Immortals' early split surge continued Saturday with a 2-1 series victory over Cloud9 on Week 3, Day 2 of the North American League of Legends Championship Series Summer Split in Los Angeles.
Cloud9 (2-3, 6-6 match record) secured LeBlanc early in the Game 1 draft for mid laner Nicolaj "Jensen" Jensen and gave him plenty of gank help to ensure a good start. After Jensen got his lead, he began to roam into side lanes, securing kills. Cloud9's superb vision control and macro decisions earned it plenty of picks to set up a 25-minute Baron kill. Immortals (5-1, 10-5 match record) defense slowed C9 down, but couldn't stop it from knocking down an inhibitor off the Baron power play. An ace in the ensuing teamfight all but locked up the Game 1 win for Cloud9 as it immediately blitzed through the Nexus.
In the Game 2 draft, Immortals picked a strong teamfighting composition and focused on feeding resources into its AD carry Li "Cody Sun" Yu Sun on Tristana. While Cody Sun fell behind in CS during the laning phase, he made up for it with kills thanks to a lot of gank assistance. IMT's early teamfight dominance earned it an objective lead but C9's CS advantages from the laning phase kept the team gold close. Cloud9 found a pick and felt comfortable enough to chase IMT under turret, but got punished for overextending. IMT scored an ace, earning a Baron kill 27 minutes in that broke open Game 2. Cloud9's base weathered the first Baron power play, but the second was too much to handle as IMT pushed to tie up the series.
Cloud9 went back to a more traditional team composition for Game 3 while Immortals went for a composition centered around split-pushing and finding picks. IMT picked up the pace early as it swapped lanes at the 12-minute mark, trading two turrets for one. After the turret trade, IMT started to build a lead thanks to split-push pressure from top laner Lee "Flame" Ho-Jong's Kled. While Cloud9 held on with the help of the first Baron, Immortals fought right back to shut down the power play from C9. C9 then went for a Baron attempt after securing a teamfight win in the late game, but it didn't account for IMT jungler Jake "Xmithie" Puchero's Elise, who sacrificed himself to expertly steal the Baron. Cloud9 was running out of chances to come back and opted to force a fight around the Elder Dragon at the 48-minute mark that Immortals easily won to finish up the 2-1 series victory.
Cloud9's Week 3 continues on Sunday against FlyQuest at 6 p.m. ET and Immortals next series kicks off Week 4 on Friday against Counter Logic Gaming at 6 p.m. ET.