Evil Geniuses started off the LCS Lock In a dominating fashion going 3-1 in the Group Stage. They unfortunately got knocked out by the eventual tournament winners Team Liquid 3-0. This left many EG fans wondering, how good are they really? Well, after week one of the Spring Split, EG showed their true colors and how they are going to approach the rest of the split. Here are 3 Evil Geniuses Takeaways from Week 1 of the LCS.
1: Impact is Not a Renekton One Trick
During the Lock In, Jeong “Impact” Eon-young impressed the League with some awe inspiring performance on the king of crocodiles, Renekton. He played Renekton four games total throughout the tournament with a combined KDA of 16/7/34. This isn’t to say Impact looked bad on other champions. Nothing though was as impressive as his Renekton. As the tournament went on, naturally teams started to take notice and banned Renekton. So entering week 1, what was Impact going to play?
The answer was three different champions all of varying styles. In Evil Geniuses loss versus 100 Thieves, he played Gnar. Impact had a few Gnar games during Lock In and while looking good, was unable to get some clutch Gnar ults to win his team the game. In the second game versus Flyquest, Impact picked one of his signature picks from his TL days, Shen. Impact’s Shen put up a disgusting 7/4/8 KDA with a 68.2% KP, three Solo Kills and did 31.7% of the total damage from his team on a tank. Needless to say, Impact straight up smurfed this game against Licorice, who was one of, if not the best, top laners in the LCS last year.
Finally, in the Golden Guardians game, Impact pulled out a pocket pick Sylas which he has only played three times before, winning all three games. He went 2/2/12 and while down in CS vs Aiden “Niles” Tidwell on Gnar, this is expected due to the ranged versus melee matchup. Impact showed up in fights, landed chains and stole a bunch of ultimates. He showed this weekend that he can play whatever his team needs on a high level.
2: Deftly Dominating The LCS
Matthew “Deftly” Chen was one of the biggest questions in the offseason for Evil Geniuses. Deftly most famously split some time with Zachary “Sneaky” Scuderi for Cloud9, played for the Golden Guardians for three splits and recently was on Evil Geniuses Academy. This split seemed like the ride or die time for Deftly and it’s fair to say he has shown up. Deftly is currently tied for second in kills for the bot lane position in the LCS, has a 7.3 KDA, and a 9.5 CSPM. Deftly even had a perfect game versus Golden Guardians ending with a scoreline of 11/0/5 on Kai’sa.
This isn’t to say Deftly performed every game. He noticeably struggled in the 100T match on Xayah with only a 27% KP and not being able to get into good positions for teamfights. Deftly has definitely put a solid case for doubters and if he can keep up this level of performance throughout the split, EG will be a serious LCS Spring Split contender.
3: EG’s Macro Struggles Against 100T
While individual performances matter, the 100 Thieves game is probably the overall biggest take away from the weekend. This was Evil Geniuses one loss and it helps highlight a few key struggles with the roster. One of the biggest was the gold difference. Despite being up four kills early in the game, EG was never up 1K gold. EG were losing gold in other ways such as Tower Plates, CS, JG camps and more. What this means is that kills didn’t provide enough value.
Sure, being up 800 gold is good. That’s nearly a pickaxe or a boots upgrade, but it’s not the item spike difference that makes the game feel unplayable. They were up in kills the entire time, even got Cloud Soul, but were not able to press their advantage enough. There is an interview with Peter Dun who said that they will not have a 40 minute game. Unfortunately for him, this game was 46 minutes. To be fair to EG, it is good to have a game like this early in the season to iron out some of their kinks. Coach Dun, Turtle, Mash and Artemis will absolutely be using this as an example to better the team. Maybe that is worth having a loss for.
TLDR:
Those were the three Evil Geniuses Takeaways from Week 1 of LCS. Evil Geniuses still have a long way to go this split, but they showed signs of life. All five roster members, including Daniele “Jizuke” di Mauro, Dennis “Svenskeren” Johnsen and Lee “IgNar” Dong-geun, had standout moments. With all of this talent, will EG be able to put it all together before the Spring Playoffs? Time will tell.
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