1- We seem to have gone a whole week without talking about how great Prince is or how FLY is clearly the best team in the league. We also managed to not mention that they’ve switched to Eyla as he finally arrived in the US and seemingly didn’t miss a beat. Golden Guardians' resurgence and C9 subbing in Emenes is generally the reason we haven’t been discussing FlyQuest, but here’s a fun tidbit. Prince has 76 kills in 11 games. If he keeps up that pace he will have the highest Kills Per Game of any player in LCS history.
2- Emenes is actually really charming? His post-day interview with Travis Gafford was a great watch: [https://youtu.be/6nGRNZNex5c][1]
I wasn’t sure what to expect from Emenes, especially with his reputation as a toxic player and all of the rumors circulating about his personality. What we ended up seeing this past week was a poor Viktor game where he struggled to play for the team, and an absolutely dominant LeBlanc game where he was going for outplays and consistently getting them. Even though the team was 7-2 with Diplex and are currently 1-1 with Emenes, the Emenes hype train is just getting started for me. Excited to see what he can deliver this week.
[1]: https://youtu.be/6nGRNZNex5c
3- Due to the fact that EG won Spring in 2022 and went 15-3 in Summer Split, they’ve earned the benefit of the doubt that the sky isn’t falling after a 0-2 week. With that being said, they’re likely having some pretty difficult conversations behind the scenes about their play in week 5.
After all, they are the only team in the LCS to lose to Dignitas, and they got handily beaten by the hottest team in the league, Golden Guardians. This follows a fairly disappointing super week where they snatched a couple games that they shouldn’t have. The biggest difference to me between 2022 EG and 2023 EG so far is their skirmishing and teamfighting. It felt like in 2022, they would seemingly win every skirmish or teamfight from even game-states, and that simply isn’t happening in 2023.
4- Golden Guardians are officially the hottest team in the LCS! They extended their franchise best 5-game win streak to a 7-game win streak with huge wins over C9 and EG last week. What’s more, neither of those games versus top opponents looked particularly close.
Every year, there seems to be one team that shoots up towards the top of the standings that wasn’t expected to be there. I’m almost always on the other side of those hype trains, thinking that their rise is more to do with some lucky breaks and Bo1 variance than it is about their solid play. To me, Golden Guardians is displaying the type of quality wins that makes me think they can contend for a title or at the very least a spot in finals weekend. I don’t think this win streak is a fluke.
5- A weirdly muted CLG 2-0 week. They had an easy strength of schedule and they won the games they were supposed to (versus TSM and IMT). Wait, that’s actually a ridiculous week by CLG standards though? The whole year we’ve been talking about how they beat teams above them in the standings and lose to teams below them in the standings… could they be turning into a normal team?? Find out next week to see if they lose to FLY and defeat 100T.
6- Winning against TL had to be huge for their mental. It broke a 5-game losing streak and prevented them from falling into 8th place in the standings. They’re still struggling, though, and have another hard week of games, leaving them precariously positioned in their race for playoffs.
Bjergsen described their team environment as “intense” in his post-game interview after beating TL. Honestly, I still think this is par for the course for this team. It was never going to be a quick study for them to find team cohesion and get consistent wins. For what it’s worth, even though they haven’t been able to display aggressive play, Doublelift continues to look strong in lane and in teamfights, which is a good sign for their future.
7- I heard a hilarious story about Neo going to the gym with a friend for the first time in a while and overdoing it, then being extremely sore for the CLG game... It could just be an excuse, but he did play terribly in that game…
Their loss to C9 was an interesting one. C9 baited TSM into first picking Elise, only to counter with Rengar-LeBlanc and making it extremely difficult for Bugi to be effective. We’ve covered in previous articles how narrow TSM’s win conditions are: Maple/Bugi need to get ahead, or they lose, so the plan from C9 was strong. TSM has another tough week ahead with games versus EG and TL.
8- This is weirdly a very entertaining team to watch, but disappointing all the same. They continue to display strong individual laning and early games – jumping out to leads in almost all of their games, but continue to be the worst mid and late game team that I can remember. I actually did a bit of digging into stats on Oracleselixir.com and found the MLR (Mid-Late Rating) statistic, which measures how well a team plays out the game post 15 minutes.
Team Liquid currently has the worst Mid-Late Rating in the history of the LCS. The eye test matches up too. When they teamfight, it doesn’t feel like anyone is on the same page. Summit or Pyosik engage when Haeri and Yeon are nowhere close, and then Haeri and Yeon try to step up and do damage when nobody is around to support them or peel for them. The only time they’ve looked good is when CoreJJ is the person with the GO button, but that’s increasingly rare in the ranged support meta. It’s going to be tough for TL to bounce back and push for playoffs… but I doubt their early games are going to regress so they will continue to have chances to win games.
9- Immortals Progressive suffered another 0-2 week, and now they will be changing up their mid lane. [The team announced][1] that Ablazeolive will be taking a break from competitive play for personal reasons. “After a lot of thought, I believe this is the best decision for myself. I want to thank my teammates, staff, the org, and the fans for their support and understanding” - Ablazeolive
Bolulu will be filling in until the end of the split. I’ve said it before, but being towards the bottom of the standings is HARD for any team. Let’s hope IMT can have some strong showings in the finals 3 weeks of games.
[1]: https://twitter.com/Immortals/status/1630350510627737600
10- The jinx worked! Apparently it’s impossible to start an LCS split 0-10 (never been done before). It’s definitely possible to finish 1-17 though… But let’s look at how they won. Tomo looked good. The mental reset was good. Jensen was really good. Based on the start and the fact that they are already at 10 losses, the Spring Split is most likely over, but that doesn’t mean they can’t start building towards Summer Split (Jensen’s specialty). They are my favorites to win versus Immortals Progressive on Thursday.
