State of the LCS: After 2 Weeks
The first two weeks of the LCS have concluded, and we have a large enough sample size to update the state of the LCS. Some of the teams expected to be at the top remain, same with the bottom, but this is by far the most competitive the league has ever looked in terms of talent. The race to the 2022 World Championship here in North America will be fun to monitor for sure.
At the bottom of the table sitting at 1-4 are Dignitas and Immortals. Dignitas’ acquisition of Gamsu has not pushed the team towards success. The entirety of DIG just looks disjointed and unwilling to fight. Due to the overall strength of rosters across the LCS, I’d expect them to stay down at the bottom. I’m more disappointed in Immortals, because on paper this roster should be much better. I’m most saddened by how the team is not setting up Kenvi for success. He’s had a very rough showing thus far, making rookie mistakes and overall not having much impact on the game. His role with Immortals is vastly different to what he was doing for 100 Thieves Academy over the past few years, becoming more of a facilitator as opposed to being a primary carry. This is a newer roster playing together, so it’s going to take some time to gel. However, Summer Split is short. If these guys don’t get on the same page fast, they could very easily miss playoffs in a league where eight out of the 10 teams make it.
Blaber won LCS Player of the Week for Week 2 of the 2022 Summer Split.
There are four teams currently tied at 2-3; TSM, Cloud9, Golden Guardians, and Flyquest. In TSM’s case, 2-3 at this point is a huge improvement from what they showed in Spring. I don’t think this team is all the way there yet, but I’m happy to see Spica returning to his old form. Maple, as I expected, is not stomping LCS mid laners and dominating (although he did beat Bjergsen). Instead, Maple’s been a good in-game leader for the team, while the other mid-season pickup Mia has been a great initiator and leader in lane for Tactical. I hope to keep seeing improvements from TSM because the LCS is better when they’re a good team. C9 sitting at 2-3 doesn’t tell the full story, as they had to play week one with k1ng-Destiny as opposed to Berserker-Zven. Zven, in an interview, talked about how the team had a hard time buying in knowing that the starting bot lane wasn’t playing. I still expect C9 to fully make playoffs and perform well as they continue to gel (barring any draft mishaps), but this 2-3 record is nothing to panic about. Golden Guardians and FlyQuest both made minor changes to their rosters, Stixxay replacing Lost and Philip replacing Kumo. These changes haven’t exactly pushed the needle in either direction for these teams. Stixxay looks… like a middling presence, and I’m still surprised they chose to run it back with Stixxay as opposed to taking a chance on up and coming NA talent. Amateur is a gold mine currently for talent, so how did Stixxay end up as their starter again? Philip, for a rookie, has shown great promise. He’s held his own in lane against strong players, and I hope we can continue to see his growth. Johnsun’s been the biggest inter by far, watching his positioning on Twitch was rough this past weekend.
The sole team sitting at 3-2 is 100 Thieves, who look a hell of a lot better than they did throughout their playoff run in Spring. Abbedagge and Closer look to be back on the same page, while huhi is no longer sprinting it at the enemy team. FBI and Ssumday were always the most consistent members on 100T, and have once again provided stability. The only roster move that happened was pushing Tenacity back to Academy, which as sad as I am, it’s for the best.
CLG currently sits tied for 1st place at 4-1.
The teams at the top, all tied at 4-1, include our spring split champion Evil Geniuses, Team Liquid, and… CLG? Yes, you read that right. CLG is tied for 1st place in the LCS. We’ve officially entered the twilight zone. I don’t think the promotion of Dhokla was the thing that pushed CLG into this position, but it was a welcome addition to this young core of budding stars. Palafox and Luger have been hard carrying games, and you can see the investment is paying off. CLG is able to swing with the top teams, and I’m happy to see it. Team Liquid being here should be no surprise. They’re not 100% clean, but they look much stronger than they did in spring. The shift in meta also probably assisted this team’s growth, and Bwipo looks a lot more hungry to win than he did before. This team should make Worlds pretty easily. Evil Geniuses’ MSI hangover hasn’t set in yet and hopefully it never does. They started out 3-0, dominating the competition. You can clearly see the growth from playing against international competition, especially for jojo and Danny. I can’t wait to see them make it to Worlds and continue to dominate for years to come.
And that about sums up the current state of the LCS after 2 weeks. We’ll check back in again in 2 weeks to see who rises and falls.
