The LCS playoffs has come down to four remaining teams. The bottom two teams, FlyQuest and Golden Guardians, were eliminated and now the remaining top four seeds will be fighting it out for the chance to go to Houston and play in the LCS finals.
LCS Playoffs: Upper Bracket Round 2
Team Liquid vs 100 Thieves
100 Thieves were able to breeze through the first round of the playoffs by defeating Cloud9 in a quick 3-0 sweep. While they were able to get past the team that just formed a few months ago with three rookies, Team Liquid is a different beast entirely. Gabriël “Bwipo” Rau is one of the best tank players in the world, Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg brings years of experience and consistency with control mages, Lucas “Santorin” Tao Kilmer guards the jungle and the bot lane duo of Steven “Hans sama” Liv and Jo “CoreJJ” Yong-in are one of, if not the best bot lane in the west.
The duel between these two teams will come down to execution in the early game. Will 100 Thieves be able to gain advantages with the champions that Can “Closer” Çelik plays. Lee Sin, Jarvan IV or Volibear. Team Liquid are most comfortable slowly scaling to the late game, and are more comfortable playing in the late game. Their compositions center around picks like Viktor, Graves, and most importantly Jinx. Can the 100 Thieves bot lane punish a safe composition like Jinx and Tahm Kench? Fans will see this weekend.
LCS playoffs Lower bracket
Cloud9 vs Evil Geniuses
The story of this series is either Cloud9’s redemption arc from their loss in the first round, or Evil Geniuses coming back for a destined rematch against Team Liquid.
Before the playoffs, Team Liquid were clearly at the top of the league, and Cloud9 were supposed to be one of the teams to challenge their dominance. However a lackluster playoff performance has brought them down a notch. Cloud9 could choose to draft like they did in the last series, with basic front to back picks like Renekton, Leona or Viktor, or they could bring out some of the new strategies they had at the beginning of the split, such as Karthus, Ivern or Sona. Cloud9 can fold to the pack, or distinguish their identity in this series.
Evil Geniuses are fighting to prove their own expectations for this season with three 20 year olds in core positions – Kacper “Inspired” Słoma, Joseph “jojopyun” Joon Pyun and Kyle “Danny” Sakamaki. They were able to bring Team Liquid to the brink of defeat in their first round matchup. Evil Geniuses even pulled out a three marksman line up that consisted of Ezreal, Graves and Lucian. They will need more of that creativity in order to move on and eventually face Team Liquid.
