10 thoughts going into Lock In Week 2
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December becomes January, and January becomes more January. 2021 is upon us and already this month has felt like two months (or years), but luckily for us, the LCS is back, and luckily for you, that means so is 10 thoughts. I’m your host, Kien Lam, and I’m ready to think. We kicked off the split with a brand new Lock In tournament to help showcase the offseason changes, and here are 10 thoughts about 10 teams listed in alphanumerical order (It is not a power ranking! Leave me alone!).
**1. Evil Geniuses (3-0) -- Sudden Impact**
I have never liked cheese but I do like sandwiches, which means I will often order a sandwich (designed specifically with cheese in mind) without the cheese. In fact, I have tried to order an Arby’s melt before without the melt and the cashier said they literally have that (a plain roast beef sandwich) on the menu already. Anyway, the sandwich always ends up being just fine, but it feels like it is missing something. Which, of course, it is. It’s missing a flavor. There’s no, ahem, Impact. Which is all an extremely roundabout way of saying you can change just a single piece on a League of Legends team and have a majorly different result. EG also brought in Deftly and IgNar to round out the team (IgNar gives the team another aggressive option). Impact, though, was clearly the biggest difference for them after the first three games. It was a good reminder as to why he’s consistently been one of the best top laners in the league for some five years now. It feels like every now and then he’ll go through a bit of a slump and everyone will kind of write him off -- he’s not judged against other top laners so much as he is judged against what is expected from him. He’s never been the type to overwhelm his lane opponent, but he has great understanding on TP timings and his team fight positioning is still excellent. There are a lot of top laners who know how to lose lane gracefully, but then are more-or-less invisible in fights. Impact *always* makes his presence known. Being able to control so much space in team fights is going to be a massive boon to EG early in the season when other teams are still trying to get into sync -- I expect them to continue their dominance at least through this tournament because of that.
**2. 100 Thieves (2-1) -- Just ignore the loss to CLG**
I liked them before they were famous. Y’all are just bandwagoners, etc. etc. I was a big fan of the Golden Guardians core last year and still am. 100 looked like the best team in the league if you ignore their loss to CLG. In fact, if you ignore the game against CLG, you can get past the fact that Closer ended up being outplayed by Griffin, and you can ignore the fact that 100 fell apart in the macro stage against a team that has otherwise looked hapless. All you have to do is ignore the loss to CLG. I mean, does it really matter that they couldn’t beat a CLG team that is currently fielding two substitute players? Simply ignore the loss to CLG… Alright, fine, that loss was inexplicable and honestly inexcusable for a roster that was thought to have the potential to challenge the top of the leaderboard. I caught a bit of Doublelift’s stream and he was upset with Closer for repeatedly trying to steal Baron -- I think going for the steal is sometimes the right play, but it felt unnecessarily desperate. It feels like a mark of arrogance -- one where you are confident you can pull off something that mostly comes down to luck. It is something 100 might highlight on their drawing board -- why are they even setting up luck-based decisions against a team they *should* be superior to on a macro level? Anyway, it is just one game, so I choose to ignore the loss to CLG and claim that this team is very good. Buy 100 stocks right now.
**3. Cloud9 (2-1) -- Perkz, Perkz, Perkz**
Did Perkz have a good weekend in the LCS? No. But let’s be honest, has anyone -- literally you or me or anyone -- had a good weekend at all in the last year? Also no. So let’s cut him some slack -- it’s only been three games. A thing I appreciated from him is that he was constantly trying to make plays. Many of those plays felt completely out-of-sync with his team and sometimes felt like he wasn’t even remotely trying to be in sync with them (a lot of which looked like solo hero plays). That, though, is completely fine by me. That’s exactly the kind of thing you want to see from a superstar player. You don’t bring in a superstar and hope for them to just be there or to just go even. You want them to be flashy, and you want them to be the one that is constantly trying to, as they say, limit test. NA isn’t going to do anything on any stage if they don’t have players like Perkz who push the region to be more proactive. As much as I like watching teams play tug-of-war with their eyes in mid lane for 15 minutes, I am grateful to see people try to make something happen. Aside from Perkz, C9 also apparently has four other players. They played well.
**4. Team Liquid (2-1) -- Tactical decision, summoner**
Looking at this list, I am now realizing that of the teams with winning records, four out of five of them already have their entire roster in Los Angeles. Kind of weird that having your whole roster leads to better results -- will have to do some more research to figure out why that’s the case. TL is the one in five in this equation (that dentists *do not* recommend), as Armao (formerly known as Grig) filled in for Santorin. This is a team expected to finish 1st or 2nd this year, and without a player of Santorin’s caliber, it’s going to be difficult to accurately assess them just yet. Jungle is such an important role in the game right now that shifting one out for another could create a massive riptide through how the team approaches the game, especially in the early stages. TL has extremely strong laners across the board, and Santorin has always been excellent at enabling his teammates. Right now, Tactical and CoreJJ still look to be one of the strongest bot lanes in the league, and I’d expect this roster to still make a deep run in this tournament without Santorin. There’s too much talent here to have another situation like what we saw with Broxah at the beginning of last year -- it is something I hope TL has learned from.
**5. TSM (2-1) -- We take those Part II**
TSM’s motto last year for a big stretch of their summer games was “we take those,” and perhaps that’s a banner they should hang onto for a little bit. A disastrous start to the first weekend of play almost left TSM at 0-2, but thanks to a big Baron steal from Spica, they were able to claw back against GG and finish on a strong note. This is a roster that still clearly knows what they need to do to win games, and so long as they’re able to shore up their early game, they’ll be a formidable foe for anybody. Of the teams at the top of the standings so far, this is the roster with the most questions to answer. Can Huni find consistency in his form? How will SwordArt’s leadership and playmaking translate in a foreign environment? Can Spica continue his growth from the sparks we saw at the end of the 2020 Summer Split? More and more you can go down the line and every single position -- coaching included -- has a lot of questions surrounding them. Questions, though, aren’t necessarily weaknesses, and it’s not like they can’t be answered. The biggest adjustment for this team will still be how well Spica can gel with PoE and SwordArt when it comes to early playmaking -- keep an eye on how much they move around together if you want some insight as to how coordinated TSM is at the moment.
**6. Dignitas (1-2) -- Dividing line**
Dignitas kicks off the bottom five teams, and this might end up being the divide all year long in the LCS, though where they fall in their respective batch of fives will vary. DIG and GG are the only two teams in the bottom five that already have their entire roster, and thus in the couple of games where they got clobbered, I definitely started to worry about the prospects of their season. This was already a roster that wasn’t pegged to do very well going into the year, and so far it is living up to that expectation. Aphromoo and Dardoch are the two veteran anchors for an otherwise extremely inexperienced roster -- I believe Aphromoo alone might have more games played than the other four members on his team combined. What worries me, though, is that these are players who’ve been around the Academy circuit at least for a while now, so this leap to the LCS is going to be a large indictment on whether or not that time was for naught. So long as Aphromoo is here, I expect this team to be able to find good fights in the mid game, but the big worry is whether or not they’ll be able to get there. Soligo and FakeGod in particular will face a lot of scrutiny if DIG isn’t able to steady this ship.
**7. Golden Guardians (1-2) -- Growing Guardians**
You already know that 100 Thieves are looking at this new GG roster and thinking about what they’d look like in black and red and white. This team is the look of potential, baby. This is easily the least experienced roster in the LCS (with Stixxay being the sole very old exception), but I was very impressed with what they were able to show in the first week of play. Their biggest issues are exactly in the phases of the game you’d expect from a young team (not being able to “stop the bleeding,” being late to objectives, etc.), which is the mid to late game macro decisions, especially in a game with an erratic pace. If they hadn’t thrown their lead against TSM, you’d be seeing a lot more praise for their start. They did, however, also get crushed by TL this weekend, so it’s not *just* the macro decisions they need to deal with. It was a good punch to the face for this roster, and I think it’s good that they got to test their mettle now before the regular season begins. Ablazeolive and Iconic in particular did their best to make their presence felt on the map through roams and the like early on and may prove to be pillars this team can lean on as the season progresses. Week 2 of play is the real test -- being LCS-level is less about how good you are when you start and more about how much you can grow week to week.
**8. Immortals (1-2) -- Revenge story**
Here is another team struggling with some visa issues to kick off the year -- maybe this Lock In tournament was just a cover to help teams get their players over to the LCS in time? Makes you think. The most interesting player to watch on this team for me either way, though, is still going to be Insanity. This will be his second year as a full-time player in the LCS now, which means he’s had a full offseason to improve the bits of his game that were lacking. I was especially impressed with how he laned against Perkz in IMT’s loss to C9 -- it made me confident that this team won’t keel over in the lane phase, especially when Xerxe finally makes his way over to NA. Once that happens, if Revenge is able to find some more consistency in top lane, then I think this is a team that could surprise people with the strength of their solo laners. Otherwise there are still just too many subs playing for them at the moment to truly cast judgment, but I am glad to see Keith is back to playing ADC for the meantime, even if it’s just as a stopgap for IMT.
**9. Counter Logic Gaming (1-3) -- Out for now**
The bad news is that CLG is already eliminated from the Lock In tournament. The good news is that Finn just had his visa approved, so hopefully Broxah follows suit soon as well. There weren’t too many positive takeaways for CLG after one week -- their veteran players (Pobelter and Smoothie especially) looked sluggish -- and there isn’t much in the way of “potential” for them. We already know what these players are generally going to be able to offer. What we don’t know, though, is how well they’ll mesh with Finn and Broxah once they arrive. I talked about how much of a difference a single player can make with Impact, and what CLG is banking on right now is that their full roster will find a similar kind of magic. I’m not one to buy into the idea that old players are washed just because they’re old -- even they can find a new spark if they are provided with the right type of environment. For now, though, they are stuck in visa limbo, and this being the second consecutive year this has happened to Broxah really makes you feel for him.
**10. FlyQuest (0-2) -- Honeycombs**
Did you know the new FlyQuest jersey has honeycombs on it? I would like to spend some time talking about that. You know what else has honeycombs on it? Honeycomb cereal. That is some good shit. Honey is good. Combs are good. If you are reading this early on in the day, there’s a good chance you still need to get out of bed and comb your hair. Maybe eat that honeycomb cereal. I know it’s been a rough year, but sometimes you just have to get up and pretend like today is fine. We can go back to bed later, you know? Am I just buying time so I don’t have to talk about the actual FlyQuest roster? It’s possible. But it’s also possible that I wanted to spend some time talking about how you are doing. Give me some credit. And also give FlyQuest some slack -- they’re still missing their jungler Josedeodo, who is the player I am personally most interested to watch on this roster. They’ve also only played two games (in which they got decimated), so there’s still time to turn it around -- way too early to hit the panic button, but way too early to say much about them period. Just go eat some Honeycombs.
