Image
Credit:



Team Liquid impressed as they cleanly took out competitors Cloud9 to make a statement to the other teams around them.

Two extremely clean performances saw them snowball early leads into insurmountable mountains for Cloud9 to climb, who looked lost. Santorin set the tempo early by picking off Perkz, who continued his disappointing slump, too far up in the mid lane.

That, truly, was the story of the series. TL were lethal once C9 slipped, and C9 didn’t make it difficult for them to find opportunities.

11 million KEKW

Perkz even got solokilled by Jensen’s Lee Sin – a sentence that would be unthinkable for quite a few reasons just a year ago.

Cloud9’s one victory involved a throw at Baron that was, thankfully for them, a blip on the radar – but such blips were not present in TL’s gameplay. Tactical’s Ziggs was key in the victories, as he out-macro’d, outmanoeuvred and outplayed Cloud9 all over the map, as well as allowing CoreJJ to roam and join the plays around mid.

We saw Alphari’s Gangplank, CoreJJ’s Shen and… Fudge’s Tahm Kench… in this series, which made it worth the watch alone – Team Liquid were showing off and flexing their muscles as they smashed Cloud9 – while C9 struggled and spluttered trying to find an answer. Fudge’s Tahm Kench, incidentally, was not the answer.

C9 must now beat Golden Guardians to stay alive in the race for worlds.

Elliott Griffiths covers a variety of esports from his home base in the United Kingdom. His greatest emphasis is on competitive Counter-Strike, but he has also covered all aspects of League of Legends esports across the game's various international regions.