Explosive moments of the 2015 LCS Summer Split Quarterfinals
Throughout the 2015 LCS Summer Split Quarterfinals, there were a few fights that kicked up the teams' morale and propelled them to victory. Let's look back at some of those explosive encounters, and what the pros thought of the big plays.
H2K vs. Giants Gaming
In Game 2 of H2K vs. Giants, the fight that put H2K in a dominant position happened early on. Giants Gaming thought they had the upper hand against Raymond "kaSing" Tsang's Alistar, but when they went for the tower dive and mispositioned under the bottom turret, H2K turned things around.
"I had no mana apart from one ultimate, one Q, or one W. One skill, basically," explains kaSing. "I ulti'd, they dove us, and after, Vayne was tanking the tower for some reason." Adrián "Adryh" Pérez's Vayne wasn't able live through multiple turret shots and the subsequent beat down from Jean-Victor "loulex" Burgevin's Lee Sin.
The fight continued to erupt from there. "We got three kills for pretty much no reason," kaSing laughs."They focused the wrong targets. After that, it was like, 'This game is pretty much over.'" The play gave H2K confidence to further punish mistakes, and as Giants lost vision and jungle pressure around the map, H2K took over.
Team Impulse vs. Team Dignitas
The defining play of the Team Impulse vs. Team Dignitas series occurred towards the end of Game 1. While Team Dignitas had previously wiped out Impulse only a few minutes prior, TIP rallied back near the Baron pit. Impulse caught out Alan "KiWiKiD" Nguyen's Alistar while the rest of Team Dignitas made a move to close in on TIP in the choke point. Adrian "Adrian" Ma did what he could to peel them away on Janna, but admits the encounter wasn't that pretty to start out with.
"I actually thought we were going to lose the fight, because everyone was just dying," Adrian says. But when he hit a Howling Gale that knocked up three members of Team Dignitas, Austin "Gate" Yu on Azir swooped in with a massive [ultimate] to swing the fight in TIP's favor. "Gate did insane damage with his ultimate and it really changed the fight and the game." Apollo "Apollo" Price's Kog'Maw stayed safe in the back, and was able to clean things up from there.
Unicorns of Love vs. ROCCAT
Game 5! After a tense back and forth series and an incredibly close match, the Unicorns of Love were finally able to find an engage that took advantage of their composition's synergy. UOL's mid laner Tristan "PowerOfEvil" Schrage describes the play best. "We were calling for Alistar to engage and go HAM. He got stunned, but instantly popped his ultimate to break the crowd control. He got the knock up, we wombo comboed with Orianna. Vizicsacsi came just in time as well to jump in and Flash-stun with his ultimate. It worked out perfectly."
With three members of ROCCAT down, UOL took the inner mid lane turret and went on to secure their second Baron of the match. "After that, I think we were feeling really confident in the game. It was a really good motivational boost," says PowerOfEvil.
Team SoloMid vs. Gravity
Team SoloMid recalled after pushing down Gravity's second top turret in Game 3, and Gravity took the opportunity to make their way to the Dragon pit. Unfortunately, Gravity didn't clear out TSM's wards, and were punished for it. "We knew that as soon as they started Dragon we'd have Dyrus Teleport behind them and have a flank position on their carries," says TSM mid laner Søren "Bjergsen" Bjerg.
With Jang-sik "Lustboy" Ham's Thresh locking Lae-Young "Keane" Jang's Orianna down with a Death Sentence, Marcus "Dyrus" Hill on Olaf was able to do free damage on Gravity's back line and grab four kills after everyone squeezed into the Dragon pit. "We were already feeling pretty confident because we were ahead 5,000 gold off of snowballing turrets," Bjergsen says. "With this, it was going to be our opening to straight up end the game."
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With the first leg of the 2015 LCS Summer Split Playoffs in the books, we want to know which plays you thought had the most impact in the Quarterfinals. To catch up on the full Quarterfinals matches, head over to the spoiler-free VODs page, then leave your favorite big plays down in the comments or on Twitter!
Check back to Lolesports for more explosive moments as the 2015 LCS Playoffs continue with the Semifinals matches on August 15.
