LCS Summer 2020 Playoffs: CONGLATURATIONS Cloud9

After being the undisputed best team in the LCS during the Spring Split, Cloud9 has missed going to Worlds for the first time in their organization’s history.

CONGLATURATIONS Cloud9 you have missed out on a trip to the World Championship! After winning the Spring Split championship with perhaps the most dominant performance ever and continuing to look like an unstoppable force in the first half of the Summer Split, they proceeded to fumble the back half of the split and the playoffs like Kevin Malone carrying a pot of chili. And even he didn’t manage to make as big a mess as whatever the heck you guys left behind on the floor these last few months.

A Summer Split that started full of cockiness and domination has now ended in catastrophe. Many will lament the lost opportunity while others will laugh at the failure. Both reactions are warranted.

35-2 for the first three-quarters of the split. A full roster of first-team All-Pros in spring.

“We should only send Cloud9 to Worlds because everyone else in NA is trash.”

“Didn’t have to prepare for FlyQuest they were so predictable.”

“I dOn’T kNoW hOw TsM lOsT wItH zVeN.”

Is your inferiority complex to Team Liquid so massive that you saw their drop-off in spring being called “the greatest collapse of a team in NA history”, couldn’t bear to have TL be the main story of NA, and went “hold my beer”? Because if so, well done you have officially out-imploded TL. And at least they were smart enough to do it in the split that didn’t matter.

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A lot of the blame is already going to Coach Reapered, one of the greatest tactical minds in LCS history, a coach known for being able to push the right buttons of his players. He just got out-coached by TSM. A team that just now figured out that Broken Blade sucks at tanks.

But don’t worry C9 fans, Reapered is just gonna keep sticking Zven on Ezreal over and over and watch him do no damage. Ah but don’t worry, if that doesn’t work he’ll switch it up and put Zven on Ashe or Senna to…do even less damage.

This is the guy who had the second-highest damage per minute last split. Maybe see if you can get him on an ADC that can actually do something?

I know, I know, the meta is different now, utility ADCs are in, and TSM smartly banned away Kalista. But what about Kai’Sa, Jhin, or Aphelios? Nah, Ezreal and Senna all day! It’s not like there was another champion you could have first-picked for yourself has a 96% pick/ban presence worldwide and a 57% win rate on this patch *cough* Caitlyn *cough*.

Speaking of Zven, where did he go anyway? No, Zven, get away from that brush!

An ally has been slain.

Yeah, no clue how TSM didn’t win with that guy. To be real, though, I actually feel bad for Zven. He had to replace the longest-tenured and most popular Cloud9 player in the organization’s history and now they’re missing Worlds for the first time. He’s going to get probably a lot more blame than he deserve especially after such a dominant Spring Split.

I really hope that Zven’s career doesn’t end here because he’s a far better player than these last few months have shown and he deserves–wait where did he go? No, Zven wait for your tank jungler to go in first don’t just walk into the Baron pit!

An ally has been slain.

Oh dammit.

And on that note, where is Blaber? He seems to have disappeared during these playoffs, which explains why he decided to play Evelynn last game. You would think he’d be better at the champion he’s been cosplaying as for the last few months.

You know you’re going to get flamed when freaking Spica outperforms you on a carry jungler. Great adaptation to pick Rek’Sai so you can see the tremors and tell your carry which direction Eve is coming in from before she completely one-shots them off the map while you watch. It’s a real shame that you didn’t have TSM’s 200 IQ coaching staff to tell you that champions with suppressions like Skarner make Evelynn’s life impossible (P.S. Warwick is also a pretty good matchup against Eve).

And, next time you play Evelynn into a champion like Skarner, remember to pay your QSS tax instead of going for a second-item Rabadons. Then maybe you wouldn’t have just gotten suppressed and killed every single time before you can ult. I mean, that’s like taking your counterfeit money to Caeser’s Palace to try and win the money you owe the IRS.

Oh, that swindling Boris got you, just like he got Licorice. Yes Licorice, build a 17-minute Trinity Force when you started the game 0/3 and are playing with two AD Carries, Black Cleaver is definitely a bad item. Blade of the Ruined King is a great purchase on Sett when the other team has zero tanks.

But the greatest trick of them all was Boris selling you that new keyboard. You really should have read the small print because it clearly said on there “some keys may stop working for no reason” so don’t go crying to him that your F key is broken. Just like you guys were saying during the Spring Split to Evil Geniuses, Boris has a strict “no refunds” policy.

And speaking of refunds, Dignitas has asked me to tell you to stop calling them about Vulcan. You already got your money’s worth with that Tahm Kench 1v9 performance in Game 2.

That’s when I knew you were doomed, by the way. You needed to get a God-tier Tahm Kench performance in order to beat TSM. The LPL is laughing so hard about how bad NA players’ positioning is that they think this champion is actually good.

An ally has been slain.

Oh my God, Zven did you just Arcane Shift into the Ashe arrow?? Well, I guess that’s why you keep sticking Vulcan on champions like TK, Braum, and Yuumi. It’s definitely not because he can’t play Thresh or Nautilus or any champion that can actually engage a fight. Hakuho is currently howling with laughter.

And then we get to the mid lane. My friend Nisqy. The selfless, team-oriented mid laner who cares more about helping his team with roams than winning his lane and padding his own stats.

It worked great in spring, when he was surrounded by some of the best side lane carries and jungler in the LCS. Unfortunately, it turned out in summer that your team occasionally needs you to be Batman rather than Robin. No, I said “Batman,” not “the Penguin.”

“Bjergsen needs to change his playstyle for TSM to win. He tries too much to 1v9.” Yeah and he 1v9’ed his team straight to Worlds, he’s that good.

I will give you props, though, you were a monster in that Game 2 on Akali. It’s a shame that you appear to have forgotten that she, Leblanc, and Zoe existed in those other three games though.

But, of course, none of this would have been possible without the owner, Jack. Thanks to your constant tempting of fate all year by antagonizing the gods about how your team was unbeatable and your players should win Player of the Week every single week, the gods appeared to have taken issue with your arrogance and smote the team down.

I can’t exactly blame you for being cocky after roflstomping everyone in the Spring Split and C9 is still probably the most successful organization in the LCS on the international stage. But you won one LCS title and immediately started talking smack like you didn’t avoid your boogeyman in Team Liquid as they imploded in spring. Looks like Doublelift was right: Spring Split didn’t matter but congratulations on that fancy new banner.

That arrogance, by the way, trickled all the way down to the Cloud9 fans, a group I was previously proud to call myself among. We went from being a fanbase that kept our heads down and let our performances speak for themselves to winning one domestic title and suddenly crowing like we were a dynasty.

I get it, I was excited too. We finally got that elusive LCS title, I was so thrilled after our showing in spring. But there was always that little nagging feeling in the back of my mind, that the championship wasn’t quite as satisfying because we didn’t have to beat our two biggest boogeymen, TSM and Team Liquid, to get it. In my mind, we needed to conquer those two demons before we could get comfortable but apparently, I was in the minority.

For the first time, I started to notice that Cloud9 fans were getting a bit too big for their britches. I attributed it a bit to bringing on Monte and Thorin as content creators for the org and bringing a lot of their fans to C9, but it was most definitely clear that the Cloud9 fans went past confidence to straight cockiness after spring. Fans were acting like the team was invincible, ignoring poor play, just saying that this team was bulletproof and would turn it on in playoffs, and oozing obnoxious confidence.

Does that sound a bit like another fanbase that everyone hates? A little like…TSM?

Oh the irony, that C9 fans were supposed to be the chosen ones, to bring balance to NA and not destroy it. But we got our hands on a championship ring for the first time in years and it consumed us like the One Ring consumed Golum.

TSM fans may be arrogant beyond all belief but they’ve had to take their lumps for the last two years. They ate a fair bit of humble pie with their underperformance and shed a lot of those bandwagon fans to Team Liquid with Doublelift and then to C9 in spring. Now they’re all back at TSM and they beat Cloud9 and they’re going back to Worlds. God if they somehow manage to win the summer championship those people will be insufferable.

Next. 20 champions that dominate pro play but suck in solo queue. dark

So let’s pour one out for Cloud9, who saw an end to their historic run of seven-straight trips to Worlds. This year is ultimately going to be one of the great “what ifs” in LCS history because if COVID-19 never struck and this team got to go to MSI, I really think we could have seen the best international performance by an NA team ever. Instead, we get the greatest collapse of a team in league history.

Atlanta Falcons, 28-3. The University of Virginia 1-seed versus a 16-seed. President’s Trophy Tampa Bay Lightning getting swept in the first round. Golden State Warriors blowing a 3-1 lead in the NBA finals. Cloud9 going from 35-2 to 9-11 and not making the World Championship. Conglaturations on the legacy.

Note: This is a work of satire and not intended to be taken seriously. Please do not be too hard on the Cloud9 players and coaching staff who deserve credit for the fantastic job they did more most of the Summer Split. Credit to Youtuber Urinatingtree for the inspiration of this article.

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