League of Legends LCS Summer Playoffs quarterfinals recap – marry, date, kill scapegoats for TSM’s loss
By Josh Tyler
There was a lot of League of Legends action in the 2019 LCS Summer Playoffs. Which teams and players made us want to commit and which made us want to never call them again?
In a thrilling weekend of LCS action, Clutch Gaming and CLG both advanced in their quarterfinals matches (just as all the experts predicted). But which League of Legends players, coaches, and teams made a strong enough impression to say if they’re marriage material (pledging my undying love and respect for their team), dateable (a team that is deserving of love, but hasn’t proven their worth), or ready for the dumping grounds (pretty explanatory)?
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- 2023 LCS Summer Split Awards – LCS All-Pro Team
Drafts
Marry: Clutch
I love what Clutch did against TSM: play to their strengths. In every game, they made it a top priority to keep TSM off their stronger bot lane picks by banning them out in the first ban rotation while leaving junglers up. They dared TSM to pick something other than Jarvan and Sejuani for Mingyi “Spica” Lu and every time TSM flinched.
In every game, Clutch got strong junglers while TSM were forced to grab bot laners early. It proved to be the difference as Clutch snowballed the early game in all four games to victory.
Date: OpTic
CLG didn’t follow my advice to keep Niship “Dhokla” Doshi off his two comfort picks – Poppy and Aatrox – and they almost paid dearly for it in Game 1 Dhokla took Poppy as a counter pick to Kim “Ruin” Hyeong-min’s Jayce and promptly got an early kill. While CLG drafted a scaling team (Azir+Sivir/Braum), OpTic drafted strong lanes where they had the best chance to win (mid/bot), with a stronger jungler (Jarvan into Rek’Sai). OpTic got ahead massively, with the Poppy+Jarvan duo securing first blood and won a lot of mid-game team fights to get a strong lead and two Barons. They lost not because of their draft, but because they got picked and had awful macro in the late game.
In Game 2, while the Zyra pick by Vincent “Biofrost” Wang was quite cheeky, I still think OpTic had a fine draft. They got Dhokla on Aatrox, Trundle into Sejuani, Sylas into a team with strong AoE ultimates, and a strong bot-lane duo in Draven+Morgana. Indeed, OpTic got first blood in that 2v2 bot lane but fell behind due to some very questionable decisions.
Had OpTic played the early game better to get Dhokla ahead so they could play 1-3-1 (or if they just had a better top laner), they could have won this game. In Game 3, though, I don’t think their draft was great (picking Jayce for Dhokla seems questionable) but it wasn’t the reason they lost. The team was giga-tilted from their earlier loss.
Dump: TSM
I have to know what exactly was going through TSM’s minds in the drafts because every single time they seemed content to give Clutch a laning advantage in their strongest lane (bot). They picked Kled for Sergen “Broken Blade” Çelik two games in a row, a decision I thoroughly disagree with (he has not been the best when it comes to picking spots for engages) and put Smoothie on supports like Rakan and Braum when he thrived massively on mage supports like Lux and Yuumi.