When I was young, there was reportedly this massive dust-up in the Vikings locker room between then-Quarterback Brett Favre and his team. It was at this point in my life that I learned the word "schism," because every news outlet titled whatever had happened between Favre and the team as such from the initial schism report. Schism was a ubiquitous word online for at least a week that it immediately became a meme.
Is there a schism between [insert LCS player of your choice here] and [LCS team of your choice here]? I honestly have just as much of an idea as you do, which is about the same idea as I had regarding Favre and the Vikings. What I do know is that this morning, Team Liquid made sweeping changes to their staff and lineup.
Let's get it.
**1. TSM: 19-8 (Summer record, 7-2)**
With all of the fuss that's constantly made about TSM being bad or potentially the worst attribute a team can be: boring, they've only lost eight regular season games all year. The heavy criticism they face whenever they try to push their own limits (POE Lucian) or the amount of flak Coach Bjergsen caught at the start of the split for his drafting seems a bit silly when you look at their overall record on the year.
This isn't to say that they don't deserve criticism or that they don't make mistakes, but that sometimes that pendulum swings quite dramatically. As always, I personally blame the single-game format, but additionally, I also think it's okay to expect a lot from this TSM lineup given the talent they have on paper.
On the desk this week, I covered a run of play that netted TSM significant advantages against C9 in the early-to-mid game where their scaling composition could have done more poorly than it did, had C9 pushed them a bit more. TSM are comfortable enough with these compositions that once they lock them in, it's a ticking time bomb that few NA teams will punish significantly enough for TSM to lose the game.
That being said, if you want to play a slower scaling style, part of perfecting that playstyle means a stronger attention to detail and making fewer mistakes (no more weird engages at Rift Herald, please) in your own early game. In Spring I described TSM as looking oddly more confident when behind and re-engaging than choosing their own fights. This hasn't changed all that much in Summer. It's not bad that TSM are sticking to their strengths, now they just have to perfect it.
**2. 100 Thieves: 18-9 (Summer record, 7-2)**
This week on What A Difference A Mid Laner Can Make: The Case of Closer.
Players often joke around that lane diff equals jungle diff and jungle diff equals lane diff et. cetera. The fact is that junglers are always going to look better when their lanes are doing well, and a jungler with strong lane-to-jungle communication can always get his lanes ahead. Prior to the split, Closer was excited for both coach Reapered's arrival and the chance to play with Abbedagge again. From the beginning, the two seem to have stronger jungle/mid synergy than Closer has had with any of his previous mid laners in the LCS. We've always known that Closer has mechanical talent and now he's finally able to showcase it more clearly along with proactive play. This has led to the entire team playing loosely together with a variety of compositions. It's not an exaggeration to say that 100 Thieves right now are truly a joy to watch, from draft to the nexus falling (usually their opponents' nexus).
Here it's also worth pointing out that even with all of the hemming and hawing over mid lane roster swaps and team identity in spring, 100 Thieves have only lost nine regular season games all year.
I've reiterated this several times on broadcast, but it's worth repeating that the flexibility of Abbedagge is the perfect catalyst for both Reapered and the rest of the team to play around. 100 Thieves finally feel like an LCS championship-calibre team.
**3. Cloud9: 17-10 (Summer record, 4-5)**
There are a few reasons why K1ng starting over Zven didn't make as much noise in the LCS community as Team Liquid's benching of Alphari and a lot of it is admittedly due to better messaging and the fact that the announcement came before the start of the split. The coaching staff and team said that Zven would play in Academy, K1ng was moving up, and that was that.
Cloud9's string of losses can't be blamed on K1ng, but they do underline the stability that Zven's laning experience previously brought to the team. Vulcan is at his best when unlocked and roaming, especially if Blaber is on a champion that clears fast and the two of them can roam together or have Vulcan affecting mid lane and roaming with Perkz while Blaber steals all of his opponent's jungle camps.
Even with their most recent loss streak, C9 remain completely comfortable in the standings, only two games behind first place. In a single-game format with two full round robins to go, that's nothing. It's more than enough time for Zven to re-integrate himself onto the team, if he even needs that time in the first place.
**4. Team Liquid: 17-10 (Summer record, 5-4)**
Team Liquid are fine.
I don't mean this in a "this is fine, sipping coffee while the house is burning down around you" way — although apply that if you want — but in a "they're not a great team, they're just okay" way which is almost worse given this team's aspirations. TL aren't bad, but they're also not good. They're a middling team overall and one of the reasons why they haven't moved much in the standings is because almost every LCS team right now, save TSM and 100 Thieves, has been wildly inconsistent from week-to-week or game-to-game.
It's not where TL want to be, that's for sure. As they are right now, they haven't been able to beat any of the top teams.
When the initial TL starting five were announced in the offseason, I chose TL as my too-early pick to take it all. Alphari had been monstrous in Europe, even while saddled to a tenth-place team, and Santorin had been a driving force behind 2020 FlyQuest's success. After they won the Lock-In Tournament, this prediction seemed to be on track.
It didn't take into account debilitating headaches, personal issues, or whatever else is going on with Team Liquid, their players, and their staff. I think a lot of the times we (and I'm definitely including myself in this we) underestimate how difficult it is to balance a team and get it right, especially given how much the game has changed. It's easy to write a comment and say "well, [x team] hated each other and won" or "[y team] played through this" but we're not on the team, and we don't truly know the situation. If I had to hazard a guess, the most difficult part of being a coach or on a team at all is communication, be that communicating your ideas to others, receiving information from others, or what you choose to say to the masses and how you say it. When you or others are going through other things in their lives, this becomes exponentially more difficult.
**5. Dignitas QNTMPAY: 14-13 (Summer record, 3-6)**
Now Dignitas, unlike Team Liquid, seem to be at the "this is fine, sipping coffee while the house is burning down around you" point. It makes me disappointed in a similar way and is similarly tricky to write about here because I don't know what's going on internally with either team. I can only speculate, which can be dangerous when considering players' careers.
What we can infer is that Dardoch is out for the foreseeable future. Akaadian is starting for the LCS team and Dignitas recently signed Will (formerly known as Projects) to their Academy squad.
Again, I can't help but lament what could have been, especially after talking with aphromoo before Summer began about how good this team could be with even more time to improve on the things that had plagued them in spring, like neutral objective setups. The 2021 Spring Dignitas lineup was one of my favorites to watch because of their teamfighting, something that has sadly been absent from the team since they started making roster changes: first in the mid lane with Yusui coming in for Soligo, and then with Akaadian coming in for Dardoch. You can still see shadows of it, like in the bot-side inhibitor fight where Dignitas drive back a sieging TSM by coordinating their crowd control, but they lack the same teamfighting chemistry that the Spring roster seemed to have effortlessly.
**6. Evil Geniuses: 14-13 (Summer record, 4-5)**
Counter Logic Gaming hasn't been the only team opting for dive or heavy-engage compositions. With melee champions at the forefront of the meta, especially flexing between mid and top lane, it's a great time for Evil Geniuses to draft some of the 1-3-1 compositions that we've seen them do well with in the past, now with even more abilities to get them all on the same page. I particularly liked their comp against C9, where they put Jiizuke on Ryze, IgNar on Galio, and Impact on Nocturne. With Svenskeren able to start fights on Xin Zhao and Danny on Senna, it was a great teamfighting look as well as a way to ensure that players could make it in time from the side lanes if necessary.
Jiizuke will always be a lightning rod for this team in that a lot of their success around split-pushing or, well, anything is going to rely on whether he joins his team in time. A champion like Ryze — something that Jiizuke is also very comfortable on — helps mitigate some of the gaps in communication that could happen.
While Jiizuke's ProView has become one of the most popular ways to watch LCS lately, I've been looking at Danny in the bot lane. Also out of the bot lane. His teamfighting has been shockingly good and he's rarely afraid to move around a fight aggressively. This fearless nature also makes for a great core of three (Svenskeren, Danny, and IgNar) if EG are running a split-push setup. A lot of people forget that the three who are presumably contesting neutrals or pressing the other team need to be strong as a unit, and EG have this with their new AD carry.
**7. Immortals: 12-15 (Summer record, 5-4)**
One of the more fun insights from Immortals coach Guilhoto on the analyst desk this past week is that having players with large champion pools is both a blessing and a curse.
It's a blessing for obvious reasons. There are significantly more champions that your team can consider and bring to a draft, especially when counterpicking lanes, if your players are able to pilot them well. Additionally, with so many flex picks available in the current meta, it keeps your opponent guessing while drafting and you can swap players between mid and top for stronger matchups if necessary.
The curse part is a bit less obvious, but also makes sense. The wealth of options can lead to a lack of identity as a team, or a lack of focus. Suddenly you've ended up with a team composition that makes no sense against your opponents, or is just a bit more difficult to execute and varies wildly with the last composition you ran in scrims and its win condition.
That being said, I appreciate Immortals.
I appreciate Immortals for Xerxe's Mandate Gragas — not something I expected to see onstage — and Insanity's Nocturne. I like that this team is kind of wacky and weird. It means that they'll likely continue to be fairly inconsistent, but I'm alright with that as long as they continue to also be entertaining.
**8. Counter Logic Gaming: 9-18 (Summer record, 4-5)**
Former Counter Logic Gaming Academy coach and current Counter Logic Gaming coach Galen (previously known as Moon) has officially left his mark in the 2021 LCS and it's through the Vi/Galio combination.
When we previously left off with CLG, it was with some particularly crushing losses where they would be able to snowball early-game leads up to a point before uncoordinated engages or poorly-chosen teamfights became their undoing. It was frustrating to watch, since it wasn't as if CLG had bad individual players. They just weren't performing at all like a team.
The solution: make CLG play team compositions where everyone has some form of engage.
The end result: a 3-0 week for CLG.
Only time will tell if this becomes the CLG staple composition, or if they'll use this as a springboard for stronger team communication and coordination. All I know is that Smoothie, who was consistently ahead or behind the team in some of their previous matches when starting fights, looked the best he's looked all year this past week. Even when the team didn't layer their crowd control exactly, there was still more than enough to dive into the backline and eliminate opposing carries. While I personally disliked the Lissandra pick — I'm generally not a fan of punting lane priority and she doesn't have the same benefits that Galio does — it still worked, showing that CLG's drafting strategy has allowed them to be synchronized for the first time all year. I'm not sure what CLG will pull out next, but it's guaranteed to be entertaining.
**9. FlyQuest: 9-18 (Summer record, 3-6)**
There are moments where FlyQuest show individual flashes of brilliance, like their top-side dive against 100 Thieves where Josedeodo's Sejuani manages to snipe Huhi's Ziggs. Or the adjustments they made to stymie the top-side dive that they knew was coming Licorice's way against TSM. Then there are moments like the now-infamous Kindred mark steal from Johnsun. I'm not going to lay into Johnsun (the community has done that enough already) but it does continue to highlight the fact that this team isn't on the same page very often, even with simpler-but-important details like Kindred marks. Those kinds of things need to be ironed out before we even begin to talk about greater lane-to-jungle communication or neutral objective setups.
As the team is currently, they're best when they do anticipate the pressure that is inevitably headed towards the top side or jungle, and mitigate it. However, when any of their plans go awry, FlyQuest unfortunately look lost.
**10. Golden Guardians: 6-21 (Summer record, 3-6)**
Golden Guardians have already tied their amount of wins for the entirety of the Spring Split, and while it's only three, it's a marked improvement. Their actual play on the Rift has also visibly improved as a team.
Solo has been cited as a driving force behind the team's more recent successes and direction. Multiple members have come out and said that his experience and stability in the top lane has allowed the younger players in Iconic, AblazeOlive, and Chime room to grow.
Yet the true standout player of the past few weeks has been AblazeOlive. If he is on a champion with any sort of teamfight agency, he can single-handedly turn a losing teamfight for Golden Guardians into a winning one.
