League of Legends LCS marry, date, dump recap: Clutch advances to Worlds

Clutch Gaming pulled off the reverse sweep to secure the final LCS spot at the League of Legends World Championship!

“Well, congrats on making #Worlds19, TSM. There’s no way that CG come back from an 0-2. #LCS” With that tweet, Cloud9 – knowingly or not – sealed the fate of the former North American League of Legends titans in the final series of the LCS Regional Qualifier.

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Yes, after going up in the series two games to zero, TSM did the very-thinkable and lost the next three games to Clutch Gaming, missing out on a trip to Worlds for the second time in two years. We’ll break down exactly what happened and why with a little game of marry, date, dump.

The reason for Clutch’s comeback

Marry: Cody “Cody Sun” Sun, who absolutely played immaculately during this series and Clutch’s three series trip through the Gauntlet. He put up absurd damage and KDA numbers but he really outdid himself in this series. He went a combined 15/1/16 in Clutch’s three games and was the biggest difference-maker in the series.

Date: Tanner “Damonte” Damonte, who had some pop-off games in Games 4 and 5 especially. However, he struggled for a lot of the first two games in the series. Among all mid laners in the regional gauntlet, he had the second-lowest kill participation and lowest kill share.

Dump: Heo “Huni” Seung-hoon, who didn’t play particularly well in any of Clutch’s three wins and at times gave TSM windows to get back into the game. At least didn’t die more times than Sergen “Broken Blade” Çelik.

TSM scapegoats

Marry: As much as it pains me to say it, Mingyi “Spica” Lu. The rookie jungler played like it, getting out-pathed by Lira in just about every single game and dying in some really awful spots, missing Sejuani ults, or just not using his ults and not staying in fights to tank damage when he needed to. Unfair as it may be, it felt like TSM were playing with one hand behind their back needing to protect the young jungler by making sure he was playing Sejuani…up until Game 5.

Date: Broken Blade, who had one really solid game on Jayce in Game 1 and then, inexplicably was put on Aatrox for four straight games. It did not go well. The rookie top laner for TSM died an average of 3.2 times per gave and had sub-50% kill participation in the series, and often leaked away deaths in the side lanes.

Dump: Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg, who apologized after the series and saying he didn’t play well enough. Bull crap. Bjergsen did everything in his power to help TSM win those first two games and did more than his fair share to help win crucial team fights.

Draft strategies

Marry: TSM’s drafts in Games 1 through 3 were immaculate. They denied the solo laners of Clutch their power picks while also getting power picks for their own players. The only criticism was taking putting Broken Blade on the Aatrox, where he was clearly not performing up to snuff.

Date: Clutch’s Game 5. Picking Kog’Maw for Cody Sun sure seemed like a questionable move until you realized it was paired with a Tahm Kench and TSM’s only form of engage was Spica on Skarner who was not playing aggressively with his ults or stuns at all. Against a better team, though, this gets punished.

Dump: Clutch’s draft in Game 3. They should not have won this game, picking basically all AD into a team with Sejuani and Sylas. They only won because Spica itemized horribly, going Gargoyle’s Stoneplate after boots and jungle item, then attempting to build Warmogs after that. If Spica had just gone another heavy armor item before Warmogs (Knight’s Vow would be a decent option) he could have held up much more effectively in team fights and tanked more damage.