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10 Thoughts going into Week 2
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One week down and… five to go! That’s not a lot of weeks before we finish up the first half of the season, and it’s also important to remember that every single game counts now as the year is just a single split now. That means 0-3 starts (looking at you, CLG) are just stuck to you all year. So far we’ve got a pretty clear divide between the top teams and everyone else! Here’s 10 thoughts going into Week 2!
**1. 100 Thieves (3-0) -- Twice the LP**
In Solo Queue, when I win really long games, I always feel like I should be awarded twice the LP to compensate for my time *and* my emotional well-being. And in the case of 100 Thieves, they played two games in the opening week that went over 45 minutes, including a game gifted to them by one Counter Logic Gaming (you may have heard of them). They should maybe be 5-0 right now. Which really ties back to what I was saying during the Lock In Tournament, which is that I think this team is still a step behind the likes of Team Liquid (and probably Cloud9). That said, that’s not a bad thing as they certainly aren’t trapped in this spot forever. This team has a ton of upside, and you don’t have to look much further than Huhi to see clear examples of growth. For him to continue shining in a world where supports are so extremely vital to a team’s success is a huge testament to how much he’s improved at the role over the last year. Right now this team feels a little capped in playstyle -- Damonte is an extremely good team player and excels on roam-heavy champions with engage options, but he feels more limited as a front-to-back carry. You don’t *need* to be able to do everything, but I’ll be watching to see if this holds true throughout the year. I want just a little more Tanner time.
**2. Cloud9 (3-0) -- Blaber leveling speedrun any%**
If you’ve ever played a game on launch day (or wipe day for stuff like Rust or Tarkov or Path of Exile), then you’ve prepped for a long session as soon as servers are live. You’ve got snacks and drinks and maybe some friends lined up to play with you, and hell, maybe you’ve even got a plan -- you know exactly how to be the most efficient. And six hours later, your hard work has paid off. You’re way ahead of the curve. Then you look around and see some other dude is six levels higher than you. That dude’s name is Blaber. That’s what it feels like watching him jungle against the competition when he’s on his game. After a blistering run to secure the MVP trophy in the Spring Split last year, Blaber and C9 suffered a massive setback in the Summer as they collapsed down the stretch. His play and his champion pool caused some concern, but with the start of season meta favoring carries like Olaf and Udyr, he has been able to dominate again. However, with nerfs coming to jungle in the coming patches, the real test will begin for Blaber -- if he’s able to show a little more diversity in his play, then he could elevate his play even further. It’s a good start, though -- he’s my frontrunner for MVP right now.
**3. Evil Geniuses (2-1) -- Trapped with Impact**
Late in the match against FlyQuest, there was a moment where Licorice’s Camille jumps onto Impact’s Shen on the bottom red side jungle. Palafox TPs into the dragon pit but ends up watching for a bit because he can’t go over the wall, and what he saw is what the rest of us saw, which was a graphic depiction of violence not unlike the scene in *Watchmen* where Rorscach famously quips, “I’m not stuck in here with you. You’re stuck in here with Impact.” Impact just turns around and starts beating him to death, and it’s not fancy either. It’s Shen. He really just turns around and slaps you with his stick. And what made it better was Palafox sitting in the pit just kind of tossing his cards before finally running around to help, only at that point, Licorice was already dead. And then Impact turns onto Palafox and starts beating his ass too! He ultimately died but it was the kind of moment that deflates your team entirely. We’ve all had plays like that where a little voice in our head says, “You know what, let’s just go next.” Combined with his Sylas performance as well, I am hoping we get to see an unleashed version of Impact all year. No more tank. Only slap. EG will likely remain a top team throughout the year, though they may find the ceiling above to be just out of reach.
**4. Team Liquid (2-1) -- The ceiling above**
If Impact is Rorschach, then Alphari can be Ozymandias. You root for Rorschach in a lot of ways but somewhere deep down you know Ozymandias is stronger. Maybe even much stronger. In a post-game interview over the weekend, Alphari said he was both disappointed with the level of top laners in the LCS (in that he feels like he gets away with mistakes that should be punished) but also surprised because in their own ways, they were still on the same level as LEC top laners. One difference is that junglers haven’t played as much around top laners in the LCS in recent years -- Impact and Solo for TL and FLY last year are good examples of weak-side play -- and so it might also just be tied to stylistic differences. Alphari, though, is someone who you can absolutely tailor a gameplan around, and so far TL has done a good job of making sure he’s able to flex his strengths by investing resources towards that side of the map. Even though they opened the season with a setback against IMT, the consensus is that TL is still the strongest overall team in the league thanks to how impressive they look in their wins. They can make that distinction extra clear in their matchup against 100 on Valentine’s Day.
**5. Dignitas (1-2) -- Finding purpose**
Dignitas managed to notch a win in the opening week of play over a hapless CLG which tells us very little about their actual strength, but I think it’s definitely a mental boost to know you aren’t the worst team in the league. It’s the same kind of thing that dominates American politics -- just trick people into focusing on how someone else has it worse. That, however, doesn’t actually patch up problems your own team might face, which is to say Dignitas is a team with problems. For example, letting an Orianna steal Drake from you because you don’t pull it out of the pit is a thing you’d expect from a young team, but I don’t feel like that’s an excuse Dignitas has considering they’ve got Aphromoo and Dardoch. More generally, this team will continue to falter if they aren’t able to secure better advantages from their solo laners -- they were particularly exposed against TL (though most teams would be) -- and I’m hoping to see a much larger emphasis placed on securing counter picks for them. Dardoch has also shown Dr. Mundo and Rengar in the jungle this week, and because they lost with both of those picks, I am left to wonder if his pool is shallow or if he’s overestimating what he can accomplish on off-meta picks. I’m okay with teams experimenting the draft this early, though -- I just hope it’s being done with a clear purpose in mind.
**6. FlyQuest (1-2) -- Setback**
I’ve thought a bit about what a shame it is that last year’s FlyQuest ended up parting ways. Turtle is toiling on a CLG squad that is limping their way through games right now. PowerOfEvil is the same with TSM. And Solo isn’t even in the LCS. So for fans, watching this team, which is clearly leaning in on development, must be a bit of a letdown when you consider they managed to go 3-3 in their group at Worlds. That’s what makes Licorice such an interesting fit for FlyQuest this year -- both of them represent a bit of a “setback” from the height that is playing at Worlds. And both of them, I’m sure, want nothing more than another shot at it, even if they have to adjust expectations in the interim. Right now the biggest question marks on this roster for me are Palafox and Diamond, who I think have struggled a bit (expectedly) even when compared to newcomer Josedeodo (who has much more experience, even if not in the LCS). There are two markers I use to judge new players: first is how much pressure they exert in lane (are they able to make a move before their counterpart and are they forcing them out of lane?) and second is how many unnecessary mistakes (like unforced errors in tennis) they make in the mid game. Keep an eye on these two things for Palafox and Diamond especially as the season goes on -- whether FLY can return to its heights will depend largely on their progress.
**7. Golden Guardians (1-2) -- Young learnings**
Late in the game against Immortals, the Golden Guardians faked a base race that forced all of IMT to recall (and thus prevented them from making a 5v3 push to end the game). I remember watching that and thinking how neat it was because playing tower defense when you have a completely exposed Nexus is one of the most stressful situations in League of Legends. Anyone who has played a good amount of LoL games has been in that situation before. So I appreciated how Phreak and Kobe highlighted it as a smart play in a game where both teams needed to make a lot of smart decisions. IMT *had* to recall because if it wasn’t a feint, they’d absolutely lose, and GG *had* fake it because that was the only response IMT could take. Games like that always teeter on the edge of being a “clown fiesta” when it comes to public perception -- honestly it’s a term that’s thrown around so loosely that it has come to lose all meaning. Not all sloppy games are “clown fiestas,” and sometimes a perfect 12-0 21 minute stomp can be more of a fiesta than the wild back-and-forth 50-minute slugfests. It just depends on what perspective you choose to analyze the game from. Golden Guardians, being an extremely young team, are going to find themselves in a lot of firsts this year when it comes to game scenarios. And they will probably make a lot of mistakes, but what’s more important is what they learn from it.
**8. Immortals (1-2) -- Short squeeze**
For a moment after watching IMT end Liquid’s dreams for an undefeated season in literally the first game, I thought, “Maybe this IMT team really *is* the dark horse.” In the interview after the game, I think it was Revenge who talked about how the team was actually winning and doing well in scrims. At that point I was ready to invest in the stock. To the moon, rocket emojis, etc. And then they went and dropped the next two games -- one long back-and-forth to the Golden Guardians and one in which they got completely clobbered by C9. So now I’m left wondering what we can even expect from this team. Was the short squeeze a ploy? Have we been duped? We got to see most other rosters play a decent amount of games thanks to the Lock In but this was our first look at the main IMT roster, and when you consider the results, I think it’s safe to say we should give it a little more time before trying to say anything conclusive about them. I *will* say that, even if it’s a fluke, taking a game off of TL isn’t a joke -- I’m more interested in a team’s peak than their reality at the beginning of the season, which means I haven’t sold all my holdings on this team just yet.
**9. TSM (1-2) -- Doc Rivers blinking dot gif**
One of my favorite gifs on the internet is one of current 76ers Head Coach Doc Rivers just staring and blinking. If you know it, you know it. The face he makes is perfect for so many different scenarios, including the general experience of watching this TSM roster’s opening weekend. You just kind of… blink. And then it’s over. Much of the blame is going to be placed on SwordArt because of the massive contract he signed, but if you ignore that part and just look at actual play, it’s not like he’s the only lackluster option on the team at the moment. Just watch any given team fight from them and you’ll see there is no real focus. For *that*, you might blame SwordArt, because he’s specifically renowned for what he brings to the table in terms of leadership and teamwork. But we don’t actually know what the shotcalling structure is like on the team, and he’s clearly still adjusting to literally moving across the world for this. It’s one thing to make proper calls in your native language, but I imagine it’s not so easy to do it, in his case, in English. In that sense, this team is still a bit of a project. And unlikely with Suning, he’s not exactly ordering around a bunch of rookies here. This type of thing is just a lot harder to see -- it’s not like SwordArt was brought over because he’s some sort of mechanical prodigy (not that he’s bad, either). I just want to be more impressed with this team’s early macro decisions. I’ll be looking more closely at the timings of SwordArt’s roams early in games this coming week to see just how much more in sync with his team he can be. When a player seems to not be in sync, I think it’s useful to ask if they still made the right play or not -- sometimes it’s on the other members to follow up properly. Either way, it’s been a decidedly disappointing start for the reigning LCS champs.
**10. Counter Logic Gaming (0-3) -- Not that bad?**
You know, at a certain point in the season last split, I remember looking at the empty space below CLG and thinking, “What do I even write here?” And here we are, one week into the season, with me thinking, “What do I even write here?” I am not sure if I am more impressed that CLG was able to secure *two* massive leads this weekend or if I am more impressed that they managed to completely throw both leads. I’m not talking about a five yard dump kind of throw. I’m talking a hail mary close your eyes and pray kind of throw. CLG just heaved it. And you know what? I think there are worse ways to lose. You can’t win games if you can’t secure leads, so they are at the very least in positions where they *could* win games. All of that is also being accomplished with a sub jungler and a sub mid laner (who may be permanent at this point -- who can really say). So, like IMT, it’s too early in the season to cast judgment on this team because this literally isn’t even the team they are looking to field. I suspect, though, that because they’re able to secure leads, that they might not actually be the worst team in the LCS right now.
