Team Dignitas's 5 keys to victory against Cloud 9
Cloud9 appeared to be a tough safe to crack, but apparently Team Dignitas had the keys. Here are their 5 keys to victory.
1. Picks and bans
Before the match started, the shoutcasters mentioned that Cloud9 had the better draft. I beg to differ. I believe that Team Dignitas had the better team composition from the start while LemonNation's squad failed to adapt to Team Dignitas's picks. After all, picks and bans is often referred as a game of chess. Rico apparently called checkmate. Let's see how the draft went!
DIG bans : LeBlanc, Gragas, Rumble
C9 bans : Annie, Alistar, Hecarim
Phase 1 : DIG picks Kalista (The streak continues! Kalista is either banned or first picked)
Phase 1 : C9 picks Thresh and Rek'Sai
Phase 2 : DIG picks Zac and Nautilus
Phase 2 : C9 picks Maokai and Kog'Maw
Let's pause here. The team comps are currently like this:
I somewhat understand the Kog'Maw, he's a meta pick and an absolute late game monster, especially at level 16. It was a flex pick though. Cloud9 may have tried to throw Team Dignitas off with it. Nonetheless, Team Dignitas have clear access to the back line and an immobile champion like Kog'Maw is in massive jeopardy.
Phase 3 : DIG picks Gnar and Vladimir
Phase 3 : C9 picks Ashe
The final result:
Now we can see that Kiwikid and the squad will be looking to team fight. With all the AOE in their arsenal, this is an all-in composition that is fairly easy to execute. On Cloud9's side, their main goal is to peel for their two immobile carries. However, what I want to criticize is the Ashe pick. We've all been waiting for Sneaky on Ashe but I think that this wasn't the right time to pull it out. As for Shiptur's Vladimir pick, he probably wanted a good team fighting champ in mid lane to synergize even further their team composition and also he scales just as well as Kog'Maw. Team Dignitas now has Kalista's "Fate's Call", Nautilus's "Dredge Line & Depth Charge", Zac's "Elastic Slingshot & Let's Bounce!" and finally Mega Gnar's "Crunch & GNAR!" to access Cloud9's backline and abuse their immobile carries. LemonNation, Meteos and Balls were all on peeling duty and, to be quite honest, the trio's performance had to be perfect to handle Team Dignitas's pressure and engage potential. However, as Jaina says in Hearthstone, mistakes were made.
2. Early game
For any Kog'Maw in mid lane, your goal is to achieve level 16 or if you're less demanding, a Luden's Echo is quite the power spike too. Therefore, it'll take some time for Cloud9 to really ramp up. As for Team Dignitas? They have, what I call, the tempo advantage. Vladimir's power spike is much cheaper than Kog'Maw's, only requiring a Hextech Revolver and level 9 for a max'd out Q. Also, after a successful gank onto Sneaky and LemonNation by Azingy, not only did Sneaky burn both summoner spells, he was forced to buy a second Doran's Blade while CoreJJ had the luxury of buying a Vampiric Scepter.
On Azingy's second gank onto top lane, where the 2v2 was still taking place, they once again catch Sneaky. From there, CoreJJ gets a BF Sword/Doran's Blade/Vampiric Scepter as offensive items, Sneaky has a Pickaxe/2 Doran's Blade. At this point, it just snowballs the game for Team Dignitas, CoreJJ can easily bully and win trades against the opposing bot lane, Gamsu could stand his own against Balls, Azingy got tanky really early and they took advantage of Kog'Maw's slow ramp up by pressuring early overall.
3. Team fights
Following a great laning phase, Team Dignitas was able to force Cloud9 into fights they didn't want since there was a substantial gold difference. This is a pretty simple factor whereas the Team Dignitas train kept rolling, taking fights at the right times and at the right places to push their advantage.
4. Shot calling
After Cloud9's infamous mid laner swap, which was previously held by Hai (their main shot caller), the team's shot calling is currently undergoing some changes, an experimental phase if you will. Indeed, Meteos has put on the shot caller pants. When analysing Cloud9's overall movement and macro-related decisions, I noticed some distortions to say the least. However, before I analyse any further I do want to specify that it is quite difficult to shot call when your team is behind. Meteos had to be ten steps ahead, be creative, be unpredictable, be efficient and think fast overall. Team Dignitas didn't let that happen though. They kept pressuring Cloud9 so they couldn't think carefully, forcing mistakes. I wanted to bring out the fact that Team Dignitas's decision making was stellar in this game. They were decisive, they were on the same page and they were ruthless in their execution. Here's the map right before they take Baron:
It is very clear that Kiwikid and the squad had their sights on Baron. They flooded the enemy team's red buff with wards, ensuring vision control when taking Baron. That vision is cohesive with the objective. The call is clear and precise. However, for Cloud9, their vision on the map isn't bad but it is somewhat all over the place throughout the game in its entirety and in turn their cohesion was somewhat lacking in this match. Again, credit is due to Team Dignitas for not throwing their lead and playing with it how it is supposed to be used. On Cloud9's part, they were not able to muster a strategy to get back into the game, if there was one to muster in the first place.
5. Azingy
It was an all-star performance by Azingy, there aren't many alternatives to define what he displayed on Sunday. He picked his signature Zac and it paid dividends. He finished the game with 5 kills, 0 deaths and 7 assists for a kill participation of 75%. More importantly, he was the one that got things rolling. Indeed, if Team Dignitas's victory was Battlecast Cho'Gath, Azingy would be Creator Viktor.
Thanks for the support and wish us luck in the upcoming weeks!
