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Events & Standings
10 thoughts going into Spring Week 5
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Super Week is over and the first round robin of the Spring regular season has come to an end. What better time to check in on [what I wrote][1] going into the first week of the LCS regular season and see where teams are, compared to those expectations and narratives. All quotes in italics are directly from that initial article.
Let's get it.
[1]: https://lolesports.com/article/10-thoughts-going-into-lcs-spring/blt1b0c3c8469bc5416
**1. Cloud9 7-2**
*Summit has the potential to take over the LCS top lane depending on how C9 want to play the map. During his time on Liiv Sandbox last year, Summit was frequently the star of the team — alongside standout jungler Kim "Croco" Dong-beom — while playing the likes of Gnar, Renekton, and Camille. He enters the LCS poised to become the best starting top in the league, especially if he ends up on his comfort picks.*
Lock In tournament is a distant memory now, but it's important for this particular exercise to remember that Cloud9 didn't play their starting lineup in it. Ibrahim "Fudge" Allami had his first games in the mid lane, so all eyes were on him and Blaber, but the rest of the team had not arrived yet from South Korea. Upon arrival, we then had the rise of Nick "LS" De Cesare's drafting for the team, his unexpected firing a few weeks later, and now the rise of C9 as a team of remarkably talented players across every position regardless.
All that being said, Summit is stealing the show, so I feel pretty good about what I wrote before the season started. Regardless of whether he has a favorable lane matchup or not, Summit is a constant point of pressure around which C9 can play around or simply rely. This gives them top side control, side lane control (depending on what Summit is playing), and more room for Blaber to move around the map early.
**2. Team Liquid 7-2**
*It shouldn't be particularly surprising that Team Liquid are now two-time Lock In tournament champions with the talent they have on their lineup. However, it's worth reiterating that they won this tournament without their intended starting roster due to issues with support Jo "CoreJJ" Yong-in's green card. While they looked shaky at times, especially in the Dignitas series, it's a credit to the players and coaching staff that they were able to stabilize this lineup and the team's play with so many players rotating in and out through the weeks leading up to their finals victory.*
It's retroactively nerve-wracking to read tweets from Team Liquid General Manager Kang "Dodo" Jun-hyeok detailing CoreJJ's green card process as an outsider, so I cannot imagine what the team was going through during these times. [To quote:][1]
"I can share this now - that there was a VERY high chance that if Core didn't receive his Green card by Feb, we would have lost Core. Not only from TL but from LCS and LoL scene as a whole, he would have potentially been forced to retire."
This Team Liquid team came together thanks, in large part, to CoreJJ and how much all of these players wanted to play on a team with him. Since his re-introduction to the LCS in 2019, CoreJJ has become an LCS staple: someone who is not only phenomenal at the game, but also does so much for the LCS ecosystem as a whole. I'm happy that we will be able to see an LCS with CoreJJ still in it.
That being said, it's again, a credit to the talent of the players on TL and their coaching staff that the roster was still able to perform as consistently well as they were, even with substitutions through Super Week.
[1]: https://twitter.com/TL_Dodo/status/1498791965944541188
**3. 100 Thieves 5-4**
*I'd be remiss not to mention that 100 Thieves are still the reigning LCS Champions, and in winning last summer, became the fifth different organization (the other four being TSM, Cloud9, CLG, and Team Liquid) to win an LCS title.
I'd also be remiss to not talk about how 100 Thieves unexpectedly lost to Dignitas 0-2 in the 2022 Lock In Quarterfinals, despite starting their full LCS championship lineup.
It's not the start that 100 Thieves wanted whatsoever, and it shouldn't be a secret that they're aiming for a repeat title.*
I had expected 100 Thieves to settle down a bit in the LCS proper, especially after a strong Week 1 performance where it seemed like they had taken their Lock In losses to heart and used them as fuel for improvement. Despite their current record of 5-4, individual players on 100 Thieves, especially jungler Can "Closer" Çelik, continue to make cases towards being some of the best in the league. When 100 Thieves are on, they're really on with strong map control and well-coordinated teamfighting. When one of their lanes collapses, that's when they have seemed to struggle with consistency over the past four weeks.
We all know what this team is capable of. They know what they're capable of. And perhaps most importantly, they're surrounded by a strong coaching staff and are friends who came up on this team together.
**4. FlyQuest 5-4**
*While FlyQuest were unceremoniously swept by eventual tournament victors Team Liquid in the Quarterfinals, I keep returning to their second day of games and how quickly they were able to fix some of their coordination issues with only a day in between. If this kind of rapid improvement can continue, teams shouldn't underestimate FlyQuest, especially in single games.*
This was written following FlyQuest's horrific first-day showing and much-improved second-day showing, underlining how quickly this team's mentality could refocus and align. Unfortunately, that did not happen this past week when, due to technical issues, FlyQuest had to play back-to-back games when their match against Evil Geniuses was rescheduled. In those games, FlyQuest again looked unfocused and this was a large part of why the team ended up going 0-3 this past week. A lot of people will say that this is just FlyQuest re-positioning themselves closer to where we had expected them to be; however, I still think the performance of this team has succeeded the expectations of most given how they looked in Lock In and the overall strength of the league. Now that other teams are beginning to gel and find their own playstyles it will continue to be a difficult task for FlyQuest to stay near the top of the standings. That being said, this is a team that could easily re-align as a five-man unit during practice this week and come out swinging against TSM and Dignitas.
**5. Golden Guardians 5-4**
*In the LCS (and again, I'm calling myself and the broadcast out here) we tend to do a poor job of tracking rookie talent as players develop and evolve past their rookie season. Part of this is because sometimes teams don't give rookies a second year after their first (or even the entirety of their first split) to grow. Part of this is because it's a lot easier to highlight the next potential up-and-comer rather than watch a still-comparatively-young player in their second LCS split.*
Mid laner Nicholas "Ablazeolive" Abbott was the subject of the above paragraph about Golden Guardians going into the 2022 LCS Spring Split. This past weekend, he went up against his mentor from his TSM days, Søren "Bjergsen" Bjerg and managed to not only win the game, but have a standout Ryze performance. Ablazeolive always should have been someone to look out for this season, especially with how few chances teams take on North American mid laners. Golden Guardians win over Team Liquid was a statement victory in many ways, further solidifying the fact that Golden Guardians have one of the strongest early games in the LCS and with fewer mid-game issues, would likely be talked about a lot more positively by the community.
Of all teams in the LCS, Golden Guardians is the one that I've looked forward to watching week-after-week due to how visibly they build on prior mistakes and successes in game. I could easily do a telestrator segment every week on things that this team demonstrably learns and improves upon because they've been that consistent and well-coached thus far even with their more obvious mistakes.
**6. Dignitas 4-5**
*Former PSG Talon jungler Kim "River" Dong-woo was the standout in Lock In, with his smart and intuitive sense of how to play around his lanes being a key reason why Dignitas were able to upset 100 Thieves and come so close to beating Team Liquid. This was done with little practice with the team, and hopefully with more time, this coordination will extend into the team's mid-game decision-making and lane assignments across the board.*
About that…I still think there are a lot of reasons to like Dignitas, beginning with how fun the team itself seems to be having sometimes. However, they've had a rough fall from grace recently that began in Week 3 and continued through Super Week until an unexpected upset against 100 Thieves in the final match of the weekend. River hasn't been able to have the same impact as he did in Lock In or the first few weeks of the season, which means that he, mid laner Ersin "Blue" Gören, and support Vincent "Biofrost" Wang haven't been able to make the same set plays on the bottom side of the map. Part of this is due to Jarvan IV bans, which take away an instinctively proactive and lane-focused jungle option that presumably needs less communication to execute. Another part is due to other lanes collapsing before Dignitas can make the most of a pushing lane elsewhere, interfering with other set plays around Rift Herald and drakes.
**7. Evil Geniuses 4-5**
*Even that disappointing loss hasn't dampened my enthusiasm for seeing this team grow and develop together over the course of the LCS season. All eyes will be on rookie mid phenom Joseph "jojopyun" Joon Pyun who already made a splash in Lock In both in and off the Rift. Jungler Kacper "Inspired" Słoma showed a stronger understanding of where to be in relation to his lanes than he did on Rogue, and both he and support Philippe "Vulcan” Laflamme were instrumental in setting up EG's proactive early-to-mid game plays.*
My enthusiasm on Evil Geniuses still isn't dampened despite their most recent loss to Zeri/Yummi (I mean, CLG). This team is still so much fun to watch when they're on, and they recently spent the majority of Super Week getting their mojo back (feel free to insert a bad Jojo pun here because I'm not going to). The trio of Inspired, jojopyun, and a roaming Vulcan is still the core attack strategy from EG, while they give Danny turret plates as much as they can and Impact either steadily goes even or wins his matchup. Then, when it comes to late-game fights, the carries in Danny, jojopyun, and sometimes Impact can take over the game.
**8. Immortals 4-5**
*Due to their lineup, in particular jungler Andrei "Xerxe" Dragomir and mid laner Tristan "PowerOfEvil" Schrage, Immortals were even tapped as a potential team to break through the well-bankrolled perceived top five of 100 Thieves, Cloud9, Evil Geniuses, Team Liquid, and TSM. I definitely don't think they're suddenly last place due to a poor Lock In performance, but there's a bit more pressure on Immortals now because of those losses.*
There certainly was even more pressure when Immortals didn't win a game until Week 2 when they snapped their then-six-game losing streak by beating 100 Thieves. Since then, Immortals have mostly committed to scaling teamfight compositions and, more recently, a fight for the starting bot lane position between Jason "Wildturtle" Tran and Noh "Arrow" Dong-hyeon. Ideally, this Immortals team looks a bit like a more disorganized Team Liquid in terms of how they want to play: volatile top laner pressuring his matchup and/or their side lanes while the rest of the team contests or takes objectives elsewhere. When it works, it's interesting to watch. When it doesn't, you might not know until the game itself is over, given how frequently Immortals matches have started one way (both good or bad for the side of IMT) and ended another (in the opposite direction from how they began.)
**9. CLG 3-6**
*When CLG managed to get ahead they did showcase elementary understanding of how their compositions should play out and how they needed to win. Unfortunately, this was frequently marred by mid-game mistakes and unforced errors. Teams targeted both solo laners heavily as well.
That being said, CLG should be fun to watch because of this, not in spite of it.*
This is still a fairly accurate description of how CLG have performed thus far — despite being second-to-last in the standings — and why I still enjoy watching them. When they're able to get a lead, CLG are fun in their proactivity, even when they make mid-game mistakes and unforced errors which still happen despite increased synergy from the team as a whole. I hope they're easily able to put the one loss they did have this past week to Immortals following latency issues in game and focus on continuing to build on what they've improved already.
**10. TSM 1-8**
*If this lineup of Huni, MVP Jungler Mingyi "Spica" Lu, Keaiduo, Edward "Tactical" Ra, and former FunPlus Blaze/Phoenix support Wei "Shenyi" Zi-Jie works out, they will be a fairly proactive and skirmish-heavy team, willing to take risks and fights together. I don't expect them to click right away, but when they do, it should be a fun time.*
I remember a lot of my thoughts on what TSM's lineup could be coming from a few of my own VOD reviews, fellow LCS Analyst Desk staple Barento "Raz" Mohammed's VOD reviews, and watching Shenyi in the LPL during his few matches with FunPlus Phoenix proper. This was supposed to be the fun, energetic, a-bit-too-aggressive addition to the LCS that played like an LPL team, relying on their hands over everything else.
That…is not the TSM team that exists on the Rift today and it's not simply because they made an early-season roster move. While TSM showed a few small improvements while workshopping roaming support top compositions — and even showed an interesting look with Huni back on his signature Rumble this past weekend — this team is at the bottom of the standings record-wise and cohesion-wise. All-in-all, it makes me sad that we not only never were able to see what that initial team may have looked like, but that a lot of the blowback has been onto the players themselves.
