I usually refer to the middle part of the split as the doldrums. It's just before the playoff race starts to heat up, but any lingering excitement from the first few weeks has faded. Fortunately, LCS teams have been keeping it interesting with roster swaps, compositions, and occasionally the power of friendship.
Let's get it.
**1. 100 Thieves: 21-9 (Summer 10-2)**
100 Thieves have been so consistent, I sometimes feel like I could easily copy and paste the same thing over and over every week and no one would notice, since it would still be blanket praise of what is currently the best team in the LCS.
I've talked a lot about Closer and Abbedagge in previous weeks, so this particular week I'm going to pivot to the 100 Thieves bottom lane and give them the spotlight. They make it pretty easy to do so given the flexibility showcased by both Huhi and FBI over the last few weeks. No team in the LCS is better at flexing Senna between a carry or support. This past week, FBI even broke out the Lee Sin bot, proving that he can play more than standard AD champions.
The true strength of this lineup is not necessarily that everyone can carry, but that everyone seems to have no problem not being the carry. There have been games where either top or bot has played full weakside. There have been games where Abbedagge has played Karma mid to buff his teammates. There have been games where Closer has taken the role of a facilitator over a carry. With a team like this, all of 100 Thieves’ Spring weaknesses are long forgotten, and it's about how much they can continue to improve together while staying at the top of the standings.
**2. TSM: 21-9 (Summer 9-3)**
For as much as I've criticized this particular TSM team's glacial early game pace at times, I can't help but enjoy this TSM iteration as a whole. Last week I pointed out the slight discrepancy in criticism versus record — also known as, hey all, they've only actually lost two games this Summer and eight games total for the entire regular season. Above all else, even with the loss to Evil Geniuses, TSM appear to be a team who know what they want to do and how they want to play, which once again is ahead of a lot of other LCS teams.
The loss to EG does point out some of TSM's flaws, which I've also detailed in prior columns. Namely, that if you're going to run a slower-scaling style, you do need to make fewer mistakes around objectives and mitigate your losses well enough until your composition comes online. Contractz's intelligent read of the map and where he should apply pressure tore through TSM early. Again, I'm not concerned whatsoever about TSM in the LCS as they seem to already know that they leave themselves open like this at times and are working towards, if not being more proactive, them having a cleaner early game.
**3. Cloud9: 19-11 (Summer 6-6)**
By the end of the weekend, Cloud9 looked less shaky, but their start to this past week was a near-loss to Golden Guardians that, if Golden Guardians had played a bit better in one specific instance, Cloud9 could have easily lost.
Zven's return was needed, but he isn't a magical solution for the team. Their problems — including a lack of coordination around some of the meta champions and Blaber looking disconnected with the rest of the team outside of a few games — were never going to be solved with his return. That being said, I'm still not overly worried about Cloud9 given the names on this lineup, what they've already achieved together, and their coaching staff. They still have more than half of the Summer split to go and a ridiculous amount of padding that they haven't been chewing through like Dignitas has.
This upcoming weekend has a fairly tough slate of games for C9 with a rising Immortals team and then both Team Liquid and TSM. They also have a new meta to play with that should suit Perkz really well, allowing him to play mages while Blaber plays a strong carry jungler if C9 wants to return to a look that's more similar to their Spring setups.
**4. Team Liquid: 19-11 (Summer 7-5)**
What more is there to say that hasn't already been said about Team Liquid's sweeping roster changes? Every week I find myself waiting with baited breath to see what will happen to Team Liquid next off of the Rift while saying somewhat similar things about their performance on the Rift. Jenkins is performing well and it's unfortunate for him that Alphari is such a good top laner and his stats were so meteorically-high that it still invites a bad comparison. Team Liquid themselves looked about the same in terms of playstyle this past week, with Armao once again keeping cool under yet another emergency substitution. This week they went 2-1, but still failed to take down a team higher than them in the standings in TSM while drafting themselves into a bit of a corner.
An hour before 10 Thoughts went live last week, Team Liquid held their press conference announcing the departure of Jatt as head coach, Santorin's continuing health issues that precipitated Armao stepping into the starting jungle role, and giving added context to their own internal drama. This week we're all on Alphari Watch as the top laner's hiatus ended this past weekend with the official stance that Jenkins and Alphari will supposedly split time. What that means for this weekend is anyone's guess at this point.
**5. Evil Geniuses: 16-4 (Summer 6-6)**
This past weekend, Evil Geniuses chose to follow the trend of rewarding Academy players for their performance by bumping up Contractz to play one game — he knew he was coming in and had scrim time during the week — and Contractz delivered a statement win for the organization, himself, and the champion pick of Diana in the LCS.
The thing about Contractz specifically is that he's been LCS-ready for a while. More importantly, he appears to have grown significantly since his last full LCS stint on Golden Guardians, and even since his last LCS appearance as a roster swap for 100 Thieves last year.
This could put EG in a tough spot since Svenskeren has been performing well but without the same kind of dazzling victories like Contractz's one game. His performances also not-so-coincidentally look better or worse based on how well Jiizuke is able to sync up with the team which, more than anything, has been an indicator of EG's success.
**6. DIGNITAS QNTMPAY: 15-15 (Summer 4-8)**
Although they picked up a much-needed win against FlyQuest this week to stop their overall loss streak, it's been a difficult week for Dignitas. Since Week 1 of the summer split, Dignitas have slipped from being tied for third with 100 Thieves and Team Liquid at 13-8 to an even .500 with a 15-15 win record. More than Cloud9, who will likely look better after another week with Zven back in the lineup, and Team Liquid, who have also struggled with internal issues and roster changes, it's Dignitas who are most grateful that games carry over from Spring to Summer, otherwise they would be in a three-way tie for fifth (or ninth, depending on how you look at it). The initial swap of Soligo for Yusui was odd from the outside, if only because Soligo had visibly done well and seemed to have better mid/jungle synergy with Dardoch. A few weeks later and now Dardoch is out and Akaadian is in, with Dardoch leaving yet another LCS organization behind him.
For me personally, both as someone who loves redemption narratives and also as someone who (admittedly on the outside and as a reporter) has spoken to Dardoch on several occasions to tell parts of his LCS story, I really wanted it to work this time and I'm sad that it didn't. In Spring, this seemed like the perfect combination of veterans in Dardoch and Aphromoo with a group of young talents in Fakegod, Soligo, and Neo, who just needed time to gel beyond the occasional dazzling teamfight that kept them shockingly towards the top of the standings. They had a playstyle, albeit a shaky one that needed a lot better objective focus. Now I'm not sure where this Dignitas roster is at.
**7. Immortals: 14-16 (Summer 7-5)**
Immortals kicked off the weekend by becoming the first team to smack down CLG's all-in composition and followed that up by beating Golden Guardians before they were unceremoniously bopped by 100 Thieves and FBI's bot-lane Lee Sin. I didn't mind Immortals’ draft for a few reasons, the largest one being that against an opponent that is the best in the league sometimes you have to try something out like the top-side focus with Irelia. But, once Ssumday teleported down as Mega Gnar for the double kill, one of their strongest laning matchups had already lost its advantage.
Again, this isn't a bad spot for Immortals simply because, unlike Spring where sometimes they would have games with myriad mistakes and slowly get run over, there are very obvious execution adjustments that can be made for future games here and they're still looking fairly consistent. If anything, I'm curious to see if the patch shift slows their momentum any, given that they've been one of the teams taking full advantage of a more open mid lane for picks like Insanity's Nocturne along with a strong stable of meta picks for Xerxe.
**8. Counter Logic Gaming: 9-21 (Summer 4-8)**
After the rousing success of what was dubbed last week by Immortals' coach Guilhoto as "a bongo comp" and this week by C9 bot laner Zven as "NA Bronzodia," CLG went from going 3-0 in Week 3 to 0-3 in Week 4.
I regret to inform you that it may be time for Counter Logic Gaming to pack up their bongos and try a different composition.
Yet, CLG's experimentation and the Vi/Galio composition that brought success for Galen and CLG Academy last year gives a unique opportunity to talk about playstyle, compositions, and what we mean when we talk about them. Or rather, what I mean when I talk about them.
So firstly, a composition is not a playstyle just like, say, a guitar is not a personality (sorry). But the actions taken by said composition, over time, that can constitute a playstyle. In order to get everyone on CLG in sync, the Vi/Galio combination is fairly forgiving in initiating fights and allows for easy crowd control layering, especially when paired with Sett, Kalista, and Rakan, like it was in CLG's first win with it against 100 Thieves in Week 3. However, especially when tweaking the composition to keep up with as much initiation as possible, a team can end up sacrificing both lane priority and a winning jungle matchup. If this is done consistently, it's easy for an opponent to use that priority to their advantage, even if the composition is able to get some good fights.
I brought up the example of FunPlus Phoenix's Doinb this past weekend on the analyst desk to shed some light on how this could work, or possibly be tweaked in the future for CLG. Admittedly, Doinb is one of the best mid laners in the world, which obviously helps, but there's still a lot to be said for how his team had to adapt to him frequently punting lane priority to go roam (their answer was to send either Tian or Crisp to reset the mid wave) and the timing of his roams as well as his overall map awareness. Simply put, if CLG want to continue these remarkably heavy dive compositions with easy crowd control layering, they need to find a way to do so with better execution, better objective control, and something to mitigate the priority they give up in lane.
**9. FlyQuest: 9-21 (Summer 3-9)**
I'm going to go ahead and echo what my fellow compatriots Mark and Raz said on the analyst desk this past week and say that FlyQuest Academy are a really fun team to watch. They're aggressive and love to dive their opponents, which is particularly fun and doable in the current metagame. Despite the loss, it was interesting to see Kumo, Tomo, and Diamond all get called up to play alongside Josedeodo and Palafox. The team did look more proactive. They struggled in a different way that the initial FlyQuest roster in that they didn't know how to respond when ceding advantages in the mid-to-late game, but that's more typical and broader of a problem that a lot of players and teams go through as they make a jump in competition, like from Academy to LCS. I'm unsure as to what FlyQuest’s plans for this coming week are, but their last game wasn't a bad look if they want to stick with it and see what happens.
**10. Golden Guardians: 7-23 (Summer 4-8)**
Golden Guardians currently have the Same summer record as both Counter Logic Gaming and FlyQuest and of those three teams, actually seem to be the roster that's improving incrementally with time. FlyQuest just did a major roster shuffle on Sunday and CLG are once again struggling now that teams know the compositions they're going to run and how to respond to them (either with counterinitition or kiting backwards). Meanwhile, Golden Guardians have an obvious rising star in Ablazeolive and have looked better and steadier as the weeks have gone on.
