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10 thoughts going into Week 4
Roster changes are starting to happen as teams vie for Worlds. Here’s 10 thoughts!
We are one-third of the way through the regular season of the LCS Summer Split and if you are not good at fractions, that means you should open a math book because one-third is not a big fraction. This week I come up with more metaphors and alternate ways of saying “Cloud9 good” in an attempt to help you gain further appreciation for them while also trying my best (and failing) to convince you that other teams could technically possibly maybe beat them. Here’s 10 thoughts going into Week 4!
**1. Cloud9 (6-0) -- Blaber Fan Blog**
Watching Blaber play is like watching real-time footage of one of my late night fantasies as I am trying to fall asleep but can’t because I played too much League of Legends that day. I sit there recounting specific moments from each game and let myself imagine a world in which I am replicating them on stage only to, of course, eventually fall asleep. Blaber is the manifestation of those dreams in that he executes the plays you imagine -- what is a dream scenario for you (but not entirely a dream for me because I am of course insane at League of Legends) is a regular play at the 23-minute mark of a game for him. He turns a Lee Sin Q into an immediate ward hop and Flash kick which is completed before you even think about it being possible. This is all to say 10 thoughts is now a fan page dedicated to Blaber. We are a third of the way through the Summer Split and already it feels like C9 is just going through the formalities -- every other team is studiously preparing for finals and C9 is the whiz kid who took all his AP exams in early May and now has a month to kill. Cloud9 fans always get a little bit mad when I don’t say anything insightful about their team, so one (only one) serious thing I will say about them is that it’s nice to see Blaber perform so well on a non-Olaf pick. Lee Sin has always been the ultimate litmus test for junglers when it comes to playmaking ability, and Blaber has demonstrated he has no peer in the LCS.
**2. Counter Logic Gaming (4-2) -- Roll for perception check**
People keep trying to make heads or tails out of this CLG team and I am here to tell you that you cannot use a coin to understand them. You need a twenty-sided dice and you need to understand that you are never going to roll the thing you want. They have four wins now over the bottom four teams in the league (who have a combined record of 4-20), which means we are about to hit an extremely difficult stretch in their schedule. In their two losses so far, we’ve seen them get perfect-gamed by EG and then put up a resilient showing against FLY this past weekend. The stark difference in the losses should give fans some hope going forward that the first game of the split was simply an aberration (especially considering it was against an inconsistent EG team). I felt like CLG could have easily won the game against FLY but they made a few too many desperate plays (even from good positions). That *should* help them going forward in that they can play a bit more calmly -- I think some of that desperation stems from being awful last split. Perhaps they became so accustomed to being down that it’s harder for them now to recognize when they are ahead or even. This iteration of CLG, though, is already one win greater than their entire Spring Split, and while they might not yet be at the caliber of a championship contender, they’re in a position where taking games off the top of the table would not be surprising. If nothing else, that very fact is already a big win to me. This is what they mean when they say winning is a mentality.
**3. Evil Geniuses (4-2) -- A bad loss is still only one loss**
**EG:** okay jiizuke we need you on karma this game
**Jiizuke [pouting]:** oh i’ll show you some karma alright
**EG:** what
**Jiizuke:** what
EG getting randomly trounced by someone they should beat isn’t something that should surprise you if you have been watching them since the Spring Split (and let’s be real -- if you are reading articles about the LCS, then you have definitely been watching since the Spring Split). Them bouncing back to slam DIG, then, was of course not a surprise either. EG is at times infuriatingly inconsistent with results because they are not as apt to change how they approach the game even when they are behind. This is a thing I respect -- I like that they’ll be aggressive and try to make plays no matter what happens. What we saw in the loss against TSM, though, is that when they don’t have pressure from mid (and subsequently jungle), this team kind of falls apart. It felt like watching one of those horror movies where people get plucked from tall grass one-by-one (though if I could go on a tangent -- if you know you are being stalked by, say, Velociraptors, why the hell would you walk in a single file through tall grass? Give us something more believable, filmmakers!). I think getting clobbered in mid is a recipe for failure for pretty much every team in the world, though, so it’s not something I’d particularly hold over EG. It’s just going to be something that happens from time-to-time given the aggressive nature of their mid/jungle duo. Sometimes Jiizuke just walks into the tall grass, you know? But more often than not, he’s Jeff Goldblum and he finds a way.
**4. FlyQuest (4-2) -- Fish Seer**
In addition to their environmentalist approach to the split, FLY has also [employed][1] magical fish prophets among their ranks. Is this legal or ethical or even possible within the confines of physics as we know it? Absolutely not. But it *is* entertaining to watch fish accurately predict the results of the LCS (who needs analysts?). In the future I recommend they cheat by pouring food onto the side they’re on so they don’t lose games (though I guess that didn’t help them against GG). Even though they ultimately lost to GG, I thought it was admirable and true to their strength that they managed to stretch the game to 47 minutes and place themselves in a position where they could have won. It’s pretty clear to me that teams lack experience in that stage of the game (super-late game?), and FLY is no different. They were extremely reliant on PowerOfEvil’s Orianna keeping them alive (he did everything from covering split pushes to securing team fights for them), and the moment he died (just once all game), FLY immediately collapsed and lost the game. Going forward, I’m curious to see if they’ll continue with Mash or if we’ll see WildTurtle again. One thing I find sorely lacking from this team at times is the willingness to make a play (even from PowerOfEvil), and that is something absolutely staple to Turtle’s approach. It feels like Mash is maybe the more stable option, but I am less confident in this team’s ceiling with him in as opposed to Turtle right now.
[1]: https://twitter.com/FlyQuest/status/1277328184074256385
**5. Team Liquid (4-2) -- Sell stock?**
The scoresheet says Team Liquid won one game this weekend, but this feels more like a boxing match where the judges awarded them points based more on technicality than on what viewers at home saw, which was Team Liquid getting the ol’ one-two between the ropes. At 4-2, you might look at TL the same way you do CLG, which is to say it’s a strong start for a team that finished at the bottom (9th) of the standings in the Spring Split. But you wouldn’t look at them like CLG because they are not CLG. They are Team Liquid, which means they are only a single split removed from their four-peat, and three of the members from the most recent title are still core (heh, core) to the roster. There is still a lot of pride in this organization, and I personally still think of them in some respects as champions because we never really got to see the physical manifestation of Cloud9 lifting the trophy (which is not fair to C9 -- it is just this tiny thing inside of me). We didn’t get to see them defend their title in an epic playoff series. They just kind of fizzled out. It felt like we were robbed of a grand fall from grace, and so I am hoping TL can find ways to win now (so that they may ultimately fall to C9). I am impressed by Jensen’s Twisted Fate and how deft his movements are, and I am impressed by how quickly Tactical has integrated into pro play (he is playing with great poise considering he’s had less than 10 games on the LCS stage). And even still this team leaves me wanting more -- it feels like they are on the cusp of being great again, but it also simultaneously feels like they will be stuck there forever, and I don’t know what to make of those feelings.
**6. TSM (4-2) -- Nexus go boom**
You know those games where you die four times in lane and then your bot lane comes to your lane and your ADC is a higher level than you and has already taken four turrets and then you just group with them and don’t actually do anything and then you win anyway? That’s the feeling for TSM after that 100 game. Somehow, some way, they won. And by somehow I mean Bjergsen literally walked up to the 100 Nexus -- through a pushing lane -- attacked it and won. It’s that easy, baby. Like the rest of the 4-2 teams, I’m not entirely sold on TSM being good so much as I am sold on them being better than the other four teams below them in the standings. Doublelift and Biofrost are starting to flex their muscles in lane a little bit and that feels like the lane to watch for TSM going forward -- I’ve said that in order to beat C9, you must be elite at *something*, and it feels like TSM might be able to lean on their bot lane to be that elite difference. Doublelift went a little too aggro on some plays in the mid and late game against 100, but I appreciated seeing aggression and willingness to make a play from an ADC -- if TSM is able to fine tune to better play around that, then they could actually evolve into a threat. Right now, though, they are doing a fine job of just buying time for Spica (and to a lesser extent, Broken Blade) to both grow as an individual and as a teammate.
**7. Golden Guardians (2-4) -- Rebound?**
I had to delete GG_eulogy.doc before writing this because I thought this team was completely doomed after they lost to IMT. They helped me empathize with all the people in my life who’ve expressed disappointment in me with some iteration of “I expected better from you,” which is to say I expected better from GG. Even with the win over FLY, the sentiment holds true, because this doesn’t *feel* like a team that should be at the bottom of the table. Then again, even their win against FLY was a sloppy 47-minute slugfest that could have easily seen them fall to 1-5 -- it especially characterized what we’ve seen from them all year, which is that they have a really strong early game but then play out the rest of the game on autopilot. It is truly bizarre that they consistently look like they’ve never played a scrim that went past 20 minutes. Good news for GG is they’ve got 100 on deck, who are in the middle of immense roster upheaval, and then TSM, who are not a terribly convincing 4-2 team. If they can string together a couple wins here, then they’ll be right back in the thick of things -- sometimes all it takes is one win to clear your mental hurdle on stage, and I still believe in this roster’s ability to make a splash this summer. So I say with the utmost confidence that this team will win the first 15 minutes of both games and then from there perhaps if you are a GG fan, turn off your stream and go perform a ritual sacrifice in a church pew and pray.
**8. 100 Thieves (1-5) -- New Thieves**
After their abysmal start, 100 announced they would bench Meteos and altogether cut Stunt from the roster to make room for Academy players Contractz (that’s right -- the very same Contractz that made a big debut splash in the LCS before disappearing for the last couple of years) and Poome (a rookie). It definitely felt like a change was long overdue, and in hindsight it really feels like Ryoma’s play (which was good) last weekend may have been a major factor in saving his job. Outside of Ssumday, pretty much everybody felt expendable, so it’s not a surprise in the least to see a shuffle. The good side to roster changes is that it provides the rest of the team with a reset -- they can start to think that this new roster, which hasn’t lost yet, could be the answer to their problems. The downside is that it is almost never that easy -- it takes time to integrate players, especially rookies, into a team. You also have to wonder if the problem really was Meteos or Stunt or if they misdiagnosed what needed to be changed. Personally I think the moves are good -- at least in the short term -- because something needed to be changed and those two haven’t been performing particularly well. The change in perspective may also help elevate their play if they use the downtime properly (see what happened to Pobelter last split, for example). 100 have a softball schedule this week with GG and DIG, so the timing is as good as ever to give something new a shot.
**9. Immortals (1-5) -- Minor differences**
IMT Academy is officially 1-1 in the LCS after snagging a clean win off of GG before being completely obliterated by C9 (which is par for the course for every other LCS team as well). This sparked a bit of debate over whether or not Academy teams could perform on the same level as some LCS teams, and I think absolutely that has always been the case. I actually don’t really understand why that’s a question at all -- back when we still had relegation matches, it was pretty clear that on average the bottom couple of teams in the league were on a similar level as the top Academy teams. There were of course some outliers, but it’s not wild to think that the 11th or 12th best roster in NA is as good or potentially better than the 9th and 10th. That’s just… literally how it is in every single sport across the world. Part of the desire called for more games between Academy and LCS teams, which is a potentially fun tournament, but I’d be more interested in seeing more players called up from Academy into the LCS. I personally feel like teams are too hesitant to pull the trigger on roster swaps and should instead treat it a little more like NBA rosters in-game where a coach may start throwing random players in if his starting lineup isn’t performing particularly well. I’ve always been of the opinion that teams that are dominant are immediately dominant and you won’t find that by sitting on mediocre performances. This is not really tied specifically to this iteration of IMT, who I will say we cannot say too much about yet (though maybe we can since it features mostly veterans). I’m glad to see a few of the faces back in the league and it should be interesting to see if this roster will play out the rest of the split.
**10. Dignitas (0-6) -- One game from playoff contention**
The distinction of being the final winless team in the league is not one that I ever enjoy talking about, and growing up as a Detroit Lions fan means I have a lot of sympathy for teams with a big fat zero in the win column. DIG has been nothing short of a disaster so far this split and no amount of sugar-coating from me is going to change that. It’d be very surprising to me if this team didn’t make any more changes to their roster in the coming week or two if only to change up the losing atmosphere a little bit. They’re not even at the point of being loveable losers in the sense of throwing at Baron every game -- it’s just sad. Phreak’s [rant][1] about them said everything you need to know. Even still, I believe they can really build something around Johnsun, so while the present is all but doomed, there is still some hope for the future. And I do mention this nearly every week, but because eight teams (eight!) make the playoffs, there is still time for every single team to get their act together. Eighth place is currently sitting at 1-5, which means DIG is one good week away from being right back in the playoff race, which is a ridiculous stat that I do not particularly like, but here we are.
[1]: https://clips.twitch.tv/RenownedAgileLarkGingerPower
