One series was a bit closer than the other but the expected favorites in both matches, Team Liquid and Cloud9 advanced over TSM and 100 Thieves respectively. Now eliminations begin.
Let's get it.
**1. Jensen's impact**
Prior to the 2019 LCS Spring Split, I interviewed Jensen during LCS media days. He had just joined Team Liquid. It was close to his birthday and he was excited about their forthcoming gift of a soda water machine to celebrate. In lieu of interview rooms, press were led to a few empty offices for interviews and the one we used had a list of narratives for the approaching split. At the top was Jensen's name. The dash beside it said, "Has never won in NA."
Jensen has had an odd run of it during his time in North America, especially narratively. He was so frequently defined by what he didn't have (an LCS title) until he had it (when TL beat TSM in that same 2019 Spring Split) and then the narrative shifted to him playing second fiddle to Bjergsen: the default king of the NA mid lane. Following Bjergsen's retirement this past offseason, the narrative shifted again to whether he could now take up that mantle of best NA mid and fill the vacuum left behind by Bjergsen. That vacuum instead was filled by Perkz in the regular season.
They'll play their first best-of-five against each other in the upper bracket.
This past weekend, Jensen was indubitably the star of TL, and that's saying a lot given how monstrous Alphari has been and continues to be. Even in the one TL game loss this past weekend, Jensen was nearly able to turn the tables in a messy bot side river fight where his Sylas unexpectedly came out ahead despite compositional disadvantages. There was no better time for Jensen to step up and prove, once more, that he's still one of the best here which makes TL's meeting with Perkz and C9 all the more interesting.
**2. The Perkz of not being a wallflower**
Overshadowing Jensen for the majority of this past split was Perkz and overshadowing Perkz for the majority of this past split was his own legacy from Europe and the massive amount of money Cloud9 paid for him. Whenever a team pays a lot of money for a player and that amount is known, that same monetary amount is going to be thrown around on social media in immediate doubts as to whether that particular organization is getting the necessary return on their investment. When C9 struggled in Lock-In, until their gradual improvement to finals, the amount C9 paid for Perkz was consistently brought up.
Now, it's referenced much more sparingly and with the consideration that C9 is already receiving what they paid for, especially if they manage to go to the Mid-Season Invitational.
While Jensen's performances were subdued in comparison to his own past LCS splits and Perkz's 2021 stylings on the rift, Perkz has been subdued in comparison to his former self. Sure he still talks a bit of trash, but it's nothing compared to his G2 Esports days. (As an aside, his strong concerns about the 11.6 patch and NA's lack of practice time on it are completely valid.) This entire C9 team could be, and still is sometimes, a bit cocky and fun, yet they also seem to be taking what happened last year quite seriously and aren't stepping out too far in favor of continuing to grind through playoffs.
Instead, a lot of Perkz's wonderful braggadocio is in the details of his play, like counterpicking himself only to stomp on his mid lane opponents anyway or picking a volatile known counter and stomping on his mid lane opponents wholeheartedly. Both sides of this mid lane matchup between C9 and TL are heating up and that bodes well for this Upper Bracket Lock-In Finals rematch between the two.
**3. Identity theft**
You knew it wasn't going to be long before I brought China's LoL Pro League into this so here we go. One thing I think that many Chinese teams excel at, and have excelled at for the past few years, has been having clear-cut team-to-team identities. Naturally, this also means that whatever team's identity matches up with the meta — 2018 Invictus Gaming, 2019 FunPlus Phoenix, and 2020 Suning — will be the LPL's most successful team that year internationally. It's a bit of a guessing game as to whether your team will be that team. One need look no further than last year's Top Esports to see that even the most mechanically-talented of teams can fall if they're ill-suited to the meta.
Identity is something that I've previously (and currently) criticized LCS teams for not having and instead, adapting to whatever they think is strong in that meta without also prioritizing their team's strengths. Now the identity conversation has been almost solely focused on 100 Thieves and their mid lane swap from Damonte to Ryoma. As I wrote last week, the perception has been that they had a clear-cut identity and lost it when the meta shifted. This shift resulted in the Ryoma swap but the actual actions of the team also point towards 100 Thieves, for a reason unknown to us outsiders, prefer to play with Ryoma. It should be reiterated that whatever 100 Thieves are going through that it's hardly his (or Damonte's for that matter) fault.
Yet what we call 100 Thieves’ identity that was crystallized during Lock-In hasn't stuck around as long as whatever you want to call the current team's playstyle. One thing that was brought up consistently in that Lock-In Tournament was that it made sense that 100 Thieves looked so good together because they had pre-existing synergy between four members. Now other rosters, like C9 and even TL who won that same tournament, have gelled together to become even stronger teams while 100 Thieves have struggled.
**4. What it means to be strong**
When the Lock-In Tournament began, TSM were immediately panned for nearly everything: bad drafting, their lack of coordination, paying such a large sum to SwordArt for such little return on their investment. People were calling for Bjergsen to resign as a coach of the team after their 1-2 start in the regular season.
While they didn't look particularly good against TL — TL outpaced them where it mattered, including objective setups, side-laning, and cross-map trading — it wasn't as much of a stomp as the C9-100 Thieves series and TSM should be favored in their match against EG.
Their drafting in particular was interesting and showcased some of the strengths and weaknesses of this TSM team. They're likely never going to flex Tristana mid and TL were more than aware of this in draft. The Lucian for PowerOfEvil was an interesting experiment and I'm glad that they tried it even though it seemed visibly uncomfortable for them. TSM also showcased the prowess of the Seraphine pick where, even in the final match where they were handily beaten by side lane pressure, it was remarkably difficult for TL to end because of the 5v5 power of that team and the Seraphine/Xayah combination. Currently this TSM team is behind both C9 and TL, but they have less to shore up than the other three remaining teams in playoffs.
**5. What we talk about when we talk about LCS playoffs**
Despite having only written last week's column and now this week's offering, it should be apparent to anyone reading that I'm interested in narratives — not only what they are but their effect on players, teams, and the entirety of the LCS. Here are some fun ones for the next two weeks of games.
**Jensen vs. Perkz for the battle of NA mid lane dominance:** this is fairly self-explanatory but I also cover it above in the Perkz and Jensen sections.
**FakeGod and Soligo vs. 100 Thieves:** While on 100 Thieves, both FakeGod and Soligo were called up to help the LCS team as emergency stopgaps. Both of them were found lacking on the LCS stage and, like many NA players, their fates seemed to have been determined on these few performances. Fortunately those fates were not set and now they're both thriving on Dignitas in one of the most unlikely and fun success stories from this past split. Now they take on their former team in an attempt to move on and make a similarly unlikely playoff run.
**Jiizuke vs. everyone calling him a coinflip player:** I'm sick of people calling Jiizuke a coinflip player and so is Jiizuke. As he said in a broadcast interview, everyone is a coinflip player at some point in their careers.
**6. The teams who waited**
It would be remiss of me not to mention Dignitas (who I want to fully embrace their inner Invictus Gaming) and Evil Geniuses (who I compared to the Rubin's Vase figure-ground illusion). They didn't play this past week but they've each had an entire best-of-five series from which to prepare.
Dignitas will take on 100 Thieves and after 100 Thieves' showing this past weekend, may actually be favored. This isn't only because of the 3-0 drubbing that C9 gave 100 Thieves, but because even in those wins, 100 Thieves remained fairly passive and relied on being able to scale and teamfight later. The problem was that they either didn't leverage objectives well and fought at the wrong times with poor setups, or they were simply out-teamfought by C9 themselves. This strategy will be difficult to execute against Dignitas who, above all else, rely on their own hands and teamfighting synergy. Dignitas are still the messier team, but it could end up being stylistically in their favor.
For EG's match against TSM, I'm looking forward to how both teams' drafts will evolve over the course of the series. As mentioned previously, I don't think that TSM's drafts were all that bad, save the odd Lucian mid pick for POE, and even then there is room for experimentation and evolution in a best-of-five series (that's one of the things that makes them so fun). EG always have the potential to surprise in draft and when they make the most of Jiizuke's pocket picks while ensuring a strong jungler for Svenskeren and a comfort pick for Impact, usually good things happen for them.
