I genuinely don’t understand where VL are heading at this point. It feels like every split is the same story recycled over and over again with no real adjustment or identity forming. You watch them play and it’s like they’re always one step behind every other Tier 1 team in almost every fundamental: mid-rounding, trading, even basic utility timing.
What makes it more frustrating is that this isn’t even about losing alone. Losing is fine. Every region has weak teams. But at least when you watch the worst teams in other leagues, you can see something forming underneath it. There’s usually a map they look comfortable on, a clear win condition, or at least some kind of adaptation from week to week.
With VL though, it often feels like they load into matches with the same problems every time and just hope individual moments bail them out. And when that doesn’t happen, the rounds just collapse instantly. No structure to fall back on, no clear mid-round calling, nothing that screams “this is a system being built.”
Even teams that are struggling, like lower Pacific teams or rebuilding rosters, you can usually point to something improving. Cleaner execs, better anti-eco rounds, tighter defense setups, anything. But with VL it sometimes feels like they reset to zero every series.
And the most worrying part isn’t even the losses. It’s the lack of visible progression. You don’t mind watching a team that’s bad if you can tell they’re actively trying to fix things. But when the same mistakes show up split after split, it starts to feel less like a skill gap issue and more like something deeper in the structure isn’t working.
At some point Riot has to look at these long-term underperforming franchise spots and ask what the actual direction is, because being a permanent bottom team with no upward trajectory doesn’t really help the league either.
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