Who will come out on top at the NA LCS Summer Quarterfinals?
Fluff that couch cushion and invite your friends over, the 2015 NA LCS Summer Split Playoffs are about to begin! Fans of Team Liquid and Counter Logic Gaming can rest easy this week -- those squads get comfy byes while the other NA LCS Playoffs teams duke it out in the Quarterfinals!
If you want to learn more about how the Playoffs work, check out our guide to the Playoffs structure, the Best of 5 format, and Championship Points.
But in this article, we're going to take a look at the four teams that have to fight for the privilege of playing in the Semifinals: Team Impulse, Gravity, Team SoloMid, and Team Dignitas.
#3 Team Impulse vs. #6 Team Dignitas
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Day: Saturday, August 8
Time: 12 PM PST
Record This Split: Tie (1-1)
Ding Ding. It's time to fight! Both these teams have shown a willingness to pick fights and spill some blood this Split.
In their first face-off in Week 4, though, they got off to a surprisingly quiet start. Team Impulse earned a gold lead with some simple lane pressure, but it wasn't until jungler Yoon-jae "Rush" Lee and mid laner Xian "XiaoWeiXiao" Yu invaded Team Dignitas' jungle that things got messy.
Impulse's playstyle is always hyperactive, bombastic, and explosive -- but never perfect. Their recklessness during this invade (and the precognisant ward placement of Team Dignitas' jungler Dong-jin "Helios" Shin) gave Team Dignitas an opportunity to make a big counterplay. They quickly collapsed on the out-of-bounds Impulse members, netting a quick kill and chasing them all the way to the top lane turret to get two more.
But Rush's trademark blind aggression has created game-winning plays for Impulse at least as often as it has caused problems -- and has occasionally even dragged the whole team, kicking and screaming, to victory. In their next head-to-head, it got Impulse up and running with an early double kill.
As soon as Rush is spotted by the pink ward, Danny "Shiphtur" Le stops his roam down mid to help bot lane and instead heads back to his lane to farm. Rush couldn't possibly still try to dive after being so obviously seen, right?
Wrong. Rush will always dive, and Shiphtur's faith in the the rationality of Team Impulse's aggression lost his team a potential numbers advantage in the fight. Instead, it allowed TIP to create a 5v3 fight that they absolutely cleaned up and took Dragon off of.
Those first fights in each of their games really set the tone for the entire match. When Team Dignitas has been able to respect and anticipate Team Impulse's wild nature for an entire match, they've succeeded in countering it. But when they let down their guard for even a second, someone on Impulse's roster is ready to go for the jugular.
It'll be interesting to see how Team Dignitas try to counter Team Impulse's style across a full Best of 5 series. In their first match this Split, Dignitas tried fighting fire with fire and made their own bold, aggressive play with Homeguard Hecarim and teleporting Twisted Fate. It worked well once and helped them secure that win, but Impulse didn't let it happen a second time in their next match. They knew better by then.
Both of these teams will be looking to surprise the other in the Quarterfinals. But who'll really pull it off in a longer series?
#4 Gravity vs. #5 Team SoloMid
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Day: Sunday, August 9
Time: 12 PM PST
Record This Split: Tie (1-1)
Gravity broke Team SoloMid the last time they played. TSM came into their Week 6 match on a six-game win streak. Then, after Gravity beat them, TSM fell into a tailspin of frustration and losses that they're still recovering from.
So what traumatic experience happened to TSM in that match? Well, they got completely out-picked by the versatile and always surprising Gravity. TSM went with the most popular champion after Patch 5.12, Runeglaive Ezreal, and Gravity humiliated them with a particularly demoralizing counter-team.
Gravity's hard engage from Kevin "Hauntzer" Yarnell's Maokai and Lae-Young "Keane" Jang's Jarvan IV let them pick a high-profile target-- say, that squishy Ezreal being played by TSM's hardest carry, mid laner Søren "Bjergsen" Bjerg -- and then just stomp on his face and delete him while everyone else was forced to watch or run away.
But it's not all doom and gloom for TSM fans. It hasn't been that long since these teams' Week 4 matchup, when smart roams from TSM's support Jang-sik "Lustboy" Ham and jungler Lucas "Santorin" Larsen got Bjergsen and the other lanes fed early.
And when TSM wins lanes, they win games. That'll likely be the plan for TSM in this Best of 5 series: grab strong team comps with no obvious counters and use strategic ganks to get ahead early. Meanwhile, Gravity will likely be doing everything they can surprise the world with new champion picks and out-of-the-box team comps.
But what I really want to know is if Keane will descend into pure madness and bust out something as crazy as Teemo, Yorick, Fiddlesticks, or (my personal favorite) Heimerdinger. I believe!
Watch Them Live!
Be sure to tune in to Lolesports this weekend to see all of the crazy dives and off-the-wall champion picks that happen in this week's 2015 NA LCS Summer Split Quarterfinals matches!
Josh Augustine's favorite champion is Tryndamere, he's never enjoyed a Darius, and he will always go for the kill, even when he knows he shouldn't. He currently works as a game designer on EverQuest Next at Daybreak Games. He’d love to talk with you on Twitter.
