So I decided to do one more pick/ban analysis though for NA this time. This game was quite possibly the best game of the split so far and the only reason Team Liquid didn't win earlier was due to the picks on TSM's side. Liquid had a team that was more focused on the early to mid game and TSM had a superior late game hence why they were able to stave them off as well as they did. Anyways, I'd appreciate any and all constructive feedback on my analysis and a VOD will be linked at the end for those who are interested in watching the game.
Bans
Team Liquid Bans :
- Kalista : A champion that scales incredibly well into the late game and is one of the powerful AD carry picks in the current meta. She's generally banned due to her mobility (kiting bruisers/tanks), objective control (rend smite), and damage output with rend. Wildturtle has shown some proficiency on her in his game against WFX in Week 2.
- Maokai : Maokai is resurging in popularity due to his powerful late game scaling and his decent laning phase. He's able to effectively farm in both 1v1s and 1v2s. Dyrus has a 100% win-rate on Maokai right now as well from his games in week 2 against WFX, week 3 against Dignitas, and week 5 against CST. Maokai is an incredibly powerful pick in the hands of TSM since the champion can not only initiate but effectively peel for the two carries on TSM (Bjergsen and Wildturtle).
- Zed : A target ban towards Bjergsen who has shown exceptional performance on the champion. Zed is an incredibly skilled duelist champion and excels at effective split pushing. Bjergsen has shown time and time again that he can outplay most other mid laners on champions like Zed.
Team Solo Mid Bans :
- Fizz : A target ban against Quas who showed incredibly proficiency on the champion in their game against WFX in week 5. Quas solo killed the enemy top laner and made the enemy top laner ineffective for quite awhile. AD Fizz is a pretty powerful early/mid game pick with his damage output but his damage does fall off a little bit late game. That being said, instead of dealing with it and outscaling, TSM decided to just ban the champion against Quas.
- Morgana : A ban most likely against Xpecial (though, Morgana has seen play in top lane as well recently). In this case, I think it's likely that TSM knew that they were planning on picking a team composition with an immobile mage/ad carry so they decided to ban Morgana out due to her snare. Her not being on the map makes it a little bit more forgiving to have more immobile champions. Plus the black shield is very powerful, especially against double AP comps.
- Vi : A power ban, less targeted at IWD and more banned out due to Assault and Battery, Vi's ultimate. This ban kind of made it a little bit more obvious that TSM was looking to pick champions who were more immobile. IWD hasn't had many strong showings on the champion recently so it wasn't exactly a target ban.
Picks
- The first pick is to Team Liquid who brings out the notorious Lissandra pick, currently a champion with one of the highest win-rates in the LCS (91.7%). The pick is incredibly potent and versatile, able to be used in both the top lane and the middle lane. Lissandra provides incredibly powerful lockdown, decent damage, and very effective crowd control. Lissandra can also effectively initiate teamfights with a self ultimate -> zhonyas combo to disrupt teamfights. In this case, Team Liquid first picks Lissandra as a bait, sort of. They picked Lissandra as a feign to bait out TSM's top lane pick and then decide to counterpick it later.
- TSM's pick. TSM decides to lock in the Janna and Jarvan for both Lustboy and Santorin respectively. Janna is quite possibly the best peel support in the game right now and Lustboy is incredibly effective at keeping Wildturtle alive while he's going as hard as he normally does. Janna is great at effectively disengaging and is one of Lustboy's best champions. Jarvan is currently one of the best junglers in the game right now and Santorin is incredibly effective on it. High damage, great objective control, amazing disruption. Overall, one of the most overloaded kits at the moment and definitely worth taking away so Team Liquid doesn't get it.
- Team Liquid's turn. Rek'Sai and Annie are locked in for IWD and Xpecial. Rek'Sai is an incredibly potent jungler and another one of the top tier competitive junglers right now. This is due to her ability to detect where enemy players are when she's burrowed and also due to her mobility, allowing her to effectively get vision in the early game, especially if a sightstone is built on her. She can get in and out without many problems. Annie is probably one of the strongest support picks right now due to her incredibly potent initiate in the form of flash tibbers and the pick allows for an incredibly aggressive 2v2 lane against TSM which is something that Team Liquid most likely wants to have the advantage in.
- TSM's pick. Rumble is locked in along with Jinx for Dyrus and Wildturtle. The Rumble pick isn't a half bad pick against a Lissandra and Rumble's mid game powerspike when his magic penetration items are complete is incredibly potent. In this case, Team Liquid baited the pick but, assuming it was a Lissandra top, it would have been a decent pick. Rumble's ultimate has incredible disruption and can singlehandedly win teamfights as was displayed in the game prior when Balls had Rumble (CLG vs C9). Jinx is probably one of Wildturtle's best champions and he has incredible positioning to boot. The Janna pick makes a little bit more sense once this pick is locked in to make sure Jinx is kept alive throughout teamfights. Jinx is one of the last hypercarries in the game right now and, when kept alive, will do an absurd amount of damage AoE with her rockets, decimating entire teams and carrying teamfights herself.
- Team Liquid's pick. Corki is locked in for Keithmcbrief and Quas shows his hand when he locks in Irelia. Turns out that the entire time, it was a Lissandra mid and Quas wanted to counterpick Dyrus. The Irelia pick decimates Rumble in lane and Team Liquid caught TSM exactly where they wanted. Corki is one of the best mid game ADC due to his incredible powerspike off one item, Trinity Force. While Keithmcbrief doesn't have any showings in competitive with the champions, he's an essential part of any ADC's champ pool and is incredibly effective. Meshing into their team composition, it sets Team Liquid's team to basically be a very effective pick composition that's very reliant on their early to mid game snowballing.
- TSM's last pick. Cassiopeia for Bjergsen. Essentially, the pick is sort of suicide for Bjergsen into their team composition but he ends up running Cleanse to help against the Lissandra/Annie/Irelia/Rek'Sai. Regardless, Cassiopeia has incredibly high damage output and scales superbly into the lategame. In addition, her ultimate can turn the tide of teamfights so effectively due to the potential to stun the entire enemy team. Overall, TSM's team settles down to become a lategame powerhouse.
Overall
While Team Liquid was a little cheeky with their picks and drafts by baiting out Dyrus and counterpicking him, TSM's team is much better, especially in the hands of their players. Their mid to late game powerspike is absurd and Team Liquid were incredibly reliant on winning the early/mid game or they had absolutely no chance in this game.
Spoiler alert :
Basically, TSM had this game in the bag if they performed better in the early to mid game. However, there were too many mistakes made and too many picks by Team Liquid which resulted in their team snowballing out of control. In addition, TSM had very poor early dragon control which set them behind overall. Team Liquid played the game very effectively for their team composition and, while they almost lost due to TSM's incredibly powerful lategame, they ended up taking the game by forcing TSM in an unfavorable circumstance in the late-late game.
Thanks for reading everyone and I hope that this was useful. If you have any constructive feedback, please send me a message on Twitter (@Lilnovalas), on my Facebook page (NovasRTC), or comment here.
Vod : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmJT46YlPnQ
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