Battle Report: Week 5 NA LCS

Team Liquid (6-4) ends their tough schedule with matches against Counter Logic Gaming (7-3) and Team Gravity (7-3). There were some major ups but equally major downs in our matches against both top 5 teams, ending us 1-1 in week 5 of the LCS.
While our performances weren’t disappointing, especially in our victory against CLG, we’re entering the second rotation and the teams aren’t going to get any easier!



Having our first match of the weekend against the number one team, it’s hard to not be nervous. But one thing I learned about sports curses, it’s that they’re tough to break. CLG, even when we were Team Curse, is a team that just has difficulty against us—we are 12-0 against them. And it showed here. A dominating performance by TL secured a convincing win against the number one seed, and we get to thank Shurima for that.




The one advantage we had is CLG went with a team composition everyone is largely familiar with this season. On the other hand, TL went with a Sion pick—Quas’ versatility never ceases to surprise me—and an Ekko jungle pick, essentially forgoing the top lane carry for a jungle carry. While the strategy isn’t ‘unseen’, we played this out like we knew exactly what CLG was going to do.

At the 3-minute mark, CLG did something they always seem to do against us, but it never works. The legendary lv.2 tower dive: their failure to initiate the play well resulted in an early kill for Quas and an early death from Evelynn; securing a lead for Quas an absolutely nullifying any threat from CLG’s jungler in the early game. They do this every time but it never works against us, it’s not going to magically work one day.

That misplay from CLG was basically the nail in the coffin. CLG did run a more pick-oriented composition where the ability to make hail-mary plays is possible. It just wasn’t likely. FeniX’ Azir became too powerful from the free farm due to lack of jungle pressure, resulting in multiple fights won just from sheer sand soldier might. A fight in CLG’s favor often left Azir to clean up any advantages gained.

It wouldn’t be long before Team Liquid would suffocate CLG, winning the game at the 37-minute mark 20 kills to 6.




Gravity has been fairly consistent this season. Team liquid on the other hand is emotional; our wins are convincing or somewhat catastrophic. This game was one of the few games where you can say ‘it was close’ but in-terms of composition, Gravity just had us beat.




We did get some strong picks with Viktor and Alistar, but their team composition made it extremely difficult to engage. And that was the point. All Gravity wanted to do was avoid confrontation and slowly suffocate us with tower sieging and succeeded. Multiple team fights would sway in favor of both teams but Gravity just pushed better.

Eventually they would push to our base with a secured Baron, and it became impossible to dive. Vayne just can’t deal with the threat of Gragas and Orrianna and all of TL just can’t deal with the tower pushing.

It was a close game but the sieging was too much to handle. Team Gravity would beat out Team Liquid for the second time this season 9 kills to 8 at the 48-minute mark.

This weekend, we go 1-1 – beating out the #1 team in NA at the time, and losing out to our former sister team. Our wins, once again, are convincing, but our losses… We just don’t close. We had the elad over Gravity but didn’t capitalize on it. That has been an issue that has plagued us in our matches versus Team Solomid and Dignitas—we get leads but don’t use. It’s an issue that needs to be solved going into our second and final LCS rotation.