Immortals continues to defy expectations, knocking off Team Dignitas on Saturday with a 2-1 series victory in Los Angeles during Week 4 Day 2 of the North American League of Legends Championship Series.
The series started with a battle of power picks, with Immortals opting to first pick Galio for mid laner Eugene "Pobelter" Park while giving Dignitas Zac for jungler Lee "Shrimp" Byeong-hoon Despite the traded power picks, the game quickly became the Benjamin "LOD" deMunck show as he put on an absolute clinic with Ashe. Picking up early kills, Dignitas found a decent lead, forcing Immortals into a poor position. Off the back of strong initiations by Shrimp, Dignitas was able to quickly remove Cody "Cody Sun" Sun from fights, negating all of the enemy team's damage and easily winning fights. With its increasingly overwhelming lead, DIG found a 30-minute Baron that solidified its advantage and allowed the team to quickly start breaking apart the enemy base. Shortly after, DIG took a final teamfight that resulted in a 33-minute victory.
Game 2 saw a completely different draft with both Dignitas and Immortals opting to ban out the majority of the power picks, leaving more comfort picks as a result. The key pick in the game found its way in Immortals' favor with Lee "Flame" Ho-Jong opting for Renekton. Turning around two early ganks to find kills onto the enemy jungler, Flame's impressive performance allowed IMT to quickly find a huge lead in the game. These turnarounds coupled with Jake "Xmithie"Puchero's Gragas play net IMT full control of the map and free reign over the enemy team. With a 13,000 gold lead just 26-minutes into the game, IMT had no trouble dismantling the enemy team and taking down the enemy Nexus in 28-minutes, tying the series 1-1.
With the series brought to a deciding Game 3, both teams switched things up significantly in the draft. Opting to ban out the majority of the power picks, the main champion of note that made it through was Galio once again for Pobelter. Simultaneously, DIG opted to move Kennen from the bottom lane into the top lane while moving LOD onto Tristana. The strategy didn't work as intended for Dignitas as IMT quickly found several kills off the back of Flame's Jarvan and Xmithie's Olaf. All hope seemed lost for DIG who quickly found themselves down 10,000 gold just 18-minutes into the game, having yet to pick up a single kill for themselves. With Kim "Olleh" Joo-sung using Lulu to speed Xmithie's Olaf into the enemy team, Dignitas was unable to find a response for the domination. Thanks to the impressive lead, IMT found a 20-minute Baron and quickly pushed into the enemy base. Although Dignitas was able to pick up a series of kills and shatter IMT's hopes of a perfect game, the team could not bring the game back, allowing IMT to take a 23-minute victory and close out the series.
Immortals will look to retain full possession of first place as it takes on Team SoloMid next Saturday at 3 p.m. ET while Dignitas will look to bounce back from its defeat, taking on Cloud9 on Sunday at 6 p.m. ET.