Immortals (12-3, 25-13 match score) scored an easy win on Friday after sweeping Team Liquid (4-11, 10-25 match score) in decisive fashion to end Week 8, Day 1 of the North American League of Legends Championship Series in Los Angeles.
It was, unfortunately, a fairly standard series from the side of Team Liquid, who was re-debuting their once all-star jungler, Joshua "Dardoch" Hartnett, who did little to solve the struggles that Team Liquid have been experiencing this split. The star jungler certainly did provide some help -- Team Liquid got early kills in both games that simply haven't been there in previous series, for example -- but the underlying issues were still present. Team Liquid simply cannot decisively execute a successful game plan no matter hard it tries, as the team's constant coordination issues always comes back to bite once the game exits the laning phase.
To make matters worse, Team Liquid didn't even have a particularly strong game plan to begin with across the series. In Game 1 it drafted a composition that relied entirely on AD carry Chae "Piglet" Gwang-jin's Kalista and mid laner Grayson "Goldenglue" Gilmer's Lucian for damage against a tank-stacked lineup from the Immortals. Despite getting ridiculously fed, Piglet still couldn't break through either top laner Lee "Flame" Ho-jong or jungler Jake "Xmithie" Puchero in time to make a difference, and the whole team folded before the awesome amount of armor that Immortals built between them. For Game 2 it was less a matter of Team Liquid's mistakes, and more a story about Immortals' successes. Immortals neatly sidestepped the incredible 5-vs-5 teamfight composition that Team Liquid put together in the most simple way possible: it simply didn't fight in 5-vs-5 engagements. Immortals broke the map up and instead engaged Team Liquid in small skirmishes, where Immortals had the far better team composition. Mid laner Eugene "Pobelter" Park especially benefited from the sustained skirmishing, as his Syndra pick quickly took over the map after he picked up a few clean kills with Unleashed Power.
The Player of the Series was, as you might infer, Immortals mid laner, Pobelter. He died a mere two times over the course of the series, and was the primary reason that Immortals managed to take victory in the first place. Without the sustained damage that his Cassiopeia offered in Game 1, there's no way that Immortals could have overcome Team Liquid's gold lead, even with the extreme armor-stacking. His importance was even more obvious in Game 2, where he found a kill for himself about once every three-and-a-half minutes, for 7 in a 25 minute game. There was no question who the better mid laner was over the course of this series, and no question what player did the most to carry their team.
Team Liquid will go on to face Cloud9 on Saturday at 6 p.m. EST, while the Immortals face off against Dignitas at the same time on the secondary stream.