With their defeat against LGD Gaming in the LPL Summer Split playoffs, Invictus Gaming have not won a best-of-five series for more than 480 days, according to the LPL twitter.
This stat excludes international competition, such as the League of Legends World Championship and Mid-Season Cup.
The 2018 world champions have looked lackluster since the 2019 LPL Spring Split. Following their successful Worlds run, they played terrifically in the Spring Split and crushed the opposition, finishing second during the regular split and sweeping JDG in the playoffs for the title.
Going into Summer 2019, their playstyle became predictable and they dropped to sixth place in the regular split. They were knocked out of playoffs in the first round by LNG Esports in a clean 3-0. Following this poor performance, they got knocked out in the semifinals of the 2019 World Championship as well.
In the 2020 Spring Split, everything looked great with the IG squad performing well. But as soon as they reached playoffs, they were knocked out in the semifinals by FunPlus Phoenix.
While their performance was lackluster at the beginning of the Summer Split, they bounced back and secured a third-place finish in the standings. IG needed to defeat LGD Gaming to advance to the next round, but were clean swept instead in a 3-0 convincing series.
Former T1 jungler Peanut played a major role in LGD’s win. He had two dominating performances on Nidalee, having a combined score of 6/0/19 from the first two games and a phenomenal Graves performance in the last game, with a score of 5/1/6. His KDA for this series is 36.0, an impressively high number in such an important match.
The first game was the Peanut show. He farmed well, ganked for each of his teammates, and secured neutral objectives. His pressure was constant, something you want from your solo queue jungler. LGD dominated IG over the entire course of the game, reaching a gold lead of more than 12,000 by 24 minutes.
After the poor performance in the first game, IG regrouped for the second game and decided to lose it even faster. Their performance was very poor, especially from top laner TheShy, who ended the game with a 0/3/0 scoreline. Even though Peanut was huge once again, the MVP went to his support after he landed game-deciding Leona ultimates.
Two huge sub-25 minute stomps seemed to affect IG’s morale. Going into the third game, the draft was clearly focused on comfort rather than a winning draft. IG picked up a random solo queue comp with no synergy in hopes of winning the third game and getting another shot of equalizing the series.