Cloud 9 vs. Team Liquid / NA LCS 2016 Spring - Week 5 / Post-Match Discussion

Kalista Alistar is probably the most powerful bot lane you can draft, and is one of the most impactful picks you can make. If pick/ban ended there, TL arguably "won" it. Kalista-Alistar solves so many team-comp issues that it gives you incredible flexibility to draft your other roles (basically picking OPs instead of weaker champs because you need engage/frontline/cc/team fighting).

C9 takes Corki. Fine. Arguably you can pick Alistar there (securing it for Hai and denying Kalista+Alistar), but Corki is a power pick and Jensen can clearly leverage his strength.

Liquid takes Kalista+Alistar. As above, I think it was a perfect pick.

C9 takes Lucian and Morgana. This should raise red flags. None of those picks are likely to be taken by Liquid. So the only reason to take Lucian (revealing the Corki pick to be mid) and Morgana is if they want to hide their top and jungle picks.

Liquid picks Quinn (???) and Reksai. Reksai is a fine pick here to secure it. But Quinn makes no sense. C9 has already revealed their mid laner, you don't need to hold onto your mid pick anymore. Why reveal your toplaner like this when C9 has already shown that they want a counterpick in top lane?

And even if you wanted to keep hiding your mid pick (maybe afraid of a particular jungler), why blind pick Quinn? The premier blind pick splitpushing champion in competitive is Fiora. Not only is Fiora open, but her primary counterpick (Poppy) is banned.

There are tanks who can stand up to her in laning, but it takes them a long time to get to that point (compared to Quinn), and even then Fiora surpassed them against in the endgame.

The only explanation is that TL wasn't comfortable putting Lourlo on Fiora.

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