League of Legends LCS semifinal preview Cloud9 vs. CLG – perfectly balanced
By Josh Tyler
Today we preview the first LCS semifinal match between Cloud9 and CLG. Which League of Legends team will move on to the championship?
Two League of Legends teams with everything to gain and much more to lose. With a win and a trip to the LCS finals, Cloud9 would guarantee themselves a spot at Worlds. On the other hand, CLG winning would put them in the final position in the Gauntlet at the end of the year.
The consensus two strongest teams after Liquid will duke it out for a spot in the finals and glory. Old teammates will showdown and two of the most storied LCS franchises will fight to reclaim the prestige of years past. Who has the edge?
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In this corner…
CLG, a team who weren’t even in the playoffs at the end of the Spring Split and looking like a team that just couldn’t measure up to the talent level around the LCS. They jettisoned their long-time top laner, Darshan, swapping him for an unproven commodity in Ruin. And then they came back to smash everyone’s expectations to smithereens.
They took down Team Liquid in Week 2 and Cloud9 in Week 7. They ended that massive winless streak against TSM in Week on the back of Wiggily’s Sylas jungle. They faltered in the final tiebreaker game, missing out on a bye and being forced to face OpTic.
In the playoff series last week, they fell behind early and were massively outclassed in Game 1 but managed to come back thanks to some charity from their opponents. They proceeded to annihilate OpTic’s hopes and dreams in Games 2 and 3. CLG is a team that has bounced back time and time again after failures. Why can’t they do it again and make it to the finals?
In the other corner…
We have Cloud9, a storied franchise who always seems to be one of the best teams in the LCS. After suffering a shocking reverse sweep in the spring semifinals, Cloud9 rebounded in the summer to re-establish their claim as the second-best team in the LCS.
According to Oracle’s Elixir, this is the best team in terms of mid and late game shot-calling and macro in the league. They’re the only ones to even come close to Liquid’s kill-to-death ratio on the year and they managed to split the season series against their stiffest competition.
Although they have suffered setbacks, such as losses during the year to non-playoff teams like Echo Fox, 100 Thieves, and FlyQuest, C9 has a knack of winning the big games when they count. They earned a first-round bye by beating their next foe, CLG, in a one-game tiebreaker to end the year.