Keys to Victory Predictions for Week 7

[Day 1] March 30, 2013

TSM vs CLG

Crs vs dig

GGU vs Vul

coL vs MRN

TSM vs dig

CLG vs Crs

[Day 2] March 31, 2013

MRN vs Vul

coL vs GGU

MRN vs dig

CLG vs coL

GGU vs TSM

Vul vs Crs

Each team will play in the upcoming week – potential for large shakeup in the standings. The bottom four teams are desperate for wins as we are already past the first half of the spring season and the deadline for relegation is fast approaching. All eyes will be on CLG and Vulcun as the former tries to stop the bleeding and the latter will try to continue their string of positive weeks. As for teams that are already in the top half of the standings, TSM hopes keeping WildTurtle as a permanent member of the roster will be enough to give them another undefeated week while Curse comes out of their bye week looking to further cement themselves at the top of the standings. Curse and Dignitas meet head-to-head and thus cannot both finish 3–0; expect a close match as both teams fight to retain first place.The first match of the Big Week 7 is itself a big one: another clash between the third and fourth place Season 2 powerhouses. Last week TSM proved (both on and off the Rift) the staying power of their new lineup with a 3-0 sweep week that included a win over CLG. CLG will be out for revenge, but TSM should be able to continue to take advantage of CLG's predictable strategies. WildTurtle and Xpecial demonstrated their proficiency with aggressive or harass-heavy duo lanes in the previous week, and implementing this strategy again may provide opportunities to halt Doublelift's carrying. Similarly, the more experienced Reginald is unlikely to lose against LinK and Dyrus is just as capable (if not more) of executing an effective bruiser-splitpush as HotshotGG. With the correct sets of bans, like Nidalee and Vayne, TSM are heavily favored in this rematch. Although defeating TSM will be an uphill climb for CLG, it is hardly impossible for a team of their caliber. As usual, CLG needs to get Doublelift farmed, but with more and more teams catching on to this crutch of CLG, this gets progressively more difficult. Ideally, CLG will give Aphromoo a safe, protective support to let Doublelift scale towards his amazing lategame. The duo lane will probably require constant attention from Chauster so no one interferes with the "feed Doublelift" plan. Finally, unless it has been practiced incredibly in the last week, HotshotGG may want to stray from the solo lane Karthus, as it isn't yet solid enough for tournament play. If Hotshot is back on one of his staples, it should give CLG an extra boost towards victory.Big Week 7 continues to live up to its name with a massive showdown between LCS frontrunners Curse and Dignitas. Curse's bye week return brings them face-to-face with their greatest competition, who picked themselves up in Week 6 after their comparably weak results at MLG Dallas. Though it's impossible to completely outban or outpick Dignitas, Curse may want to consider keeping Alistar away from patoy once again, since his cow was a serious playmaker during Week 6. Once in game, Curse must solve the problem of how to keep all of Dignitas' laning strength at bay. One method may be to send Voyboy against scarra, who recently occupies side lanes, and use Voyboy's 1v1 skills to keep the dignitas AP Carry at bay. Another would be to out-aggress imaqtpie and patoy with Cop and Elementz, fighting fire with fire to attempt to come out on top. Strong ganking potential would also be a good consideration against Dignitas, so Curse might want to consider choosing Twisted Fate, Shen, and/or Nocturne to put huge pressure on dig's dangerous lanes. On the other hand, Dignitas needs to ready themselves for a well-rested and well-practiced Curse who will be looking for payback from the team that ended their win streak. Ensuring that their classic aggression won't be countered will be essential for Dignitas, as Saintvicious' counterganks and reactive assaults often gain Curse their early game leads. Above all, Dignitas will want to secure as large a lead as possible as early as possible, since Curse makes a habit of falling behind, only to return and dominate their competition.GGU also returns to the LCS after a bye in Week 6 and will face Vulcun, who only had a single game last week themselves. While GGU holds a 2–0 record over Vulcun, Vulcun is stronger than ever after recent victories over CLG and Dignitas. GGU should target at least two bans/picks against mandatorycloud, since his Nidalee and Lux have been integral in several Vulcun victories. Another prime candidate for respect bans is Sycho Sid: letting him get a hold of Singed would be a massive mistake on GGU's part. Once in game, GGU may want to attempt to lane swap in such a way to contain the aforementioned Vulcun players; an unexpected laning phase may throw the Vulcun stars for a loop. In contrast, Zuna and muffinqt are notoriously aggressive, so GGU should look for opportunities to kill them whenever possible. Since GGU has been their kryptonite through the LCS, Vulcun will be intent on coming out of this match with a win. One of Vulcun's largest weak spots against CLG in Week 6 was poor map awareness. In that game, CLG took two Barons and five Dragons without contest simply due to a dearth of wards and bad positioning. Shoring up this issue will give Vulcun a huge leg-up in their next matches. Similarly, aiming for strong late-game Champions is paying of for Vulcun, so getting those will be key to starting a true win streak in the LCS.After the first two lower bracket teams conclude their match, the remaining two will face off on the Rift. Week 6 was another rough week for compLexity, who ate three losses to join GGU at the bottom of the LCS standings. Furthermore, one of said losses was to MRN and it was rather one-sided. While it may be tempting for coL to focus on taking down Nien, doing so gave MRN an early lead in their last encounter. Instead, brunch U and M eye A should focus on staying even with Nientonsoh and Heartbeattt in the laning phase so when Nien starts bringing the pain, brunch U can strike back. Instead, neutralizing the threat of ecco would be more effective since ecco tends to find himself in vulnerable positions with some frequency. Also critical to coL's victory is not allowing MRN to draft such a strong global team again. MRN was extremely adept at executing powerful offensive Destiny/Gate/Stand United/Whirling Death wombo combos, so coL should go out of their way to avoid such a composition. Despite their win over coL, MRN also had a tough Week 6 with two losses to go along with their one victory. Their biggest vulnerability right now is Heartbeattt: he is still adjusting to his support role and will likely be a comparatively weak link in Week 7. As such, MRN (and particularly Nien) will need to temper their play in such a way as to keep Heartbeattt out of trouble. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Nien would be wise to play cautiously as well. The other LCS players have recognized his talents and made him a high priority target already, but MRN needs him alive.The second-to-last match of Week 7 Day 1 may be the most important of the day. TSM is looking stellar after their roster changes, but Dignitas will be their first true trial. TSM's big challenge this match will be coming out of the early game with a lead, a difficult task considering the competence of Dignitas' laning phase. However, for the first time in the LCS, TSM may have a chance at surpassing Dignitas in the early game with a standard laning strategy. It's hard to imagine a pair that could outdo imaqtpie and patoy, but WildTurtle and Xpecial were recently able to take down Doublelift and Aphromoo in the same situation. Some choice battles in a 2v2 scenario could just end with a victorious duo lane for TSM. Similarly, Reginald and scarra are comparably aggressive, making them a nearly even match, which is a boon for TSM. With KiWiKiD and Dyrus also sitting at similar skill levels and playstyles, the biggest difference will be the jungle styles of each team, so TSM will need to take special care to ensure Crumbz doesn't ruin their days. Dignitas will also be feeling some heat in this match because recent LCS weeks exposed their frailties and TSM is now hot on their tail for second place. With this in mind, Dignitas should attempt to crush TSM as quickly and as devastatingly as possible. TSM is strong in the late game, but they also are very susceptible to collapsing if the odds turn heavily against them (they remain to be one of the only teams who have surrendered in LCS matches). Lane swaps, Crumbz's impressive ganks, and the unstoppable forces in KiWiKiD and scarra could dishearten and disarm TSM early on and make the game Dignitas' to take.For CLG, this is a chance to really pull themselves back into being solidly in the top 4. For Curse, it’s important to seal another victory to defend their #1 spot from any takers, as it will give them a first-round bye and favorable seeding in the mid-season playoffs coming up. It’s likely CLG will want to send their Duo lane to lane against Voyboy – a good way to secure Doublelift’s early development as well as cage the beast that is Voyboy. Chauster in particular needs to step up his game: he has been underfarmed in nearly every game CLG plays, and it bites him when he is significantly behind his opposing jungler in the mid and late game. He needs to make the time to clear camps or farm lanes in between ganking and lane camping. If he gets massively outfarmed and outleveled again, even Saintvicious won’t need to worry about losing a smite battle against him; he’ll either be easily killable or StV can abuse the smite damage difference.As this is a match between the two of the teams best know for upsetting the top four, this match should be quite interesting to watch. Overall, Vulcun Command plays a little bit more consistently, but Team Marn is looking hot with their adjusted lineup, and Marn on a good day is a terror to behold. Marn draws a lot of power from Megazero, however, and he still hasn’t shown himself to be totally comfortable with 1v2 situations (at least, not without a large level 1 lead.) If he gets a chance to lane against Sycho Sid, his chances of developing through the early game and be a tempo setter for Marn increase greatly. VUL draws a lot of their power from Mancloud, heavy poke champs like Lux and Nidalee.This is the battle between the bottom two teams in the LCS. Unfortunately for both of these teams, placing in either 7th or 8th place means instant relegation for the second half of the season. More so than anything it’s pride on the line rather than actual placement in the standings. In coL’s recent victories Lautemortis has played a huge role Unfortunately his performances have been wildly inconsistent so we won’t know till game time which Lautemortis has shown up to play. Good Game University’s best bet for victory is abuse this fact. Nintendudex has a reputation for playing very aggressive Junglers, so if he can get into coL’s Jungle and abuse Lautemortis they can gain a lead and try to push their advantages from there.During their streak of upsets, Dignitas was one of the top teams that MRN simply couldn’t overthrow. Now with a new roster it will be interesting to see if MRN can accomplish what they couldn’t before. The addition of Nientonsoh will be crucial to their success as he has a lot of potential to carry games. If he can win a couple skirmishes against imaqtpie in the Bot lane they should be able to snowball this and create pressure all around the map. For Dignitas a big factor in their win against MRN last time was KiWiKiD completely shutting down MegaZero. MegaZero played a pivotal role in their victories against TSM and CLG and against Dignitas KiWiKiD just never let him become an issue. If he can shut him down this hard again a victory for Dignitas shouldn’t be too hard.There’s probably never been a better time for coL to face CLG. After their 0–3 week it’s clear CLG is having some team issues. While they are certainly working out these problems, they probably won’t have it full figured out in just one week. Like most teams coL should focus their efforts on shutting down Doublelift. Make sure they ban Vayne and overgank his lane and they might stand a chance. Recently CLG has been experimenting with HotshotGG playing Karthus in an off lane, and against a less experience team like coL this could work to their advantage. If they try and punish HotshotGG for picking a squishy champ he can bait the team to focus him letting Doublelift farm with ease. On the other hand if coL focuses Doublelift like normal this could allow HotshotGG to reach late game status and actually be able to carry his team by doing damage instead of just tanking it up.This match will be Good Game University and TSM's third meeting in the LCS with TSM holding a 2-0 advantage overall. After a bye last week, GGU is going to be scrambling for any win they can pick up. With the end of the season fast approaching they are doing everything in their power to avoid guaranteed relegation by fighting their way up to sixth place A win against TSM would go a long way in trying to obtain this goal. Their best bet to accomplish this is to try and abuse TSM's newest member WildTurtle. Despite an excellent debut performance in Week 6 his overall coordination with the team is still developing and could lead to some mistake. TSM doesn't have do anything fancy to secure the win for themselves. Even after playing with Jintea for so long, GGU never reached the potential they displayed with Shiphtur during Week 1. If TSM plays smart they should be able to pick up an easy win by simply outplaying GGU.Depending on how their prior matches go, this could be a key match for Vulcun. If CLG continues to underperform Vulcun are in prime position to sneak into fourth place. Even though the only competitive difference between fourth and fifth place is seeding during the first half playoffs, there would be great symbolic meaning if one of the “bottom four teams” was able to cast off this stigma and break into the top half of the standings. That said, this will be a hard fought battle as Curse is still one of the top teams in the LCS. Curse has been known to lose early game and still win late game with more game experience, so Vulcun will need to establish an early lead and grind out a quick victory before Curse has a chance to get back into the game. As for Curse, their key to a smooth victory lies in the Bot lane. Cop and Elementz have been playing solid all LCS long, but haven't carried quite as hard as the rest of their team. Against a team with Zuna, getting Cop fed not only puts them at a strategic advantage, but it is also a huge blow to Vulcun's morale.