Final Destination Florida: a Breakdown of the four NA LCS Quarterfinalists

Mar 24, 2018

Just like in Europe, the North American LCS starts its decisive stage this weekend, in a few hours actually, with four teams – three regional powerhouses and a newcomer – fighting to join 100 Thieves and Echo Fox in the semi-finals.

With much hype and excitement surrounding both match-ups, I decided as well to write a quick summary of how each team’s season has been going so far, while giving alongside an overview of their main strengths and weaknesses, and what to expect from them this weekend in Los Angeles.

TSM

For the 5-time NA LCS Champions, it was an unusual regular season, filled with problems and difficulties, with the team managing to confirm their presence at the playoffs only during the final week, following an exceptional improvement during the second half of the split. And well, it is TSM, so they somehow even managed to finish third, after a very long last day which saw the side coming ahead in tiebreakers against Clutch Gaming and Team Liquid.

Coming to 2018 with three new members - prodigy Michael "MikeYeung" Yeung, and European all-star bot lane duo Jesper "Zven" Svenningsen and Alfonso "mithy" Aguirre Rodríguez – TSM were surrounded by extremely high expectations, taking into consideration the absurdly high amount of individual talent within the roster.

But the irregular start to the season resulted in a wave of criticism, especially towards their MikeYeung, who with insecure performances, was jeopardizing veteran and fan favorite Søren "Bjergsen" Bjerg in the midlane, putting his team in a considerable disadvantage.

However, since week 6 everything has changed, with TSM’s members starting to show collective strengths, which obviously reflected on their results. MikeYeung is playing much more confidently, creating opportunities for Bjergsen and Zven to go in and be the carries the team needed, while mithy is also feeling more comfortable at assisting with the shotcalling.

Overall, TSM will arrive at tomorrow’s match against Clutch Gaming as heavy favorites, and as long as they are able to successfully neutralize Febiven, Clutch’s biggest threat, while keeping jungler LirA at bay, the reigning Champions will confirm their tickets to Miami…and have a chance to fight for their 4th NA LCS trophy in a row.

Strengths: With a star-filled roster, TSM’s individual prowess can be decisive in clutch moments. Zven and mithy are likely the best botlane in the league, and this should show tomorrow against Clutch. A confident MikeYeung can be key for the team, especially if he can help Bjergsen getting ahead.

Weaknesses: TSM are still not in perfect tune, which shows in some teamfights. If MikeYeung falls considerably behind, it will significantly impair his lane’s abilities to come back to the game, with the question being how he can adapt for the remaining of the series.

Team Liquid

It seems like a joke but is not. It seems like it is scripted, but it is really not. But once again, Team Liquid’s connection with the number four is above all laws of men and nature, which means they will be playing a high-stakes series against fifth-placed Cloud9 for a spot in Miami.

A much-hyped roster considering the amount of investment needed to assemble such stellar line-up, Jung "Impact" Eon-yeong and Yiliang "Doublelift" Peng are the two main players of a team who actually failed to deliver all expectations in the regular season, whose inconsistency was the main factor for the rather mediocre 11-7 finish.

Liquid alternated great performances – such as in wins over 100 Thieves or Clutch Gaming – with unexplainable losses – the game against the Golden Guardians in week 5 instantly comes to mind – which gives you the question: is this line-up able to survive a possibly very long series, where consistency, adaptability and mental fortitude are the main attributes in order to come out ahead?

Luckily for them, Cloud9 is right now as unstable as they are, with Liquid likely even having the upper hand, considering they took down today’s rivals two times last week, with Jake "Xmithie" Puchero’s Skarner giving Doublelift’s Jhin enough “gifts” in order to make sure the veteran ADC took control of both games. It will be surely interesting to see if C9 will straightaway remove these two champions from the pool, and which weapons Liquid will have to use in order to reply to it.

Strengths: Individual strength is for Team Liquid an important factor too, with their star players being able to dominate a game if given enough resources. Apart from that, Liquid is strong when they hold to their win conditions, using the composition’s advantages to come out ahead – like last week against C9, where they overcame an early deficit to win the game.

Weaknesses: As mentioned above, they are at times simply not stable enough, which costs the side easy games. And at times too one-dimensional, they might be forced to show something new in order to come out ahead in best-of-5s.

Cloud9

Cloud9’s split took a similar direction to Liquid’s, where despite a great start – with new jungler Dennis "Svenskeren" Johnsen instantly making a big impact – the side ultimately failed to keep up with expectations, and have recently showing multiple weaknesses.

With a very sub-par 3-6 record during the second half of the split, which included very disappointing losses to sides such as Counter Logic Gaming and FlyQuest, Cloud9’s problems involve the team lack of creativity and plain bad shotcalling, with the team being at times completely insecure on what to do after getting themselves an advantage, allowing their opposition to come back to the game, as seen last week against Liquid.

Despite having strong carries in form of Zachary "Sneaky" Scuderi and Nicolaj "Jensen" Jensen, such a prospect of insecurity and cluelessness is a very dangerous one coming to such a decisive best-of-5 against one of the most seasoned rosters in North America, where the team can quickly find themselves in a situation in which they fail to show signs of reaction.

Therefore it is paramount for their success today that they managed to fix most of these issues throughout the week – especially the ones shown in both games against Liquid last weekend: if Cloud9 manage to overcome this, they can put their stronger jungle-mid duo to good use, putting themselves in a situation to quickly make plans across the map, catching Liquid unaware.

Strengths: The great synergy between Jensen and Svenskeren is a key factor to come ahead against Liquid’s (theoretically) weakest members. If needed, they can adapt their playstyle to center more on Sneaky – who usually delivers when put in a position of huge responsibility.

Weaknesses: At times unorganized and lost, despite early leads, C9 can quickly bring their opponent back to the game due to their inconsistent calls. Furthermore, even if rookie Licorice is able to hold his own against more seasoned opponents, Impact can prove to be too big of a challenge for a player unexperienced in big best-of-5s.

Clutch Gaming

Arriving to the split expected to be a middle-of-the-pack team, Clutch Gaming proved experts when, with the addition of European star Fabian "Febiven" Diepstraten fitting perfectly with the rest of the former line-up from Team EnVy that gave some of North America’s biggest sides a run for their money last week.

But after a strong showing during the second third of the regular season, Clutch wasn’t able to repeat their performances in the final weeks, displaying a playstyle that is too easily read and counterplayed by stronger opposition, which is the main reason why they had just 3 wins against the Top 6 in the regular season: centered on the idea of having Nam "LirA" Tae-yoo as the main catalyst to propel Febiven to become the big carry Clutch need, if one of them happens to fail behind, the team simply has no idea how to move forward, becoming thus an easy prey and failing to threaten their enemies as they push towards the win.

Therefore, Clutch will arrive to tomorrow’s match against TSM as heavy underdogs – despite actually holding the positive 2-0 head-to-head against the reigning Champions. But the last time both teams faced each other was in week 5, over than a month ago, with TSM since then showing significant improvements, especially around the jungle.

With MikeYeung making sure to camp the midlane to not give the Dutch superstar away room to play, Apollo "Apollo" Price and Nickolas "Hakuho" Surgent need to step up big in the bot lane. Surely a very difficult task, considering who exactly they will be facing, but that is what Clutch need if they want to have a chance to surprise the favorites: show that they are not only “Febiven’s team”, but instead a well-centered side that can give their other members space to shine if the team’s main carry is being held on a tight grasp.

Strengths: The Febiven-LirA combo is a destructive one, being able to quickly decide games in Clutch’s favors if given enough opportunities. LirA can surprise MikeYeung, putting the relatively unexperienced jungler in a tough situation.

Weaknesses: While having a strong jungle-mid duo, Clutch really way too much on those players, leaving at times toplaner Colin "Solo" Earnest at his own peril. Having overall less experience in playoff series can also play against them, with the team maybe having more difficulties to adapt between games.

And once more, to wrap everything up, here are my predictions for this weekend’s quarter-finals matches in the NA LCS:

Team Liquid 3-2 Cloud9