Hey ya’ll this will be a short form breakdown of my thoughts of each week’s NA LCS games. Expect this to pop up every Monday.
Friday the 20th
TSM vs C9
C9 Win
A great overall series played by C9 absolutely destroying and out playing TSM on multiple levels. TSM looks shaky after replacing Doublelift with WildTurtle, and looks as if they forgot how to properly play League of Legends. Bjergsen did not look up to form as expected and the rest of TSM looked lost with the exception of Hauntzer who seemed to be the only full functioning member. Overall TSM has some problems to work out for future games. C9 on the other hand looks really good, a crazy good draft to pigeonhole TSM combined with all the players playing phenomenally.
Echo Fox vs Phoenix1
Phoenix1 Win
Echo Fox looks abysmal. No real reason trying to sugarcoat it. Looper looks lost most of the time and seems to not be in tandem with the rest of his team, Froggen still looks like Froggen. He seems to rely on old tendencies of farming and trying to do things, but it’s never really enough. Keith and Gate… well Keith looks downright awful with some of the worst positioning in League I’ve watched in a while. And its hard to look good on support when your adc seems to be running around with his head cut off, so Gate gets a meh on performance. The shining star for Echo Fox is Akaadian who is an absolute monster, and the team’s rookie. That is not a good sign.
Phoenix1 on the other hand looks real good despite playing a sloppy series. Ryu and Arrow are great additions to the roster and are great carry threats. Zig seems to fulfill his role well enough, Inori got massively out jungled by Akaadian, but I don’t believe that was due to his own play. The one blemish seems to be in lane synergy and communication between Adrian and Arrow. Different languages are always a problem for communication, but Adrian did seem to not fully acclimate himself with Arrow and understand what he needs. This will probably improve with time as the team gets more and more used to playing with each other.
Saturday the 21st
CLG vs Team Liquid
Team Liquid Win
This series was really interesting to watch, on one hand CLG seems to be imploding with almost every single member under performing with the exception of the team’s most criticized member in Huhi. On the other hand, TL’s worst performing member was in their recently acquired superstar jungler Reignover.
I can’t remember the last time I thought Darshan looked good and this series was no exception. Xmithie looked pretty decent, but that’s not saying much when Reignover played like an idiot. Huhi surprisingly looked really good, of course he was against GoldenGlue who is not known for being a punishing superstar mid laner. Stixxay and Aphromoo were questionable as a duo, the botlane that is supposed to be the best duo in North America got manhandled by Piglet and Matt. Overall CLG didn’t play well, especially so when you consider CLG is the only roster in North America that stayed as a full 5 and somehow managed to get worse. Surprising.
Team Liquid’s standout performer was Lourlo, who went massive hard carrying several fights and overall the game for his team. A sentence I never thought I would type after hearing of Team Liquid’s acquisition of Reignover. Reignover, the former Immortals jungler, looked absolutely awful, getting out jungled and overall making some silly decisions which ended up in free kills for CLG. Overall if Reignover cleans up his act, TL should improve.
Team Envy vs FlyQuest
FlyQuest Win
As I predicted Envy look absolutely awful, there isn’t much to talk about for Envy other than the fact that they look pretty bad (and they were playing with a sub in Alex Ich Mid, where Ninja moved to Jungle, because Lira had visa issues.) Unfortunate for Envy but not much to say.
FlyQuest though! FlyQuest is composed of LCS veterans Balls, Moon, Hai, Altec, and Lemonnation. What they lack in mechanical skill they make up for in their insane drafts and shot calling potential. FlyQuest danced circles around Envy and won the watch really easy. Not much to talk about as this was the predicted bottom of the ladder team they faced off against.
Echo Fox vs Immortals
Immortals Win
I feel so bad for Akaadian. LCS debut is with one of the worst teams in the LCS, he’s the clear standout and star, out jungles every person hes faced up against. Participated in every single first blood, and has had to try to hard carry every single game he’s played so far. But Keith plays so bad that it doesn’t even matter. For Akaadian’s sake I hope his team gets better.
Immortals on the other hand also look rather shaky, a rough victory for Immortals, 2 combined come from behind victories to secure the W is not quite what they would have wanted but it’s what they got. They’re a relatively new team, one that has a combined 2 days of practice due to Olleh’s only recent arrival to the States. Ultimately I believe the team will iron out their bad habits and fix their issues. Right now though, they are in for a struggle.
Dignitas vs Phoenix1
Dignitas Win
Oh my god, Ssumday is an absolute monster, I’m sorry for doubting you Dig. Dig’s new LCS debut was absolutely amazing, Ssumday was a standout player and Chaser played rather well. Keane seems to be as good as I remember him to be and Xpecial and LOD show that they can keep up with the Korean imports on their team. Overall Dignitas looked really solid in this showing over Phoenix1.
Phoenix1 seemed to struggle a bit against Dignitas, although it was mostly due to Ssumday absolutely destroying their entire team in teamfight after teamfight. Most of the team held their own with the exception of Zig, who got pretty much manhandled. Overall Phoenix1 is still a strong team and I look forward to seeing how they develop.
Sunday the 22nd
TSM vs Immortals
TSM Win
TSM pulled off a victory but in no way was it clean. They struggled against immortals the first two games of the series and managing to pull out wins from Immortal’s struggles with shotcalling. That being said game 3 was rather clean from TSM’s point of view and the best looking TSM looked all week. I’m fairly certain TSM will fix their problems in the coming weeks so don’t implode on yourselves TSM fans.
Immortals on the other hand seem to have real issues in their late game shotcalling and their ability to make focused plays around the map and not making silly decisions the second they get a lead. As I said before the full roster has only been playing together for a couple of days, but they have still had issues in 2 separate games in Olleh not locking in a ban. Its debatable if that would have cost them the game, but speaks to a different issue in whether or not Olleh can adjust well and wont have some semblance of translation issues within the team.
Team Envy vs CLG
CLG Win
Team Envy blowing leads and letting the game be dictated to them is a recurring issue I expect to see well into the season. They don’t exactly have shot-calling prowess, with the team speaking 2 different languages and can’t focus on out skilling their opponents either. These issues can’t really be fixed until they get their full roster together. But I don’t believe even that will save them.
CLG on the other hand managed to grab a win, despite playing like complete boosted animals and losing early game and various fights to Envy. The best player in the series was Huhi with some good showings from Stixxay. But Huhi pretty much dragged CLG kicking and screaming to a victory. I don’t know what the hell happened to the 4 other members of CLG but for their sake I hope they re-learn how to play League of Legends.
Dignitas vs Cloud 9
Cloud 9 Win
This was definitely the best series of the entire weekend. Pretty much the two best teams at the moment going head to head in a very close, very well-played, and very exciting series. It was a delight to watch compared to the rest of the clown fiestas over the weekend.
Dig continued looking solid and gave a solid-looking Cloud 9 a run for their money. Ssumday took advantage of Ray who was playing for the first two games of the series and managed to get leads in both games in tank matchups. Surprising that he can still manage to find leads in matchups that shouldn’t lead themselves to it. Additionally the drafting by Dignitas is also extremely solid aside from a weird game 1, they proved themselves to have similar knowledge of pick and ban to Cloud 9. Extremely good and as a noted Dignitas hater, I’m excited to see more of them.
Cloud 9 is such a good team that I firmly believe if they had chosen to play Impact every game in this series Cloud 9 would have easily 2-0d Dig. Instead they opted to give Ray some stage time and that’s probably for the best. He played two games and while he did get slightly manhandled by Ssumday, he proved that he has the mechanical prowess and intelligence of a really good top laner. While Impact is better at the moment, Cloud 9 could effectively have a rotating top lane of 2 of the best of their positions. Additionally Jensen is just an absolute monster, single-handedly winning Cloud 9’s first win of the series off his amazing Ekko play in teamfights. Contractz on the other hand didn’t look as solid as he did in the TSM series. With a series of questionable decisions, he might simply have had a few bad games and I’m certain he’s still one of the best North American junglers in the league.
Team Liquid vs FlyQuest
FlyQuest Win
If you had told me a week ago that FlyQuest would be one of the best looking teams in North America I probably would have chuckled and guessed that it was mostly of the back of Hai. And that’s pretty much what happened, FlyQuest’s pick and ban is so bizarre and different from everyone else in how midlane is pinched and manipulated into outlandish picks that favor Hai that it completely demolishes most standard teams as can be seen in this series. GoldenGlue had trouble matching up to Hai’s non top-tier picks and play. Hai seemed to have GoldenGlue’s number and displayed it on stage, leading FlyQuest to a really convincing victory over TL.
TL on the other hand. There are some real clear issues that were displayed in this series. Reignover is not looking rather good, perhaps its new team jitters, but it’s not the performance we normally expect out of him. GoldenGlue got exposed by Hai and its curious why they didn’t attempt a swap for Link in this series to test the waters. Piglet and Matt also didn’t look too hot against Altec and Lemon which was concerning. Lourlo on the other hand is the one bright and shining player on the team with an outstanding display of his skill on Fiora which solo carried his team to victory as he became unstoppable against Balls’ Maokai. If Lourlo keeps it up and the rest of his team pick it up, Team Liquid will return back their top 4 glory.
End of Week 1 Power Rankings
These are based entirely off the results of this week and the previous weeks and are in no way indicative of my beliefs of who the best teams are.
- Cloud 9
- Dignitas
- FlyQuest
- Phoenix1
- TSM
- Team Liquid
- CLG
- Immortals
- Echo Fox
- Team Envy
Once Again From Zero 