Going into quarters, our analysts don’t feel comfortable using stats from the group stage due to the lack of games played. We feel that stats hardly give us the full story, especially when matchups are so lopsided. Going into semis, expect to see in-depth analysis on the matchups.
FlyQuest were able to take a game off 100T in dominating fashion, and look to bring that energy going into the quarterfinals. Kumo, Johnsun and Aphromoo are the stars of the show, and have proven to be a strong core for the team. Toucouille is that star power FLY needs heading into teamfights and skirmishes, while Josedeodo looks admittedly subpar compared to expectations. Despite all of this, we also want to highlight their draft against 100T, where they were able to snag Gwen, Corki and Jinx who are all priority picks in the tournament. We don’t want to take credit away from FLY, but we also want to acknowledge 100T’s horrendous blunder in the draft phase that contributed to their loss. Overall, FLY is solid and looks to be middle-of-the-pack unless they prove to us they’re a top team in the league.
TL on the other hand have shown they’re already a top contender in the league through their group stage run, only losing to EG who are looking like the favorites to win the entire thing. This star-studded lineup has been led by the chad in the top lane Bwipo, who seemingly blows leads open like no other player in the LCS. His proficiency on picks like Graves and Rengar give him early leads in lane, which allow him to influence the results of skirmishes in the mid game. Moreover, his champ pool is seemingly larger than most top laners in the league which give TL a significant advantage in the draft. Besides Bwipo, both Santorin and Bjerg are looking like the stable mid-jungle duo the team needs in order to enable the rest of the team to stay aggressive and accumulate leads in lane. Our analysts think that either bot lane duo is more than good enough when it comes to lane phase, but we think the duo of Yeon and CoreJJ win out when it comes to mid-late game. Yeon has proven he is capable of playing in the LCS, and CoreJJ’s initiating abilities are unparalleled in the LCS.
Prediction: TL 2-0
TL are the stronger team that seem to stomp lower competition with ease. We predict TL to accumulate a 1-2k gold lead by the end of lane phase simply through superior mechanics before they look to fight at objectives and blow open the game. We want to highlight how important Bwipo is to this TL roster, given how he’s able to influence the game so much. While the team looks good as a whole, Bwipo certainly gives this roster the X factor NA teams have been looking for in an import since the beginning of time. We’re interested to see how FLY manages to fend off against TL, but we’re fairly certain they’ll crash and burn.