The last day of Week 3 is upon us and the classic rivalry is as well. Cloud9 faced off against TSM and looked to pick up their 5th win of the split while TSM hoped to accomplish the same thing, but only one team could come out with the victory.
draft phase
TSM first picked Sylas for themselves, while Cloud9 responded with a first pick Irelia and then Gragas. TSM countered the Irelia pick with a Poppy, who is hard to kill and can stop her dashes. Cloud9 then picked up the Yasuo to play the Gragas-Yasuo combo once more.
To finish out the draft, TSM picked: Sivir, Nautilus and Skarner while Cloud9 picked Varus and Braum.
Overall, Cloud9 loves having the identity of team fighting, so they have to play this composition well in team fights otherwise it can tilt more on the side of TSM. TSM have 3 tanks with a Sivir and Sylas, so their goal was to out-tank their opponents and take advantage of mistakes that Cloud9 could present in a team-fight setting.
game phase
It started off well for Cloud9 as Nisqy once again got first blood on his Yasuo, this time baiting Bjergsen into top river and having Svenskeren on his side. Minutes later, a fight broke out around Rift Hearld and it very questionably went in TSM’s favor since the TP from Sneaky accomplished nothing and was an unnecessary int into TSM. Poppy was a force to be reckoned with against Cloud9 as she was really annoying for the team to deal with, though eventually they won fights against her later into the game.
However, Cloud9 had slip-ups in team fights, which is the death blow to the composition. TSM took advantage of their mistakes and despite Cloud9 getting a few kills in that last teamfight around middle , Zven’s Sivir picked up a Quadra kill and TSM marched into the base to defeat Cloud9.
conclusion
The gripe against Cloud9 in this game was that they were not able to hold up one of the strongest identities of this team: team-fighting. The team is known for performing well in that circumstance and to see them slip up easily in this game was difficult.
Despite a bit of an shaky performance today, Nisqy performed well this week on Yasuo duty and the MVP of the week for Cloud9.
He kept up the identity of sacrificing some lead in lane to help his team in the side lanes or secure more vision in the jungle for potential pickoffs. Next week will give Nisqy an opportunity to put more of stamp into his opponents PowerofEvil and Ryu/Soligio. Cloud9 fans should like what they see so far from Nisqy but the more he shores up his mistakes, the faster he”ll climb up the ranks and be considered one of the best Mids in North America along with Bjgersen & Jensen.
Next week, Cloud9 will face 100 Thieves on Saturday at 4 PM PST while on Sunday they face CLG at 12 PM PST.
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