On Saturday evening, Dignitas defeated Cloud 9 in day two of the League of Legends LCS Summer Split. This marks Cloud 9’s first loss of the new split and a confirmation that a fresh roster for Dignitas means some strong play to come.
This match was one of the most anticipated of the latest Season Four LCS split, pitting two newcomers on Dignitas against the seemingly unstoppable force of Cloud 9. The new chemistry along with full-time coaching from Scarra proved more than enough to secure a very comfortable victory: the match ended in under 30 minutes, with an 11-2 kill record, in favor of Dignitas. Much of the community was surprised by the upset, with 81.17% of voters before the match on the official LCS site predicting that Cloud 9 would come out on top.
Dignitas has shown that it remains a serious contender even after the retiring of long-time mid Scarra and replacement of top laner Cruzer. Mid laner Shiphtur came up big in the Cloud 9 game after a pentakill against Complexity Black in his first game with Dignitas, showing that his skills are certainly consistent. In a post-game interview, jungler Crumbzz discussed the new roster’s focus on building teamwork and synergy in their day-to-day lives, an attempt which clearly payed off with strong play this evening.
Coming up against the terrifying presence of Meteos’ Kha’Zix play, Dignitas held strong, selecting laners like Shyvana (newcomer ZionSpartan), Lulu (Shiphtur), and Zyra (KiWiKiD) who would be able to hold their own without support from Crumbzz’ Lee Sin. The plan was executed flawlessly, giving Dignitas the opportunity to leverage their early-game advantages to a quick and solid victory. On top of this, Dignitas pulled out an impressive 400 gold per minute lead over Cloud 9 and a nearly 10,000 gold lead by the end of the game. That said, Cloud 9 kept up a solid CS throughout, maintaining a nearly 100 minion lead even at the time of their loss.
With the LCS Summer Split just getting started, there’s sure to be many more exciting matches to come, including more tests for the fledgling Dignitas roster.