Battle Report: LCS Week 2 - TL vs C9

Coming off a strong 2-0 record after week 1 of the LCS, Team Liquid looked to bring their A-game into week 2 especially with their world champion marksman, Piglet… Or so they thought.

A hefty schedule involved a match-up against Cloud 9, a team expecting to rebound after their 0-2 start of the season, and rebound they did. With all the pressure on our shoulders—and the expectation to win (58% of fans said so)--Team Liquid fell to the hands of C9 in a very convincing fashion. C9 proved yet again their ability to play as a team.

A Shaky Champion Selection

Cloud 9 came in extremely prepared, spitting out insta-locks left and right: Irelia, Vi, Lissandra, Annie, and Kalista A.K.A The Kill Piglet comp. It seemed they had already planned to play this composition no matter what champions Team Liquid would choose. So much for not being afraid of one ADC...

The lightning quick picks were a strategy themselves, ultimately giving Liquid less time to decide how they were going to react.

Team liquid ultimately decided on Gnar, Jarvan, Ahri, Sivir, and Leona. The composition wasn’t bad, per se, but it ultimately failed to get the hard engages the team needed with both Leona and Sivir behind in both gold and levels.

Dragons… dragons… and gold leads…

… And vision. Cloud 9 is a team that plays the “I’m ahead and you’re not” game quite well, utilizing their gold lead to control varying areas of the map at their will. Whenever dragon was approaching spawn, they would lace the dragon side of the map with wards… lots and lots of wards:

C9 Dragon #1
C9 Dragon #2 – 18 minutes
C9 Dragon #3 – 24 minutes
C9 Dragon #4 – 30 minutes

After effectively shutting down Piglet and Xpecial during the laning phase, it became easy for them to slowly bleed Team Liquid out and take the game. All-in-all, TL was just too scared of Cloud 9, or more specifically, Sneaky’s Kalista, and opted to play more passively despite having a strong hard-engage composition.

A Decisive Team Fight

A few minutes into the game Cloud 9 would begin to slowly accumulate a gold lead: 4k at the 18 minute mark and 7k+ and the 30 minute mark. Cloud 9 continuously locked down FeniX and IWillDominate, securing kills and gained map control over the course of the game.

In all honestly, Team liquid would play out 5v5 team fights quite well, going as far as to take an even 3 for 3 in the top lane despite being behind. Sadly, no matter how much coordination team Liquid could muster, the Cloud 9’s gold lead was solid, giving Sneaky’s Kalista a significant advantage over Piglet’s Sivir in the damage department.

We lost, big whoop

With all the expectations riding on a world champion’s shoulders, it was quite the shock--despite how good we know Cloud 9 can be—when Team Liquid lost, at least in the way they did. We were outmatched in every phase of the game, an effect that might have been caused by the communication discrepancy between Xpecial and Piglet. Or maybe it was aliens.

This just in: Turns out Piglet didn’t have masteries. #0/0/0

Well, it turns out Piglet didn’t have masteries on during the whole match. That kind of sucks.

Some say it doesn’t matter. Others say it does. To me, it may have affected the early game a tad bit, especially during the 3-man tower dive that gave-up first-blood (Xpecial) to Cloud 9… But hey, Cloud 9 played really well so we may actually never know if it actually mattered or not.

I’m just amused by this scenario, considering Riot would typically allow a match reset if lack of masteries was noticed early on… Competitive merits, you know?

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