The last time Team Liquid and Team Impulse faced off, it was in the 2015 NA LCS Spring Split Playoffs — where TL took the victory. Now, in Week 4 of the Summer Split, they’ve managed to repeat that victorious performance. Team Liquid’s veteran jungler and shot caller Christian “IWDominate” Rivera took control throughout the game and came away with plenty of thoughts on the Match of the Week.

Thanks for Sejuani!

Heading into the game, Team Liquid had a surprisingly strong pick and ban phase that IWDominate feels went heavily in his team’s favor, despite TiP opting to ban out three junglers. “I think we outplayed them really hard in picks and bans. We took away a lot of strong power picks from their team, and we were able to pick a lot of strong power picks for our team.”

Not to mention, Liquid was still able to lock in Sejuani, who IWDominate admits is one of his favorite champions. “I love playing her. She’s super good late game and I feel like I can make stuff happen early.”

TiP ended up with a threatening lineup, but it decidedly lacked lockdown. Meanwhile, TL found themselves on a strong team fighting, tower pushing composition. They knew they had the superior lineup if they could last until the late game.

Early turning points

While Liquid’s goal was to prolong the game, they met trouble almost as soon as they set foot on the Rift. Alex “Xpecial” Chu unexpectedly met a few TiP members in the top lane, giving up First Blood early on. “I actually should have been here at this turret,” says IWDominate. “I didn’t know that they were going to dive from that angle. We warded the sides, but we didn’t ward the tri-bush, so I should have just been at this turret, which was my mistake here.”

He explains how he didn’t let the convincing dive break Team Liquid’s spirits though, as TiP had to burn tons of their Summoner Spells in order to pull it off. “We were behind almost 1,000 gold. But Piglet was freezing, so I just wanted to get some pressure around the map, and make a play around the bot lane.” And since Liquid had Summoners and TiP didn’t, IWDominate knew his team should be able to win a fight.

He headed bottom for a gank that IWDominate says was the turning point for the entire match. “I called that I was going to lane gank and I told Piglet, ‘just jump on them. If you jump on them and get the slow, I’ll be able to just come through lane and get a kill.'” It worked. Gwang-jin “Piglet” Chae on Tristana jumped right in, slowing Apollo “Apollo” Price and Adrian “Adrian” Ma down, while IWDominate came through to help his team rack up the kills.

Meanwhile, Jae-hoon “FeniX” Kim picked up a solo kill on Xian “XiaoWeiXiao” Yu in mid lane while it was going down. “As soon as those things happened, we’d stabilized the game, and that’s when the game goes into our favor,” IWDominate says.

With IWDominate focusing his attention bottom, TiP sent Yoonjae “Rush” Lee towards top for another gank on Diego “Quas” Ruiz. “When I made the play bottom, they realized that I probably wouldn’t be able to make it to top, so I actually cut straight from bottom to top and I skipped all my camps on the way. That’s the kind of play I go for more against a Lee Sin, because I know he’s trying to early pressure and I want to be able to counteract his pressure rather than just let him do whatever he wants.”

Rush was able to narrowly escape with three measly health, but IWDominate wasn’t discouraged. He took another journey down to the bottom lane, where he knew Impulse had no wards in the line brushes because Liquid had pinks in one bush and swept the other. “I snuck into the bush and knew they didn’t expect me to be there. What we were going for was insta-killing the Kalista. But, unfortunately Rush was there and Piglet got bursted.”

Despite Dominate landing a great Glacial Prison on Apollo and Adrian, the fight didn’t go cleanly for Team Liquid. “Piglet wasn’t able to jump in, get the kill, and get out. I think we kind of misplayed that. We probably shouldn’t have jumped so close there. We should have just jumped into range to get damage off, get a kill like that, and Flash and use Heal and try get out,” he explains, saying that it still ended up being alright for Liquid, as Impulse had to burn a Teleport and their mid laner lost farm.

Cooling Off

After a bloody early game, things cooled off quite a bit. In fact, it took until just after 24 minutes for another kill to be put up on the board. Until that point, it was just quality rotations and objective trades.

“In my mind, I wanted to keep a slow pace for the game. If we just bring the game to 30 minutes and we’re even, we were just going to win. We’d just win any team fight we’d get into,” IWDominate says. “So I was calling to not force anything too aggressive. Play slow, play smart, and play around my ultimate. That’s the big advantage Sejuani has over Lee Sin: Team fights.”

At 25 minutes in, Team Liquid finally got the team fight they were looking for when Fenix found Impact, forcing him to Zhonya’s before finishing him off. “Once I saw the Zhonya’s, I actually timed using my ultimate so that he didn’t have time to Flash. I got a really good ultimate there, but the problem was, since we did get a kill, we should have just let Piglet push top for free and not try to fight again.”

“When we ended up fighting again we ended up burning some Summoners. The problem was, when we were trying to wave clear, the Annie was able to stun our LeBlanc because LeBlanc has to get really close to get her wave clear off, and then they ended up diving us and getting a couple more kills.” The fight may have come out in TiP’s favor, but it wasn’t nearly enough to throw TL off their game. “That [fight] was kind of unfortunate, but we were still up in gold and we all knew that based on our farm, based on the turrets that we had, so it wasn’t the end of the world.”

Liquid answered back with a critical fight 5 vs. 5 fight in mid once Dominate’s ultimate was back up. On the back of Xpecial’s clutch Dredge Line on Apollo and Dominate catching two people with a Glacial Prison, no one on Team Liquid went down and they were able to take Baron.

Equipped with Baron buff, core items, and the confidence that can only come from winning a massive team fight, Liquid stormed towards TiP’s base and won yet another skirmish. “They end up killing Fenix, but Piglet gets out. I end up getting a three-man Flash ultimate, and as soon as I get multiple people, I think that we win the fight. That was a big turning point for us.”

From there, Quas unleashed the clopping beast, taking down three members of TiP before storming into the base to pick up their second win of the week.

“Pulling out a 2-0 was pretty unexpected,” says IWDominate, “But I think we’re starting to become a team that’s really comfortable at LCS. Even if bad things happen early game, we didn’t let it snowball on us. We’re still playing aggressively, we’re still looking for kills, and I think that’s a good quality that we need to keep in order to go far and go to Worlds like we all want to.”

Worlds aspirations are important for the squad, but next week their schedule is tough, as they’ll face off against Team SoloMid and Team Dignitas. “I think TSM is going to be our strongest competition this Split. I think they’re really good. Even if they haven’t showed the best performances here at LCS, I still consider them a top team in NA. So I think that’s going to be a really tough game. I’m hoping that we can keep up with them strategically, and that we can have our better mechanics shine through.”