C9 Berserker uses his signature champ to snag first pentakill of 2023 LCS Spring Split

If there’s anything stopping Cloud9’s professional League of Legends team in the LCS from showcasing their dominance over the North American scene, they can almost always count on their AD carry Berserker stepping up and shutting down the opposition.

And once again, to start the third week of the 2023 LCS Spring Split against TSM, Berserker did just that—earning himself the first pentakill of the split, and his second career pentakill on the same champion he accomplished this feat on last year, Zeri.

The Spark of Zaun continues to be one of Berserker’s most-played and most-successful champion picks, sporting a nearly 70-percent win rate over 18 games, according to Oracle’s Elixir.

This play came to fruition through masterful positioning by Berserker, making sure he was out of contact from enemy crowd control while also continuing to fire rounds into any champion he could from a safe distance. While Zeri’s ultimate often leads her to perform well in these situations, Berserker’s ultimate was on cooldown, so the rest of C9 had to act as barricades to prevent TSM from reaching their ADC.

However, a full-health Ryze from TSM’s mid laner Maple made it unclear if Berserker would only get a quadrakill, or if Maple would earn a one-versus-four quadrakill for himself. Yet now, with an ultimate ready-to-go, Berserker did not have to worry about being too close to Maple, rewarding him with the first pentakill of the split.

C9 sits at the top of the LCS standings, only behind the newly-revamped FlyQuest, a team that handily defeated C9 just last week. Notably, Berserker’s first LCS pentakill was against FlyQuest last Summer, where an early ultimate from himself allowed him to speed through his opponents in a much easier-earned pentakill—and victory.

Cloud9 will compete again tomorrow against Evil Geniuses, marking the first time these two NA challengers have met on the Rift since the LCS Championship.