Welcome back to NA Cloud9.
The LCS representative for MSI is back for the Summer season ready to show off their new skills after scrimming top teams from other regions. Even though they didn’t leave Iceland with the record they were looking for, C9 surely were prepped to come back home and roll over some NA competition.
Or they could be the ones to get rolled over. In classic C9 fashion, the team struggled right out of the gate and dropped the first two matches of the 2021 Summer season. The sluggish start from Cloud9 is worrying. Implementing a new player to the roster is never easy, and Cloud9 is doing it in back-to-back splits. In this week’s Cloud9 Cooldown, it’s time to break down what audiences saw out of the MSS champions in their opening weekend for the summer split.
Back to Being Slow Starters
It looks like the MSI hangover is no joke. Cloud9 came out of the first week of the summer season looking like they reverted to Lock-In tournament form. There really wasn’t much going on for the roster in the first two matches, except for a whole bevy of suboptimal play. Solo laners were making unforced errors and getting solo killed. Team fights were a bit all over the place, even when they combined extremely powerful ultimates. Overall, Cloud9 simply were outplayed for the majority of the weekend.
Certainly, the most frustrating game to watch for C9 fans was the 100 Thieves match. Once Fudge got solo killed by Ssumday, the game just went completely south. Perkz looked legitimately bad on the mid-lane Renekton as at 18 minutes, C9’s prized midlaner was 0/5/0. For a team with a new player on the bot side of the map, it was brutal watching the two mainstays struggle to provide stability, let alone give C9 an advantage. Whether it was truly terrible preparation for Cloud9 or just tilt, this team is going to need a bit more time to ramp up to full strength.
A Disappointing Debut for K1ng
After the sudden announcement of his promotion, K1ng got his first go at a full weekend of LCS matchups. Fans weren’t convinced that his call-up would be the fix for the team, seeing as Cloud9 had just come back from MSI and previously won the Spring season. Each game K1ng locked in the Kai’sa, but overall he opened his LCS career with some mixed results.
[Related: Fit for a K1ng: Cloud9s Struggle to get K1ng up to Speed]
Looking at a purely statistical view, K1ng played pretty well. With a combined KDA of 14/5/15 across the weekend, it’s totally understandable to say that K1ng did his job and the rest of C9 dropped the ball. But that is really only half of the picture. K1ng had a horrible time trying to dodge projectiles in back-to-back games. Against GG he caught several Paddlestars from Ablaze Olive, and against 100T, K1ng struggled to stay in an aggressive position thanks to FBI’s Varus. Taking massive amounts of poke damage drastically changes how a team fight is played. It was clear that at pivotal points C9 were not decisive in their engages thanks to a health disparity in ADCs.
For an opening weekend, K1ng will want to move on from this pretty quickly. He will be fine going forward. K1ng needs some time just as Fudge did when he joined the LCS roster.
Don’t Read too much into Early Struggles
The good news for Cloud9 fans is that they have all seen this movie before. Cloud9 makes some key roster changes and immediately struggles to start the split. Fans get worried about the roster and begin to wonder if C9 is really going to struggle for a few more weeks. In the end, C9 ends up being completely fine. While the team is facing some growing pains, C9 are capable of bouncing back in a big way.
At the end of the day, Cloud9 still boasts one of the most talented rosters in NA. A small shift in the meta may slow them down for a moment, but C9 will step up to the challenge. They key going forward is to have Perkz and Blaber truly step up when the team is struggling. They were sorely missing during MSI, and now is their chance to break through the rough patch. It’s time for the duo become the dominant pair Cloud9 fans known they can be.
Stay Connected
Featured image courtesy of Riot Games
You can like The Game Haus on Facebook! And make sure to follow us on Twitter for more sports and esports articles from other TGH writers.
Follow Bryan on Twitter @esportsbrock for more updates on Overwatch, VALORANT, and the LCS