by Reece "SabrewoIf" Dos-Santos
1. Origen are as good as they were made out to be.
Origen-ally I was sceptical about how xPeke's team would adapt to top tier competition that they haven’t yet been exposed to as a group. I thought that against some of the best EU has to offer, they might have some flaws exposed which they could later build upon. Instead what I received was a 2-0 trash of a week where Origen brushed away the likes of Giants Gaming and then proceeded to steamroll H2k - what I believed to be EU’s second best team and practically guaranteed worlds squad.
While Mithy is no Forgiven and opted against declaring himself as part of the best bottom lane in EU…by far, the duo pair of him and Niels has been crazily effective with the rookie marksman picking up the first MVP award of the summer split. But with so much attention on the oppressive dominance in the bottom lane duo, the good work and Peke, Soaz and Amazing are not to be overlooked. Aside from the occasional positional hiccup from Soaz, the top three members all held down their roles spectacularly showing that they’re still able to exhibit a top level of play. This will be especially warming to the top half trio as they all shouldered their fair share of doubt towards their ability to perform near the end of their last splits on Fnatic and TSM respectively.
I’m now excited to see how Origen fare up against some of the wilder teams in the LCS, as both H2k and Giants are quite tame and telegraphed in their style compared to the likes of UOL or Fnatic who aren’t afraid to shake the table.
2. The Copenhagen Wolves are still consistently inconsistent.
This team is about as consistent as my solo queue MMR, which by the way could be mistaken for an analogue radio wave. On their best days they can pool together a dominating performance and completely clean house against the best teams in EU, the next day or even literally half an hour later, they’re a mess of basic mistakes that can’t retain any control against a team that hardly looked like they knew why they were winning.
Although Freeze’s pure mechanical ability has been a shining point in lost moments along with areas of inspiration from Soren, the team needs heavy focus on regaining their flow and recovering from a loss of tempo if they want to be challenging for any of the spaces in the top half of the table this split.
3. Forgiven ruins the flow of any team he graces.
Although a tad bit harsh, there’s no way to express this without flat out saying it, Forgiven has proven to me that his playstyle appears to be unadaptable for everyone who tries to tame it. While the benefits of his presence are more than evident in having one of the best skilled ADC’s the west has to offer, it seemed like Gambit this week put themselves into a Piglet/Team Liquid situation where they tunneled on the acquisition of a world class talent and tried too hard to pool themselves around making it work. What Gambit need to avoid is the situation that has followed Forgiven like a dark cloud and it’s the internal collapse of teamwork, trust and synergy due to the clash in personalities. While SK Gaming held on for the best part of a split, it was too much for them as was with the Wolves. Personally with the history of how emotional Diamond and Edward can be, I’m a little worried as to how the team will recover if they don’t pull off a momentous upswing like last split.
4. The right Elements may have finally been blended together.
What an upgrade! This team looks to be with the right players in the mix alongside the right mentality. No joke, the KaBuM! incident obliterated the original lineup of Alliance and alongside the embarrassing worlds exit that followed, really tore apart the civil colleague relationship between the team. Only with the purging of the teams members and eventual rebuilding with the return of Tabzz, has the team finally begun to show the spark it showed in the summer of Season 4.
Dexter, Jwaow and PromisQ bring a new fresh feel and dynamic to the playstyle of the team and also seem to mesh with the rest of the team in a much better fashion than the previous trio of Wickd, Shook and Nyph who were simply Mission Impossible, Froggen’s waiter and some guy no one listened to. Rotations were good, the top laner actually looked like a member of the team and Froggen wasn’t giving off the vibe that he believed he was in elo hell.
As to how far this team can go, it’s still unknown as EL’s first game was a stomp over the currently broken Gambit and while they put up a good fight, they were ultimately taken down by the Unicorns. If EL wants to sneak in for a worlds spot, they need to overcome potential rivals for the spaces. Now it looks like they can, and not just on paper.
The question is, will they?
5. Roccat still have many problems that need to be addressed.
Woolite’s positioning has been the cause of many LCS face-desk moments for me and we’re only two games into the split. Whether or not he’s upped his poor positioning game to make up for the loss of his partner in crime, P1noy, is beyond me, but it’s hurting his team’s chances of being anything but relegation zone bound. It’s also apparent that every time Roccat change their top laner, it only seems to make the situation worse. Steve has yet to show why he was worth being selected as Roccat’s new top laner in place of Overpow, who went from the team’s shining star to a quickly ousted unmemorable top laner.
In fact, Steve’s biggest impact upon the LCS so far is the crowd chant of his name which follows a particular pattern of Roccat crowd memes when underperforming, one example being the ward chanting at LCS Wembley last season. On top of this, Jankos and Vander are mere shadows of their former selves and it’s been a very long time since I’ve heard anyone even try and call Jankos the “best jungler in the EU LCS”. Last but not least is Nukeduck, being the one returning Lemondog who isn’t a valuable asset to their new team. Out of the meta and completely out of his depth in most matchups, it’s a surprise Roccat chose only to make a change in the top lane, it’s even more surprising that it doesn’t seem like they’ve made any headway to addressing these issues which have carried on from the last split. In both management and player mentality, something is clearly wrong.
: Since the departure of Darien, Gambit has been trying to to fill the toplane role with Kubon but, after a relatively short stay, they switched him out with Cabochard who had previously subbed for them when Darien couldn't get a visa to play. He quickly got picked up by NiP after subbing, but after they failed to qualify for LCS, Cabochard got picked up by Gambit. Cabochard is known for his confidence through laning phase, which makes him vulnerable for ganks. If they can play well with his style of play, he should be one of the better toplaners going into the next season.
: Diamond has been with Gambit for a long time and experienced their IEM success and he'll be trying to replicate it with new teammates. Diamond is known as the innovator and has been one of the players to look at when you define how to play jungle. He is still considered as a elite jungler of EU and will hopefully, for the spectators, come out with something new again. He joined the old Gambit boys by Edward knowing him, despite being 1800 elo which was low for professional players. He is known for exceptional Lee Sin play and for popularizing Evelyn jungle with various builds, most notably the old bluepot start which would allow him to have insane early pressure.
: Edward, the man who was previously known as Gosu Pepper, is a huge playmaking support. He is known as the “Thresh Prince” for good reason. He has always been the player to flash in for a kill or for trading the flash of the opposite adc. He would often do this on Sona as well. He has previously been praised as the best Sona and was picking her very often. He describes his playstyle as “see hero, kill hero” which we have seen in the EU LCS multiple times. He has also been trying to innovate the support champions, spamming Vel’koz in soloq and busting out Gragas in competitive play quite a few times.
: Overpow was for the early of the EU LCS split highly praised and hyped but did not perform exceptionally well in the midlane in the split. He was good at times but really passive in the midlane with many strange picks such as Mordekaiser. He has been praised for being aggressive & having instant tp’s since his role swap to toplane. Many didn’t feel like the removal of Xaxus was a good idea, but Roccat seems to feel happy about putting Overpow top. The question stands if he will be living up to the hype and showing dominance in his lane.
: Crumbzz, for me, is an very underrated jungler in NA. He is often solid and is extremely versatile since he has played top, jungle & mid competitively. He has also been great on the analyst desk the few times he has been there. He is trying to become the shotcaller for Dignitas which is a very underrated skill. Shotcalling is very important but many seems to forget it when they rate the player. He has previously shown good performances on Elise, Vi and Lee sin. Something I think he has under his sleeve is a Kayle and maybe a Nocturne jungle pick since he has played it once before.
