Holy moly, what a Week 4 for Team Liquid. The organization had a press conference on Thursday, June 24 announcing Jatt’s resignation and Santorin taking a break due to recurring migraines. This all came to light alongside Alphari’s break due to personal issues. The team went into the weekend with Armao subbing jungle and Kold as the new head coach. Overall, Team Liquid played well considering the circumstances, beating Evil Geniuses and CLG and losing to TSM. Here are 3 takeaways for Team Liquid from Week 4 of LCS Summer Split.
Jenkins and Armao are Not the Scariest Subs
This shouldn’t be too controversial. Individually, Jenkins has proven himself as an S-tier Academy top laner. Darshan is the only player who is arguably better. The Jenkins is top two in almost every positive statistic, including average assists, gold per minute, kill participation, damage per minute, and gold and XP difference at 15.
Armao is certainly not the best Academy jungler, but he is among the best. Armao’s playstyle is also much more plug-and-play than, say, Kenvi or Nxi. Not to mention, his LCS experience on Dignitas and TSM brings plenty to the table. Most recently, he substituted for Santorin during the Mid Season Showdown and showed he could take Cloud9 to five games. Without this background, the Armao substitution would feel a lot more stressful.
Week 4 Could Have Easily Been 3-0
Watching the last five minutes of the TSM match, Team Liquid’s loss looks pretty rough. At 24:30, TSM essentially catch out Jenkins, Armao and Tactical, burn down the Baron, and push down mid to end before 30 minutes. Team Liquid’s team composition really could not afford to throw their lead in that way. The Varus had a strong gold lead, Jensen’s Lee Sin was getting rolling and they had two enchanters to buff them.
However, their champions did not have nearly enough waveclear to deal with Baron buffs. TSM’s composition included Mundo, Azir and Ezreal, some of the hardest scaling champions in the game. Their entire composition brings powerful waveclear. So a single mistake more-or-less threw away the game for Team Liquid, as TSM turned into a tidal wave. If TL showed a bit more respect, built the Varus a bit differently and stayed grouped up, then this game could have easily swung in their favor for a 3-0 weekend.
Team Liquid Looks Bad Against Top Teams
| Opponent | Kills Against | Kills For | Dragons | Heralds | Barons | Turrets |
| TSM | 7 | 5 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| 100T | 26 | 11 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| C9 | 13 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| TSM | 17 | 17 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 4 |
| Average | 15.75 | 9.5 | 2 | 0.25 | 0 | 2.75 |
As mentioned in last week’s 3 Takeaways, Team Liquid’s statistics indicate they are good at everything, but not great at anything. Looking at just their matches versus the teams above them in the standings, TL seems like a solidly fourth place team right now. Even pulling their most basic stats, there are clearly issues that TSM, 100 Thieves and Cloud9 are taking advantage of to win the matchups.
So far in TL’s four losses to the top teams (so, not including the EG loss), they average 9.5 kills, while the opponent’s average 15.75. TL averaged two dragons per game, .25 heralds per game, and 2.75 turrets per game. On top of that, TL has yet to secure a Baron versus TSM, 100 Thieves or Cloud9. These trends point towards poor macro from Team Liquid. Whether they lose control through vision, tempo, or poor decision-making, TL will not make top three and go to Worlds off of individual star power and mechanics alone.
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