Immortals vs Evil Geniuses
Evil Geniuses are on cloud nine after their win against… well Cloud9, but we should not be overly excited about that, since EG’s overall performances was not all that good. By that I’m mostly looking at Huni, who ended the series with impressive numbers, but quite frankly, he did nothing to impress.
In the laning phase Huni was just terrible, yet still managed to end the game with some of the highest marks in his team which is in most part due to this champion’s scaling, not necessarily because he played well, so we should take his performance last week with a grain of salt.
Having said that, Goldenglue played well and I was quite impressed with his contribution. He made some serious damage with Zoe and was arguably the main actor in his team’s win. As for the remainder of the team, they did not produce anything spectacular, so it’s safe to say EG will not suddenly become the second-best team just because of their win over C9 – perhaps a top four.
I was sort of awestruck with Immortals resurgence when they decided to field their academy team, and while they look better, IMT are still not there. There are arguments to be made they are better than 100T, CLG and Dignitas, but going above that, it’s not likely. Last week they lost to Golden Guardians and defeated CLG, who entered the match with a disastrous draft so we can’t praise IMT too much for that win, but a win is still a win.
Despite Immortal’s improvement, we don’t see how they can defeat EG. Having said that, EG are way too inconsistent and are very likely to give up deaths. Across the last three games EG gave up 47 deaths which average at 15.7 and even though they faced TL and C9, most of those deaths were unnecessary.
Another thing I’m worried about is Huni in the top lane. His playstyle is very aggressive without any regard whether he’s ahead of behind his opponent, which usually sees him die several times per game and we can be sure Xmithie will look to take advantage of that to get his top laner ahead.
Other than that, it’s also worth noting that Immortals started to play with much more aggression and averaged 14 kills per game across the last three, and since they are in a do-or-die situation their approach to the game will likely not change. Expect Immortals to claim at least eight kills against the shaky EG.
Prediction: Immortals over 7.5 kills – 1.813
FlyQuest vs Team Liquid
To see Team Liquid sit so high up the standings is just shocking. As a team that has a lot of flaws, they arguably should not be tied-first in the league, but that’s LCS for you.
The biggest issue with TL is Broxah, who is objectively the least impactful jungle in the league. The fact that he ended TL’s last match against 100T with 1/0/2 on Graves is just laughably bad. On a more positive note, CoreJJ and Jensen are doing well and quite frankly, they are the two players who are currently carrying their team to W.
Looking at Liquid play, they seem like a team with good players but they don’t play like a team. Yes that individual quality is enough for them to rack up wins, but as soon as they face a cohesive team, TL will struggle.
Unlike TL who have one of the worst junglers in the league, FlyQuest can be happy with the performances of Santorin, who is in our book one of the top-four junglers in the LCS behind Closer, Blaber and Svenskeren. What’s more, FlyQuest are also a fairly cohesive team and a far more efficient when it comes to moving and executing their plan as a unit.
Another thing to note is that FlyQuest’s playstyle is very boring for a viewer, but their low-variance and scaling compositions are not a bad thing from our perspective. Their drafts are usually solid and it seems like they have a clear plan on what they are looking to do. This might work only half of the time, but when it does, it works very well.
Despite TL’s individual quality, FlyQuest are severely underrated here. Yes, they got stomped by C9 last week, but it really came down to the fact that they have faced C9 who are by far the best LCS team. Before that, however, FlyQuest trashed TSM because they’re a better cohesive unit. I’m not too big on Liquid and while they have solid players, they will likely struggle against FlyQuest who look like a better team with their low-variation late-game scaling compositions.
Prediction: FlyQuest +5.5 kills – 1.877
Prediction: Under 20.5 kills – 1.81
