Another year, another LCS. Worlds, though nominally far when looking at a calendar, is nonetheless looming in the minds of all of the teams who want a chance to prove themselves against the Asian powerhouses. But before that can happen, the top LCS squads need to overcome each other in a bloody and merciless elimination bracket to try to secure a spot. Old champions and new contenders collide as the LCS playoffs begin, and no one will rest until their opponents are completely exposed and defeated.
The LiquidLegends writing team is pleased to break down each of the upcoming playoffs matchups in the most volatile split of LCS yet.
Round of 6 Previews
H2K vs. Giants
+ Show Spoiler +
This quarterfinal series looks like the most one-sided in both LCS playoffs for this week. GIANTS come in as the overwhelming underdogs, managing to barely qualify for the LCS playoffs for the first time in their history after narrowly dodging auto-relegation in the Spring Split. With a dismal record of 8-10 for a top team, it's hard to argue that the all-Spanish squad has been particularly impressive over the season. Although they have displayed decent consistency in being able to take games from the majority of teams, they have a dismal record of 0-6 in the Summer Split against the top 3 teams of Fnatic, Origen, and H2k. GIANTS have been thoroughly outclassed when playing an opponent better than them, and it doesn't look likely that they'll pull out the victory against H2k.
Or can they? Of the three top European squads, H2k has experienced a sort of downward spiral in recent days. Starting from their loss to European top dogs Fnatic, which they at one point held a 5k gold lead in, the team has gone a dismal 2-4 in their last 3 weeks. The consistency of play that was almost to be expected from the squad never materialized, as Loulex and Odoamne both dropped the ball significantly in their play. The tactical and calculating nature of H2k just couldn't scrape out wins with individual misplays costing H2k at crucial moments in games. Although it's hard to imagine, this series may be closer than what would normally be expected.
H2k: Downward Spiral
When H2k went on their 8 game winning streak in the Spring Split after acquiring KaSing for support, the pattern of their wins was a very solid formula. The team would get early game advantages with smart fighting, then use that gold lead to push themselves ahead of their opponent, reducing their enemy to the point where they suddenly couldn't do anything. A key part to that early success was Loulex, who was starting to grow into one of the best junglers in Europe. His early pressure along with KaSing's playmaking ability were crucial to H2k's success in the early game.
Even today, this formula remains mostly unchanged. The main difference, however, is Loulex, who has experienced a rather drastic drop in performance over the last couple of weeks. Where once he was a pillar of H2k's early success, he gradually changed into a liability for the team, missing crucial smites at key moments or just not putting the same pressure that he once had in the Spring Season. He now looks like a shadow of his past self, singlehandedly costing H2k games that they might have been able to pull out victories from.
Odoamne, once the pillar of consistency for the team, has also seemed a little off as well. Once being the silent threat on the team, he has recently been careless in lane and in laneswap scenarios, feeding unnecessary kills to the enemy team which cost him crucial advantages that he once had over his opponents. His ability to fit his team has also resulted in him becoming a master of none, with no real big champion threats. Whereas before it was suicide to give him a champion such as Maokai, with his careless play in recent days he hasn't been the threat that he once was.
H2k still remains as the strategists of Europe. The recent decline in individual performance from some of the players has not reduced their ability to crisply rotate, to ward properly, and to get advantages in lanswap scenarios. But individual misplays are starting to cost the team of what was once easy victories for the team. When H2k was still a challenger team under the name of Cloud9 Eclipse, their solid play in the challenger scene was almost as infamous as their tendency to tilt in crunch-time scenarios, costing the team from being able to make the EU LCS twice. The core of the team is still the same as old C9 Eclipse, and the team may be still prone to tilting disastrously. With a Worlds spot potentially on the line, H2k does not want to lose here.
GIANTS: One-man Team
GIANTS is most easily described as a mid-lane centric team. In fact, their only threat is their mid laner PePiiNeRo. Known affectionately as XPepi, after the other famous Spanish mid laner, he has shown throughout the split his ability to carry his team from pretty much any bad scenario the team gets stuck in. This is by far GIANTS's biggest strength but their biggest weakness. A team such as H2k has shown the ability to shut PePiiNeRo down, which inevitably results in loss for GIANTS.
In many way, GIANTS's 0-6 record against the top teams is a significant sign of weakness. They have been able to secure wins over lower teams, but unlike some of the other playoff teams such as Roccat, they have been completely unable to secure any momentum with opponents who out-skill them. Their other lanes are some of the weakest in the league, and with only a mid laner who stands comparable to his competition in Ryu, it will be tough for them to win.
An Uphill Battle
It's extremely difficult to predict a future where GIANTS manages to beat H2k. They've been far too weak in the regular season and lose to H2k both individually and on a strategic level. Despite this, H2k has been on a bit of a downward spiral in the last month, and they have had a past of tilting. Although it's extremely unlikely, H2k could continue their downhill slide and drop to an opponent who they should normally have no problem dispatching.
TiP vs. Dignitas
+ Show Spoiler +
Regular Season woes
These teams came into the season with completely different expectations. Dignitas had barely kept their spot in the LCS after going the distance in their relegations match with Team Fusion and were widely seen as a bottom tier team. Their start to the season, however, was phenomenal as they took games off of TSM, Team Liquid and Team Impulse to end the first half of the split with a 7-2 record.
On the other hand, Team Impulse were seen as a team on the rise, ready to challenge for the NA LCS title. After their first split where Rush’s inexperience and champion pool issues hurt the team in the playoffs, their off season expectations skyrocketed after Rush claimed the number one solo queue rank in Korea, dominating what many saw as the most competitive solo queue environment. Their start to the season, however, was terrible. They dropped every game against higher ranked opposition, whilst only picking up wins against the bottom four teams ending the first half of the season with a 4-5 record.
That’s when Team Impulse flipped the switch, going on an eight game win streak, defeating every team but eventual Summer split leaders Team Liquid, and even that game was a close affair. Losing XiaoWeiXiao so late in the season and some roster shenanigans in the support role added some doubt to their Worlds prospects, but the wins kept rolling in for Impulse. They need to keep that momentum going into playoffs to pull out of their series with Dignitas as victors.
Dignitas’s results took a nose dive after they also lost a critical element of their roster in coach Rico, ending the second half of the split with a 3-6 record. With coach Rico returning for the playoffs, Dignitas will need some serious improvements to further their run into the playoffs.
Matchups to watch
Gamsu vs Impact
The two Korean top laners for Dignitas and TiP have received much of the attention from their teams. Impact as the seasoned veteran has played supportive champions like Maokai, but also shown a strong ability to play champions like Gnar to great effect. Impact’s synergy with Rush has often created scenarios where TiP create a lead in the top lane and then utilize Impact’s teleport to create a play in the top lane.
Gamsu has often fallen behind slightly in unfavorable lane swaps, but jungle pressure has kept him in games where he should have been less effective. His performances on AD top laners like Hecarim and Jarvan IV have drawn bans, but when he gets these champions his effect on the game can be devastating.
It’s probable that the player who gets a lead in the top lane will lead their team to victory, either Gamsu being a major damage source for his team or Impact providing a front line for Rush to leapfrog off to make aggressive plays.
KiWiKid vs Adrian
Kiwikid and Adrian have completely contrasting roles on their teams. Kiwikid is the erratic initiator, who favours champions like Annie and Thresh. Sometimes, he’ll get a four man flash pulverise that will single handedly carry a game, and other times, he’ll completely whiff a flash tibbers. This season, the good Kiwikid has shown up slightly more often than the bad Kiwikid, but every so often you’ll be reminded of Kiwikid’s dark side, and this unpredictability is both what defines Kiwikid and hinders him. His vision control has improved with Helios on the team, but he still places the least wards per minute of any support in the NA LCS.
Adrian’s role on the team is to be the glue to TiP’s play. He’s moved past playing Leona to focus on champions like Alistar and Janna. Rather than being the main initiator, Adrian’s play revolves around acquiring the necessary vision to ensure the aggressive plays from Rush work out more often than not. He places more wards per minute than any other player in the NA LCS, ensuring that Rush’s aggressive, less vision focused play, is balanced by his attention to vision.
With two polar opposite playstyles, we’ll have to see if Kiwikid’s aggression pays off, or if Adrian’s vision control will give Team Impulse the necessary information to ensure that they aren’t caught out in the dark.
Conclusion
Even with the loss of XiaoWeiXiao, TiP has managed to pull off wins with Gate without changing their whole playstyle. The mid lane was never the focus for TiP and as long as Gate fulfills his role and goes even in the mid lane, it’s hard to see how Dignitas can pull off a victory in a best of 5.
In terms of how TiP matchup with all the teams in the playoffs, Dignitas are probably the best matchup for them. Shiphtur has never been known to be an aggressive player who looks to capitalize on his opponent’s mistakes, so Gate should be safe to play a more passive role in the team without being found out in the laning phase. In every other position, Team Impulse has a better matchup and with Impact and Rush hitting their strides, this is TiP’s series to lose.
UoL vs. Roccat
+ Show Spoiler +
Unicorns of Love and Team ROCCAT are two teams that finished in polar opposite positions at the end of the Spring split. While ROC barely managed to avoid being auto-relegated at the end of the regular season, UOL was one playoff win shy of being crowned EU LCS Spring Split Champions. In the Summer split things were just a little different. UOL managed to secure their second straight 9-9 regular season record finishing 4th instead of 5th. ROC, of course, improved a little more to 8-10 and won a tiebreaker to finish three spots higher in UOL’s former spot.
This Bo5 series will undoubtedly be a hard-fought contest between these two evenly matched, middle of the road teams. Excluding ROC’s tiebreaker for playoff seeding, both teams went 1-1 in each of the last two weeks of the split so neither is entering playoffs with any sense of momentum. Even in their head-to-head matches, there is no clear winner. In their previous four meetings this season, each team managed to pick up a win in each split leaving the head-to-head record at 2-2. That said, it’s difficult to prove anything meaningful based specifically on those matches. None of them featured all ten players the teams will be fielding in the playoff series. The closest would be the Week 5 match which ROC won with their current roster, however UOL are two junglers removed from the roster that played.
A quick glance at the stats from the Summer Split tells us that the matchup to pay attention to will be in the midlane. The midlaners, PowerOfEvil and Nukeduck, are by far the primary threats on their teams. Each of them has the highest Total Kill/Death/Assist Ratio (KDA) and Average Share of Team’s Total Damage to Champions (DMG%) on their respective team. Nukeduck even has the highest Average Kill Participation (AKP). When compared against other midlaners, PowerOfEvil ranks 6th in KDA, 4th in DMG%, and 3rd in AKP. Meanwhile, Nukeduck maintains the highest AKP but ranks 4th in KDA and 6th in DMG%. Stats aren’t everything but with how close the rankings are, it’s hard to guess who is more likely to carry their team to victory.
The real decider in who will win the series is UOL’s new jungler, H0R0. With Kikis abandoning his teammates and the team deciding to no longer use Gilius, UOL is entering playoffs with a jungler who hasn’t seen the LCS stage since being auto-relegated with MeetYourMakers at the end of the Spring split. His numbers at the time weren’t impressive, but that’s to be expected when on a team that only managed to secure five wins in a split. If H0R0 turns out to be the jungler UOL needs to reach a new level of play, they might be able to take the series decisively. On the other hand, if H0R0 turns out to be a dud, ROC may have an easier time getting through than anticipated. Each game should be close but one team may eke out the wins and the series may end with a 3-0 or 3-1 score that doesn't reflect it. Either way, both teams would be better off playing each other solely with their fundamentals and using any time available to prepare for Fnatic instead.
Gravity vs. TSM
+ Show Spoiler +
A couple of weeks ago, nobody could have predicted that we’d see this matchup before the final. Gravity were on the up and up, and while TSM had some issues, they hadn’t quite fallen to their current state. So here we are, two teams that were tipped to be top 2 in the regular season, now put into a sudden death best of 5.
A slow, painful decline
Looking back to the Spring playoffs, where TSM looked to be head and shoulders above any other team in NA, a fifth place finish just a couple of months later seemed ludicrous. While their performance at the Mid Season Invitational was disappointing, their performance throughout the split was arguably worse.
First there were the issues with lacklustre performances from Wildturtle. In comes KeithMcBrief, to provide the spark to reignite Wildturtle’s flailing career, but if we’re being brutally honest, it didn’t work out for TSM. Wildturtle is still a bottom tier ADC in NA, and Keith left for College two weeks before the end of the season. Then came the issues with Locodoco, and a detachment with the current meta. In comes TSM owner Reginald to fulfill the role of head coach, since TSM didn’t quite have faith in Locodoco to have authority over the team. Since then TSM have gone 2-2, and the change in coaching has yet to attain the results TSM yearned for.
Perhaps more worrying are TSM’s other issues. From team fighting to Santorin’s lack of aggression, the biggest issues for TSM arise from the fundamentals of the game. Whether that’s lack of practice, or lack of confidence, we just don’t know.
New blood, new season
Gravity’s first season in the LCS was solid and they never lit up the LCS in any meaningful way. A couple of roster changes, with Saintvicious and Cop retiring, and former ADG jungler Move and former Winterfox ADC Altec replacing them, saw Gravity make immediate improvements.
Move was especially enlightening in a scene where junglers were either ward bots or aggressive gankers, and never both. His attention to vision was unparalleled as he rushed sightstone on junglers like Nidalee whom many didn’t consider candidates for sightstone. But vision control is only half the battle, and Move was also able to use this vision to ensure he was at the right place at the right time. Move’s attention to vision also helped support player Bunnyfufu focus on making the aggressive plays he has become famous for.
Gravity were also the first team to play Shen support and the only team to play him at a top level. Most of Gravity’s pick bans revolved around flex picks, and Shen added another layer of complexity to an already complicated pick ban, which many teams struggled to deal with.
With so much of Gravity’s success linked to Move’s control of the map, it seemed only logical that their late season slide correlated with Move’s poor performances.
Uncharacteristic mistakes from Move saw Gravity fall to fellow title contenders Team Impulse, Team Dignitas and even last place team Team Dragon Knights. Gravity’s play has lacked the consistency it had earlier in the season, and they’ll need to rediscover it in order to further their run in playoffs.
Matchups to watch
Move vs Santorin
From most of Gravity’s public statements, we can safely infer that Move’s playstyle is very instinct based. The problem with instinct based play is that often when a player is not 100% focused they can make uncharacteristic mistakes. At his best, Move can control a game almost single handedly, and at his worst, he’ll chase a support and die under tower and at the moment, there seems to be a fine line between good Move and bad Move, and no real middle ground.
Santorin is probably best known for his ability to acquire high KDAs and it isn’t even a meme at this point. This split, Santorin was second only to Piglet in KDA, with an overall KDA of 9.0. However, Santorin’s been known to go missing at key moments of the game, and his vision control alongside Lustboy has been lacklustre. Even on signature champions like Gragas and Nidalee, his impact in the early game and in team fights have been well down on his performances in the previous split.
The issue for Santorin in this matchup, is that at both of their peaks, Move is simply a better player than Santorin, whether it’s in ganking lanes or providing vision control. For Santorin to matchup well against Move, he’ll need to improve his synergy with Lustboy because he just won’t be able to do it alone.
Keane vs Bjergsen
While other positions crumbled around him, Bjergsen was the rock that held TSM together. If Wildturtle or Dyrus weren’t pulling their load, everyone looked towards Bjergsen to carry the team. No time in TSM’s current lineup has this been more true. For TSM to win, it’ll be off the back of Bjergsen. Easily the best mid laner in the NA LCS and arguably the best mid laner in the west, Bjergsen’s ability to play assassins and mages adeptly, while being a very strong laner has been an asset of his play. He’s also the shotcaller of TSM, so priority number one for any team looking to beat TSM is keeping Bjergsen down.
Gravity’s mid laner Keane has been dubbed the ‘anti-carry’ for his ability to pull out weird mid lane counter picks for any meta champion and reduce the carry potential of the other mid laner. His playstyle is more akin to a top laner than a mid laner, often playing top lane champions like Jarvan IV, Hecarim and Rumble in the mid lane and drifting towards a side lane in the mid game to split push while Gravity funnel farm onto Altec.
In an interview Cop said that in a Bo5 set they’d have five cheese picks, and Keane will be central to their pick ban strategies. The issue with Keane’s often erratic off meta play is his lack of consistency. If his counter pick works out, he looks like a genius like in his game against TSM where he played Jarvan IV into Runeglaive Ezreal. Other times, he will straight up feed like in the game where he played Urgot into Azir (also against Bjergsen), and ended the game 0/9/11. Keane has never been the carry of Gravity, but he’ll need to be on point, both in his overall play and in his counterpicks, to ensure Bjergsen doesn’t carry the whole game.
Conclusion:
In the end, it all boils down to controlling the mid lane for both teams. Keane will need the help of Move and Bunnyfufu to ensure he doesn’t get bombarded by ganks from Lustboy and Santorin, and Bjergsen will need help to ensure he can deal with whatever counterpick Keane has up his sleeves. If Keane pulls out a trump card more often than not, Gravity have the ability in the other lanes to defeat TSM. If he pulls out a dud, then it’s likely Bjergsen will lead TSM to victory.
Staff Picks
Impact needs to prove himself. TSM TSM TSM. #TeamPEPI. Can UoL do it again? Is ROCCAT real life!? Does H2K have it in them to show us their true potential? How many times can Dignitas disappoint us? Can Gravity overcome the established NA old guard?
We have no idea. One of our hardworking graphics guys, Zyd, says that TDK will take 1st, T8 2nd, and 3rd will DEFINITELY be NME. Can't argue with that. But here we are – these are the LiquidLegends staff picks for this round of playoffs. Do we know better than you? Probably. Do we think we know better than you? Definitely. We ain't afraid to call it like it is and say, "Hey, the West kinda sucks. Maybe Fnatic can do something? There is always TSM... But really, who are we kidding." So let's rejoice in this small moment where we can watch the bad beat up the worse and predict the most exposed.
JonGalt (3-2) keithasante (3-0) | 739 (3-1) CSheep (3-0) AdsMoFro (3-1) thejuju (3-0) Zess (3-1) DrPuppet (3-1) oo_Wonderful_oo (3-0) | ||
DrPuppet (3-2) | 739 (3-0) CSheep (3-0) AdsMoFro (3-1) JonGalt (3-0) keithasante (3-0) thejuju (3-1) Zess (3-0) oo_Wonderful_oo (3-1) | ||
CSheep (3-1) JonGalt (3-1) oo_Wonderful_oo (3-2) | 739 (3-2) AdsMoFro (3-1) keithasante (3-2) thejuju (3-2) Zess (3-2) DrPuppet (3-1) | ||
739 (3-1) CSheep (3-2) AdsMoFro (3-2) keithasante (3-2) thejuju (3-2) Zess (3-1) DrPuppet (3-2) | JonGalt (TSMTSMTSM-0) oo_Wonderful_oo (3-1) |
If you feel like telling us how wrong we are about the two worst premier regions in League of Legends, be sure to register on LiquidLegends.net and keep up-to-date with the discussion on our forums!