2022 LCS Spring Split Week 3 Day 2 Recap

Lots of bangers today! Summit carries Cloud9. CoreJJ picks up where he left off.

EG vs IMT: Revenge gets his revenge

Immortals turn in their best game of the entire year so far with an exciting win over Evil Geniuses off the back of Revenge’s Graves and Xerxe’s Volibear. A relatively boring early game devolved into skirmishes and fights across the map as Xerxe made his mark on the game with his usual intelligent pathing as well as some uncharacteristically chad dives that boosted IMT up to an early lead.

Evil Geniuses continue to disappoint after their inspiring (haha, get it? Cuz their jungler is Inspired??) Lock-In performance by finishing 2-4 at the end of Week 3. While individually they do not look subpar, their coordination as well as Jojo’s constant aggressive plays have often piled up small disadvantages throughout the games that eventually result in them holding the L at the end of the game. I am not too worried about them however, especially with world-renowned coach Peter Dun manning the ship, I am certain this team will perform in the playoffs.

Special shoutout to Revenge for this game; I criticized him on yesterday’s recap for his inability to accelerate his lead and really carry his team to victory and boy did he deliver this time around. From the 1v2 kill straight off the chronobreak, to intelligent razor-thin flanks in big teamfights, to eventually solo-ending the game while his team fights at dragon pit, Revenge was nothing short of outstanding today and deserving of the MVP honors.

BlogOfLegends MVP: IMT Revenge (1) 

100T vs FLY

The day of (good) exciting matches return as FlyQuest continue their run by taking down the reigning champions in a full-fledged brawl. While 100 Thieves got out to an early start, Josedeodo was able to camp Kumo’s Tryndamere to get him ahead and Kumo was able to repay in kind with some sick dive plays that propelled FLY to some objectives.

But toucouille was the star of the show as the Veigar counterpick into Corki rears its head once again, and the man pulled off a psychotic outplay on a surging 100 Thieves to shut the door on any sort of comeback from the reigning champions and push FlyQuest to 5-1, a record no one expected from this team six games in.

BlogOfLegends MVP: FLY toucouille (2)

TSM vs C9

Bangers continue as TSM vs C9 lives up to its prestigious name, despite everything being so different now. TSM jump out to a monstrous kill lead with their repeat dives in bot lane, spoon feeding Tactical’s Jinx through the sublime efforts of Yursan’s Alistar and Spica’s Xin Zhao.

Yursan has been playing well since he has been substituted for Shenyi, and it is clear as day to see TSM playing better under his shotcalling as a native English speaker. Spica himself got an unofficial Quadra Kill near the baron fight to keep TSM’s lead healthy as they secured baron.

However, despite their early leads and Hextech Soul, one pivotal suicide Baron steal from Blabber at around 30 minutes blindsided TSM and they fell apart in the ensuring Elder Dragon fight. Summit, the MVP of this game and the MVP of Cloud9 in general, was able to splitpush his way to the TSM base as the objective dance began and then flanked around TSM for a disgusting Teleport play that took the fed Tactical out of the game and pulled Cloud9 back from an embarrassing early game to a gorgeous comeback win.

I have to say that I am impressed by both teams from this game: both in TSM’s increased coordination with Yursan in the lineup (although they have only been running support tops, we’ll see how they fare in the weeks to come) and at the Cloud9 roster’s resilience in having their famous coach released and still being able to bounce back from yesterday’s loss with a great comeback win off the back of Summit.

BlogOfLegends MVP: C9 Summit (1)

GG vs DIG: Pridestalkr finds a way to close

The flurry of bangers come to a close as Golden Guardians once again jump out to a godforsaken lead versus Dignitas before they wander aimlessly for 20 minutes before finally figuring out how to close the game. Inero’s coaching is in full display here as GG almost always find themselves with an early lead, probably from the coach’s blueprint, but have trouble with Baron turns that would enable them to wield their leads more effectively and lead to cleaner closeouts. What should’ve been a 27 minute game dragged onto 41 minutes because of this indecisiveness, with Pridestalkr finally ending the drought with a decisive engage in Dignitas’ red side jungle that eventually put them, and the viewers, out of their misery.

BlogOfLegends MVP: GG Pridestalkr (2)

Pridestalkr continues to impress with yet another MVP game with aggressive ganks and engages that fed Ablazeolive’s Veigar and allowed the terror of LCS to reign supreme once again. Veigar definitely feels like an LCS champion: scaling mixed with long range aoe cc and instant execution makes it a good champion in a region where playing scaling usually results in championship trophies. I, for one, cannot wait until his cage gets its stun duration nerfed – it doesn’t make sense for a champion to have thousands of gold worth of ability power from his passive as well as a game-changing crowd control basic ability.

CLG vs TL: Back in Business

Second game back and CoreJJ already secured his first MVP in an absolutely hilarious display of power as Team Liquid tie FlyQuest atop the LCS standings at the end of Week 3. As expected of the superstar bottom lane, the HansJJ combo annihilated the CounterLogic bottom lane with yet another one of Santorin’s patented level two Trundle ganks. CoreJJ promptly took over the map, snowballing to more kills in the bottom lane while also roaming to the other lanes simultaneously, allowing TL to accelerate the game so fast that they got the bottom lane inhibitor by 17 minutes. CLG managed to comeback with a pivotal top lane ace that resulted in a Baron, but were not able to capitalize on it as Bjergsen’s Teleport flank to kill Jenkins into Hextech Soul spelled the end of the line for CLG.

BlogOfLegends MVP: TL CoreJJ (1)

2022 LCS Week 3 MVP: C9 Summit [1]

Amidst the sudden release of their super-famous coach LS, Cloud9 looked all sorts of discombobulated this week – except for Summit. The Korean top lane import shone bright this week, brighter than his opponents, brighter than his teammates, with a complete demolition across the board from both games.

While he struggled to outdo CLG’s massive gold lead owing to their bot lane dive in Day 1, he was still able to put Jenkins in the dirt owing to his laning prowess and being a thorn in the side of the winless team. He completely took over in Day 2, being the single biggest reason why Cloud9 were able to erase their early game deficit with crisp sidelaning IQ as well as the game-winning flank to take out the hypercarry of TSM and carry C9 to another win. He remains a top 5 player in the league and could look to challenge the likes of Bwipo and toucouille for the League MVP further down the line.