FlyQuest picked up its second series victory of the split Saturday, defeating Dignitas 2-1 during Week 5, Day 2 of the North American League of Legends Championship Series in Los Angeles.
Game 1 saw a rather standard draft, with both teams finding themselves on comfort picks. Dignitas' mid laner Lae-Young "Keane" Jang took advantage early with his Leblanc, picking apart his lane opponent, Hai "Hai" Lam's Orianna. That led to a rather large lead for Dignitas (5-4, 14-12 match record) to start, forcing FlyQuest to rely solely on Jason "WildTurtle" Tran to bring the team back. After a decently one-sided early and mid-game, FlyQuest (2-7, 7-15 match record) managed to claw its way thanks in large part to WildTurtle, turning around a skirmish to pick up several kills for themselves 30-minutes into the game. After playing on its back foot for much of the game, FlyQuest was able to use Galen "Moon" Holgate's Elise effectively, picking up a Baron and winning back-to-back fights. With a near 10,000 gold swing, FlyQuest found a 38-minute victory.
Dignitas was not fazed by the loss, finding an almost immediate lead to begin Game 2. After being unable to close out the first game, jungler Lee "Shrimp" Byeong-hoon ensured his team's full control of the game, picking Lee Sin and finding three quick kills for himself to snowball the lead. With the game being relatively low in kills, Shrimp found four dragons for his team and a Baron, taking all the neutral objectives and allowing his carries to swiftly move forward and take teamfight victories. With a clean ace 34-minutes into the game, Dignitas was able to take the Nexus and force the series to a third and final game.
With everything on the line, FlyQuest switched up its draft strategy in Game 3, prioritizing Rek'Sai for Moon and Lucian for Hai. Without giving up any power-picks to the enemy team, the strategy worked out well. Moon was able to pick up several early kills, ganking Keane to shut him down early while simultaneously snowballing Hai ahead. With FlyQuest taking the lead in the early game, Dignitas forced a small base-race that allowed them to take a tier 2 turret, but simultaneously gave up an inhibitor to FLY just 27-minutes into the game. With the resulting teamfight going disastrous for DIG, FLY took the first Baron of the game, snowballing its lead to 6,000 gold. After failing in yet another a desperate engagement nearly 30-minutes into the game, DIG fell behind even further, all but solidifying their defeat. Giving up a final Baron, Dignitas could do nothing to stop FlyQuest from taking the final fight and subsequently closing out the 38-minute contest.
FlyQuest will try to carry its momentum into its match against Echo Fox on Sunday at 3:00 p.m. ET, while Dignitas will look to bounce back from the defeat, taking on EnVyUs on Sunday at 6:00 p.m. ET.