Tom Beer offers his opinion on Immortals losing to Cloud9 and missing out on qualifying for the World Championship, in a new series of articles where we share our thoughts on the LCS and the wider League of Legends scene.
Immortals are not going to Worlds. This is the reality after the team was beaten 3-1 by Cloud9, who have taken their spot in the 2016 League of Legends World Championship.
When you take a look at the regular season results of Immortals, that fact becomes even more absurd. Across the season for the last two splits, Immortals have a win-loss record of 33-3. That is one of the most dominant performances in LCS history. Yet when it comes to playoffs, to where the stakes are at their highest, they have crumbled.
When you consider the level of talent within the team, that simply is not good enough. Immortals now needs to ask serious questions of its players and management. Huni and Reignover, whilst being one of the more dominant Top-Jungle combinations in EU and NA, have shown a predictability and a lack of adaptation.
Huni is a player famed for his ability to “win lane, win game”. If you are playing versus Huni, especially in the spring split of 2016, you stood the lowest chance in the league of winning lane.
However as a team, with Huni playing so many damage dealing carries, they were left vulnerable to the engage-heavy tank line of other compositions, and to falling behind if they didn’t get significantly far ahead in the early to mid game. Their competition in the playoffs, the likes of CLG, TSM and Cloud9, are all very long-standing, well-run, well-coached organisations who were clearly able to identify Immortals’ weaknesses and exploit them.
“The team may well be called Immortals, but if changes aren’t made, they will forever be underachievers.”
Some of the blame has to be put down to the coaching setup. As in traditional sports, it’s the job of the coach to set up the way the team will play and the players to carry out their roles within that system to the best of their ability.
In the case of Immortals’ losses in the post-season, I think it’s more a victory of setup, coaching and in-game leadership than a case of lane dominance and better 1v1 match-ups. The Immortals coaches obviously know that their best player is Huni. When he is given enough pressure from Reignover, he will carry and he will win games. While there is nothing wrong with that, it is their responsibility to ensure their team has more than one point of attack, especially across a series.
Looking at SKT T1 for example, in the spring split, Faker’s most played champion was Lulu as they played a lot of ‘Enable Bang’ type compositions. This is one example but emblematic of a team able to play around different players, different compositions and strategies and still achieve success.
While SKT have looked shaky in the regular seasons of the last two splits, they have won Worlds 2015 and MSI 2016, and are Korea’s second seed for Worlds this year.
I don’t think there will be many changes to the Immortals roster (though the org has said things may change, and Reignover will be bootcamping with CLG for worlds), the players have shown their quality and their achievements are to be envied. I also don’t see a player who would be available who would improve the team in any one position. What I would expect is to see a difference in play style come season 7.
The team may well be called Immortals, but if changes aren’t made, they will forever be underachievers.
View more: A clearly disappointed Pobelter apologises to fans in this awkward interview with Scarra for The Score eSports:
Image source: Riot Flickr (Reignover, Immortals)
