League of Legends MSI: Three reasons Liquid was lucky to beat Phong Vũ Buffalo
By Josh Tyler
Zeros couldn’t stop Impact
I’ve been hyper-critical of Impact’s performance throughout the LCS Spring Split. Today, though, Impact played his ass off, earning MVP honors for the series. The honor was well-earned, but it also came because of one of PVB’s biggest Achilles Heels for MSI thus far: Zeros.
Zeros was hyped coming into the tournament as one of the best top laners, not in the major region. He had some ups and downs in the play-in stage thus far, but now he had the chance to show his mettle against one of the best top laners in League of Legends history. And boy didn’t he ever.
In Game 1, Zeros did fine in the laning phase, though he did fall behind by about 10-20 farm before being dove and killed by TL’s winning bot lane. This was expected in a Jayce vs. Sylas matchup in the top lane, but unfortunately, Zeros just didn’t end up bring enough damage in team fights to counter the poke damage Impact was able to do. He popped off to go 4/2/7 and carried some of the final fights that allowed Liquid to take the game.
Game 2, however, was Zeros’s game for the taking. He got an early advantage over Impact’s Gangplank as Irelia, but couldn’t ever quite make GP’s weak early game pay like he should. At the 12-minute mark, Zeros was actually up over 30 CS on Impact, yet Impact wouldn’t die until nearly the 19-minute mark. By that point, Zeros had already died twice and Gangplank had out-scaled him.
It’s unclear if it was due purely to Zeros not punishing Impact as hard as he should or not getting proper jungle attention, but Zeros needed to take advantage of this early lead and was not able to. The botched three-man dive we mentioned repeatedly didn’t help matters, which was compounded by Zeros missing an E – Flawless Duet after Impact flashed, but in any case, the proper focus to shutting down Impact on this hyper carry was certainly not given.
In Game 3, Zeros had a good scoreline on Kennen, going 3/1/6, but he made several crucial errors like an awful teleport at level five that allowed Impact to shove in two waves to his tower, denying Zeros all that CS and experience. He had a couple of nice ults to help swing team fights, but ultimately Impact just did more to help his team on Sylas, especially the teleport play to stop that ill-fated Baron attempt by PVB.
Next. MSI MVPs and LVPs from Day 1. dark
Think Liquid deserved to win today’s matches? Have confidence they’ll turn things around? Let us know in the comments below!