Cloud9 top laner Thanatos pulled off the play of the game against Sentinels, reading Impact’s K’Sante ultimate before it happened and landing a Gnar stun on the way out.
The moment came during a messy teamfight where Sentinels, roughly 10,000 gold behind, nearly flipped the entire game.
Impact went for All Out on Thanatos, the K’Sante ultimate that grabs a target and hauls them away from their team. It usually works. Isolate the enemy, remove them from the fight, win the duel.
Thanatos didn’t wait to see it happen. He started Mega Gnar’s Wallop before the displacement began, so the stun resolved right as the ride ended, landing on Impact himself.
The engagement should never have been dangerous for Cloud9. It became dangerous fast.
Blaber pushed into an aggressive spot without vision of Sentinels players rotating from the top side and got punished immediately. Viewers pointed out that the fight briefly turned into a functional 4v4 from there.
Then Loki committed hard on Rahel. Instead of flashing out to safety, he stepped back and dumped his ultimate on the Caitlyn, who was already around half health. Cloud9 lost their ranged damage at the worst possible moment.
Thanatos and Vulcan were left holding the line. Sentinels kept pushing forward instead of backing off, which made sense given the situation. Both surviving Cloud9 players were carrying shutdown bounties, and a team down 10,000 gold doesn’t get many chances to close that gap in one fight.
The buffered W is what stopped it. Thanatos kited out the rest of the standoff, Vulcan survived alongside him, and Sentinels walked away with far less than the fight promised.
That 10,000 number also flattered Cloud9 less than it looked. Gold only turns into power once it’s spent, and with players yet to recall, the item gap on the map was much tighter than the scoreboard suggested. Gnar was the clearest exception.
Buffering, for anyone unfamiliar, means starting an ability input before crowd control or forced movement hits you. Depending on the ability, the cast continues through it and fires at your new location. It requires knowing the animation, knowing what cancels it, and, in this case, guessing what Impact was going to do before he did it.
