Team Liquid and FlyQuest have similar profiles: both have well-distributed talent across their roster, primary carries in the Mid lane, control-oriented Junglers, playmaking Supports, and a preference for winning through mid-game team fights and objective control. During the regular season, the teams split their games 1-1. In last week’s matches, Liquid took our Golden Guardians 3-0 while FlyQuest dispatched Cloud9 3-1. With so much similarity, from recent form to play style to head-to-head, it’s almost tempting to make a 3-2 series prediction with a coin flip to pick the winner and say we’re just hoping for some high-quality games…

Okay not really. Well, yes, I’m hoping for high-quality games, but I actually think there’s a decent favourite here.

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Win Conditions

Team Liquid

• Out-roam IgNar
• Get onto the flanks

The side lanes will be vital for Team Liquid, in the sense that I want to see CoreJJ influence the map more actively than IgNar, and I want to see Impact find ways to move through fog of war or use Teleports to find flanks for team fights.

FlyQuest

• Make mid/jungle the focal point
• Exploit Impact in lane

If FlyQuest can make the games centre around the mid/jungle pairings, their head-to-head advantage at Jungle can swing the series, especially if Solo is able to out-lane Impact to create broader map advantages.

Prediction

TL 3-1

Team Liquid is stronger than FlyQuest in the most crucial position for this series—Mid lane—and, more importantly, they are less vulnerable to being shut down in the early game, and better at team fighting, than the Cloud9 we saw last week. There are some ways FlyQuest can take this series, but Team Liquid should be plenty aware of those, and I think they’ll be prepared to deny FlyQuest’s win conditions.

Team Liquid Key Player and Path to Victory

Usually when I pick a “key player”, I highlight someone who needs to directly lead their team to victory by carrying themselves, or by neutralizing a star player on the other team. This time around, I’m looking at Impact as a sort of inversion of those conditions. Impact doesn’t need to carry his team, and Solo isn’t the star of FlyQuest. But for Team Liquid to win, Impact needs to perform well in a weak side role. That has been his forte for virtually his entire LCS career, but we’ve seen much less of the classic lose-gracefully play from Impact this year than was typical in past years.

In the two regular season games between TL and FLY, Impact drafted Kennen both times, very much not a weak-side champion. Against Solo’s Maokai, Impact gave up First Blood on an awkward early invade and did more freezing than pushing, with unimpressive side lane play and team fighting that didn’t stand out. Against Solo’s Renekton, Impact died to Solo 1v1 while receiving a Broxah gank far too eagerly, then proceeded to bleed out of the laning phase.

Impact’s performances in both games were unimpressive, to say the least, and Solo has been a rock for FlyQuest. But no one is forcing Team Liquid to draft Kennens for Impact, and the story could be entirely different if Impact is on Shen, Ornn, Gangplank, or another weak side top laner that can help out with global ultimates and utility team fighting. Against the Golden Guardians, Impact was -1239 GXD10 for the series—a truly awful number—but he played Mordekaiser twice and Ornn once, so he was still able to use Mordekaiser ultimates to imbalance team fights, and Ornn is useful in pretty much any game state. That’s the kind of anti-snowball champion pool I expect Team Liquid to put Impact on against FlyQuest, as well.

As long as Impact can lose gracefully to Solo in the early game and/or play champions that are still useful from a deficit, Team Liquid can focus more confidently on the other parts of the map where they have their real advantages. Jensen can focus on winning his lane—his +545 GXD10 in the regular season is way ahead of PowerOfEvil’s +110, especially since PoE’s number is mostly driven by his +144 XPD10, which comes from sitting in lane and soaking up XP from every minion death—and CoreJJ can focus on helping Tactical win the 2v2, then either receiving Broxah’s ganks, or roaming to the Mid lane, with or without Broxah, to empower Jensen that much more.

Team Liquid won’t fall to FlyQuest’s team fighting the way Cloud9 and Evil Geniuses did. Team fighting is a strength for TL, and so is general rotational play and setups—their 89% Baron control in the regular season speaks to that. This isn’t to say that FlyQuest can’t and won’t win team fights, but over a 5-game series, with the team comps and gold leads being even, I’d count on TL to win enough of the fights to take the series.

Tactically, I want to see TL approach the team fights with flanking setups as much as possible. FlyQuest’s death distribution is mostly weighted towards Solo and IgNar, with very low regular season death shares on PowerOfEvil (17.9%) and WildTurtle (13.8%), with the same trend in the playoffs so far (PowerOfEvil 19.7%, WildTurtle 15.8%). That’s a big part of how FLY have been so successful in their team fights: the playmakers set up the carries, and the carries live and deal damage. TL need to circumvent those front-to-back setups, which will require lane priority and strong vision play, as well as good execution from Impact in particular, which brings us full circle.

I’m counting on Team Liquid to cover their vulnerabilities with appropriate drafting, to find the flanks in team fights, and to take this series.

FlyQuest Key Player and Path to Victory

As I wrote earlier, the Santorin/PowerOfEvil combo is where FlyQuest have a potential advantage. Santorin is a more effective control jungler than Broxah, and he’ll need to be since Jensen is the most dominant in-lane Mid in the LCS. Santorin will be hyper-aware of the fact that Broxah ganked the mid lane at 3:00 in every game against the Golden Guardians. If Broxah is anywhere near that predictable against FlyQuest, Santorin will definitely find a way to exploit it.

In general, Santorin should have a good opportunity to create leads for his team in the laning phase. His primary goal will be to win the Jungler portion of the mid 2v2 and directly help PowerOfEvil with getting into a position to carry in team fights, but if Impact gives up too many big wave crashes in the top lane, Santorin will happily set up some tower dives, too, and if WildTurtle and IgNar can get some bot side control, Santorin will be all over the dragons. Whatever the game gives him, Santorin will run with it. A lot of the early game will come down to how many opportunities Broxah and TL’s laners surrender for Santorin to exploit.

The top lane, specifically, could produce some juicy opportunities for FLY’s Jungler. Solo will probably get some good laning wins there, as I’ve already discussed, though it depends somewhat on what draft approach FLY are going to take. Shen will be a heavily contested pick in this series, after Solo used it in all four games against Cloud9. Impact would love to take the champion himself, if it’s available, since it’s a perfect weak side fit. And Shen can fit into a strong game plan for FLY, for turning around Broxah’s ganks and winning mid-game team fights. But I don’t think Solo should play Shen into Impact—I’d much rather see him take something more proactive, like Renekton, to apply pressure in lane as he did in the regular season, and then transfer that pressure proactively into the mid and bot lanes. So FlyQuest will either need to ban the champion, pick it early themselves, or prepare a dedicated counter. Of those three options, I recommend banning it to introduce a bit more volatility in the Top lane matchup, both in draft and in game.

Since I believe Team Liquid will win more of the team fights if they are on even footing, FLY will need to find advantages, either by drafting better team fighting comps or getting early gold leads. PowerOfEvil’s champion pool will be a key factor in both of those options; the question is how creative he’ll get. Will we see more Swains and Malzahars, or will TL let him pick a comfortable Orianna or Syndra? He can perform well with either creativity or comfort; it’s more a matter of how much breathing room Jensen and Broxah (and CoreJJ) give PowerOfEvil early, and how well TL’s playmakers are able to access PowerOfEvil once the team fights start.

If Solo and Santorin can attack Impact hard enough, and if Santorin and PowerOfEvil can nurse FlyQuest into early-game leads or mid-game compositional advantages, FlyQuest will be well positioned to pull another upset and reach their second LCS Final of the year.