2022 LCS Spring Split Week 2 Day 2 Recap

Bwipo reigns supreme. 9 sheep and 1 Pridestalkr. 100 Thieves destroy Evil Geniuses. Fudge learns a thing or two from Bjergsen.

IMT vs C9: If ye can’t beat em, join em

The Church opens up with Fudge taking a page out of Bjergsen’s book and playing Zilean mid, leading to an MVP performance for the roleswapped Australian. He rampaged through the largely dysfunctional team of Immortals, even showboating near the end of the match after the 30 minute stomp. Summit impressed with a good Malphite performance against Revenge’s Jayce, while Berserker debuted a new, no-mythic, blue Ezreal build by going Muramana + Essence Reaver + Serylda’s Grudge. Overall, Cloud9’s scaling style matches up extremely well against a weak early game team like Immortals – who also drafted scaling carries, but didn’t have any enchanter champions that take that scaling to the next level. IMT, after their miracle win over 100T yesterday, remain a largely uninspiring team who is still sorely lacking on any sort of aggression that leads to abysmal early games.

BlogofLegends MVP: C9 Fudge (1)

TSM vs GG: 9 sheep and 1 Pridestalkr

What the hell was this game… Two bottom tier LCS teams clash in an extremely unsightly, yet extremely exciting back and forth game of League of Legends as Golden Guardians squeak away with the win in an extremely tense base race. The 43 minute game started with Golden Guardians jumping out to an early lead but started to falter as Tactical’s Jinx, powered up by Huni smite top Lulu, started erasing health bars and creating pandemonium all across the Rift. Both teams traded errors back and forth with each other as no carry was good enough to position correctly and win a teamfight decisively, which led to a constant throwing of the advantages between both teams. There is a hot potato joke somewhere in there but I am actually so disgusted with this game that I am not even going to reach for it; just when the LCS was looking good with their “diverse strategies” across the top teams, you get classics like this that remind you of how bad the bottom tier teams are.

BlogofLegends MVP: GG Pridestalkr (1)

Nevertheless it was a fun game and one man stood clearly above the rest for being good enough to make clear decisions in such hectic conditions – and it was Pridestalkr. The EU import continues to impress with his flashy assassin picks, taking over the game on Zed in early to mid game, and finding key combos in the late game onto specific TSM players to drag out the game to its riveting finish. He looks head and shoulders above the rest of his teammates here and if we keeps playing like this, I do not expect him to stay in a bottom-tier org for too long.

EG vs 100T

Another top of the table clash featuring 100 Thieves and Evil Geniuses and it delivered, with 100T powering through to a resounding win over the Lock-In Finalists. The early to mid game were largely uninteractive as both teams farmed up and the game was played around Ssumday’s splitpushing antics on the Tryndamere. 100T played the fights much better owing to split-second engages by Closer’s Jarvan, followed by Huhi’s Sett, allowing the backline to eviscerate the competition. Literally everyone played well from the 100T side and it was quite hard picking an MVP, but I think Ssumday was the man to watch, as he completely took over the sidelane versus Impact’s Graves and scaled into a two-shotting monster in the later stages.

BlogofLegends MVP: 100 Ssumday (1)

FLY vs TL

FlyQuest’s undefeated spree finally comes to an end as Team Liquid get a decisive game over them off the double poke comp drafted for themselves. Bwipo’s Jayce and Bjergsen’s AP Corki rained down hell in mid game sieges and teamfights as FlyQuest were unable to find a massive Jarvan IV/Orianna wombo combo to set up a picturesque engage. It’s quite ironic I see this pairing fail, because Team Liquid’s only loss also comes from the fact they were unable to set up the wombo with the same mid/jg duo. Now I’m convinced that pairing is cursed…

Josedeodo proved to be a powerful threat on the side of FlyQuest, tracking down TL members without flash and constantly picking them off to give his team a fighting chance but Bwipo’s MVP gameplay on Jayce, picking off FlyQuest’s ADC Johnsun twice in clutch sieges, drilled in the final nail of the undefeated run for the Green Team.

BlogofLegends MVP: TL Bwipo (2)

DIG vs CLG

We live in a world where both TSM and CLG are 0-4 going into Week 3. Depends on who you ask, they might just tell you it’s the best timeline they could be living in. Nevertheless, Counter Logic Gaming were fighting an uphill battle for almost all of this game, with River dictating the pace of the game with his intelligent picks with the Poppy. While they took a bit long to close out the game, their scaling picks in Corki and Jinx guaranteed they would only get stronger as the minutes went on. I want to give a special shoutout to Neo, who will be picking up the MVP award for this game, for that game-warping dragon steal why unraveled CLG’s big pick on FakeGod as well as good teamfighting IQ that pretty much made it impossible for CLG to ever come back.

BlogofLegends MVP: DIG Neo (1)

As far as CLG is concerned, just like TSM, I do not think this team is so far below everyone else in power level. While they do suffer from having a relatively bad top laner in Jenkins as well as Contractz being susceptible to make hyper-aggressive plays that blow up in his face, Palafox and Luger make a stable core that is only going to get stronger as they get more games under their belt. Once they fix their cohesion problems and find a team identity around their good carry players, I am sure this team will be able to rack up some wins in no time.

2022 LCS Spring Split Week 2 MVP: Bwipo

The man is just head and shoulders above almost every other player in the League and has a perfect blend of skill and dynamism that make him addicting to watch for audiences. With an uncanny ability to siphon away even the smallest bits of advantage with his hyper-aggressive playstyle, the pressure that Bwipo exudes, whether it’s on weakside Gragas or splitpushing Jayce, is a huge boon to an otherwise good Team Liquid team who still do not have their main roster or their captain on the Rift. Bwipo clearly is someone that most North Americans players, who tend to be passive and self-preserving, can study and learn from – with more players like Bwipo who are willing to play solely to win and push the envelope, North America will surely get much stronger as a region.