The laning assignments in League of Legends are fairly strict. While elements like champion picks will often fluctuate, the specific roles don't really change. Teams almost always have two Solo laners, one Jungler, and a duo lane composed of a Support and ADC. This set-up has been around since the Season 1 days and has been standard since Season 2, so whenever a team attempts to break this mold it often gets a lot of attention. Team SoloMid tried just this in Week 5 when they decided to run an Annie/Xin Zhao lane instead of the standard Duo lane. The concept of double bruiser lanes or Support/AP lanes have been around for a while, but the AP/bruiser lane is a rarity. Reginald also played his part in the comp picking up Zilean who’s ult added another layer to the comp. No other team in the NA LCS to date has really tried to break the meta in such a manner.

TSM’s comp had it’s advantages. For example, if layered correctly, the CC chain from Annie and Xin would provide a way to lock down any member of Vulcun's team in the early phases of the game. Additionally, having Zilean on the team meant Vulcun would have to kill a member of TSM twice and with their specific line-up most of their champs were fairly tanky. Unfortunately for TSM, they didn't really get a chance to show the potential of their comp as one poor call led to them giving up four incredibly early kills for free. Still, there were moments where the strength of the comp looked promising, particularly around Dragon where TSM was able to engage on Vulcun and catch them off guard. That said, it didn't take long for the weaknesses to catch-up with any potential strengths. The lack of an ADC really hurt them as Vulcun reached a tipping point where Zuna could easily just kite around TSM and kill them without much problem. Even if TSM had gotten off to a better start it’s likely that Vulcun’s late game would have outscaled them. The snowball would have been hard to stop, but if Vulcun would have been able to stall out the game it would have been hard for TSM to retain control at the late game stage.

Coincidentally enough, last week we talked about how TSM is scariest when they are playing on comfort champs. It's possible that they had some success with a similar comp in scrims, but seeing a team break out something so off the wall certainly caused some people to scratch their heads. To further elaborate on this point, we made note that TSM shouldn't be given Karthus or Jayce, and in their only win of the week Velocity allowed Reginald to play Karthus. TSM still has the potential to be one of the best teams in North America, but right now something just isn't clicking and they need to fix these problems if they have any hope of qualifying for Worlds.

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Bans:       

22       C9        83.8k
vs.
22        VUL        87.8k

Bans:       
The top two NA LCS teams battled it out in what would become an epic comeback for Cloud 9. Vulcun, despite at points holding a 11–1 kill lead and almost 40% gold lead, could not keep the momentum rolling into Cloud 9's Nexus. However, a look at the draft reveals that the comeback was not so improbable.

Cloud 9 first picked Nunu, a very strong jungler for early–mid game objective control and late game team fight control. Cloud 9's draft continued to build around their Nunu pick with Zyra, Zed, Ryze, and Ashe, giving them a very flexible composition that could instantly initiate fights or quickly disengage from bad positions. Vulcun, on the other hand, stacked their bets on Twisted Fate, Shen, and Evelynn to dominate the early game and punish any mispositionings thereafter. However, the combination of both Tristana and Evelynn was a gamble for Vulcun. Although Evelynn can secure development for Tristana, her power peaks at Tristana’s weakest moment: at inner tower sieges, Tristana lacks the range of Caitlyn or the waveclear, poke, and lockdown of Varus to single handedly demolish towers. By the time Tristana can raze a tower from 650+ range in 7 seconds of Rapid Fire, Evelynn is constrained to punishing a team severely out of position with all-in engages and contributes little to inhibitor turret sieges. Thus, Vulcun held a timing window around 18-25 minutes to find and opening, sweep a teamfight, and quickly break through inner and inhibitor towers. This was exacerbated by Cloud 9's composition: if Vulcun forced towers and dove too early, they would not be able to sustain through the lockdown of Zyra and Nunu to push down the primary objective; however, if Vulcun waited too long for their items, Cloud 9 would be able to effectively clear waves, stall sieges, and nullify dives.

They game played out almost as an exaggeration of each team composition's potential. With the power of their picks, Vulcun crushed Cloud 9 in the early game. Xmithie's Eve terrorized Cloud 9, giving his team 3 kills before anyone hit 6. Meteos' Nunu could not match these ganks, but instead secured his team a 4 minute Dragon.


The game really took off for Vulcun when they consecutively hit 6 and in the span of less than a minute, picked up 5 unanswered kills. Again playing to the power of their composition, Vulcun caught Cloud 9 at the next Dragon and took another 3 kills.

At this point, the clock started ticking for Vulcun. They had won the early game almost too hard: with all three outer towers down before 15 minutes, Vulcun had nothing to do for the next 3 minutes. Since most of the kill gold was on Xmithie, neither Tristana nor Twisted Fate had any core items, and thus Vulcun could not make a centralized push. Opting to triple push and farm out the lanes, Vulcun allowed Cloud 9 to defend under their towers and nullify much of the Evelynn threat. Moreover, despite being 0-3, Zed still posed a huge 1v1 threat, twice catching out and almost bursting down a Vulcun champion. Vulcun aggressively burned Destiny and Stand United to force down towers, but Cloud 9 refused to get caught as a team, sacrificing space for time. Although Vulcun picked up inner towers, they did not find the teamfight they needed to break into Cloud 9's base. Vulcun insisted on pushing lanes simulatenously, diluting their power, but hoping the increased map pressure could crack Cloud 9. Cloud 9 dutifully pushed out their lanes with map-hack-level awareness and did not commit the positioning error for Vulcun to capitalize. Thus, despite almost complete map control over secondary objectives, Vulcun could not convert their gold lead into primary objectives at the rate they needed.

As Vulcun grew increasingly aggressive with their manoeuvres, Cloud 9 became the team to punish. At 24 minutes, Vulcun attempted to catch out Cloud 9 4v3 at Mid inner tower with Flash-Agony's Embrace and Destiny-Zhonya's. Although Vulcun took all 3 kills, Nunu, Ashe, and Zyra ultimates were enough to lock down Vulcun in the tower damage. With Ryze and Zed coming back down from Top, Vulcun could not convert the kills into a tower. Instead, Xmithie was caught out and gave over his shutdown bonus to Ryze.


When Cloud 9 pushed their Mid lane past river for the first time, Xmithie attempted to flank behind them for the initiation Vulcun needed, but was instead spotted on wards and locked down. Cloud 9 immediately turned it back on Vulcun with Flash-Rune Prison, for their first clear team fight victory. While the first fight was perhaps a small turning point for Cloud 9, this one effectively sealed Vulcun out of the game. Cloud 9 secured Baron and Ashe finished off Static Shiv, allowing her to quickly move between lanes and wipe down creep lines and providing Cloud 9 with all the defensive stall they needed. Knowing that Vulcun was on a timer, Cloud 9 allowed them to commit the errors: Zuna, in his attempts to finally chip down towers at range, often found himself in front of his team when the creeps cleared out and took Enchanted Crystal Arrow face first.

Despite Vulcun's towering early lead, the draft meant the onus was always on Vulcun to dictate the game. Cloud 9 played from their position perfectly and did not allow Vulcun to create the pacing they needed. This is not to say that Cloud 9's comeback was inevitable because Vulcun's draft was inferior: if Vulcun had been playing against any lesser team they would have closed out the game before 27 minutes. But after the chaotic early game, Cloud 9 did not present any egregious mistakes for Vulcun to capitalize on; on the other hand, small errors by Vulcun were greeted by an Enchanted Crystal Arrow.

Halfway through the LCS's Summer tournament, and already we could not have a more different Split than in the Spring. Not simply in the teams that are performing at the top of their game (a few months ago Curse was in first, and C9 wasn't even IN the LCS), but in the style of play dominating the NA metagame. As opposed to the fast pushing, quick turret taking style that we saw in almost every game of the last split, in this split LCS teams focus on destroying their opponents in lane and throughout the early game, pushing that lead into the late game. We've seen that Summer Split games are won by jungle invades, frequent ganks, and early teamfights over essential objectives. The most frequent picks thus far illustrate this particularly well: Thresh, Jayce, Draven, Elise, Caitlyn, Sona, Zac, and Kennen top the charts for Games Won and each of these Champions either bully their opponents throughout the laning phase (going even on farm in the worst case) or allow for strong objective control and ganks throughout the game. Draven in particular is a wonderful example of this since his strength is far more skewed towards the early game with the (Patch 3.08) strength of Wicked Blades dropping off when the Axes become harder to catch later in the game.

Contrast these Champions with the most picked ones from the Spring Split: Sona, Jarvan IV, Lulu, Caitlyn, Lux, Nidalee, Renekton, and Nasus, who focus more on poke and/or wave clear. This new early game style is, as one would imagine, best demonstrated by the team that leads the standings: Cloud 9. Their strongest Champions all have an 100% win rate: Rumble, Jayce, Nasus, Draven, and Thresh. Each Champion is perfect for crushing their laning opponents, while Nasus is a perfect pick for taking Dragons and Barons quickly and safely (of course, when Meteos isn't playing Zac and perfectly ganking his lanes). The statistics that best reflect their playstyle are the Kill/Death/Assist Ratio, Average Minions Killed, and the Gold Per Minute. C9 has a team KDA of 4.72, which is higher than every other team except Vulcun, and a Minions Killed of 932.13, lower than Vulcun, Dignitas, and CLG. However, Cloud 9 beats every team in GPM, capping out at 1630.68 (compared to the next highest in Dignitas's 1564.85). How can C9 possibly lead in gold while other teams beat them in CS and Kills? Answer: their games are short but they take every objective they can, earning them more gold than any other team while getting fewer kills in their shorter games. C9's compatibility with their typical "Win Early, Win Game" style keeps them far ahead of their LCS opponents, but with half the Summer Split remaining, no one can say when we’ll see the next metagame shift.

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Bans:       

18        Crs        61.8
vs.
19        CLG        62.1

Bans:       

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The first game of Day 2 brought another battle between one of the oldest rivalries in the NA scene: Curse and CLG. Already beaten once this year by CLG, Curse needed not just to even the score, but to begin a recovery from the bottom of the bracket and their loss in the previous day. CLG, on the other hand, sought to keep their slight lead over their close competition to remain in third place behind Vulcun and Cloud 9. While Curse's draft earned them a bundle of their most frequently picked Champions, CLG's had a more specific intent: utilizing a frightening semi-global composition to create great kill opportunities initiated by bigfatlp's jungle Pantheon and to reinforce a split pushing Zed from Link. The game began evenly with Blue steals and 1v2 lanes on both sides, both of which were eventually reinforced by junglers to create a six minute stalemate. At 6:00, Link rotated to the top lane and helped CLG's duo lane take down the first turret of the game. Afterwards, Doublelift and Chauster switched towards the bottom lane, allowing bigfatlp and the pair to take an early Dragon, increasing CLG's lead. At 9:30, bigfatlp began to show the strength of the Pantheon jungle with a Grand Skyfall that netted him First Blood on Nyjacky and a 2:1 kill trade overall. With another two similar ganks, CLG pulled further ahead, particularly with a drop in bot lane at 13:50 that gave CLG a 3:1 trade and 2 turrets. CLG remained in control for much of the game with a double split push strategy and this domination gave them the power to take an extended teamfight at 24:50 when Curse attempted to take down CLG's mid outer turret. CLG followed this victory with an attempt at Baron at 27:45, but Curse appeared, forced CLG away, and continued it themselves. However, bigfatlp jumped in to the pit and stole the Baron, earning CLG the buff as well as a 6K gold lead. Things looked nearly hopeless for Curse, despite their ability to trade kills well as CLG encroached upon their base from multiple directions. Yet everything changed when Curse caught bigfatlp in the mid lane, beginning a teamfight that Curse won with style, getting three free kills and following up with Baron. Emboldened, Curse rushed the mid lane, pushing all the way through the mid lane while Nien and Link continued split pushing from the sides. Unfortunately for CLG, their full team arrived in the base far too late, allowing Curse to take down the Nexus in a surprising comeback victory.

Despite each team only playing 2 matches each, Week 6 holds potential to be the watershed of the season. Five teams came out of Week 5 within one match and will be heading into 12 and 20 game weeks for the rest of the season. Any momentum they can gather now to break ahead of the pack, if only slightly, will have reverberating effects on the final Summer standings.

The key matches for next week are Curse vs Coast, TSM vs Coast, and CLG vs dignitas. Both Team Coast and CLG have a chance to go 2–0 this week, which would strengthen their position at the top of the pack. On the other hand, Curse, TSM, and dignitas must prepare well for these matches, as their other sets are against the current powerhouses, Cloud 9 and Vulcun. The top finishers from the Spring split are now facing a very real possibility of sinking to the bottom of the standings.