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10 thoughts going into Week 9
With up to a six-way tie still possible, here’s 10 thoughts going into Week 9!
A wise man once said, “Stay home and don’t spread the damn virus,” and that wise man’s name was me, [Kien Lam][1]. Thankfully you can tune into the LCS, which has also shifted to remote play after taking one week off to figure out logistics. In case you forgot, Cloud9 is still better than everyone and their mothers and their mother’s mothers. But eight teams (RIP CLG) are still battling for the last spots. Here’s 10 thoughts going into Week 9!
[1]: https://twitter.com/MeanMisterKien
**Cloud9 (15-1) -- /unpause**
After clinching the #1 overall seed for the playoffs, C9 players jokingly (I think…) tweeted to their followers asking what champion they should play next. While that may be a joke, I do think they were testing things as we saw the likes of Yasuo mid and Kalista top, which aren’t troll picks by any means, but are unorthodox and harder to execute than more standard picks. They won both games fairly convincingly, though, so if you were wondering whether or not they’d phone it in or be distracted by the COVID-19 outbreak, the answer appears to be no. With other teams faltering, the only real question left for this roster at this point is which one of their players will win the MVP. I am of the opinion that mid lane is the most important role in professional play (this was echoed by a pro survey I did earlier in the split), which means in a situation where a mid laner and any other position seem to be playing equally well, I lean towards the mid laner being more impactful. Which means my personal frontrunner for the award is Nisqy -- he stands out for being one of the most active roamers in the league (kind of like what Doinb does for FPX). That said, anyone on this roster could receive votes and I wouldn’t really bat an eye. I say unleash Vulcan this week and give him Pyke or other high kill supports so he can at least make a real run at the weekly MVP award.
**Evil Geniuses (9-7) -- Finally we come to my number two man. His name? Number two.**
The world goes to hell and suddenly the evil team starts to rise in the standings… if this were a movie, this would be the part where the protagonist begins to investigate. The question, though, is, are we looking at a superhero movie where the good guy wins, or are we looking at a The Departed type of movie where… well, I guess everyone lost in that movie. Bad guys should win more often to better depict real life. EG has flipped a switch the last couple weeks as they’ve dismantled their opponents. The biggest change has been Jiizuke’s consistency -- he showed flashes of hard-carry potential earlier in the season but it was intermixed with games where it felt like he was running it down. Now, though, it seems he’s either managed to reel it in or his team has managed to keep up with his pace -- likely the answer is somewhere in between. This led to him winning Player of the Week in Week 8 and it has propelled EG all the way up to a tie for second place in the LCS. As the new maybe-second-best team in the league, they’ve got a matchup against Cloud9 on Saturday that could be an early preview of the Spring Finals (this is at least the third time I’ve hyped up a #2 vs Cloud9 matchup…), or it could be a humble knock back to earth for them.
**FlyQuest (9-7) -- Solo: A Flyquest Movie**
This tweet from [Solo][1] tells us two things: first, he’s back in the LCS, and second, he’s got a good sense of humor over getting camped. As such, if you run into him in a Solo Queue game, please help out by ganking his ass every single minute. There has been concern surrounding V1per’s level of play all split (he hasn’t been particularly bad, but if there was a link that needed to be shaken up, this felt like the most natural one), so I was glad to see FLY give Solo a try as we approach the playoffs. Solo is a known quantity at this point, and I don’t expect him to step in and immediately be a key cog for FLY, but he might be able to let them adjust their style of play to something that benefits the team as a whole. For example, he -- having never been a carry-oriented player (as opposed to Riven main V1per) -- might be more comfortable playing weak-side matchups and being resource-starved. This might enable FLY’s carries to have just the little bit of extra resources they need to better do their jobs. With FLY splitting two games, it’s hard to say how successful of a pivot it is, but at least they have options if things start to fall apart in, say, a Best-of-5 series. Roster swaps are always risky, but if you’re not willing to test things now, then you might as well roll over and die to the Cloud9 deathball that looms ahead in the playoffs.
[1]: https://twitter.com/SoloLCS/status/1241548004319834112
**TSM (9-7) -- The end is nigh**
TSM going 1-1 on a weekend (the first time all split) truly is a sign of the end times. Though I read a Reddit comment which suggested it still counts as a 2-0 because their loss to IMT screws over TL, which is fair if you are anti-TL (or just generally a fan of chaos). Despite the 46-minute loss to Immortals, I still feel like TSM has a good claim at being #2 overall right now (alongside EG and FLY), and if they are able to secure Syndra, they may be the strongest team, period. Unfortunately… all you have to do is ban that away. I’ll be curious to see how TSM looks on similarly-styled control mages (Orianna, for example), and I expect for it to be pretty good. I don’t think they’ll experiment that much this week with some important seeding on the line, so whatever comps they end up locking in here should reveal their hand as to what they believe their best look is. They’ve been very creative in the draft (for better or worse) this split, and this now is the time for all of that experimentation to bear its fruit. With games against 100 and DIG on the dock, this is a good chance for TSM to prove they’re no longer part of the soup. Or they can simply embrace the soup life -- non-perishable goods are hot, hot, hot right now!
**100 Thieves (8-8) -- 100 to C9**
Another solid week from the Thieves as they took down FLY and then played a close game against C9 until C9 decided the game should go from 100 to 0 in a split second. Or should I say 100 to 9. It’s like they were counting 100 monkeys jumping on the bed except continued the next verse as 100 fell down and broke their heads. This is par for the course for the Thieves, though, who’ve now successfully managed to hang around a .500 record for the entirety of the split. You’d expect them to beat CLG at least on Sunday, too, which means I’m confident this team will make the playoffs at this rate. In fact it’d be disappointing if they don’t, given the way the split has progressed at this point. Whether or not they’ll manage to make a splash when they get there is a different story, but it seems their plan to steadily improve is working. The year is a marathon more than it is a sprint, but with Ssumday still able to pop off in top lane when called to do so, this is a team with the potential to surprise on any given day.
**Immortals (8-8) -- Immortal or I’m mortal?**
IMT is really interesting to me in a Bo5 context because in Game 1 they might be the worst team you’ve played against since you had to play against your own team in your Platinum promos, and then Game 2 they might make you feel like you are tied to horses that are pulling in opposite directions. The chaos has been a welcome addition to NA, which has more often been known as NAram for how often we just group mid and slam into each other. IMT is a team that will circumvent that when they are able to. The caveat being they aren’t always capable of reaching a position where they can flex those creative muscles. Sometimes, as we saw in the game against FLY, they just get stomped on. But with one “easy” game against DIG this coming weekend, I also figure they’re in a great spot to clinch a playoff spot. They might be the Tennessee Titans of this playoffs -- a weird underdog that keeps winning and you aren’t actually sure if they’re good or not. Or they might just be the Immortals of this playoffs -- shake a magic eight ball for the most accurate prediction.
**Team Liquid (7-9) -- They blue it?**
thisisfine.jpeg
All season most of us have been saying that we aren’t going to count TL out until they’re actually out, and with games left against the two teams that have sat at #1 and #2 (C9 and FLY) for most of the season, they may finally be on the way out. If I am C9 especially -- there is a good chance TL needs to win both games to even force a tiebreaker, which means C9 could be in a position to knock them out completely. This is like those fantasy movies where the villain receives a prophecy about a “chosen one” and then tries to kill the baby before it can grow up. TL is that baby -- theoretically a monster given the chance to mature and develop -- and C9 is Voldemort… actually maybe not the best example, but you get what I’m saying. Go for Neville instead. If I am C9, I am not scared of any single team (as they are) in the league right now, but perhaps I’m a bit scared of what TL promised to be. Unfortunately for TL, they just haven’t been able to become even a shadow of that expectation. Especially after the game against EG, they’re being knocked for just rolling over and dying without trying anything. This isn’t exactly new criticism for them -- variants of this line are always lobbied at NA teams after disappointing international showings. And, well, at least for now it looks to be true. Not just in individual games but for their split as a whole -- it just feels like they’ve phoned it in, which is a great shame considering the unprecedented run they just had.
**Dignitas (6-10) -- Digging a hole to summer**
DIG enjoyed their best game in a long time thanks to a dominant Rumble performance from Froggen against CLG, which is great, but as it was against 10th place CLG… still perhaps not something to celebrate too much over. DIG is one loss from being eliminated from playoff contention entirely, and even a 2-0 weekend might not be enough to give them a chance. Their destiny is no longer in their hands, which is a shame for a team that opened the split 3-0 and looked to be extremely promising. DIG could redeem their season a bit by winning the last two games, even if it doesn’t end up meaning anything for Spring, it could still be a good morale injection going into the Summer. You could tell yourselves, “We figured it out, but we were just a little too late,” which is a great place to be in the Spring Split because in the grand scheme of a Worlds chase, figuring it out late in Spring just means you’ve figured it out early for Summer. That said, I’m not particularly convinced DIG can figure it out, especially after watching the Fiora top/Qiyana mid/Syndra bot game -- they just look extremely lost.
**Golden Guardians (6-10) -- Out of Gs**
In cartoons, sometimes a character will run off the cliff and continue to run in midair until they finally look down, at which point they crash down. That character feels like the Golden Guardians. They ran out of the gate this split with good focus and coordinated teamplay that kept them in the thick of things, but now as the season winds down, it seems like that’s not enough anymore. They just don’t have the oomph needed to close out games, and when it comes to an even-gold team fight, I’ve just found very little reason to believe in their ability to outplay opponents this split. Even six wins, though, is a mark that eclipses what most people probably would have given them before the split began. So in the context of expectations from fans, they have overachieved. Unfortunately, if you are a professional, as they are, your expectations should be a lot higher than that, and to that end GG is looking like they will fall short. Rotating between Huhi and Keith this split ended up being too unstable, and I feel like going forward, their biggest focus should be locking down on a player for that role.
**Counter Logic Gaming (3-13) -- New CLG, same result**
Pobelter’s injection of spirit into the team seems to have fizzled, though it is still clear that CLG is a much better (or at least more exciting) team now than they were at the beginning of the split. In the greater context of things, though, this was the third place team last summer, so falling all the way to a dead last finish just one split later is truly a puzzling fall. You can find a myriad of excuses for Team Liquid’s fall (which is definitely worse), but it feels a lot harder to explain what happened to CLG. I’m curious if this team will just run this roster out in the summer -- I don’t feel like it’s a bad idea to give the five of them some more time together as they’d probably be right in the thick of the soup if this was the roster from the beginning. Until then, though, it’s going to be another long offseason for CLG, who are soon poised to take over for C9 as having the longest championship drought in the league.
