Today's explosive action came with not only Dignitas growing stronger and stronger, but a major upset against Counter Logic Gaming as well.
Counter Logic Gaming ended the day unexpectedly receiving two painful losses. However, the day wasn't a downer for everybody as Vulcun not only won both of their games but completely crushed them. Dignitas' Imaqtpie also received his birthday wishes by pulling ahead of CLG and keeping themselves even with Team Solomid for 2nd place in the North American Championship Series standings.
The day opens up with Counter Logic Gaming vs. Vulcun Command with a staggering variety of wild picks including Nasus, Vayne, Syndra, Alistar, and Singed. To fortify the early game weakness of Vayne on purple side, CLG makes the swap towards top. Vulcun, however, calls their bluff and swaps Zuna and MuffinQT up to the top lane.
The first piece of action begins at 6 minutes, where Sycho Sid Singed teleports top to take out Aphromoo and Doublelift early. For the better portion of early game, Vulcun grasps the lead, taking many advantages and utilizing their roaming capabilities and wielding much stronger results than CLG.
Their reign wouldn't end up stopping there, however, as they took 3 towers and a dragon worth of global advantage without penalty. As the battle progressed, Vulcun would take an incredibly huge lead on CLG by taking a 25-minute inhibitor. Though many would have expected a throw, Vulcun very decisively and thoroughly stomped through their opposition, methodically stomping Counter Logic Gaming for their first win.
The next game would see even more strange picks coming out as Good Game University locks in Fizz top and Leona in the jungle using the utility tree. Good Game University almost takes a 4 minute tower, but Akali holds it off by threatening Graves with a near-death experience. Cop and Elementz manage to take the first turret instead.
15 minutes in the game would wind up even with GGU closing out a dragon, tying up the gold. Unfortunately, the second dragon would not yield the same results as GGU does grab the dragon, but Curse capitalizes on it with superior teamfight potential by acing GGU.
The ace-spree would continue as Curse's experience shined through, taking both inhibitors and climbing up to a whopping 5k gold lead and washing out GGU.
The third game of the night would feature one of the most famous rivalries between North American teams since the dawn of LoL E-Sports. The games were neck and neck with Dignitas showing preparation by constantly pulling ahead by just a hair.
However, this would not stay the case for long with CLG pulling a 2k gold lead around the 220 minute mark after a superior teamfight from CLG. The lead wouldn't last forever in CLG's favor either and CLG has begun to regret their terrible drafting phase by letting Dignitas get champions they are very strong with at this point. This is apparent as Imaqtpie becomes huge on Dignitas and they take a middle inhibitor turret.
Eventually, Counter Logic Gaming makes far too many graves mistakes and Dignitas takes the game home.
The ending would certainly be the least climactic match of the night unfortunately, with a double kill coming off straight away from Vulcun's bottom lane against Complexity. What looked like a typical snowbally solo queue game was actually the final professional match of the LCS. Certainly not the largest of crowd pleasers, Vulcun succeeds in maintaining the lead and not throwing significantly in any sort of way.
Despite the massive deficit, Complexity holds on longer than expected. They are 0-9 in the midgame but still manage to fend off their inhibitors. However, they were still at the whim of their enemies and could not dictate their own game decisions. They couldn't hold off forever, however, and Zuna closes the game out with a Trueshot Barrage from downtown to blindly finish off Lux and take the game home.
LCS NA Week 3 Standings
