Team Liquid are once again tied for first place in the North American LCS with a win over CLG today.
CLG had been on the warpath over the past couple of weeks, rising to contention for first place in the league with quality wins. The team had done it off solid marksmen play from ADC Trevor “Stixxay” Hayes and power picks from mid laner Choi “huhi” Jae-hyun.
Then, they threw that out the window against the defending champions today.
Stixxay was put on Vladimir, an AP bruiser, instead of his traditional marksmen, and huhi tried out a gold funneling strategy. CLG hid their composition extremely well in the draft phase, picking a traditional jungler in Sejuani to deceive Liquid. None of that mattered, though, in the face of Liquid ADC Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng’s Kai’Sa.
Doublelift has long been one of the best carries in the region, and Kai’Sa is one of the scariest champions in his arsenal. Despite CLG running a composition dedicated to dive and kill him, he survived fight after fight. An engage in the top lane by CLG led to a Baron for Liquid, which they used to end the game a few minutes later.
While Liquid took the win, their inconsistent play is a worrying indication of NA’s strength as a region. The defending champions lost horribly yesterday against bottom-of-the-barrel Cloud9, but played like the clear best team in the league today. Their inconsistency is a worrying trend for a team that wants to repeat as champions, and they’ll need to clean up their play before playoffs.
Team Liquid will look for revenge against Golden Guardians next Saturday at 7pm CT, while CLG take on OpTic Gaming at 5pm CT.
