With week six of the NA LCS in the books, a foggy playoff picture is finally starting to take shape. Team Coast are floundering in the auto-relegation zone, and Team Dignitas are sitting by themselves in ninth place after a catastrophic weekend, but the top eight all believe they have what it takes to finish the season in one of the six playoff spots.

The Key to Liquid

When Team Liquid were in their rut with Piglet as their starting AD carry, the conversation was if they should continue playing Piglet or turn to their substitute Keith. Both sides had valid points — Piglet being a former world champion and one of the most mechanically gifted players ever at the position, but Keith gelling more with the team play style wise and having the advantage of being able to communicate better with Xpecial in English.

From numbers alone, it's easy to see that Liquid plays better with Keith. The rookie is 5-1 in his first six starts compared to Piglet's unsatisfactory 2-4 record. Keith has died less in his death games, picked up more kills and blown out the former world champ when it comes to assists. There is really no question now that Liquid should stick with Keith for the remainder of the season, and that he has been the overall better player than Piglet.

But Keith is not the key to Liquid's success — it's Quas.

Quas is the most versatile player on Liquid and possibly the entire league. He's played ten different champions out of Liquid's twelve this season, only playing one champion more than once with Gnar. Outside of playing the transforming Yordle three times when the champion was almost a must pick or ban the first few weeks of the season, Quas has varied up his play every time Liquid gets on the Rift.

Liquid can play around Quas' champion pool, either letting him be a gigantic tank or engage tool on champions like Maokai and Renekton, or letting him be a primary carry with Fizz or Irelia. Whenever Liquid wants to shape a new composition or strategy, Quas can play what is needed and execute it at a high enough level to give his team the best chance at winning.

Keith allows Quas to have more freedom in his choices and picks. The amateur-turned-pro has no issues taking a backseat when it comes to letting Quas, Dominate or anyone else on his team take farm or kills in the latter parts of the game. With the freedom Keith allows Quas to have, the Venezuelan carry can have the games he has on champions like Kennen or Morgana where he is the X-factor.

When Piglet plays, the team revolves around him. He enjoys the late farm, kills and gold to get into his back pocket. This isn't necessarily bad when the AD carry can pull through for his team with the resources they gave him, but it can be game ending if it doesn't go well. It's all fine and dandy if Piglet picks Vayne, the entire team plays around him to give him free lane farm and the kills in team fights to snowball into a late-game hyper carry, but what happens when he's down 25 CS at 10 minutes and already died twice?

Game over.

Quas is the biggest benefactor from having Keith on the squad, getting to play in a more carry oriented role. It wasn't the supportive or utility style that got Quas scouted by Liquid (Curse at the time), it was his ability to carry games on his back and be a driving force of a team's power. Paired with Quas, Keith can have an easier time cleaning up fights as the team's janitor and getting himself into his own carry role by the end of the game.

In their win against Counter Logic Gaming to finish the week off with a 2-0, Quas was allowed to play a more active role on Morgana. His constant three to four man Soul Shackles were the key to letting Keith on Jinx and Fenix on Zed get into into CLG's back lines and rack up the kills. Liquid's top laner finished with only one kill, but set up 16 for his teammates and only died once during his constant engages.

Keep Keith? Absolutely. He's mechanically gifted, synergies better with Xpecial in the bottom lane, and allows Dominate to flex his muscles around the map.

But by keeping Keith, Liquid unleashed Quas — and that's the scariest thing that could happen to the other nine teams in the NA LCS.

Around the Horn

With only two weeks to go before heading off to Poland for their chance at the IEM World Championship, TSM had a setback against Team Impulse to drop their top placing record to 9-3. Again, just like their last loss to Liquid, TSM tried something new with their composition: this time, letting Dyrus play on Irelia instead of putting him on a more defensive minded champion.

Dyrus was able to out CS TiP's Impact in the top lane, but the former SKT T1 top lane player had more of an impact influence in the latter part of the game with Morgana's Soul Shackles. TSM also played more of Impulse's game style than their own, getting into constant fights across the map and having the match turn more into a bloodbath than a chess match.

The usual cool and collected TSM were outdone by a team who, while still having problems getting on the same page all the team, are still one of the best mechanically sound skirmishing teams in North America.

Impulse's 6-6 record was tied up by Gravity with their win against Team Coast. The now 1-11 Coast are on the edge of being auto-relegated with only three weeks to go, and Gravity took advantage of the wounded squad by cleaning up the map in the quick time of 32 minutes. Keane and Cop continued their stellar play, this time the two players combining for an overall score of 11/0/14 on Kassadin and Graves.

Winterfox are finding themselves on a roller coaster ride with an 0-2 weekend. After being dusted off by CLG the day before, the rejuvenated Cloud 9 took care of business in the speedy time of 29 minutes. After rotating back and forth from looking like the old C9 and a team that looked to have their talents sucked away by aliens, the two-time NA LCS champions look to be back where they belong in the top echelon of Western teams. The loss knocked down WFX to eighth place at 5-7, but C9 reaped the benefits of WFX's rocky weekend by tying CLG in second place at 8-4.

To close out the sixth week, Team 8 put themselves on the same footing as Gravity and Impulse at 6-6. Following an off-season where they were pegged to finish last in the league, T8 have surpassed all expectations by finding themselves in a playoff spot with only six games to go. Porpoise has established himself as one of the best up-and-coming junglers in the Western scene, emerging as one of the unsung heroes of the season alongside his Team 8 squad.

Dignitas, who replaced CloudNguyen in the jungle with Challenger player Azingy for the round, didn't have the results they were hoping for — getting blown out in both games and now sitting in ninth place with a 4-8 record.

Keep Cloud?

Tyler "Fionn" Erzberger is a staff writer for The Score eSports, and recaps each week's EU LCS and NA LCS. His spirit animal is NaJin's Ohq. You can follow him on Twitter.