Franchising was supposed to bring parity to the North American LCS, and in the Spring Split it looked as if it had. In the summer, however, Team Liquid are more than just heads and shoulders above the competition—they’re on another level entirely.
The defending champions faced off against Echo Fox on Saturday in a battle for first place, and Liquid steamrolled their opponents. While both teams are tied for first in the standings at 4-2 apiece, the fact that TSM are also 4-2 shows that match records aren’t always the best metric to evaluate teams.
In the two games Liquid has lost this season, star marksman Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng has not been on a high-impact marksman. In the team’s first loss of the split to the Golden Guardians, Doublelift looked uncomfortable on Vladimir, and the team reverted back to standard composition and proceeded to crush every team in their way. Against Clutch Gaming, Doublelift picked up Ezreal, a champion that does little to nothing for the majority of the game, and the team faltered.
When Doublelift is given his signature AD carries, like Xayah or Kai’Sa, he takes over the match. It helps that mid laner Eugene “Pobelter” Park has also stepped it up this season, acting as a dependable second carry for the team. Indeed, the entire team has been firing on all cylinders, and are beating teams with a combination of talent and smart macroplay.
In their stomp of Echo Fox, Liquid showed a perfect understanding of how to beat a gold funnel composition. Early skirmishes prevented Echo Fox marksman Johnny “Altec” Ru from reaching critical mass, and his Kai’Sa was never allowed to scale and become a teamfighting monster. Doublelift and support Kim “Olleh” Joo-sung continued their bot lane dominance, shutting down Fox’s secondary carry.
Echo Fox, on the other hand, seem to be trying out new strategies. Top laner Heo “Huni” Seung-hoon has played four roles this season, only returning to the top lane for the first time this split on Saturday. The team has also played gold funneling compositions three times, losing twice. In their sole win with the strategy, the team was down over five thousand gold at the 15 minute mark and would have lost were it not for a game-saving pentakill by Altec and questionable decisions by Cloud9.
Drafting these weird compositions simply does not work for Echo Fox. While Huni is flexible enough to play in any lane, his teammates are not. Jungler Joshua “Dardoch” Hartnett looked terrible as a top laner versus Clutch, and mid laner Kim “Fenix” Jae-hun has not looked comfortable in either side lane.
Then there’s the problem of playing the gold funneling strategy at all. Dardoch is one of the most mechanically skilled junglers in the entire league, and putting him on support duty is a waste of his talents. Instead of crushing early skirmishes with a Graves or Xin Zhao, Dardoch is relegated to playing Braum or Sejuani with Exhaust and being starved for gold and experience.
TSM has its own problems. Poor draft decisions and passive play in the early game lose it for them more often than not, and it’s often an uphill battle to try and come back into the match. It seems like they don’t respect their opponents, willingly picking champions into losing matchups and praying for late game. Against a team like Liquid, which will happily crush you in 20 minutes, playing reactively simply isn’t an option.
Team Liquid’s proactive early game and strong mid and late game decision making have solidified them as the best team in North America. Their rivals for the trophy, barring major improvements, look to have no chance to prevent the squad from repeating as LCS champions.
