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James Bates 7y

Pobelter rallies Immortals to take a 2-1 win over Cloud9 in the NA LCS

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Immortals took down Cloud9 2-1 during the North American League Championship Series on Sunday in Los Angeles. The battle was as hard-fought as expected, with Cloud9 taking a lead early on before the pendulum swung in Immortals favor, despite some C9 players' best efforts.

No one was more influential in Immortal's 2-1 series victory than mid laner Eugene "Pobelter" Park. He started off the series quietly -- his greatest accomplishment in Game 1 was not getting stomped into the dirt as hard as his teammates on Syndra -- but the 18/4/14 KDA (kills/deaths/assists) that he earned in the following two games was anything but quiet. Taking the popular marksman Corki in Games 2 and 3, Pobelter dominated teamfights, with Immortals relying on him to carry fights since AD carry Li Yu "Cody Sun" Sun started out nearly every teamfight by taking a one-way trip to the respawn platform.

The glory didn't all belong to the Immortals, however. Cloud9 jungler Juan "Contractz" Garcia also had an excellent series, despite his somewhat lackluster KDA by the end. He crushed Immortals almost entirely on his own during Game 1, earning a 3/1/16 KDA on his Gragas, proving just how effective he was early in the series. While he wasn't able to replicate his success later on in the series, as his Rek'Sai play was quite a bit weaker than his Gragas had been, he still was the driving force behind Cloud9's early games, giving Cloud9 early game leads in every game of the series.

Early leads don't result in match wins, however, and, when it came to teamfighting, Cloud9 was clearly outmatched. What started a couple weeks ago as a slightly worrying trend has finally evolved into a massive and obvious weakness for Cloud9 as the team simply falls apart in teamfights, incapable of executing proper cohesive fighting after the first opening moments. It became almost comical how much Cloud9 struggled by the end of series, as even instantly deleting Cody Sun's Kog'Maw at the beginning of every fight wasn't enough for Cloud9 to outplay the Immortals in Game 3. Cloud9 found plenty of kills as the series wore on, but it was Immortals who found the teamfight wins to lead to Baron kills and turret kills, and those were all that mattered in the end.

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