Match commentary and interviews from the floor courtesy of RheingoldRiver

With excellent overviews of each match and interviews with the expert summoners involved, RheingoldRiver brings fantastic insight into the events that enthralled millions as part of the League of Legends Championship Series.

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The first game of the summer promotion/relegation tournament on Friday saw Quantic running an engage composition with Kennen, Zac, and Sona, while Team Astral Poke opted for a disengage composition with Janna and Gragas.  Lane swaps of the ADC/support duos to mid went heavily in favor of Quantic, and it was able to secure a decent gold lead before the first kill or objective of the game was secured. 

It was TAP that actually secured the first kill of the game, onto Hai in toplane at 7 minutes, but Quantic immediately came back with Meteos ganking BobbyHankhill and NydusHerMain, enabling two kills and a dragon for his team.  After taking those early objectives, Quantic massively snowballed its lead, taking kill after kill and tower after tower, ultimately forcing Astral Poke's surrender by 21 minutes.

After an extremely strong showing in game 1, Quantic strode confidently into game 2, picking up several of the same picks that it had chosen in the first game, with Kha'zix, Zac, and Sona.  Superior warding at level 1 led to Meteos stealing Remstars's first blue buff, which in turn led to a significantly higher jungle presence from Quantic's jungler. 

This time, it was Quantic who took the first kill of the game, off a Zac gank in botlane at 4:45, and its duo-top lane also secured the first tower half a minute later.  Quantic continued its snowball of the previous game, picking up three more kills and a dragon by 10 minutes.  Team Astral Poke was able to secure a few pick-offs, but it was not enough, and Quantic ended up closing out game 2 almost as quickly as it had closed out the first game.

After its stunning 2-0 showing, I sat down with Quantic's support player, LemonNation, to talk a bit about the games he'd just played and himself as a player.

Rhein: Congratulations on taking out Team Astral Poke.

LemonNation: Thank you.

Did you expect the victories to be that one-sided?

I hoped they would be that one-sided, I guess.

How much have you prepared for Complexity?

We have a full day now to prepare for Complexity.  We have a basic plan for Complexity, but we're going to do the rest of it tonight.  Before yesterday, we were just scrimmaging, just getting better.

Going into the matchup, you had recently switched AD Carries with WildTurtle going to TSM.  As a support player, how does that impact you?

I just duo with Castro a ton, play with him in scrims a ton, tell him what to do.  I don't know, we just played.

So you've played with a lot of really well-known AD carries.  Who's your favorite?

Hoodstomp.

Why is that?

He was the blackest.

Recently, in an AMA, you said that you think that Blitzcrank isn't a viable support, but we saw him being used GGU two weeks ago to a lot of success.  Do you still stand by that?

He's definitely viable in solo queue.  In an actual team game, he is not viable.  I think he's too weak right now; it's too predictable what he's trying to do, and there are just so many strong supports that can just outtrade AD carries and can just dominate their lane that there's no reason to play Blitzcrank.

 Why do you think GGU was able to use him?

Well, Daydreamin has been maining Blitz for, I don't know how long.  But that's like all he used to play.

You used to play Blitzcrank also.

Yeah, that's true.  But he mained it, like that's how he got to high Elo, so he's been playing a lot.  I just picked up Blitzcrank, got rank 1, and then dropped it.  Once he got nerfed, I dropped it.

Moving back to specific games.  The first game saw you switching your carry-support to midlane, very successfully.  Were you expecting their lane swaps?

They picked Gragas with teleport, and that's just projecting what they're gonna do.  We know he's gonna go botlane, so we just sent our lanes to counter them.  We just sent Kennen bot, and he destroyed Gragas.

So the lanes worked out exactly as you expected?

Yeah.  If they're gonna take teleport on Gragas, they can't be that predictable.  They should have done something differently.  Like if he'd had ignite, we might not have known for sure, but he took teleport.

The Ezreal build we saw in both games has been really popular recently.  Can you talk a bit about when you should get it?

I think you should always get it.  I think it's effective no matter what, and the reason is because you get 40% CDR, and you get all these things that improve Q, Elder Lizard adds onto Q, muramana adds onto Q, Iceborn adds onto Q, and you can Q every, I don't know, 1-2 seconds, and they can never catch you, you just use spells, and you do a ton of damage.  His Q just chucks people so hard.

One other item choice.  At the end of the second game, you picked up a mana manipulator on Sona.  Usually we see Sonas go for chalice for more mana sustain.  Why did you choose Mana Manipulator and when would you do that?

I think mana manipulator is a very good item.  I never upgrade it, I don't like the upgrade, I just buy mana manipulator.  I never build chalice.  I think Chalice is not a good buy.  Usually I'll just buy Shurelya's, not even get anything else, but sometimes I get Shurelya's + Mana Manip, kinda just how it feels.  If I'm with Jayce or Ez, they both use a lot of mana, so Mana Manip is even better.

Sona has been played so much.  What is so good about her right now?

The main supports right now are Thresh, Lulu, and Sona, and of those three, Sona is the only one who can out-trade ADCs early game and also provide sustain, as well as having the initiation late-game and her aura.  A full Q aura on Sona gives Ez more than 100 burst on his combo, one auto attack and his four spells, which is just huge.  It's mainly that she provides sustain over the other good supports.  Lulu can out-trade enemy ADCs just like Sona can, and she has a very good ult as well, but she doesn't have the sustain that Sona does, that's the main difference.

Finally, tomorrow you're fighting Complexity in a bo5.  What is the result of that gonna be?

They're 100% gonna 3-0 us, and we're gonna go home and cry.

All right, well I'm sorry to hear that, but you did have a very good showing so hopefully that makes up for your 0-3 loss tomorrow.  Do you have any shoutouts you want to make?

Not really, but you can follow me on twitter @lemonnnation.