Bans:

TSM - Rumble, Kassadin, Lissandra
Cloud 9 - LeBlanc, Tristana, Nidalee

TSM Picks:

Top Lane: Irelia - Dyrus
Jungle: Rek'Sai - Santorin
Mid Lane: Ahri - Bjergsen
Support: Janna - Lustboy
ADC: Jinx - WildTurtle

Cloud 9 Picks:

Top Lane: Gnar - Balls
Jungle: Elise - Meteos
Mid Lane: Fizz - Hai
Support: Thresh - Lemonation
ADC: Sivir - Sneaky

Initial Reaction:

Pick and ban phase was won by TSM, that was my initial impression before the game even started. The reality is pick and bans could have been even better for TSM. They had Azir open and I'm fairly certain Hai doesn't play Azir and realistically probably doesn't have a counter to it. Rek'sai was the first pick and a pretty good pick for TSM. Really I didn't think Rek'Sai had the impact that was necessary to warrant 100% ban rate, but it's not like it was a terrible pick. It didn't outright win the game, maybe Santorin didn't play it well, but none-the-less it was a good pick up.

The Ban phase for Cloud 9 was horrendous, entirely targeted and the Tristana and Nidalee ban made absolutely no sense. I get that Wildturtle is a pretty good Tristana, but he has a large enough champion pool that he wasn't going to be banned out and sneaky and lemon are good enough that they could exploit Tristana's early game. As far as the Nidalee ban I'm fairly certain that was targeted at Bjergsen. Dyrus doesn't play Nidalee and never has, even if he's picked it up, I highly doubt his proficiency on the champion (which is probably minimal) is worth a ban. It could have been a jungle Nidalee ban targeted at Santorin, but that doesn't seem ban-worthy. Bjergsen isn't really known for his Nidalee play and I think there is plenty of ways to deal with a mid lane Nidalee.

Cloud 9's first two picks were solid, Gnar and Sivir are two priority picks, and while I'm not really a fan of either of them, there's no doubt about their strength. TSM's response with Janna and Jinx was pecuiliar, but it definitely paid off. Probably the biggest discrepancy was in ADC and Support performance between the two teams. Sivir did considerably less damage in team fights than Jinx. Janna was a great counter pick response to the Sivir and the Gnar. When C9 picked those two champions, TSM read it like a book. Both are extremely weak in terms of individual strength. Gnar is a decent laner but isn't really going to punish anyone individually and Sivir is straight up terrible besides from the pressence of her ultimate. The Janna pick is great to counter-disengage and provides a strong laning phase. I really didn't like the Thresh and Elise pick from Meteos. I know meteos likes Elise, but she isn't really that strong. He had an impact on the map with her, but he could have done with just as easily with Jarvan IV or Lee Sin and had pressence in team fights. Elise brings a lot to be desired in a team fight, especially when your first 2 champions were built around team fighting ( Gnar and Sivir). I felt like there were better options to Thresh; Annie probably would have been a good pick for the lane pressure and team fight engage. Maybe even Morgana for the catch potential and Black Shield, it just felt like Thresh did nothing in the game and maybe that was because Lemonation had a bad game or maybe it was because it was a bad pick. I really liked the Fizz pick into Ahri but Hai just got completely outclassed. I thought Fizz was one of Hai's better champions and definitely the correct response to Ahri but obviously he didn't play well at all. I really didn't like the mid lane Ahri pick out of Bjergsen or the Irelia pick out of dyrus personally. Dyrus definitely looked lost on Irelia for most of the game and really didn't play it that well until TSM had a very solid lead. I feel like Irelia is not a dyrus style of champion so that's the main reason I didn't like it. The Ahri pick obviously worked out, but I felt like Azir was the stronger pick, Azir is flat out gamebreaking and I don't think Hai has any way to deal with it. It would have also been a perfect pick up against the team C9 was running, a team fight oriented team with Gnar and Sivir that requires them to just run at you, Azir punishes that style extremely well and has great disengage. Obviously the Ahri worked out, but it could have gone smoother for TSM.

Early Game:

The early game was clearly dominated by Cloud 9, their map movements looked so good, Meteos did a great job establishing and denying vision. He completely outclassed Santorin with his map movements, killing pink wards, killing scuttle crabs; Meteos dominated the vision control. Honestly, it's nothing I didn't expect from Meteos, he has always been great at establishing map dominance over other junglers which is why he is the clear-cut best jungler in NA. Balls played the lane swap much better than TSM and Dyrus did. He got a huge CS and experience lead over Dyrus and really established himself. He couldn't even be pushed out by the Jinx/ Janna combo, but to be honest that really doesn't surprise me, because one of my criticisms of Janna is that she has very little lane pressure and swapping 2v1 on her is very easy and hardly punishing. C9 and Balls exploited that very well which was why he got such a huge advantage in the early game. Sneaky and Lemonation did a good job harassing and denying Dyrus and they played the 2v1 pretty well. One of the more surprising feats was that Hai was actually beating Bjergsen in cs early game. Ahri should win the early-game match-up and should have been punishing Hai a lot more than he did. The early went decisively in favor of Cloud 9 and honestly at that point it looked like C9 was going to absolutely roll over TSM this game.

The Mid Game:

Cloud 9 is a team known for having a good mid-game with great rotations, this game they didn't have it. TSM had some very good maneuvers across the map, two moments stick out in my mind, when TSM rotated mid to take two middle turrets while Balls and Meteos got one up in the top lane. This was a huge swing for TSM and really you have to blame Meteos and Sneaky on that, sneaky was the only form of waveclear on the team, Elise wave clear is pretty weak, but with his pressence mid I at least think C9 and Meteos could have held TSM to only getting one tower. Hai also got completely solo'd 1v1 in the mid lane by Bjergssen, that cannot happen. Hai is an LCS player, not even LCS, he's a Worlds level player and he is getting solo'd by another LCS player, that's completely unacceptable at this level. Cloud 9 did respond by getting two dragons in the mid game and they got both uncontested, so they still showed they had some brilliant movements because C9 was definitely down when they took both dragons and they completely exploited TSM's movements. For most of the game however, in terms of the team fights and rotations, TSM completely dominated. Cloud 9, even in the mid game, when the game was still fairly close struggled to find any good team fights and exert their pressure. The skirmishes in the mid game went pretty handidly towards TSM for the most part, Cloud9 had the vastly superior team fighting comp and still couldn't clamp down on TSM.

The Late Game:

It's really no secret that TSM dominated the late game in every aspect. This is really where the map play and team comp of TSM completely outplayed Cloud 9. Cloud 9 never stood a chance when they couldn't find a good team fight. They got out-rotated on the map by TSM. TSM is not a good team to rotate across the map, if you get out-rotated by TSM you're playing it incorrectly, end of discussion. I know a lot of TSM fans might be upset with me saying this, but TSM is not a good team with map movements, in fact they're terrible and in my opinion, they have traditionally been one of the worst TSM in NA at exploiting the map while Cloud 9 has easily been the best. C9 might be the best team in the world at exploiting the map as we saw in worlds, but this game they were not. And that isn't to take away anything that TSM did on the map, I actually give them full credit and I think it's a testament to how well they played and how poorly C9 played the map. Losing baron was a minor flaw in the late game for TSM, but in the end their team fights crushed C9.

Conclussion:

TSM completely dominated in pretty much every aspect. The fact that they played the team fights better than C9 and rotated better than C9 shows that TSM made some massive adjustment since IEM San Jose. They had a few minor blips, especially in the early game and giving up so many dragons and baron, but the team fights and map movements were huge for TSM. TSM also won the pick/ban phase which is a pretty rare occurrence, obviously Locodoco is a huge benefit for TSM. TSM still has a lot to prove for the rest of the season, but to come out and dominate probably the best team in NA says a lot about where they've gone since IEM San Jose