Week four of LEC is over and it left a bittersweet taste, with some teams exceeding many expectations while others fell hard below them.
Fnatic managed to gain back some ground with another 1-1 week and Origen showed some good fight grabbing their first 2-0 week. But enough beating around the bush – let’s have a look at what went down in this week’s LEC matches.
YET ANOTHER 0-2 WEEK
It has become short of a morbid tradition for Rogue at this point to close up the week with an 0-2 score. Huge communication errors, constantly out-skilled bot lane and bad drafts seem to crucially persistent for Rogue. During the first match of the week, against Origen, Chres “Sencux” Laursen and Mateusz “Kikis” Szkudlarek were doing their absolute best to carry the game while the rest of the team was hard-throwing. Putting the dad draft decision aside, Rogue bot lane was once again a liability with Martin ” HeaQ ” Kordmaa being in an immense CS deficit throughout the game, 20 to 80 CS behind Patrik “Patrik” Jírů.
The second game of the week, against SK Gaming, was not much different. Only this time some major issues came to light that puts the team’s coaching staff at the center of the critique. It is more than evident that the individual talent in the likes of Sencux, Kikis and Kim “Profit” Jun-Hyung is there but the team as a whole fails to work. During the second game, the team showed that they lack a fundamental understanding of micro and macro management. They seem unable to maintain vision control even in their side of the jungle and had very poor timing for backs throughout the game. In addition to that, during the draft phase of the first match of week four they basically countered themselves with very questionable choices. More precisely, Rogue left Draven open; something that was immediately punished by a heavy bot lane-focused team like Origen, and picking Varus into a Draven-Morgana lane. All these errors and failed or rather absent strategies point towards poor coaching.
FALLING HARD
This week was a free-fall for Misfits who closed it out with an 0-2. Starting week four with a very questionable draft against Schalke 04, Misfits gave up control of their number one win condition so far, the bot lane.
The first mistake was to allow Elias “Upset” Lipp to get Ezreal, a champion he has been consistent with. Not only that but Steven “Hans Sama” Liv, a player who has so far fancied highly mobile champions, ends up with Varus. In addition, Kang “GorillA” Beom-hyeon who is also known for his play-making prowess picks up a rather reactive support in Tahm Kench. With a losing bot lane and the most popular heads-first ADC player being stuck in the back line, Misfits forfeit the game.
The second game of the week, against Splyce, was yet another story. Misfits made huge individuals mistakes and despite having control over most of the game, they simply handed over the match to Splyce in the late-game. Miscommunication, desperate and forced moves as well as crucial individual mistakes were the highlights of this week’s performance for Misfits.
Another team that ended up on the 0-2 side this week, is the team that just beat Misfits last week. Excel lost both matches this week against Fnatic and Vitality. Although this is a team that has shown so far they have a lot of fight in them as well as individual talent and good team-play; they do seem unable to play a match when they find themselves on the back-foot though. This was most evident during the game against Fnatic where they did not manage to punish small mistakes from the enemy team in order to come back into the game. These decisiveness issues also became clear in the match against Vitality when despite putting up a good fight, they failed to translate any advantages into leads. Vitality completely took control over the game. Excel need to work on their gameplan as a team.
SOME SIGNS OF LIFE
SK Gaming started the week with yet another loss coming after a very questionable and dangerous draft that was easily punished by Splyce. On top of that, it looked like the level of the team’s synergy has been falling from week to week. The squad did, however, come back from their three-game losing streak and pick up a win against Rogue in day two. Once again, Oskar “Selfmade” Boderek was an absolute pleasure to watch and he hard-carried the game with his plays on Gragas. It should be pointed out that the team struggled more than they should have against the 0-6 Rogue though.
Fnatic closed out their second week with a 1-1 score, showing signs of piecing together the puzzle of their team. During game one in week four, against Excel, Fnatic managed to pick up a very convincing win. Tim “Nemesis” Lipovšek began to discover his role in the new Fnatic roster as a team-fight facilitator with an excellent game on Syndra and the synergy with Mads “Broxah” Brock-Pedersen starting to click. Unfortunately, for the second match of the week, Fnatic faced the godlike G2 esports. Complete annihilation is the only way to describe this game that left the Fnatic squad in ruins. Let’s just hope that this defeat will not set them back in the progress they have been showing since week three.
HARD WORK (AND SOMETIMES LUCK) PAYS OFF
Two surprising 2-0’s were scored this week by Splyce and Origen. Although both teams managed to pick up double victories, their wins had very different flavors.
Splyce miscommunication issues seem to be very much alive still, especially during the first game against SK. They did manage to effectively punish SK’s risky draft and take control of the game though. It wasn’t a clean win, but it was a win after all. The same goes for the second game of the week, this time against Misfits. Mistakes like engaging in team fights with zero vision and giving up objectives uncontested, gave control of the game, for the most part, to Misfits. Splyce came out big, however, in capitalizing on the numerous individual mistakes made by the enemy team and ended up with the win.
A very different 2-0 came out from the Origen squad who showed some big improvements from last week. The win against Rogue was clean, with Origen demonstrating superior vision control, well-strategized draft and a lot more methodical gameplay. Their second win of the week, however, was even more impressive since they took down the unstoppable Schalke in a very convincing manner. Origen came into week four extremely strong, worked on their coordination and they simply out-played Schalke.
REALITY CHECK
Schalke and Team Vitality have been running wild lately picking up one win after the other. This week, however, the narrative was a bit different with both teams going 1-1 and forced to do a reality check.
Starting off week four of LEC with the Schalke versus Misfits match, Schalke demonstrated some superior League of Legends. After making some small mistakes in the early game, they take back control with some amazing plays coming from the Schalke bot lane and they dominate Misfits. Their second game of the week, however, was quite different since they got dominated by Origen. Schalke has shown so far that they are among the best-coordinated teams in LEC. Nonetheless, this time around, several individual mistakes and an obvious lack of coordination cost them the game.
On a similar note, Vitality got their reality check while getting crashed by G2. Despite Lee “Mowgli” Jae-ha’s amazing map awareness and intelligent jungle pathing, G2 did not give any leeway to Vitality to take any advantage.
Granted, there was a lot of aggression back and forth from both teams, but in reality, G2 was always in control. Fortunately, the defeat against G2 did not keep the Vitality squad down and the team came back strong with a clean game against Excel. Despite Excel putting up a fight and despite some individual mistakes on the side of Vitality, they did come forth as the better team with better macro-play and team fight execution.
ON ANOTHER LEVEL
G2 close out week four with an 8-0 overall score and keep demonstrating their complete dominance over LEC. Both games this week were clean and perfectly executed. The highlight of the week was the complete obliteration of Fnatic in what was the fastest game in LEC history!
At that point, it is inevitable that the question is asked: Who can stand up against this monster team?
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Featured image via LoL Esports.