exceL vs Team Vitality

The lower half of the playoffs bracket is rarely all that interesting. Ditto for the teams that often end up inhabiting it. They're good but just not good enough to compete with the "big dogs." They've done *something* right and have, as a result, found themselves in the playoffs, but they're not expected to accomplish much once all is said and done. If they were *really* good they would've ended up in the Top 4. The last two playoff spots, on the other hand, sort of exist as a middling consolation prize — a pat on the back, if you will.

It's tantamount to saying: "you've done well, but this is where the road ends."

EXCEL and Vitality, however, don't really "fit the bill," and we mean that as a compliment, by the way. They're not expected to claim the throne, granted, but they *will* put on one heck of a show. Both line-ups are stacked with seasoned veterans and will surely entertain us beyond measure from the very moment they take the stage and start trading wild haymakers.

They're playing a very entertaining brand of LoL and that's why we all love watching them. They're not going to play things "by the book," no matter how advisable it might be. Instead, they'll throw caution out the window and skirmish whenever and wherever possible. And, well, we'll all tune in, eager as ever to witness the carnage and the sloppiness that might ensure as a by-product!

Everyone seems to be leaning towards Team Vitality and, well, it's easy to understand why. They'll have the upper hand here for a multitude of reasons. First of all, they're more experienced when it comes to Best of 5s and those incredibly taxing situations that can often break those less seasoned. They know their way around a five-game series as they've won many of them. They've also lost a bunch, too, so they know how it feels to be on the receiving end of things as well. Their many years of professional play have also forced them to adapt and grow. They can, therefore, employ a wide range of team comps and strategies — and execute them appropriately, too. Most of their players are more than capable of "clutching things out" when the need arises, which is perhaps their biggest weapon coming into this particular Best of 5.

EXCEL, too, have a fair bit of experience, but their forthcoming opponents still have an edge in that regard. Mikyx, for instance, is one of the best and most accomplished supports in LEC history, but he cannot transfer that experience over to Finn or, say, Markoon. Nukeduck, by the same token, is as seasoned as they come, but his trophy case lays empty and hollow. Patrik, too, hadn't made playoff in *years*. They're all really good and capable, but they haven't been relevant in what feels like forever. Mikyx is, obviously, the sole outlier to that statement but he can only do so much given his in-game role.

There's also another hugely important factor that we need to touch on, and that is the three-week break that had occurred. During that time, all six teams scrimmed, experimented, and tried their best to adapt to the ever-changing meta. Some of them, therefore, have a better read on what's "vogue" than others, and that could definitely play a huge role going forward. Moreover, three weeks is an incredibly long period of time to prepare for just a single team. We're quite certain that Vitality, being the experienced veterans that they are, have used and harnessed this time a lot more efficiently than their forthcoming opponents. They also have more "tools" to work with which means they themselves have been harder to prepare for.

They're a lot more flexible and layered compared to EXCEL, and that one fact cannot be overstated. The importance of it, to be more exact. One can also think of EXCEL as a somewhat one-dimensional team, too. Their bottom lane duo is absolutely incredible, but other than that, they have very little else to work with. Nukeduck is solid but far from great, Finn has huge ups and downs and is generally exploitable, and Markoon — promising though he is — lacks any competitive Bo5 experience. Once you deconstruct EXCEL in such a way, you start to notice huge gaps and flaws which could easily be exploited, especially if a team has enough time to prepare a solid enough game plan — and Vitality certainly *did* have enough time on their hands to get the job done.

Finn has also had champion pool issues and will now be going up against the best laning top laner the West has ever produced. You cannot be as inconsistent — and, at times, middling — against a behemoth like Alphari. His teamfighting might be a bit suspect (depending on the opposition), but his laning and ability to create sidelane pressure are second-to-none.

EXCEL have also plateaued in terms of their flexibility and the diverseness of their drafts. They're easy to read, in other words, and that's not something you can *truly* ameliorate in three weeks' time. We're not going to pretend like Vitality have a clear and coherent identity, but they *do* have an incredibly high skill ceiling and have also had more than enough time to work on their biggest and most exploitable flaws — flaws which EXCEL hadn't been able to punish in either of the two times they had faced Vitality during the regular portion of the split. So if they were at a disadvantage *then*, what hope could they have *now*? We know that things aren't as simple as we've just made them out to be, but you do get the point.

If this Best of 5 was scheduled to happen three weeks ago we would've been a lot more inclined to believe in EXCEL's chances. Heck, we might have even chosen *them* in such a scenario — they had more momentum and fewer issues and kinks to work out. But now that so much time had gone by, betting on Vitality simply makes more sense. The bot lane meta, too, has shifted more towards Zeri and Kai'Sa, two champions Carzzy can and *will* excel at. It really seems that many different things sort of "clicked" in Vitality's favor. That doesn't mean they're guaranteed to win, but they *are* favored here for a reason and if they perform as well as we expect them to, they should definitely be able to best EXCEL and, in doing so, set up a clash with G2 next week.