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Events & Standings
10 Thoughts going into Super Week
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Through the first three weeks of the LCS, we've talked a lot about preparation and how it relates to a league where so many teams seem willing to try out different strategies. The conclusion according to nearly all players, coaches, staff members, and the like is that it's always better to focus on yourself and your own team's playstyle rather than overfocusing on specific opponent preparation. (The caveat here is that there's always a balance, and at least a cursory look at what your opponents are doing is also vital and necessary.)
This goes triply for super week, where teams must prepare for three separate best-of-ones and the standings can swing wildly in both directions for all LCS teams.
Let's get it.
**1. FlyQuest 5-1**
One of the continuing arguments on the Analyst Desk for a few weeks now has been of when FlyQuest are going to fall back from where they are in the standings to figurative Earth.
I keep returning to this quote from FlyQuest support Zaqueri "aphromoo" Black when I interviewed him about the team following their Lock In performance, before the season started with FlyQuest giving us the roaming support top strategy in their first two games.
"It's good to have aggressive players because the opposite is harder in trying to make a passive player be more aggressive. I think we can be really good at early game. We need to practice that into snowballing around objectives and with our vision. I think that FlyQuest last year was lacking that a lot just early game macro and how to snowball and all that. And it's definitely spilled over into this year. We can get there. Teamfighting is obviously going to need some work because it's been looking ugly."
FlyQuest have somewhat shored up their teamfighting since then, but more importantly, with most teams still adjusting to new lineups or how to play in this meta with the variety of strategies we've seen in the LCS, FlyQuest have oddly positioned themselves as a team that capitalizes on mistakes made by their opponents and snowballs them to victory. I still think the question of how long they can sustain this is valid; however, mid laner Loïc "toucouille" Dubois has been consistently good, and top laner Colin "Kumo" Zhao has also stepped up in both the LCS and his continuous spamming of Champions Queue for improvement.
Currently, FlyQuest still only have one loss. It's to the team with which they're tied for first place in the LCS: Team Liquid.
In conclusion, FlyQuest are better than we initially thought.
**2. Team Liquid 5-1**
And now for the team that nearly everyone expected to be at the top of the standings: Team Liquid.
Whenever a super team is put together, there's a baseline expectation that the mechanical ability (and often, the experience) of the players will naturally make them a top team. For this year's Team Liquid specifically, people were already touting this full starting lineup as one of the best that the LCS could potentially see. Jo "CoreJJ" Yong-in received his green card last week and returned to the lineup, giving us a fun glimpse (especially Sunday and his carry Tahm Kench against CLG) of what this team will be.
What was written here next was: Now that CoreJJ is back, also expect a lot more roaming to take over the LCS with supports once again trying to keep up with his early roam timers once Steven "Hans Sama" Liv and he have control of the bot lane wave. However, for the second time this year, an announcement was released as I was writing 10 Thoughts. This time, it's Team Liquid announcing that CoreJJ will be off this week dealing with a personal issue and that Bill "Eyla" Nguyen will be stepping in once again as a substitute for the LCS lineup.
I wrote about this last week, but Eyla has played significantly above the role of a mere substitute, making his own case as an LCS-caliber support. It's only because he's being compared to one of the best players to ever play in the LCS at all that more people aren't talking about his performances.
**3. 100 Thieves 4-2**
While 4-2 is hardly bad (in fact, it's tied for second place in the league) 100 Thieves certainly aren't happy about it based on the expectations they internally set for themselves and externally set with the community by winning last year's LCS title.
In game, they've played as expected, relying on the strength of their bot-lane duo of Victor "FBI" Huang and Choi "huhi" Jae-hyun to make sure that the team's front-to-back teamfighting is still strong. Can "Closer" Çelik is one of the best-performing players in all of the LCS right now, even in 100 Thieves' two losses.
Their early game setups are still well-coordinated and an extension of what the team was already doing during their time last year in the LCS and at the 2021 World Championship.
As I type all of this out, and you read it accordingly, you're probably wondering where the "but" part of this sentence is going to come in. But…there isn't really a "gotcha!" moment here for the Thieves. As FBI referenced in his own Player of the Week interview after dominating Week 1 and then losing their first game in Week 2, this team also has a very clear-cut idea of when they make mistakes and how they make them. Which means that they should stay around the top of the LCS standings for most of the split. The trick for 100 Thieves is now evolving past that to not overextending in certain teamfight setups and allowing windows for their opponents, like they did after a strong early game against FlyQuest this past weekend. Again, none of this stuff is new. 100 Thieves know that they're a good team and they also know where they can improve.
**4. Cloud9 4-2**
When I was walking out of the bathroom at the LCS Arena on Sunday, a Cloud9 staff member was watching the monitor behind the players' stage entrance as C9 locked in their final draft pick on red side. I had said hello on my way to the bathroom, and stopped to also look at how the draft had developed. C9 were on the last pick, red side. The staffer laughed and said, "They still don't know it's not Karthus jungle," before locking in Nocturne as their final pick.
Putting aside any and all speculation regarding C9 releasing Nick "LS" De Cesare as their coach I want to look at this from what I could see in Cloud9's gameplay.
I will be sad going forward if the team doesn't occasionally throw in a wrench to their opponents in their scaling drafts, like the farming Karthus with Senna in that game against TSM, or the now forever memorialized games of Ibrahim "Fudge" Allami on picks like Ivern and Soraka. One of the reasons why this team could (and probably still will) so heavily-focus on scaling was because of their individual mechanics, especially during teamfights. (Not to mention Park "Summit" Woo-tae winning both presumed favorable and presumed losing matchups in top lane.) I still believe that these players are extremely talented individuals and still look forward to them playing.
**5. Dignitas QNTMPAY 3-3**
It would be easy to say that the reason why Dignitas went 0-2 is that jungler Kim "River" Dong-woo has finally seen consistent Jarvan IV bans against him. Too easy.
However, the lack of J4 does give us an opportunity to look at how Dignitas were winning games, and what J4 does for that. On J4, which River would pick and play even into presumed losing matchups like Poppy, River was able to control the Dignitas early game through his pathing, especially blue side bot invades into the enemy red side jungle. It was easy for the team, — in particular, support Vincent "Biofrost" Wang and mid laner Ersin "Blue" Gören to follow up on that — especially when the team was also picking pushing bot lanes for Toàn "Neo" Trần and Biofrost like Caitlyn/Lux or Ezreal/Karma.
Not only have teams kept the J4 out of River's hands, but they've also kept Caitlyn out of Neo's. But again, these specific picks aren't the sole reason why Dignitas was picking up wins (they've won without them, after all). They just illustrate the setups that Dignitas like to have and execute.
I think Dignitas' recent dip is a combination of teams banning more strictly, teams understanding and capitalizing on River's pathing (look no further than their loss against Golden Guardians and River's attempted repeat mid lane gank), and existing problems in Dignitas' mid game. That being said, they still have a strong bottom lane, a jungler who understands how to read that map, and strong teamfighting. It will be a tough week for Dignitas with C9, TL, and 100 Thieves as opponents, but I'm still looking forward to seeing how they adapt.
**6. Golden Guardians 3-3**
When I watch a Golden Guardians game, I either feel like I'm watching their opponents capitalize on a mistake and snowball against them, or a visibly obvious representation of how Golden Guardians are learning to adapt in real time.
Last week I pointed out how interesting their laneswap response was to TSM's support top strategy in a game that continued to go back-and-forth between the two teams for far longer than it should have.
This week we saw them get clobbered by 100 Thieves. They then turned around and similarly clobbered Dignitas by correctly reading River's repeat mid lane gank onto a flashless Nicholas "Ablazeolive" Abbott, sending their entire bottom lane up for a four-versus-three advantage on a support roam timer, netting them two kills.
Like it or not, Golden Guardians are an odd microcosm for the LCS right now: a group of people learning in real time against a variety of different strategies and styles, some of which are not fully developed yet.
**7. Evil Geniuses 2-4**
While FlyQuest have had the most disparate performance from their Lock In showing in a positive way, Evil Geniuses have had the opposite. Part of this is due to a fairly tough schedule — facing TL, 100 Thieves, and a Week 1 Cloud9 — but part of it has also been the team's inability to find the same spark in their gameplay that characterized their proactive Lock In looks.
Going into the Lock In Finals, I specifically praised EG for their cross-map ability and setup. They always seemed to have a strong understanding of where their opponents would be and were able to capitalize, especially on the bottom side of the map, with the trio of mid laner Joseph "Jojopyun" Joon Pyun, jungler Kacper "Inspired" Słoma, and support Philippe "Vulcan" Laflamme. Even when their opponents made a play, EG would come out ahead due to how they'd set up the map up until that point. They've lacked this ability thus far in most, if not all, of their LCS showings. Their ideas are similar, but the map hasn't been set up similarly — either through Inspired visiting and getting his lanes again, Vulcan beating out his opponents on early support roam timers, or Jojopyun shoving up and roaming elsewhere for vision or a kill.
This super week, EG will face an unexpected first-place FlyQuest, Golden Guardians, and CLG. We know just how good this team can be and their upcoming matches could offer a foothold to keep them from further sliding down the standings.
**8. Immortals Progressive 2-4**
I'm at a similar frustration point with Immortals that I was at certain times last year (and perhaps that they are with themselves) after this week. Sometimes I see a really amazing run of play from Immortals that absolutely takes over an entire game like how the team moved and used Mohamed "Revenge" Kaddoura's Camille to exploit inherent weaknesses in a roaming support top strategy. Revenge helped take down all six outer and inner turrets by 21:18 and was a large part of how the team leveraged their early lead into map-wide success. By 26:40, they were pushing in three waves against or into TSM's base.
And they still lost that game.
In their second game of the week, Revenge turned what was initially a collapse and kill for EG in the bottom lane, to trading one-for-one coming out of a pause and chronobreak, helping the team gain momentum around a bug call that didn't go their way. Unlike their Lock In and Week 1 performances, this team is finally starting to show some signs of life beyond scaling teamfighting, and they're interesting to watch.
I'm really curious to see where they go from here, considering how good their response was to the roaming support top, and the kind of strong teamfighting that this team can have. Like EG, they've had a tougher schedule than most, so this super week will give us a clearer snapshot of Immortals at the end of the first round robin.
**9. Counter Logic Gaming 1-5**
Although TSM may have broken their loss streak first (earlier on Saturday) it was CLG's Saturday win that looked more cohesive as a five-man unit. In particular, Cristian "Palafox" Palafox made the most of Ryze's roaming potential in teaming up with jungler Juan "Contractz" Garcia on Hecarim.
Even in their expected loss to Team Liquid on Sunday, CLG looked more coordinated than they had in Week 2, able to punish TL when they overextended on the top side of the map despite being outmatched for most of the game.
After this week, I find myself looking forward to seeing the incremental week-to-week improvements that this team can make. Their win against Cloud9 reminded me of my optimism around their wins in Lock In where, even despite the myriad mistakes in the mid-to-late game, there was a visible understanding that CLG had of how their compositions should be executed.
**10. TSM 1-5**
After a tumultuous week of news and speculation, TSM also picked up their first win last weekend, where Edward "Tactical" Ra set a record for the highest damage percentage for his team in a single game at 70 percent.
Rallying around Tactical as the primary damage dealer isn't a bad call, especially when top laner Heo "Huni" Seung-hoon is so willing to play roaming Lulu to help facilitate his bot laner on hypercarries like Jinx. It gives them a set strategy around which to work on other team coordination issues.
Furthermore, it's been interesting to see TSM actually evolve this strategy in their more recent games. On Saturday, they went for a very early dive that paid off, and on Sunday we saw probably the best-looking execution of the roaming support top strategy yet until TSM made mistakes in the mid game and Cloud9's scaling composition around Karthus took over teamfights. I don't know if it's the addition of Wang "Yursan" Sheng-Yu to the LCS squad directly, but TSM did look more cohesive after the swap, which makes me wonder how they're going to go about integrating Wei "Shenyi" Zi-Jie (someone with his own strong idea of how to play the game) back into the lineup if that's still the plan.
