NA LCS Playoff Preview: Quarterfinals

Team Solo Mid vs Dignitas

Honestly this series feels like it's going to be much closer than it has any right being. On paper Dignitas is clearly the better team. From adapting to new OP picks, to their sensible picks and bans, to their their often incredible early game roams from Kiwikid, Dig should be considered the clear favorite. What's more Dignitas holds the head to head match up 3-1 over TSM in the regular season. All of that and I still haven't mentioned that TSM lost nearly a week of practice with Amazing in Europe renewing his visa. Still, I can't help but feel the series is tough to call.

Dignitas has hit much better peaks throughout this split; but TSM has been far more consistent. Both teams suffer from serious mistakes in their mid-late game vision and decision making, but TSM has more consistently been able to persevere through those mistakes against the lower tier NA teams. In the end the deciding factor is likely to be champion select, a place that Dignitas has been superior throughout this split. Dig understands both the must pick champions and the weaknesses in TSM's lineup such as Amazing's tendency to fall apart when pushed off the trinity junglers. Dig's tendency to better understand champion select, combined with Amazing losing a week of practice, Lustboy's limited English, and WildTurtle's continued struggles in bot lane should all add together to out weigh Dignitoss' tendency to make poor decisions around Baron.

The inconsistency of both teams is likely to make the series go 5 games. In the end I think Dignitas should take it 3-2.

Curse vs Counter Logic Gaming

Perhaps it's my CLG fan showing through but this series honestly feels like it's CLG's to lose even in the face of Curse's late season surge and 3-1 head to head record against CLG.

Curse surged in the final weeks as CLG slumped, using some interesting strategies like the AD Ttristana mid to snatch a last second 4th place end of the regular season. While Curse has hit their high point pulling out somewhat unusual strategies, CLG's peak this split was entirely about them strategically out playing even the best of NA all across the map. The strategic and rotational play that made CLG a force to be reckoned with during the regular season is what CLG went to Korea to regain. CLG's peak performance this split was unquestionably superior to that of Curse in both map movement and vision control. Now though not only could CLG come back with their slump issues solved, but they've spent the last few weeks learning from some of the best teams in the world while Curse has only had NA opponents to scrim. CLG has all the available tools to bring about a dominant performance in this series, it is simply up to them to use those tools.

While a renewed CLG does have everything it needs to dominate this match up, I don't think it will be a 3-0. There is something to be said for Curse's ability to surprise in champ select. The surprises Curse may have in store could go a long way towards getting them at least 1 game even against Super Saiyan CLG. As a result I predict the series to go 3-1 in favor of CLG. 

Patch 4.1, Welcome back to the League of Draven

It took some time, and a significant cost increase on Trinity Force, before Draven finally saw his original debut in the competitive scene. Once he arrived, though, it was difficult to get through a day of games without seeing him. The Glorious Executioner was a favorite in the competitive scene throughout much of season 3 for his ability to absolutely dominate other ADCs in the laning phase. The incredible 45% AD scaling on Spinning Axes at level 1 combined with his stacking dot passive made Draven level 2 all-in tactics a common theme, and it often made up for his lack luster late game.

The popularity of Draven among teams like DragonBorns in EU and Dignitas in NA led to an impressive combined 32 bans and 23 picks across both regions in the inaugural spring split of the LCS, nearly 25% of all games.  Though he lost popularity in EU after DragonBorns was relegated, Draven continued to have intense popularity in NA among teams like TSM and Cloud 9 causing his pick/ban rate to increase to 37% of all games played in the NA LCS summer split. Draven played a clear part in these and more teams successes in the LCS, so much so that Riot began to consider him a problem champion. Thus came July, patch 3.09, Draven's new passive, and a sudden drop in his popularity in the competitive scene.

Patch 3.09 completely stripped Draven's old damage over time passive, in it's place came the League of Draven. The new passive gave Draven stacks of adoration for catching an axe or last hitting a minion, and those stacks were cashed in for bonus gold on champion kill. The new passive reduced Draven's early kill power, taking away the actually rather significant stacking damage over time from Draven's attacks. To make things worse League of Draven was not very efficient, because it only consumed half the adoration stacks on a kill early kills almost felt punished for the very low return on the passive. Patch 3.11 would improve the passive to it's current point, using all the adoration stacks as well as giving a 50g baseline for the passive, but by then the damage was done. A few picks still occasionally landed on Draven but for the most part the competitive scene had moved on, Cloud 9 was running their Ashe/Zyra duo lane and the Trinity Force users had risen to the top yet again for World Championships.

So after his fall from grace what is it that makes me believe Draven is due for a comeback? A combination of factors that have come together in the last few patches.

The first is the passive fix. Now that it consumes all stacks of adoration early kills no longer feel punished and the longer Draven is able to farm the more incredible a lead he can gain from a single kill. The effectiveness of the new passive is demonstrated quite well in this weekend's Cloud 9 vs Curse game where Sneaky is allowed to safely farm for quite some time on Draven eventually resulting in a 1272 gold bonus, roughly equivalent of 4 individual kills, from League of Draven on his first kill. That number is certainly a bit of an outlier but a similar total can reasonably be expected to be accrued over the course of a game thanks to the passive consuming all stacks of adoration.

The second major factor is the tower changes in patch 4.1. The old standard 2v2 bot matchups are more common and the bot tower is easier to drop now. That plays right to Draven's strengths as an unmatched lane bully. Now if Draven can get a quality all in at level 2 and either kill his opponent or force them out of lane he can make quick work of the enemy turret.

Finally the lineup of current favorite ADCs Jinx, Sivir, and Lucian, all have a very tough time dealing with Draven in lane. Jinx lacks mobility and her range doesn't out pace Draven's for several levels making her an easy victim. You can't spell shield Spinning Axes and that combined with higher damage output of Draven, plus Sivir's lack of mobility, spells doom for Sivir in lane. Lucian is the best equipped of the 3 to fight Draven, but Lucian's mana pool is quickly depleted and using Lucian's double shot passive requires getting in range of Draven's axes. All 3 of the currently most popular AD Carries have a much harder time dealing with Draven than champions with high mobility and ranged poke like Ezreal and Caitlyn, or strong disengage like Vayne.

With so many things once again favoring Draven, the surprise is not that Cloud 9 and Dignitas both brought him back in their matches this weekend, but rather that it took this long for Draven to make his return showing in the LCS.

Dignitas vs Cloud 9, what happened?

Like every game, It all started in Champion Select

Right off the bat we can see that Cloud 9 has made some crucial mistakes in champion select. First they allowed Scarra to have his Gragas which is a well known comfort champion for him. Second Cloud 9 picked Riven for Hai, a match up that worked for people like Faker in the past but remains a mistake for reasons I'll get into in a minute. Finally the Cloud 9 team composition is a mess. Leona is strong engage, Riven and Elise are great pick champions, Shyvana is a strong split pusher, and Lucian is a lane bully, there's no real synergy in the Cloud 9 team. Dignitas' team composition on the other hand is exquisite, they have tons of hard engage and a reasonable amount of disengage. Where Cloud 9's team has no clear goal Dignitas' composition screams that they want to be able to pick advantageous fights and escape from poor ones. 

Hai is Definitely not Faker

Everyone no doubt remembers SKT T1 mid laner Faker's Riven play destroying the mid lane and highlight reals hitting the front of the League subreddit multiple times leading into the Season 3 World Championships. Likely having seen the same plays as us Hai purposefully chose the Riven and expected to man-handle the no-doubt predicted Scarra Gragas. Unfortunately the Riven pick was not heavily prepared by Cloud 9 as some digging on Probuilds shows Hai has rarely played it in solo queue and a concentrated look at past professional games shows Hai has not run mid Riven during Season 3. 

Hai's lack of Riven experience quickly became evident as he made mistake after mistake. Scarra made short work of exploiting every mistake and setting Hai's Riven further behind. The gif below is the first time Scarra crushes Hai, off screen before it starts Hai gets chunked by a Gragas barrel and expends all 3 jumps of Riven's Q signaling to Scarra that Hai can be burst down.



A few moments later Hai returns to the mid lane and again makes the same mistake. In the gif below you can see it starts with Hai finishing his 3 jump of Riven's Q, he then uses his E and Scarra, knowing Hai has no more mobility skills left, immediately reacts and Dignitas secures another kill.



These continued mistakes by Hai and Scarra's relentless capitalization on them all but removed Hai from the game. Hai never does recover either, he ends the game an abysmal 0-7 on his first outing as mid lane Riven.

Sometimes Objectives just aren't Enough

Despite the early kills Dignitas picked up Cloud 9 actually possessed an early lead thanks primarily to well timed rotations allowing C9 to secure uncontested objectives. In the early game Cloud 9 would secure all three outer turrets to Dignitas' one, as well as the first two dragons of the game. Unfortunately thanks to reduced early gold values of Dragon, very close farm numbers on both sides, and Dignitas' staggering 5 early kills, Cloud 9 would only reach a peak gold lead of 1.9k. A lead that quickly evaporated when Hai was again caught by Scarra and killed allowing Dignitas to pick up the mid outer turret and their first dragon of the game. 

Cloud 9 would pick up a few more objectives throughout the game, even going so far as to have Hai and Sneaky back door the bottom inhibitor while Dignitas was picking up a Baron. Their best efforts were simply not enough to compare to the far superior fighting composition Dignitas brought to the table. 

Imaqtpie lives to Fight another Day

The fight that essentially secured the game for Dignitas was actually an attempt by Cloud 9 to force a fight. Seeing QTpie and Kiwikid pushing bottom lane, but critically failing to have knowledge due to lack of wards that Crumbzz is nearby, Cloud 9 attempt to dive onto QTpie in hopes of quickly burning him down. The problems with Cloud 9's composition quickly become evident. Both Hai and Meteos blow all of their gap closers at the very start of the fight just trying to catch up to QTpie and are caught by a Vault Breaker from Crumbzz. Sneaky and Lemonnation manage to catch up to the fight and things almost look like they'll go okay for Cloud 9, but again a lack of wards meant C9 is completely unaware of Scarra combing in from behind them to clean up C9's duo lane and make the fight  go 4-2 in Dignitas' favor.

Both teams willingly engage the next fight which happens a short time later in mid. Cloud 9 does their best dumping Lucian, Leona, and Riven ultimates in an attempt to kill QTpie but a clutch flash from QT dodges the Riven ult that might have finish him off. Dignitas clean up the fight without losing a single member allowing them to pick up Baron after which C9 never willingly engage another fight, and the game eventually falls to Dignitas.

A Taste of Their own Medicine

Going into super week few people had faith in Dignitas to win any match, much less a match against last splits reigning champions, Dig received a mere 10% of the fan vote for this match. Cloud 9's signature team fighting dominance made it difficult to bet against them, but Dignitas not only brought the better team composition they also executed it far better than Cloud 9. The early shut down of Hai exacerbated the issues with Cloud 9's champion picks and they found themselves on the opposite side of a familiar situation. A team with superior team fighting coming out ahead fight after fight. 

While the mistakes of Cloud 9 played a roll in their loss, it was Dignitas who exploited those mistakes. No level 1 cheese, no gimmicks, simply Dignitas refusing to give C9 an inch of breathing room. Now the focus is on next week and the question of if Dignitas can sustain the kind of coordination displayed in this game. If this Dignitas continues to show up to the LCS it's easy to see a future with them being a competitor for top 4 and victories a plenty.