After the FLY vs C9 game today, only one team remains undefeated in North America.
LCS had an unfortunate delay at the start of the day. Due to some hardware issues relating to on-stage audio, teams were sent back to their facilities and had to play the rest of the games remotely, which were pushed back an hour.
Roster issues also continued on Day 2 as well. Yesterday was the debut of Golden Guardians mid laner Gori, who couldn’t play with his team last week due to visa issues. Unfortunately, not all teams managed to get their full rosters together in Week 2. FlyQuest and Dignitas support players Eyla and IgNar haven’t joined their respective teams. For a second consecutive week, we saw Winsome and Biofrost on the stage.
Week 2 of the LCS was also the first time a major region played on the newest patch, 13.1b, with the ADC and bruiser itemization changes. Due to the new patch, some champions, like Yuumi, dropped were absent from pick/bans during the week, while some new champions rose in priority like Caitlyn and Amumu.
FLY vs C9
Before the game, nearly everyone’s eyes were on the two bot laners, but the early action came in the mid lane. After finding a clean 2v2 fight, FLY mid/jungle started out the game on the right food. Spica was even able to carry his lead to bot lane with the first Herald. More bad news came for C9 when their only lead on the map Fudge died 1v1 to Impact in the top lane. There were a couple of close calls during the mid game, but FLY managed to come out ahead in all skirmishes and strengthen their lead with a 20-minute Baron.
FLY’s gold lead ballooned over 7k with the Baron siege, and they trapped C9 to their base. C9 tried to pick FLY solo laners in side lanes, but they couldn’t find any kills and gave a second Baron on top of it. FLY top side had scaling on their side, not to mention their lead, and with a 7/1 VicLa leading the way they ended the game in a dominating fashion.
- Teams: FLY 1 – 0 C9
- Time: 29:52
- Kills: 13 – 2
- Turrets: 10 – 1
- Gold: 58.5k – 46.4k
- Dragons: 3 – 1
- Barons: 2 – 0
DIG vs EG
It took four games, but finally Jojo was on the side of the winning matchup in the mid lane. With both Inspired and Vulcan visiting his lane in the early game, EG found themselves a lot of map pressure and used it to control early objectives. While EG were focusing on the Jensen, the other side lanes of DIG weren’t able to create anything else on the Rift and the gold lead eventually grew to a massive amount.
While DIG not doing any proactive moves definitely helped them, EG had a good game plan, and they executed it very cleanly. They made their only mistake when they overextended a little bit while trying to end the game with a Baron push and gave over a couple of shutdowns. But in the end, it did not matter as they came back with their second attempt and managed to close it out with an ace.
- Teams: DIG 0 – 1 EG
- Time: 26:48
- Kills: 2 – 14
- Turrets: 0 – 9
- Gold: 38.4k – 53.2k
- Dragons: 1 – 3
- Barons: 0 – 1
TSM vs 100T
Third straight Zeri game from 100T as they keep the focus on Doublelift once again. This time around they relied on the veteran ADC even more as Bjergsen pulled out his patented Zilean. To Doublelift the credit, the strategy seemed to pay off really well as the Thieves were able to snowball very effectively from their bot side of the map. And with Tenacity finding not one but two solo kills in the top lane, the game looked over even before the 15th minute. 100T still played it slow and waited for the Baron, which they secured after a deathless ace and just ended the game with their siege.
- Teams: TSM 0 – 1 100T
- Time: 29:57
- Kills: 2 – 20
- Turrets: 1 – 10
- Gold: 49.4k – 62.3k
- Dragons: 0 – 4
- Barons: 0 – 1
TL vs GG
If you missed the Kalista support game from Zven on Day 1, we got another ADC popping up in the role with huhi’s Caitlyn support, this time countered by CoreJJ’s Blitzcrank. But even with the unconventional bot lane picks, teams seemed to focus on their top sides in the early game. Summit got ahead with the first Herald, while GG managed to find kills with their mid/jungle duo. TL was winning the first couple of skirmishes as most of the GG kills went to their support, but they made some big individual mistakes that kept GG in the game. Unfortunately for the Guardians, they had trouble punching through the tanky team comp of TL with their more poke-reliant champions, even with multiple great engages from River. It still took TL a couple of attempts to end the game, but they managed to do it in the end.
- Teams: TL 1 – 0 GG
- Time: 40:02
- Kills: 23 – 15
- Turrets: 11 – 3
- Gold: 76.7k – 67.4k
- Dragons: 4 – 1
- Barons: 1 – 0
CLG vs IMT
A couple of interesting draft picks came out in the last game of the day with Palafox’s Irelia and Kenvi pulling out his famous Kindred first time in the LCS. The early game was very action-packed, but weirdly it didn’t lead to too many kills for either team. Eventually, IMT was able to establish a decent-sized gold lead. They tried to push their lead and secure a Baron, but after a missed smite from Kenvi, CLG stole the objective and gave themselves a second chance in the game. But IMT kept their mental strong and delay the game so that they were able to take control back and win their first game of 2023.
- Teams: CLG 0 – 1 IMT
- Time: 36:20
- Kills: 5 – 17
- Turrets: 3 – 10
- Gold: 61k – 72.2k
- Dragons: 1 – 4
- Barons: 1 – 1
Image credit: Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games
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