There was a time in North American League of Legends when "Cloud9" was practically synonomous with "victory." However, they've finished second best behind Team SoloMid for two splits in a row now, and are currently fighting just to avoid the promotion series to save their spot in the LCS. Things have quickly gone downhill since the (short-lived) retirement of team captain and shot-caller, Hai. With that said, their most recent match against Team Dignitas offered some reasons for optimism. Is this the beginning of the resurgence of Cloud9? Let's break down several key points of that game to figure out if it was just a fluke, or if there's something tangible here that the team can grab on to and build from.

Picks/Bans

(Champions shown in order they were picked, before being swapped to the correct players.)

There are a few notable things about the strategy of Cloud9 here. They banned away Rek’Sai, but left other jungle power picks (such as Gragas) open. This means that multiple options will be open for Hai regardless of what Team Dignitas does, and allows C9 to first pick Kalista, one of Sneaky’s best champions. The Maokai taken in the second round is a very strong champion for Balls, which helps engage fights and peel for his carries, while simultaneously denying the point-and-click CC from DIG as they look to lock Kalista down. The Karma from LemonNation offers an extremely strong laning phase along with Kalista, while also serving to protect Sneaky later on. Incarnati0n’s Orianna is another champion focused on controlling team fights, while also having the option to either shield a damage dealer, or throw the ball on Maokai when he goes in to land a good Shockwave.

The big surprise here is the Rengar for Hai. It’s a champion he’s been playing in solo queue, but no one really expected it to come out in the LCS. North America has typically not been kind to LCS Rengar players, but the synergy with Orianna, as well as Hai’s comfort on the champion, made C9 feel it was the right choice here.

Level 1 Strategy

Cloud9 moved up into Dignitas’ red side jungle to lay down a bit of vision, but mostly to scout for the lane swap. They picked the Kalista/Karma combo specifically for their power in a 2v2 lane, and wanted to make sure they got that match-up. A skirmish at Cloud9’s red buff led to Helios stealing it, though both he and KiWiKiD had to Flash to save their lives on the retreat. Interestingly, Dignitas willingly had Sivir and Nautilus on the bottom side of the map, as they never intended to lane swap, ready to go head to head with C9’s bot lane.

Laning Phase

At 5 ½ minutes, Cloud9 already had a 500 gold advantage simply from farming. While top lane remained even, Incarnati0n in mid was slightly ahead, and Sneaky down bot was opening up a large CS advantage over CoreJJ. In fact, at around 7 minutes in, Sneaky’s CS was double that of his lane opponent’s. Dignitas likely should have looked for a lane swap, knowing that Nautilus is weak to getting poked down in lane. One can only assume they really wanted the Jarvan vs. Maokai match-up in top lane, but they weren’t really getting any advantage off of that. As for the junglers, neither one of them had much of an early presence, despite multiple attempts by Helios to try to gank bottom and mid lanes.

First Blood

At around 10 minutes in, we had our first big confrontation. LemonNation and Hai both roamed to the mid lane, looking to make a play on Shiphtur. It didn’t work out right away, but when they stuck around to try to clear a pink ward, Dignitas decided it was time to strike. Helios, KiWiKiD, and Shiphtur collapsed on them, while Gamsu teleported to a creep behind them. Balls followed the Teleport, and the fight was on. While it initially looked like DIG was ready to back off once Balls began to TP, KiWi decided to go in with the Dredge Line, looking to be the front line for his team. C9 quickly blew him up, and it looked like it might just be a simply one for nothing. However, Cloud9 chased their opponents under the tower, playing it perfectly to avoid taking too much turret damage, turning this into a 3-0 fight, grabbing that mid tower, and claiming a gold lead just over 3k.

The little things

Cloud9 was able to punish their opponents when they saw even a small opening. Often, a full damage Rengar will be looking to simply farm the jungle whenever he’s not involved in a fight. However, noticing that Gamsu had recalled at an inopportune time while the creep wave was at his tower, Hai immediately went to help Balls push down the turret, opening up the map and giving C9 more global gold to extend their lead.

Team fights and tower dives

KiWiKiD made a great play, with the Flash/Dredge Line catching Sneaky while both Helios and Shiphtur were there to follow up. Great map awareness had Balls Teleporting into the lane immediately, and despite being at a 4v3 disadvantage, Cloud9 turns things around, taking down KiWi. They looked to pressure the turret, and executed a fantastic dive, trading 2-1 while also grabbing the tower. These kinds of coordinated dives almost defined the team back when they were at the top of North America, and the fact that they had the confidence to execute here was a telling sign of how they were feeling.

Showing off the team composition

As Hai was clearing out vision around Baron, Team Dignitas thought they had the man advantage they needed to pick a fight. They use Sivir’s On The Hunt to get the speed boost to initiate, though an empowered Inner Flame from Karma greatly slowed them down. DIG still went hard after Hai, chunking him down to almost nothing with multiple ultimates. However, shields from both Karma and Orianna kept him alive, and Cloud9 turned the fight from there, resulting in a 4-0 trade and a free Baron.

Sneaky is still Cloud9’s carry

After having already taken the middle inhibitor, Cloud9 looked to break through in the bottom lane as well. As soon as they got the inhib turret, Balls went looking for a pick. At this point, the team set up the kills, and Sneaky showed off his talent on Kalista, resulting in a quadra kill. That was all they needed, ending the game in under 25 minutes, the fastest match of the split.

What we saw from Cloud9

Their pick/ban phase has been somewhat suspect recently, but Cloud9 put together a fantastic champion select with some uncommon picks. Rengar, Orianna, and Karma are not champions that are picked very often, but they fit perfectly with C9’s game plan here. Cloud9 looked calm and in control of this game virtually the entire time, showing off the team fight prowess that used to be their calling card. Hai being back finally had the effect on their shot-calling that they were looking for, as Cloud9’s map rotations were quick and decisive.

In the end, this was only one game (against a team that has been struggling lately after a red-hot start), and so it may be too early for Cloud9 fans to hope that this is the resurgence the team will need to try to avoid having to fight to keep their LCS spot for next year. However, there were multiple encouraging signs, and they were enough that C9 has reason to believe this could be what they needed to get back on track, at least for their next few games.