Week 3 CLG: Rush Hour or Hush Hour?

This week the LCS brought many surprises as well as many new challenges for each of the teams. However, it seemed that one team was facing a lot more challenges than the others. The new roster, the well-known coach, the stellar bot lane, and even the addition of a Korean player has sparked a lot of controversy around Counter Logic Gaming and led them to some new highs and lows. While, CLG has been praised in the first 3 weeks as "one of the top 3 teams in NA" it seems that despite their improved form, their incredible rotations, and even the astounding play of, arguably, the best support in NA, and they are still running into a few issues. CLG had two incredibly similar games this week, one of which they found success and the other they did not...the difference? I am sure Riot's Phreak would agree: "Tons of damage!”

CLG had two very intense games this week both of which left the review booth saying: "What happened?” While that was the question of the hour after each game; it is quite easy to discover the difference between the two games by looking at the team comps. Specifically, we can see the difference in how CLG had to play team fights and how their team comp had to engage. Both the CLG team comps were centered on their outside lanes: the top and bottom. In each of the matches, CLG wanted Lucian and Morgana as their duo-bot combo and a tanky-pusher in the top lane played by Shyvana and Renekton respectively. This setup then allowed CLG to take a mid-lane that was best-fit for the situation and the best jungler available to enhance the team’s strengths. In each of the games, the teams win condition was based on these two spots: the mid lane and the jungle. Thus, these positions were the most important factor in their win and their loss. Beyond this, it did not matter what the other team drafted as long as CLG played correctly and were able to execute team fights the way they wanted. In fact, this allowed CLG such flexibility that they were able to give away Kassadin (the most contested pick in season 4) to Dignitas and still walk away with a win. So what was the real difference? Why, despite the similar team comps, was one of the games a smash victory and one a struggle to a loss? Well, as stated earlier, it really had to do with one of the comps being able to do "tons of damage".

In the Dignitas game, CLG came out with a comp of: Shyvana, Kha'zix, Nidalee, Lucian, and Morgana. As discussed earlier, the core of the team was the same so really the important picks to look at here are the Kha'zix and the Nidalee. These two picks center around the same basic ideas: high mobility, high damage, and almost no crowd control. To this end, this means that CLG was looking to establish map dominance early with superior rotations and then either poke or pick their way into good team fights to win the game. In this case, it was a major success as in each of the important fights CLG was able to burst down one of the squishy Dignitas targets and win the fight 5v4. Despite the early advantage in the bottom lane getting a double kill at 9 minutes and the cute triple-fake-back to secure the bottom inhibitor, the game really came down to a few important fights.

First, we look at the fight at 24 minutes where Dignitas has the Baron buff but is only barely able to take the mid and the top tier-2 turrets. Despite the map and buff advantage by Dignitas, they take an incredible amount of damage from Doublelift's Lucian and Link's Nidalee while taking the two turrets they are not able to gain anything more than this small advantage from the Baron buff. CLG is even able to: take a dragon, keep the gold difference within 1000, and position themselves to take the bottom inhibitor turret. During this exchange, the casters are calling the game over, saying that "CLG might be on a clock". However, the superior damage by CLG is able to push Dignitas back, keeping ZionSpartan's Kayle from split pushing and keeping Dignitas from re-establishing their map control. This then leads into the second important fight at 29:30 where CLG is able to get a clean pick on Crumbzz' Elise and burst Imaqtpie's Twitch down to 25%. This sets CLG up to take an inhibitor turret for only the sacrifice of Aphromoo's Morgana. CLG then re-starts their superior rotations (off the back of the afore-mentioned triple-fake-back) and manages to re-take the gold lead, slowly increasing it to 3000.

The final fight then comes at 39:45 where CLG are (simply) able to kite-away from the Dignitas initiation, and use their superior burst (tons of damage!) to pick-off Crumbzz' Elise and Kiwikid's Nami to win the game. They are able to burst down Shiphtur's Kassadin inside the Dignitas base to further flaunt their high damage output. Basically, CLG used their superior rotations to establish their early game, stay even in the mid game, and then use their "tons of damage" to keep Dignitas from taking objectives too quickly and win the game. While it is not unfair to say that CLG got a bit lucky, they would not have been able to do this without understanding how to win with their team comp and beautifully execute the late game. However, in their match against C9 the next day, it seemed to be same chapter, different story.

As stated before, the match against C9 started very similar with CLG taking a comp of: Renekton, Evelynn, Twisted Fate, Lucian, and Morgana. Again, we are able to see CLG use their superior rotations in the early game and establish map control by 17:30 baiting 3 Cloud 9 members to the bottom lane for the bait-and-switch to the middle turret that then nets them a dragon from right under Cloud 9's nose. However, we can see fundamentally that this team comp is vastly different from the one in the Dignitas game. In this team comp, we see the standard core with the pivotal picks being Evelynn and Twisted Fate. As opposed to the mobile, heavy damage comp discussed earlier, this setup relies on: strong initiations, higher CC and less burst damage. It is these subtle variations that make the difference in the late game and ultimately decide the victory. Against Dignitas, CLG was able to burst one of the squishy targets to keep Dignitas from getting multiple objectives or winning a fight. In this game, CLG needed to get clean initiations and lock down the important C9 members long enough for their less-bursty team comp to take effect. Again, this can be seen in a few choice fights. The first of which occurs at 21 minutes as CLG gets their flawless imitation to take a huge lead. The fight starts with Seraph's Renekton engaging the entire Cloud 9 team at the middle tier-2 turret that then gives a window for Link's Twisted Fate to Destiny into the back line and Dexter's Evelynn to Agony's Embrace 5 Cloud 9 members. CLG is able to walk away with a 3 for 0 victory that then propels them into a (rather shaky) Baron kill. Despite this, CLG moves into the mid game up 6000 gold and in position to reset their rotations.

This then leads into the second important fight at 24:30 where CLG decides to try and sneak a dragon and defend a sieging-Cloud 9 at the CLG middle inhibitor turret. However, this time the CLG initiation is horrifically un-coordinated with Link's Twisted Fate teleporting in with Destiny way too early into his death, followed by Aphromoo's Morgana doing the same. This then gives Cloud 9 an opportunity to end the game but they are held off (barely) by the item advantage gained by CLG. The teams then trade smaller fights in the bottom and mid lane respectively resulting in a few traded objectives that keeps CLG ahead by the same 6000 gold margin.

The final important fight occurs at 33:20, however, despite their gold lead CLG losses the fight and eventually the game. Here, we see the small differences in the team comps come to fruition. CLG do manage to catch Cloud 9 out in a transition from Baron to middle lane, however, Dexter is only able to land Agony's Embrace on two Cloud 9 players: Hai and Balls, neither of which are the main damage dealer in Sneaky's Twitch. This allows Balls and Meteos, on Shyvana and Lee Sin respectively, a chance to jump onto Link's Twisted Fate (Shyvana can use Dragon's Decent to close the gap even while slowed) rendering his use of Destiny worthless and allowing Sneaky to kite backwards and use Rat-Ta-Tat-Tat (ugh, please change back to Spray and Pray!) on 4 CLG members and ultimately win the team fight for Cloud 9, 4 for 1. This fight sums up the entire game: once CLG are not able to get their flawless imitation and burst down a single target, to tip the team fight, they lose the game. Simply, the lack of "tons of damage" from Evelynn compared to Kha'zix and Twisted Fate compared to Nidalee changes the fight dynamic so much that the super-consistent bottom and top lane picks from CLG mean nothing. Despite the entire early and mid-game looking very similar for CLG, the end game varies wildly based on the abilities of the champions selected. CLG used the same formula but were less able to execute their win condition correctly to close out the game. CLG really needed to push Cloud 9 back down the lane and take a fight on their terms and continue to out-rotate Cloud 9 into the late game.

In both these cases, we are able to see how competitive the NA LCS is becoming with matches coming down to who can better utilize their team’s strengths to their advantage. Despite CLG starting both games well, good rotations and map planning only gets your team so far if you do not understand how to close out games. It also shows how a single pick or ban can sometimes mean the difference in the match as small variations in strategy can determine when objective play and team fights are good and bad. These will be items that all the top-tier teams will be going over in their preparations for Worlds as these are items that the top Korean teams have been reviewing for years. It is encouraging to see this as early as we are in the season as these are items that can only come from careful study and utilization of coaches so the players can focus entirely on mechanics.

So while CLG is still credited with some of the top NA players with their all-star duo "Rush Hour Bottom Lane" they still have plenty to improve on. They need to continue to refine their team coordination and improve their fight synergy to make sure that their games can conclude as swiftly as they begin. This fine tuning of their skills will ensure that their superior player quality is not shut down in crunch time. CLG currently are one of the teams that can stamp their own ticket to worlds...or not.