NA LCS Week 6 Recap: Team Dignitas vs MRN

Team Dignitas' first match of NA LCS week 6 against MRN came out as a win thanks to a solid effort from all 5 members. Despite being caught out in one or two team fights, Team Dignitas managed to think on their feet and apply some intimidation-based pressure throughout.

The first noteworthy point of this match up was Patoy's choice of champion. At first the Janna pick seemed a little unorthodox but the application of her tornadoes and the scaling of her ult managed to cancel out a lot of team MRN's abilities and pressure application potential.

Patoy became somewhat of an escape artist throughout the game managing to avoid being chased down by throwing out some well placed tornadoes and popping his shield at the perfect time. He responded well to the 3-man stacks his team were applying using his abilities to harass champions like Jarvan and Karthus away from their towers.

Although team MRN got the first dragon of the game Team Dignitas managed to respond by taking a top turret allowing them to keep the pressure up from the early goings. Another thing to note is that despite the 3-man push application being pulled out often, team Dignitas kept up to par with their farming.

The most notable for this was Imaqtpie who was playing a brilliant intimidation-based game as Caitlyn. He was very aware of his damage output against turrets and wasn't afraid to poke the enemy team back to their turrets then put some good damage on the towers. Despite his fearless assault mentality he still managed to be very versatile in terms of defense, always making sure that he had a way out of these risky, up front pressure plays.

Dignitas won the first major engagement of the game managing to come out of it five kills to two losses which was the trade that put them ahead in gold early on. This trend continued throughout thanks to the the farming and the turret claiming Dignitas were constantly applying. An important player in the turret pressure aspect of Team Dignitas' play was Crumbzz.

Its no secret how good Nasus is at taking down towers but his presence alone applies pressure to any champion trying to defend a turret. His Wither could open up the possibility of a tower dive and his Q rips chunks out of turrets. All of this plays to Dignitas' intimidation stratagem perfectly. Crumbzz was making sure to be all over the map yet not always in sight to keep MRN on their toes. The last thing you want is Nasus to catch you by surprise.

Then we have Scarra who seemed to be the most prepared for the enemy team. He built himself to be nigh unstoppable with Zhonya's and his shield. He initiated well throughout the game, isolating enemy champions and bursting down the major threats from team MRN. By doing this he made himself public enemy number one.

However he was well aware of this and managed to pop Zhonya's active ability at some clutch moments during team fights making him the crucial element for Dignitas in terms of engagements. Scarra displayed just how deadly Diana's combos can be with some impressive crescent strikes to open this up.

The final member of Team Dignitas chose Elise as his champion. Kiwikid managed to assassinate key targets in almost every engagement as well as pull off some impressive cocoons both offensively and defensively. One of the most notable cocoons being one he fired off to save Patoy who was being chased down through his own jungle. The versatility of Elise was put on display throughout with the pursuit capability of he spider-form. Kiwikid also drew a lot of fire early on at a contention at Dignitas' blue buff but managed to flash away and allow his team to turn the confrontation around on his pursuers and protect their buff.

Dignitas played an intimidating and efficient game. The most important part of their pressure was their use of the 3-man stack pressure early game allowing them to rush team MRN into dealing with them early when team MRN's composition favoured late-game. This was a good display of game control and champion kit awareness.