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8 thoughts going into Finals
Cloud9 has a shot at claiming the best win percentage ever in the LCS. Here’s 8 thoughts!
Evil Geniuses proved that Cloud9 could bleed by taking a game off of them, but they unfortunately could not prove that C9 can die. A rematch against FLY will determine the final challenger of the split against the behemoth that was C9. Can either of them take three games off C9? Can pigs fall from the sky? All this and more as I’ve got 8 thoughts going into Spring Finals!
**1. How good is good?**
This feels like a question your professor would ask you on the first day of a philosophy class. Some dude bro in the back wearing a cardigan who smells dank (if you know what I mean) pipes up and says something like, “Good is, like, subjective, man.” Which is absolutely incorrect. Good is objective and it is Cloud9. At a whopping 92% win rate so far this split, C9 can secure the all-time best win percentage in the LCS with a 3-0 Final. The crazy thing, though, is if they drop even one game, they will not be able to make that claim. That distinction would then go to… also Cloud9! In their inaugural split in the LCS of Summer 2013, C9 went 30-3 (they’d go 29-4 the next split) to win the first of two consecutive LCS Finals. This iteration of C9 is essentially chasing their own ghost like you do in Mario Kart timed races. So far this playoff, they’ve dismantled both the #2 and #3 seed through a unique and innovative combination of top lane dominance, jungle dominance, mid lane dominance, bot lane dominance, support dominance, draft dominance, Rift Herald dominance, Dragon dominance, Baron dominance, rotation dominance, tower dominance, mid game team fighting dominance, warding dominance, and not-letting-you-reach-late-game dominance. If there is a mystery going into the Final, then it’s the fact that Cloud9 has lost six straight LCS Finals before this. Sometimes curses are more powerful than reality, and with seven being a magical number of sorts, maybe the curse is pulling them in.
**2. Ranking C9 among all-time LCS greats**
Okay, so the rule for this quick and arbitrary Top 5 ranking is that, outside of this split’s C9, the other teams must be champions (sorry 2016 IMT). I’m not going to add any weird caveats about how I’m ranking this (it’s pure guts, baby), so [hit me][1] with your Top 5 if you disagree!
1. Cloud9 2013 Summer
2. Cloud9 2014 Spring
3. Cloud9 2020 Spring
4. TSM 2016 Summer
5. TL 2019 Spring
First off, I am extremely biased to the original C9 squad as they are my favorite team to have ever played League of Legends, but if you are looking for a team that completely revolutionized the NA scene, then it’s them. They essentially forced Reginald and TheOddOne, two legends at the time, into retirement by completely overwhelming all competition. And one of the greatest what-ifs of all time is if Hai’s lung hadn’t collapsed after the 2014 Spring Split, would C9 have actually fallen from their reign? It’s hard to say, but the “fall” was still back-to-back 2nd place finishes (which meant this roster went to four straight finals before Hai departed the team the first time). That felt like the first in a string of bad luck for C9 -- we have the Jensen Zhonya’s, reverse sweeps, the 0-4 Week 2 at Worlds, and now COVID-19 has put a major damper on this split even if C9 does win. There is always a price for success for this roster. This has to make you nervous if you are a C9 fan (you start to wonder if a goat got banished from their house) -- being a “favorite” doesn’t mean anything once you actually step onto the Rift.
**3. Coach of the Split and Expectations**
Congratulations to Reapered for winning the Coach of the Split award -- it’s always a difficult award to give because the bulk of a coach’s work is done behind the curtains. However, that he’s been one of the constants on C9’s success over the years despite major roster overhauls means a lot, and this split in particular I felt like this C9 roster, while expected to be solid, majorly overachieved relative to what we thought they’d do. Like, no one thought they’d be this good. I really want us to take a moment and think about that -- compare this to last year’s TL or G2 for example when none of us were particularly surprised to see them dominate. They were built to do as such and did, in fact, do as such. This year’s TL was supposed to be the same, but that of course didn’t pan out. C9 is more like last year’s FPX -- an insanely dominant team that came together thanks to their pieces meshing more than necessarily being individual superstars. That narrative shifts a bit as they continue to win, though. Going into Summer, you’d say C9 is definitely a “super team,” but it’s one that earned the status rather than having been built as such. Zven was largely seen as a disappointment in NA before this split. Vulcan was an exciting prospect but wasn’t seen as anything more than a middle to upper-middle level player. Blaber was in Svenskeren’s shadow, and Nisqy was seen as a solid player but maybe not worth the import slot. Only Licorice shouldered a “superstar” status before this split began, but now all five of them can claim being the best in their role in NA. That’s a monumental achievement and say what you will about “home grown” NA talent, but the team itself came together in NA and improved in NA, and I think that’s awesome.
**4. The MVP case for each player**
I used all three of my MVP votes on C9 players, and I don’t think I’m alone there -- I just feel like it’d be a crime for a C9 player to not receive the award after the kind of split they had (and the kind of split the other nine teams had). So let’s break it down on why each player might or might not deserve the award.
**Licorice:**
- Case for: extremely flexible champion pool and playstyle. Can carry and can play weak side.
- Case against: played a lot of weak side top lane, which limited his ability to carry. Top lane meta also did not favor carry styles this split. I think it’s unlikely he wins it because of this.
**Blaber:**
- Case for: had to replace the previous MVP and did a fantastic job. Applies early pressure like no other, and C9 is winning games largely because of massive early leads and objective control that snowballs.
- Case against: it’s easier for junglers to look good if their lanes are winning. It’s a chicken-or-egg scenario.
**Nisqy:**
- Case for: C9 only lost their mid lane outer turret a couple times this split, which is wild considering how much Nisqy roamed. His playstyle helped create a ton of pressure and space for his teammates to play, and he has been aggressive at making plays to snowball leads.
- Case against: takes some early CS deficits -- maybe hard to tell if he’s just great at roaming or if other players are bad at punishing his style. Ultimately he looks better but perhaps that’s tied to the pieces around him changing.
**Zven:**
- Case for: led league in KDA including a monstrous deathless run to start the season. He’s been a great insurance policy for C9 as they scale and avoiding needless deaths makes it easy for Vulcan to maneuver around the map.
- Case against: because marksman players lack agency early, and C9 often has their games in the bag already early on, it’s harder to say he’s been the primary factor in their wins.
**Vulcan:**
- Case for: support has become a more and more important role over the years, and his map presence has really opened things up for Blaber. Support also carries bot lane early.
- Case against: ultimately support is still not a particularly “sexy” role and so does not receive as much recognition, whether that’s fair or not. Their impact is just harder to see.
So, who wins? To me it comes down to Nisqy and Blaber, as I think they play the most important roles and have excelled at them. We’ve now revealed that the remaining four candidates are those two, Zven, and Ssumday. Any one of the C9 players could win the award and it would be well deserved.
**5. The E[G]mpire Strikes Back**
Having a selective memory is extremely important for pro players. You can’t remember your missed smites or missed skillshots because that shit will haunt you the next time you go for the same play. And right now EG needs to be that guy you golf with who always conveniently forgets a stroke here or there. They need to take some mulligans and focus solely on the one game in which they clobbered C9 (even if they struggled early). They looked like the second best team down the stretch in the regular season, but without a win against C9, it was hard to say they could challenge. Now, however, that they do have a win, you can see that C9 isn’t necessarily invincible. EG can still capitalize on C9’s mistakes or on drafts from C9 that emphasize early game too much (like Pantheon/Taliyah), and they need to be careful with their Jiizuke side lane strategies. C9 has been way too good at punishing split pushers, and EG needs to be able to play a little bit safer there or pivot away from the strategy altogether. Cloud9 will fight you, so I think it’s about baiting C9 into taking bad fights. First up, though, is a FLY team that they already beat once. I think it’ll be a close matchup, and Svenskeren needs to once again be the difference maker. Shut down PowerOfEvil and EG is likely to win.
**6. The Power of Damage**
After a tense five game series against TSM, in which most of the focus ended up being “wow why does TSM suck,” I want to give some credit to FLY. The clincher was a decisive 26 minute victory that should give them plenty of momentum as we head into the rematch against EG. It’s also worth noting that even through a five game set, Solo wasn’t subbed out for V1per, which feels like a commitment to him no matter what happens the rest of this split. That should be a good confidence boost to a player who has spent a lot of time shuffling in and out of starting lineups in his career. Solo hasn’t been a world beater by any stretch of the imagination, but he has been reliable for them in top lane as they continue to play around PowerOfEvil. IgNar’s ability to find plays in the mid game has also served as a wildcard for them that could turn any game on its head, and it will be interesting to see what adjustments they make ahead of this EG set. I’ve been riding the FLY bandwagon all split and there’s no reason for me to back down now, which leads to my...
**7. Predictions**
We have had a couple of salty runbacks (teams locking in the exact same compositions from the previous game) so far this Playoffs, and both times the loser went on to win the second game. That means this salty runback between FLY and EG is going to follow suit and result in a FLY win. You can escape destiny and you can escape from Tarkov, but you can’t escape the script. I don’t have any real basis for this prediction (I actually think EG is the better team on paper) other than my gut tells me FLY is going to get them in the second go around, and because I think having some momentum from the previous week means a lot. FLY is coming off an adrenaline high with a five game over TSM whereas EG is coming off getting slammed by C9. You learn more when you lose, which means FLY’s lose to learn strategy is going to pay off this time around. Also, the most important reason is that I want to see a different matchup in the finals. Rumors suggest FLY is doing well against C9 in scrims, whatever that means, so I want to see FLY vs. C9 in the finals. It has the added bonus of being Cloud9 vs. Cloud9 Academy if you go back to 2017 when FLY joined the LCS and look at their origin. And then in the Final matchup -- bear with me here for I will provide a very lengthy description of why -- Cloud9 will win. Because they are good.
**8. Celebrating the winner**
One last request I have for you all is simple -- for whichever team wins it all this weekend, it might be nice to send photos or videos of you celebrating their victory. One of the major drawbacks of playing online is that the players won’t have the in-person rush of winning it all with the confetti raining and the crowd going nuts. There won’t be much fanfare at all. It’ll almost feel like winning a Solo Queue game, so I feel like if we could flood their social media accounts with some nice messages, it might give them something to watch and read through when they finally get some time to wind down. It’s been an extremely stressful time for all of us, and I think that includes many of them who are separated by thousands of miles from their families and even now are separated immediately from their teammates. Maybe draw a picture. Maybe make a Twitter account if you don’t have one already. I think putting in just a little bit extra effort here will be a really nice gesture -- let’s show the good side of esports fandom this time!
[1]: http://twitter.com/meanmisterkien
