The North American League Championship Series for League of Legends started this weekend and the games have already been electrifying. Yesterday’s game between Team Solomid and Counter Logic Gaming gave us our first look at TSM”s new support, Biofrost, who crushed the competition. Today, two of League’s biggest teams fought it out, and Immortals managed to clutch out a victory 2-1.
C9 Vs. IMT
The first game was just a back and forth slugfest, teleports and tower dives all around. Each team picked fairly normal team comps, with Adrian on Karma and Huni on Ekko. Reignover even brought out the Olaf, a champion that fits his overly aggressive style by diving the enemy backline with crazy Viking speed. Cloud 9 was doing well in the beginning, winning team fights at Baron in the mid game. Jensen got a sick quadra kill on Azir at 23 minutes that had him shred the entire Immortals backline without being touched.
Cloud 9 secured four dragons by the end of the game, but too bad dragons don’t work like they used to. Eventually, Immortals managed to secure the upper hand, winning teamfights in the mid lane. The final nail in the coffin for Cloud 9 was a scuffle that had Impact’s Gragas getting destroyed and the rest of Immortals steamrolling C9’s squishies.
Game two was way more straightforward. Immortals decided to go for a poke comp with Varus, Ezreal and Ekko. Cloud 9 opted in for a team fight strategy using Maokai, Karma, Fizz and Sivir. Immortals just got out-picked and really struggled to go even in engages. All C9 had to do was start Baron, wait for Immortals to show up, use Sivir and Karma ultimates and then chase down whoever is left standing.
The reason TSM beat Immortals in the Spring Playoffs was because of Huni’s need to go Lucian top, even when tanks were popular in the meta. For a team with such mechanically gifted players, they sure do have problems in the draft phase.
Pobelter on Varus kept getting caught throughout the game as well. Impact on Maokai would just flash on him, and Jensen’s Fizz would eat him alive. Even with Heal and Flash, Pobelter still ended up dying over and over.
In games one and two, Huni decided to go for an unorthodox Ekko build. He might have gone for a trifecta, but C9 finally banned the time boy for game three. Huni went straight AP, instead of going the normal tank route. LCS games are still being played on patch 6.10 so Ekko’s AP scalings aren’t as good as they are on live.
Still, Huni managed to show the power of an AP Ekko, two-shotting whoever C9 was using as a support. Reignover and Huni are still the best top lane and jungle duo in the NA LCS and their synergy is on point. Even if they mess up, they put 110 percent into whatever tower dive they just botched..
In the last game, Immortals decided to remind us why they are the best team in NA. Huni picked Riven and went full Super Saiyan Goku, shredding tanks while still being relatively tanky himself. Adrian, for the first time in his NA career, picked a support besides Janna, Soraka or Karma. Zyra, after her new rework has been seeing play in the bottom lane again, and Adrian played her full AP, getting fed enough to buy a Liandry's Torment and a Void Staff.
Pobelter redeemed himself for his game two performance, showing up big time on Viktor. His ultimates destroyed Sneaky in a few crucial teamfights, blowing him up before he even had a chance to fight. In the end, Immortals managed to win the whole series 2-1 with an aggressive and powerful late-game teamfighting composition. Immortals stuck to their strengths – they rotated around the map quicker than C9, got more early game turrets and went for a ton of “high risk, high reward” plays.
Meteos is back baby!
Even though Cloud 9 lost, they still put up a hell of a fight this series. Meteos reminded us why he used to be one of NA’s best junglers, stealing Elder Drake in game three.If Reignover had won the smite war, the game might have been over.
