first launched, there was a lot of fanfare, he said.
But by the end of the split, they played less and less, he observed, and he believed that it was because they lost the chance to earn prize money where only the top 10 players are rewarded with up to US$12,000.
He contrasted this with South Korea’s pro gaming culture, where playing League of Legends all day is considered normal and not “grinding”. In North America, this is not the case.
“To have better environment for practice in NA, everyone should work harder. What I want [is for] many people to just play. I want everyone in Champions Queue to spam games till 1 a.m,” he wrote during his livestream.
He also believed that the role he plays affected the number of games he could play, because players like Evil Geniuses’ Joseph “jojopyun” Joon Pyun could spam more games as a mid laner.
That said, jojopyun did queue off role several times just to play more games when the queues became too long.
EG Peter Dun: ‘There are currently 40+ LCS/Academy players playing in CQ’
However, not everyone agrees with Olleh’s comments. One of them, Evil Geniuses’ head of coaching staff Peter Dun, posted a tweet in response.
“There are currently 40+ LCS/Academy players playing in CQ and more waiting for games,” he wrote. “This is much more in line with a normal night.”
He also disagreed with the idea that pros should be grinding that much, calling it “unreasonable”.
“Sure, players like Jojo, Muhammed Hasan ‘Kaori’ Şentürk, or Jett ‘Srtty’ Joye can do that, but it’s not for everybody. Even two to three games a night is fine and fulfills the purpose of the queue.”
He noted that some pros prefer 1v1s and VOD studies, while others split their time between solo queue and Champions Queue to vary their intensity of training.
Peter also guaranteed that there’d be at least 75-80 pros who will have played Champions Queue, out of the 240 in LCS and academy.
You can read a full transcription of Olleh’s post on Reddit here.
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