Lyons: This should be the first week with Inspired back. Which is a good thing for the team. They’ve looked really good despite inspired’s absence. Armao filled in perfectly fine and it seems the other players stepped up. But we know that once Inspired returns the team is going to return to playing and practicing his way. The sooner that happens the better for them. The longer you are out rhythm the longer it takes to get back into it. Even if the team looks perfectly fine on stage there will be things that they have to catch back up on. Not even meta shifts, but simple things like remembering how they communicate with each other. Relearning their roles in game. The team is still looking to be a top two (probably top one) team at the end of playoffs. They want to be firing on all cylinders as fast as possible.

Team Liquid: I would love to hear more about what happened at MSI. Team Liquid shows up, 6-0s KC, loses 0-6 to T1. They come back to NA and figured everything out and are looking super strong. They all seem to understand their roles. Their communication seems crisp and clean. There really isn’t a lot to say about Team Liquid right now, they seem performing well and are continuing to get better each week. My only concern might be that they are peaking to early and might regress a bit come playoffs or worlds time. I think that’s on Spawn to make sure the team is pacing itself well so they are avoiding burnout and fatigue. Looking forward to week 6 where we get to see TL vs Lyon.

Cloud9: I said it last week and I will say it again. Cloud9 have a 5-man roster. Which I think is the correct choice. 6 and 7-man rosters can work, that’s how every traditional sport works. You sub players in and out all the time. But I think current League of Legends has a few problem that makes larger rosters not work. The primary one is the limited amount of scrim time. They scrim six games a day, five days a week. So 30 scrims (with ff’s and remakes littered throughout). If you’re splitting your time between multiple rosters that’s all you are getting done. There’s no room to practice new champs. I think Cloud9 needs to stick with this core five. A sudden shift in the roster line-up at any point of the season will be concerning for me.

Shopify Rebeliion: Shopfiy beating Sentinels is a big deal for them. That’s one of the teams they are going to be competing with as a dark horse for the third world spot. However, they are still working through problems as a team. So unfortunately I don’t think they have enough time to improve to a point where they are earning themselves that third spot. But I do think Shopify is building a strong foundation for themselves. Something they can build up from for the rest of the season and playoffs. Having that foundational understanding of the game and how you want to play is core to success.

FlyQuest: FlyQuest’s current situation is a difficult one. They have a clear image of how they want to play. Hyper aggressive, playing on that knife’s edge where they try to take every advantage they can. But in key moments they make a mistake and the game unravels. So the question becomes, what does FlyQuest do? It really depends on how their internal scrims and reviews are going. Individual stage games are are a difficult metric to measure from. Especially when they have played Lyons and Team Liquid, because unless something spectacular was going to happen they were always going to lose those matches. From an outside perspective it seems they still believe in their way of playing which is the most important thing during seasons like this. There’s a bigger end goal for them than just doing well during regular season. Building towards playoffs and securing third is what matters.

Sentinels: Sentinels continues to look like a decent middle of the pack team with fundamental problems they have to work on. They don’t seem to be as coordinated as they would want to be, especially with having Huhi and Impact on the team. It feels like with two veterans at the helm they at least have a clear direction for the game. But they seem to be struggling to understand how they want to progress the game and how they want to win. During moments like these one of the best things a team, or individual player, can do is take a step back and look at the larger picture. Really trying to to understand where the breakdown in their games comes from. There’s only so much time left in a season so trying to identify the most important problems is important. There’s no reason trying to fix something that will increase your win rate by 2% when there’s a bigger hole losing you 10%.

Dignitas: Dignitas had a great 80% of a game against Lyons. Which is a good sign for them given the current situation. Dardoch had one week of practice. The expectation would be with more practice the team should look better. Communication will get better, playing together will become easier. Dardoch also seems to be in a much better place, at least after a first week of interviews. Which I think is a huge boost to the team. If he can provide a level head that comes in as an outsider to the team he can provide a much needed reset and a new perspective. However, I would be remiss if I didn’t touch on the moment where Palafox called that he had TP, and then didn’t TP instead walking topside. That was such a weird moment that I would be willing to ignore it, if it wasn’t part of a pattern that Palafox is just not playing at his best. Hopefully he and Dardoch can work together to build for future weeks.

Disguised: It’s hard to say a lot for Disguised. A team in this situation knows the reality. They are probably the worst team in the LCS. So what do you do with that information? Hopefully you use it as fuel to try and grind and study the game as hard as possible. But it’s also possible that it completely deflates the team and convinces them that the season is over. Hopefully for them they have a strong internal leader, either in coaching staff or a player who can keep their morale up. The worst thing for a team in this position is everyone stops caring. Apathy is the death of competitiveness.