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6:59 p.m. ET — Team SoloMid, despite some struggle, finally take down Dignitas to win game 4 of the NA LCS Summer Split semifinal and advance to the Finals in Boston next weekend.
6:48 p.m. ET — After almost 5 minutes of Baron dancing TSM finally manages to take the objective with no one on either team going down.
6:39 p.m. ET — TSM retain a 3k gold lead at 25 minutes, but Dignitas are fighting their way back into the game with a couple of solid fights in a row.
6:27 p.m. ET — TSM commit to a full five man fight bottom lane and get a kill and first tower in exchange for the rift herald.
6:20 p.m. ET — 5 minutes in and there have already been a couple fights centered around top with Dignitas coming out ahead at 2-1 in kills after five minutes.
6:10 p.m. ET — Pick and Ban Game 4
Both teams are looking for team fights, but between the two Dignitas will scale a little better into the late game, with the exception of Kog’Maw.
Dig: Maokai, Jarvan IV, Taliyah, Xayah, Thresh
Bans: Leblanc, Rakan, Ashe, Renekton, Kassadin
TSM: Cho’Gath, Gragas, Lucian, Kog’Maw, Braum
Bans: Zac, Tristana, Kalista, Elise, Cassiopeia
5:58 p.m. ET — Dig manage to take the game after winning fight after fight.
5:51 p.m. ET — Dig are getting pick after pick with each one leading to a strong teamfight for the team. All that adds up to a 7k gold lead and a fantastic position to win the game.
5:32 p.m. ET — Team Dignitas have started to rely more completely on their compositions pick potential and are playing it well getting their first real lead of the series.
5:27 p.m. ET — Dig try for a bottom lane dive with the Taliyah ultimate, but TSM counter perfectly, winning the trade 3-1 in kills.
5:10 p.m. ET — Pick and Ban Game 3
Dig’s comp doesn’t have much of a clear identity, with most of the game focused on early aggression and picks as things get later. Meanwhile, TSM is going to have more hyperscaling with even better peel this game, putting them in a great position.
DIG: Jarvan IV, Elise, Taliyah, Xayah, Thresh
Bans: Leblanc, Rakan, Ashe, Kassadin, Renekton
TSM: Maokai, Rek’Sai, Cassiopeia, Kog’Maw, Braum
Bans: Zac, Tristana, Kalista, Jayce, Orianna
4:57 p.m. ET — Just a couple minutes later TSM take down Dignitas for the second game in a row.
4:50 p.m. ET — TSM took a strong early lead off of a fight in the bottom lane and once again we have a scaling composition that is sitting comfortably in the lead at 23 minutes.
4:38 p.m. ET — This is one of the team composition that featured heavily in Dig’s series against Cloud9 and it’s clear that TSM had a plan to play against it. Svenskeren has spent the entire game aggressively count jungling Shrimp, forcing every one of Dignitas’s lanes to play passively.
4:17 p.m. ET — Pick and Ban Game 2
Dignitas has a good theoretical team composition, Syndra will help them in the mid game while Twitch scales up and takes advantage of the peel from Maokai and the buffs from Nunu. The only problem is that TSM has a composition made exclusively out of strong picks. The only real issue they might have is that they don’t have much peel for the Cassiopeia and Kog’Maw carries, which should make team fights extra explosive.
DIG: Maokai, Nunu, Syndra, Twitch, Thresh
Bans: Leblanc, Ashe, Rakan, Cho’Gath, Galio
TSM: Jarvan IV, Gragas, Cassiopeia, Kog’Maw, Braum
Bans: Zac, Kalista, Tristana, Renekton, Orianna
4:00 p.m. ET — Giving up the Baron was a step too far for Dignitas, in the crucial moments for their compositions DIG instead gave TSM a quicker path into the game. TSM took advantage expertly and won game 1 at 35 minutes.
3:53 p.m. ET — DIG got a little too aggressive after good fight and started a Baron they couldn’t quite finish forcing them to leave. This allowed TSM to get the Baron and TSM use it well absolutely taking over the map and grabbing 4 towers.
3:44 p.m. ET — There’s another fight in the river, this time it comes off of a pick on Bjergsen, who seems a little out of it in his map movement.
It’s very easy to see the ways that TSM’s team comp scales into this game, but that last fight gives us a little insight into the issues this composition has. There is no way for them to deal with Renekton and the silence from Blitzcrank is very likely to make Bjergsen a non-factor in most fights.
3:42 p.m. ET — Well if the first 18 minutes were the calm, then minute 19 was the storm as a massive teamfight breaks out top and Renekton makes sure that Dignitas come out ahead in the 4-3 trade.
3:37 p.m. ET — A very quiet game so far leaves both teams just about even, with DIG taking a very small advantage as their composition starts to move into it’s strongest stage. But keeping this deficit small is exactly what TSM will need to allow their champions time to scale.
3:14 p.m. ET — Pick and Ban Game 1
Dignitas have picked around taking over the early game. They will want to snowball a couple of early kills and objectives into forcing teamfights that TSM won’t be able to out-damage them on. TSM will need to make it unscathed into the mid and late game, if they can’t then DIG are likely to take over the game completely.
TSM: Shen, Gragas, Kassadin Tristana, Thresh
Bans: Twitch, Cassiopeia, Zac, Syndra, Orianna
DIG: Renekton, Jarvan IV, Taliyah, Kalista, Blitzcrank
Bans: Ashe, Rakan, Maokai, Cho’Gath, Leblanc
NA LCS number one seed, Team SoloMid will face off against number five seed Team Dignitas in the final series of the NA LCS Summer Split Playoff semifinals on Sunday.
Team SoloMid will enter the contest coming off of one of their strongest splits ever. Though it couldn’t quite match the highs of last Summer Split, TSM managed to come in first place, overcoming a few issues early on in the season while attempting to reintroduce Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng to the roster. In the end though, TSM figured things out and as the season came to a close continued to look better every game.
Things aren’t much different for Team Dignitas. While their Summer Split wasn’t quite as strong, they successfully overcame a fairly weak first couple of split to quickly turn into one of the league’s most impressive teams. While they could never really be counted on to win all of their games, matches against top of the table opponents were always close, and often ended in surprise wins for Dignitas.
Lineups
Team SoloMid
- Kevin “Hauntzer” Yarnell
- Dennis “Svenskeren” Johnson
- Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg
- Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng
- Vincent “Biofrost” Wang
Team Dignitas
- Kim “Ssumday” Chan-ho
- Lee “Shrimp” Byeong-hoon
- Jang “Keane” Lae-young
- Johnny “Altec” Ru
- Adrian Ma
HOW TO WATCH
The TSM vs DIG series will be a best-of-five and watchable on here or at the NA LCS Twitch channel. It is scheduled to start at 3 p.m. ET.