Team Liquid vs 100 Thieves

We are on the verge of a new meta with so many changes to AP itemization and champion balance in patch 8.4. Tomorrow night will be the very first day that NA LCS teams will play on the latest patch and things will surely get very hectic, very quickly. They have already been a region that had faster paced games when compared to Europe over the last couple of weeks, with the average game time being just a bit above thirty minutes.

The game we're going to focus on is Team Liquid vs. 100 Thieves. Now the odds are heavily in Liquid's favor which is quite confusing seeing how much they struggled during the last couple of games.

Liquid is currently fourth (ironic) in the standings and they've been hot and cold, winning seven games but losing almost the same amount. They played quite well against Echo Fox, even managing to punish a lot of their mistakes however they lost almost every single lane and weren't able to respond to their unfiltered aggression. Whenever they thought they had the edge they were wrong as Echo Fox responded two fold, culminating in an insane clutch teamfight near the second tier mid turret. A single teamfight win was enough for Echo Fox to close it out in the fastest game of the split, against a stacked Team Liquid roster to boot.

As for 100 Thieves, they just took down one of the best teams in the region - Cloud9 and it wasn't even close. They started off strong, with Meteos focusing heavily on the bottom side of the map. They let Ssumday play Gankplank and left him on an island and it paid off, as the rest of the team played to perfection around multiple Mountain Drakes. Cloud9 had in theory the better teamfighting comp but 100T never really let go, they consistently rotated and put Cloud9 in uncomfortable situations. They also forced Cloud9 to adapt and they didn't do so well, as their lack of coordination between Licorice and the rest of the team became more and more evident. In just thirty minutes, 100T managed to play a near perfect macro game. It was clean, controlled and calculated from the very get go as they made zero mistakes.

They also displayed the superior early game against Flyquest, with Meteos (and the rest of the team) consistently focusing bottom lane. They did overextend once but FlyQuest wasn't in a position to punish. They were faster on the map and displayed far better coordination and just went into overdrive around the twenty minute mark and started dominating on the map. Aphromoo pulled out his pocket Blitzcrank and it paid off in spades as the team fully enabled Cody Sun to dominate - much like in the C9 game.

While they weren't always as clean or dominant in their first NA LCS run, but it's clear that they're putting in the work necessary to reach to very top of the LCS. They're also playing incredibly clean and they're all phenomenal players on an individual level as well.

This is somewhat of a risky bet, however after seeing Team Liquid falter last week and 100 Thieves play and dominate in such fashion, it's hard not giving them the benefit of the doubt. It probably won't be easy nor clean, but 100 Thieves have the tools to come out on top. While Liquid has the edge on paper (but even that's debatable), they were rarely able to fully translate their leads against top tier teams.