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10 thoughts going into Week 8
Cloud9 falls to TSM! Are they still the favorite?
Cloud9 lost their first game last weekend, which made me reevaluate my declaration that they had a 99% chance of going undefeated down to 50%. Which is to say there’s a 50% chance we completely forget about their loss and pretend they’re undefeated. We’re seven weeks down and nobody -- not even CLG -- has been mathematically eliminated just yet (though TL has been emotionally eliminated).
And as a quick edit into this piece, I'd like to remind you that we did not play any LCS games last week as the league temporarily suspended due to concerns surrounding COVID-19. After [careful deliberation][1], we have decided to resume play online for the foreseeable future. This means teams will be playing remotely to follow best practice for the ongoing epidemic. As such -- no more stage jitters, hopefully! And without further ado, here is 10 thoughts going into Week 8!
[1]: https://watch.lolesports.com/article/lcs-and-academy-return/blt015ec4ac936d438f
**Cloud9 (13-1) -- Clouds cleared**
In my head I understand that the difference between 14-0 and 13-1 is actually extremely small. In both cases C9 is still the #1 seed overall, and there’s no extra reward for finishing with a better record at that point. You don’t even get a Steam achievement. And yet I would immediately agree with someone that says C9 is no longer a shoe-in to win the LCS (which I guess was partially said as a joke). It’s not that they got blown out by TSM either -- the game was back-and-forth until a mid-game fight broke it open. I’d still say they’re the overwhelming favorite to win the split, but they literally no longer have that aura of invincibility. A single loss can stick to your head when you try to assess just how strong a team is. 17-1 just isn’t as pretty as 18-0. The loss, though, is probably a good thing in the grand scheme of things. It takes off a lot of the arbitrary pressure that is tied to going undefeated or not. There are no dumb records lingering in the back of their head as they load onto the Rift, which means they can focus solely on the game in front of them. They bounced back quickly against GG on Monday to clinch the #1 overall seed for the first time since Summer 2014 -- and this, perhaps, is the surest sign that C9 can finally end their championship drought.
**FlyQuest (8-6) -- Big moment, no show**
FLY feels like the team equivalent of when you ace all of your quizzes in school and do all of your homework correctly, and then you bomb the test. This team has struggled to find marquee wins over strong opponents, which is a pretty major problem as we push towards the playoffs. The flipside to this argument, though, is that if they had beaten TSM last weekend, I’m not sure we’d have called it a marquee win. I’ve been on the tree train all split, and I still think they’re one of the better teams in the league, but after the 0-2 weekend, you can see why many analysts weren’t ever that high on them. The real problem is still that we are continuing to see evidence that they cannot hold a candle to C9. In the losses over the weekend, the side lanes were exposed and FLY’s jungle/mid duo was unable to help the team recover. V1per in particular had a rough weekend which means he’s still the player to keep your eyes on if you want FLY to take the next step. Teams like this fill me with uncertainty in the Spring because only the winner advances to MSI, but come Summer -- if you are able to maintain top three -- then the reward will be much bigger.
**TSM (8-6) -- The Good, the Bad, the Good again**
Death, taxes, and TSM not going 1-1. That’s the final arbitrary record to watch for this split. After a convincing 2-0 weekend that included major wins over previously-undefeated-but-maybe-still-undefeated-if-we-forget C9 and #2 FlyQuest, you have to figure that TSM is maybe the collective LCS’ best chance at extending the C9 championship drought. You also have to figure that, in a world where “what have you done for me lately” reigns supreme in sports and competition, that TSM has a case for being the strongest team in the league. I don’t personally believe that, but I do think C9 having won 12 games in a row to start the split is a thing that’s not going to matter at all if these two teams lineup against each other for Spring Finals. And I do think that if you are TSM, then that’s what you are telling yourself -- who cares if you sucked two weeks ago? That doesn’t even matter anymore. But if you are not TSM themselves and are simply a fan, then you have been here before: a nice high after a 2-0 weekend. And you have seen it collapse just as quickly as it rose. Let us look at what actually happened, though: TSM played around top, and they didn’t try anything particularly fancy in draft. This seems like a simple one-two punch that they can replicate going forward, which means the optimistic TSM fan should be thinking that the only team that can beat TSM is TSM.
**100 Thieves (7-7) -- The Process**
If the 100 Thieves look twice as good now as they did at the beginning of the season, do we start calling them the 200 Thieves? Do Thieves scale linearly? Look, I’m not entirely sure if this team is actually that much better now, but the 2-0 week came at a pretty critical juncture in their season. They still suffer from a lot of the same problems, which is that Ryoma struggles to have a strong presence in lane and Stunt dies too much, but both of those things have continued to be minimalized as the split has progressed. On top of that, their strengths are still there. We got another game where Ssumday clapped his opponent (solo killing sOAZ), so this team is always going to be in a position to take games from people just from top lane brute force. One thing I appreciate about this team is that they stated this would be a process from the get-go and have stuck with this roster for the entire split, even as teams around them shifted and even as the chorus of fans (especially those calling for Ryoma’s head) grew louder and louder. I hope that gives Ryoma especially the confidence he needs to focus on improving instead of on “being good” in the here and now. They’re decidedly a middle of the pack team, but at least the way forward is pretty clear: mid lane continues to improve and Ssumday continues to be a star.
**Evil Geniuses (7-7) -- Coinflip Lee Sin**
Like 100, EG also picked a perfect week to clock a 2-0. This has been the most Jekyll and Hyde team of the split, and to me that makes them the scariest team in the field (after Cloud9, who is just always Hyde). A lot of times, teams look like this because they are unrelenting with their early game aggression -- it’s like the Solo Queue Lee Sin players who always invade your red buff at Level 2. If it works, they can snowball the game entirely out of control, and if it fails, they’ll forfeit at 15. That’s also what the LPL does in a nutshell. And that’s what EG sometimes feels like -- they’re extremely dangerous if they’re able to secure early leads, and they seem willing to take large gambits to make that happen. It makes for some exciting games, but the lack of consistency is going to punish them as we approach playoffs and teams play even *more* carefully. Especially because EG isn’t always good at executing on their aggression. Jiizuke seemed to have a much calmer weekend, and that contributed greatly to the team winning -- he made comments recently about how no mid laners in NA want to fight, and while I think it’s great that he wants to fight, he should be careful to not overforce it. So long as they are able to reign him in, EG could make a surprising run in the playoffs.
**Immortals (7-7) -- Revenge is a dish best served by Xmithie**
Xmithie’s perfect revenge script came two weeks early: bring his new team into the Playoffs while knocking his old one out of contention. Will it hold? It kind of feels like one of those false endings in the Lord of the Rings where you are convinced the movie is about to end, and it feels like maybe some Eagles are about to fly down and salvage TL’s season. I’m not saying Xmithie is Sauron (though, maybe…), but because IMT hasn’t found consistent success, they’ve struggled to gain any sort of protagonist narrative all split. The win against TL was extremely impressive, though -- it was one of IMT’s cleanest wins of the split as they continued to rotate to objectives faster and more cohesively than Liquid. This is a team that I’ve been extremely critical of all split, but at this point it’s pretty clear that them knowing what a win looks like and feels like is always going to be relevant in an LCS where almost everybody is playing mistake-laden League of Legends. Apollo’s return to the LCS and to his longtime lane partner could prove to be the injection this team needs to secure a run to the playoffs -- and doing so at the expense of Team Liquid would be a legend we will tell our kids and their grandkids.
**Golden Guardians (6-8) -- Just okay**
GG continues to hang in there with reliable performances, but their upcoming slate features TSM, FLY, a desperate TL, and a not-as-bad-as-their-record CLG. It feels to me like they’d have to win three of those matches to secure a playoff berth, and that feels unlikely. They’ve been consistent all split in that they aren’t getting completely blown out of the water (except against C9), but with push coming to shove here, it’s hard for me to think this team is going to be able to slip into the crowded playoff field. I just don’t feel like it’s enough to just be okay at this juncture of the season -- all of the teams above them have shown flashes of dominance or something unique that I’ve yet to see from GG. They are simply a solid team that hangs in there, builds some small leads, and can capitalize on opponents’ mistakes. I am, however, a little perplexed by how they handled their support situation this split. I don’t think giving Keith a chance was a bad idea by any measure, but it felt weird to make him do it immediately on the LCS stage. Now he’s in a position where his support play has already been evaluated by the community (as shit), which feels like it would be hard to bounce back from. I think it’s great to see Huhi back on stage, but I am disappointed that Keith’s career may fizzle out on this note. And fizzling out may be exactly what happens to GG at this point as well.
**Team Liquid (6-8) -- Liquidate Liquid**
Stocks -- including TL -- are down across the US. The good news for TL is that the team right below them, Dignitas, is an even hotter mess than they are. The bad news is that if I am comparing the state of your team to Dignitas, a flaming hot mess, then you yourself must also be a flaming hot mess. Liquid first decided to continue playing Tactical, which I thought was a fine decision, and then immediately subbed him back out for Doublelift once he lost (a game in which he got 4-man dove at Level 1). I don’t think subbing Doublelift back in was a bad decision either, but that suddenly turned the game on Monday against IMT into a must-win sort of situation if they wanted to salvage team morale. Instead, they got clapped and now must stew in a week of angst and despair around the team situation. It’s just that we’ve had seven weeks of play already and I don’t think Doublelift has had a single game that was reminiscent of him being the #1 marksman in NA for the past half decade. Compound that with the fact that he was benched and you start to wonder how bad his own personal morale and confidence is right now. Even just slight doubt can severely impact your play. There aren’t any “easy” games period in the LCS right now, but TL also has games remaining against FLY and C9. They could play well and still lose both of those matchups, which means their reign atop the LCS is in danger of ending in the most anticlimactic way possible. Dynasties don’t die in a glorious blaze of fire. They usually die from within.
**Dignitas (5-9) -- The Dongers**
2-9 in their last 11 games now means DIG is, at least based on the results, the worst team in the LCS over that span. They are lucky to be buoyed by the three wins they chained together at the beginning of the season, otherwise I figure the chorus against this team would be much louder (and it’s already pretty loud). They don’t even have the underdog “we expected to suck” charm that CLG often has when they struggle, which makes this situation very sad to me. They subbed in Akaadian, who had a mostly strong weekend (even though DIG as a team collectively threw at Baron), and even that wasn’t enough to change things up. It’s weird because this team seemed to have a lot of strong pieces as we opened the split -- Huni, while not the titan he once was, still commands a lot of pressure top. Froggen has always put up numbers in mid lane. And Johnsun sprouted up as a promising rookie. Now, though, all of those parts have unraveled. My fear early in the split was that this team would be unable to adapt as the season wore on, which includes learning from their mistakes, and it feels like that has proven to be true. There is just little cohesion from the team, and at this point they may even finish below CLG in the standings.
**Counter Logic Gaming (3-11) -- Why did Pobelter not have a job?**
Pobelter’s 11-1 Syndra game against Team Liquid is one of the few 1v9 carry games we’ve seen all split. Not only was he a major catalyst in keeping his team early, he also secured the winning fight for them with a stylish triple kill -- all of this on a Syndra pick that more often plays well in front-to-back team fights instead of popping off in skirmishes. And while he’s had some poorer performances as well (he still just randomly dies sometimes -- even in the game against TL), it’s performances like these that make me wonder how in the hell this guy didn’t have a job to start the split. CLG technically still has a shot at making the playoffs, but it requires too many things to happen that are out of their control, so I feel like they are essentially eliminated (losing even one more game, for example, finishes them). However, I think *how* you end the spring split is extremely important for team morale going into the offseason. DIG, for example, is probably doomed and likely to break up if they continue on their track. CLG, however, suddenly has a pillar to build around going forward -- not only with Pobelter but with marksman Wind seeing some time -- it feels like they are at least thinking about what comes next. The headstart on other teams going into the Summer should make fans optimistic about the road ahead -- it might not be perfect, but at least they aren’t clinging to a middle-of-the-pack ceiling.
