It was an exciting Week 3 in the LCS, leaving six teams tied for first place. Along with this close fight for the top, this will also be the first week without a winless team, as 100 Thieves found their first victory against Echo Fox. As the teams start to settle into their form for the split, the power rankings begin to take shape as well.
After picking up their first win against Echo Fox with a completely shuffled roster, 100 Thieves are heading into Week 4 with an alright schedule lined up. While many people will stave the Echo Fox loss as a “one off”, Echo Fox had also beaten a slow starting Team Liquid earlier in the split. Surely, with more roster changes ahead of them, the Thieves can continue to create opportunities to team fight and utilize their pieces properly (an aggressive Bae “Bang” Jun-sik). If so they could generate another win against FlyQuest, a team with high potential but lack of any cohesion. – Cody Hill
Echo Fox are hard to pin down. At 1-5, they are definitely toward the bottom of the ladder, but it’s not just that simple. One of those five losses came as the first victory for 100 Thieves, which is about as bad of a sign possible. That is, however, until remembering that their one victory came against Team Liquid. This by no means makes them a top team, but it’s just enough to edge them out over 100 Thieves in this weeks ranking, despite the head to head result. – Nick Butts
FlyQuest (Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games)
FlyQuest should be able to pick up a win this weekend as they face 100 Thieves on Sunday, but it is unlikely that they will find two. CLG have been showing the improvement this split that fans had hoped would happen for FlyQuest. With a roster that consistently looks much better on paper than it does in practice, FLY drops another spot in the power rankings this week, putting them in the bottom three. – Nick Butts
Despite losing to TSM this weekend, Clutch proved that they can still hang with playoff caliber teams like the Golden Guardians. The team continues to be proactive in the mid and early game, constantly looking for ways to turn the game around, taking 50/50 team fights etc. CG fans should be excited for the rest of the season if Clutch continue to play this well throughout the split. – Steven Zamora
Week 3 was the week for OpTic to prove that they belonged at the top of the league – and they didn’t. An 0-2 week is always a disappointment, but it was against two of the toughest teams in North America, which is why it didn’t drop them further. They are part of the group tied for first at 4-2, and as long as they can avoid more 0-2 weeks, they will stay as one of the contenders for playoffs as the season progresses. – Nick Butts
CLG (Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games)
CLG move up one spot in this week’s TGH rankings, following a 2-0 weekend. The win over Golden Guardians definitely boosted their rank, but not enough to surpass GGS as number four, and still nowhere near the Cloud9-Team Liquid-TSM tier. CLG’s bottom lane continues to shine as easily a top three in laning phase. All of this is surprising, considering Ruin was just added for Summer Split. Also, CLG has not had an above 50 percent win rate over the first three weeks since Summer 2017. That split they finished third in playoffs, so this 4-2 start bodes well. C9, number one in the TGH rankings, faces CLG on Sunday. A solid showing versus them and FlyQuest could continue CLG’s surge. – Thomas Baker
While the Guardians are still near the top of the pack in the LCS, teams have figured out how to keep them down in the mid game. Ban away their comfort champions and target their bottom lane. The Guardians’ play and macro seems to have slipped from the first week. They are no longer securing four Drakes a game and effectively 4-1 pushing two lanes. Instead they are lingering around in the opponent’s base or devolving into ARAM mid to wait for fights with the enemy team. As teams have improved over the course of the split the Guardians seem to have declined slightly, which drops them a spot in the power rankings. – Declan Mcloughlin
TSM fans may be relieved they took down the supposed best team in the league but there is still a lot to consider. Despite TSM taking them down I still believe Cloud9 are the best team in the league. TSM currently sit tied for first with six other teams and taking down C9 will go a long way if a tiebreaker has to come into play. This is the time for TSM to ramp up as they defend North America’s honor at Rift Rivals where they will be facing much stiffer competition. – Jordan Marney
After their first 2-0 weekend of the split, Team Liquid are back. Their 4-2 record has them tied for 1st place with 5 other teams, but none of them played as soundly as TL did last week. Whether it was playing as a team, keeping ward coverage or winning their lane match-up, Team Liquid seemed to be back in form against FlyQuest and OpTic. This has been expected of them this season, but their slip-ups through the first two weeks kept spectators on edge. Now, things look more in order, but they’ll have another tough weekend ahead of them. – Brayden Nazarian
Zeyzal (Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games)
Despite going 1-1 last weekend, Cloud9 are still one of the top teams in the LCS. They will look to clean up on their team fighting this week as well as their draft shortcomings. If Cloud9 shore up on those issues, they will have no problem staying at the top in the LCS. – Richie Farley
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