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Dignitas stays on top after a 2-1 win over Echo Fox

Benjamin "LOD" deMunck, AD Carry for Team Dignitas. Provided by Riot Games

Team Dignitas retained its share of first place with a 2-1 victory over Echo Fox to close out Week 3, Day 3 of the North American League of Legends Championship Series Summer Split in Los Angeles.

The series started out as a highlight reel for Echo Fox mid laner Henrik "Froggen" Hansen on Ahri in Game 1. Roaming early and often, Froggen participated in five of his team's seven kills by the 30-minute mark, one of which was a solo kill onto his lane opponent. However, Team Dignitas (5-1, 11-6 match record) had massive amounts of area-of-effect damage built into its team comp between Rumble top for star Kim "Ssumday" Chan-ho, Orianna for mid laner Jang "Keane" Lae-young, and Kalista for AD carry Benjamin "LOD" deMunck. Echo Fox (3-3, 8-6) failed to snowball its lead quickly enough, stalling before eventually falling to DIG's superior 5-vs-5 once the latter had a chance to scale, ending the game in 50 minutes.

Echo Fox jungler Matthew "Akaadian" Higginbotham went on an early rampage as Elise in Game 2, picking up three kills and an assist before the nine-minute mark. Combined with the kills picked up by FOX's Varus/Blitzcrank bottom lane, Echo Fox jumped out to a huge early lead. After picking up Baron at 21 minutes, FOX held a roughly 10,000-gold lead by the 25-minute mark. Some unnecessary deaths from top laner Jang "Looper" Hyeong-seok's Rumble made things a bit scary for Echo Fox, but its objective lead allowed it to close out the game after a 5-for-3 ace around Baron at 38 minutes, forcing Game 3.

Game 3 featured the closest early game of the series with only a few kills and objectives getting picked up for either team. This left the gold within 2,000 until 25 minutes in, when Dignitas snagged a Baron kill from under Echo Fox's nose. FOX's last-second attempt to stop the objective take resulted in disaster as Dignitas support Terry "Big" Chuong's Rakan landed a beautiful Quickness into Grand Entrance initiation combo, setting up Keane's Cassiopeia to melt through Echo Fox in seconds. This teamfight was all it took to swing the game, as Dignitas ended the series quickly afterwards in 28 minutes with the buff still intact.