Doublelift has returned to LCS with Team Liquid, but still struggles

Team Liquid’s bottom laner Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng had an underwhelming return to the 2020 LCS Spring Split.

After being benched for three games, Doublelift returned to the stage, but it didn’t go as he or his fans expected. Team Liquid is closing the week with two defeats and is currently tied in seventh place with Golden Guardians.

The ups and downs of Team Liquid in 2020

In the match against Immortals, Doublelift was a non-factor. Through the laning phase, he managed to stay even in CS and gold with opponent Apollo “Apollo” Price. When it came to team fighting and disputing the neutral objectives, Doublelift was either poorly positioned or completely zoned out by enemy chamions.

Through the mid game, Doublelift was running around the map getting as much farm as possible, and that was it. He didn’t create pressure and he wasn’t a threat to the enemy team. Even though Doublelift was in a decent spot from a scaling perspective, Team Liquid never managed to convert that into a global advantage.

The rest of the team collapsed around him and after a lost team fight in the river over the dragon pit, Team Liquid couldn’t recover. The match exposed Liquid’s bad habits and weaknesses.

Why is Team Liquid losing?

Liquid depends heavily on its jungler to make things happen and that’s no secret. Through 2018 and 2019, Liquid relied on Jake “Xmithie” Puchero to enable the laners. When Xmithie’s performance decayed by the end of 2019, the team decayed with him.

Mads “Broxah” Brock-Pedersen is not that type of jungler. Through his time with Fnatic, Broxah played mostly with the mid laner to get him ahead. That strategy is not working with Liquid, especially now that Nicolaj “Jensen” Jensen is not performing to his full potential either.

Broxah is trying his best, but that might not be enough. Overall, the players on Team Liquid are simply underperforming and making costly mistakes. Being patient and waiting for opportunity is not working for Liquid.

Heading to Week 8, the competition is closer than ever and it’s anyone’s game at this point. Cloud9 already secured the top rank in the season, but the rest of the standings are yet to be determined. Liquid is facing Evil Geniuses and Golden Guardians in Week 8, and two more losses would put them in a very difficult position.