After a string of horrible playoffs, CLG has finally stepped up their game, and are in the finals this Sunday against TSM. No stranger to the finals, as they have been a part of all LCS finals, TSM are looking to defend their Spring victory and head into Worlds as the first seed in NA. First seed is has a huge advantage in group stages, and gives the team a great shot at making it to the top 8, so a lot is on the line here. Ryan Tang of goldper10.com knows that, and he has some key question going into the match. Starting off with the one that is always on any CLG’s fan mind, why does CLG always lose to TSM:
Ever since the LCS era (and arguably before it, after CLG lost star jungler Saintvicious) TSM has always beaten CLG. Although TSM vs. CLG is considered one of LoL’s greatest rivalries, its becoming harder and harder to consider it a rivalry at all. In the Season 3 Summer Split and Season 4 Spring Split (when the two teams met in the play-offs) CLG went into the series with hopeful signs (a 4-0 record against TSM in the regular season in the first case, and a very strong close to the season under dexter in the latter) but still lost the NA’s most popular team. On one very simple level, CLG have never beaten TSM because TSM has always been a very mid-focused team and CLG have never had an ace mid laner who could control his counterpart. Perhaps it’s telling that CLG’s unlucky streak against TSM came after the decline of star mid laner bigfatlp.
This season, CLG are once again entering the play-offs in no position to contend with TSM’s star mid laner. While TSM made some attempts to diversify their strategies in the playoffs, they are still a very Bjergsen centric team (he dealt a whopping 41% of his team’s damage in the series against Team Liquid, and in spite of all the noise from Turtle fans about his performance against Liquid, his much improved 463 damage per minute would still rank him as only the 8th best AD Carry in the NA LCS regular season even though half the play-off games his team has played were stomps.) On the other hand, while CLG’s Pobelter is a great teamfight damage dealer, his laning phase is mediocre. Pobelter was not only able to punish LCS rookie Gate in their semi-final matchup, but was outroamed and outpressured in Game 1. If Pobelter can’t dominate an LCS rookie, what will happen against a stronger mid laner like Bjergsen? CLG’s other historic problem is that they are also rarely able to control TSM’s mid laner in teamfights. In their Season 3 series, their inability to lock down Reginald’s reckless Zed led to a disappointing 2-0 defeat. In their Season 4 series, CLG were able to repeatedly outrotate TSM, a clutch pick from Xpecial and a Dyrus solo-kill onto Nien brought both teams into Game 3, where Bjergsen’s Karma scored a pentakill to close out the series. Unfortunately for CLG, the team once again is entering the play-offs in no position to control Bjergsen. CLG still struggles with their engages, their strengths come from their rotational and great kiting in teamfights. If Bjergsen plays a poke style and forces CLG to engage onto him, it will put a serious damper onto CLG’s play-off hopes.
Can CLG even win? Ryan has more keys and insight into the match up, so check out the full article here.
