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NA LCS Spring Week 8: Calm before the storm

Riot games. (Image: Riot Games)
Roar Guru
16th March, 2017
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Another week, another Team Liquid roster change. I mentioned last week that they picked up Adrian of Team Immortals; after another 1-1 week they’ve announced Adrian will be their starting support.

Matt hadn’t been playing well, but Adrian only has around three weeks to learn to play with the rest of the team. Adrian has been a solid shotcaller, but he has never played on the same team as any of his new teammate s before. Their game against Team Dignitas this weekend (which I’ll go into shortly) will be interesting; Dignitas are now in a playoff spot and have been improving, but so have Team Liquid.

Adrian’s performance will probably have a significant impact on the success or failure of this team. With so many changes, staggered over weeks, there is a lot to get used to. This team will need to play like one if they want to escape the relegation bracket.

Going into week eight, here are the standings:

1. Team SoloMid: 12-2 in matches; 24-12 in games
2. Cloud9: 11-3; 24-10
3. Phoenix1: 9-5; 22-12
4. FlyQuest: 7-7; 17-14
4. Counter Logic Gaming: 7-7; 16-19
6. Team Dignitas: 6-8; 16-19
6. Immortals: 6-8; 18-18
8. Echo Fox: 5-9; 13-20
9. Team Liquid: 4-10; 14-21
10. Team Envy: 3-11; 11-22

We have two weeks left, and it still feels like any team could beat any other team (as long as the other team isn’t Team SoloMid). Here are two matches this week that are going to be particularly important in how the rankings shape up over the last two weeks of play.

Team Dignitas versus Team Liquid
I’ve mentioned this one already, but I want to look at it more closely, since it could be a fantastic series to open the weekend. This will be Team Liquid’s first series against a team where the match could feasibly go either way since acquiring Doublelift, and Adrian’s first game on this team full stop. Dignitas meanwhile have been getting better each week; although they lost to Team SoloMid, so has every other team since week three.

Team Dignitas’ match against CounterLogic Gaming last week looked really good. They won the series 2-0, and although they definitely had their weak points, this was still a clean sweep of a team that beat them at their last meeting. Each member played clean games, and although CounterLogic Gaming made mistakes, Dignitas were able to close their games out.

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They did manage to lose the opening game in their Echo Fox series, which is almost impressive with how shaky Fox have been playing. Still, Dignitas were able to pull themselves together to still take the series. Ssumday especially made some excellent plays, finding strong engages when it mattered most.

I have talked about Team Liquid at length for probably the last three weeks (including in the intro to this piece), but I have one more point I want to make. In Adrian they have a new shotcaller who has the potential to make or break this team. He has a much more conservative playstyle than his new carries, which could either temper them, or cause an even bigger disconnect than already existed.

Grassroots esports scenes matter just as much as the international circuits.

This should, in theory, be Team Liquid’s easiest remaining match this season, whereas Dignitas still has opportunities to face off against lower-ranked teams. It serves as somewhat of a litmus test as to whether either of these teams should be in the playoffs; if Team Liquid can beat a sixth-place team, that should make them worthy of that rank too, where if Dignitas can beat a team that has re-built itself over the course of several weeks, with upgrades in each changed slot, they definitely deserve the higher spot in the table.

This is a hard one to call, as have many of the Team Liquid matches recently have been. That said, Dignitas are a team reinvigorated, and I think they should have the ability to win this series. The teams will play at 9am AEDT on Saturday.

CounterLogic Gaming versus FlyQuest
FlyQuest have been slipping pretty seriously in recent weeks, and although I expect them to keep their playoff spot I’m not certain if they will deserve it. CounterLogic Gaming haven’t looked too bad, but their matches are inconsistent; they beat Cloud9 and Phoenix1 in the last couple of weeks, but they lost a game last week to Dignitas.

Currently, both these teams are in fourth place, however by the time they play next week, they will each have had one other match; CounterLogic Gaming against Echo Fox (midday on Saturday) and FlyQuest against Team SoloMid (9am Sunday). FlyQuest is very, very likely to lose that game, and while CounterLogic Gaming is the higher seed by several spots, Echo Fox are only two matches back and was the victor last time the teams met.

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Regardless of the outcomes of these teams’ respective first matches over the weekend, their game against one another at 9am on Monday is important for both sides. With ties currently in fourth and sixth place, they’re both realistically only a couple of lost series away from missing out on playoffs.

FlyQuest hold the head-to-head record going into the match, and will certainly want to keep it. Although FlyQuest will also hold the higher game win percentage, CounterLogic Gaming will definitely want to have this win as a big part of holding fourth place in their own right. Taking into account that there’s a good chance that CounterLogic Gaming will come into this series a match up on FlyQuest anyway, it becomes that much more important to both teams.

Unless FlyQuest have worked out a new approach, CounterLogic Gaming have a fairly straightforward path to victory, at least in theory: stay safe, play off the mistakes. All season, FlyQuest have played aggressive games with off-meta picks; the high-risk/high-reward calls that Hai makes are not always successful, so if CounterLogic Gaming can not get baited in, then take advantage of the unsuccessful calls, they should be able to win this series. FlyQuest badly needs some new strategies, but short of Hai revamping his whole shotcalling style it’s hard to see anything being enough.

All games are, of course, important in the standings, but unless there are several serious upsets this week, week eight should be relatively smooth before we see some much closer games in week nine. These two matches have the highest potential to impact the standings on their own, but of course there are eight other games to be played! What’s on your stream schedule this week?

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