With a week full of upsets and surprises, the power ranking saw a lot of movement. Who moved up and who dropped? Let’s find out in the week 5 edition of the LCK power rankings! If you missed last week’s power ranking, you can check it out right here!
Courtesy of: LCK Flickr
With their second loss of the season to Gen.G, the 0-18 season for Jin Air is all but confirmed. For Jin Air, it was a lot more of the same issues that has plagued them this season during yet another 0-2 week. The team has yet to show the capability to play proactively past the laning phase and slowly loses any lead they may be able to make early on leading to an eventual defeat. On top of the team lack of team play as a whole, the players themselves have been vastly outclassed by their opponents.
To be fair to Jin Air, some of their players have shown that they can hold their own at times. For example, while he might not be Park “Teddy” Jin-seong, ADC Moon “Route” Geom-su has shown that he can be a capable mid-tier ADC in Korea. Unfortunately, due to how weak Jin Air is as a team, being a mid-tier ADC is simply not enough. Along with Route, jungler Kim “Malrang” Geun-seong has shown some flashes of great early play but has simply been too inconsistent.
The pieces are there for a rebuild, but at this point, the season is over for Jin Air.
Courtesy of: LCK Flickr
Gen.G remain in 9th place on the power standings after a 1-1 week thanks to their win against Jin Air. Unfortunately for them, there’s not much to build on for the team as their victory against Jin Air came off of the issues mentioned previously with Jin Air. Along with that, it’s clear the team has more issues than previously expected, as the team has lost faith in mid laner Song “Fly” Yong-jun as they opted to play top lane sub Kim “Roach” Kang-hui as the mid laner instead.
On top of their issues in the top lane, the usual problems remain. Jungler Han “Peanut” Wang-ho continues to be underwhelming and not live up to his huge contract. ADC Park “Ruler” Jae-hyuk continues to slowly fall off as he struggles to drag the team to victory in their matches. As other teams continues to slowly improve, it’s hard to see Gen.G take any more wins, as a result, the fate of relegation will likely await them.
Courtesy of: LCK Flickr
With another 0-2 week, KT Rolster has now entered survival mode as their goal now becomes avoiding relegation. Luckily for them the roller coaster has made a slow move up as steady improvements are being made by the team. Most notably this week has been the performance of top laner Song “Smeb” Kyung-ho, which has looked better than previous weeks. Despite this, it was simply not enough as KT was simply outclassed against SKT and Griffin.
With no games for KT in week 6, they’ll have a chance to continue making improvements to prepare for the rest of the season. Will they be able to avoid relegation and live to fight another day? Or will they join CJ Entus as yet another original KeSPA team to be relegated?
Courtesy of: LCK Flickr
It turns out having a proper roster does wonders for your team’s chances at winning games. Afreeca Freecs found that out this week as they had two very close series on their way to a 1-1 week. While their chances at playoffs are very low, the team can start working towards having a stronger showing for the next split by fixing up some small issues in their play. Their most notable issue was their questionable decision-making in game 2 against Hanwha, which ultimately cost them the game and lead to them eventually losing the series.
As long as Afreeca can continue to make small improvements, the team will likely be contending for a playoff spot in the Summer Split. But for now, they make a small move up the power ranking and find themselves in 7th.
Courtesy of: LCK Flickr
The drop in play continued for SANDBOX this week as they take a huge drop to 6th on the power ranking after a rough 0-2 week. Their overall decline in play becomes all the more worrying as the teams weak mid game also became worst. Along with the team play declining, individual players have also had huge declines, most notably jungler Kim “OnFleek” Jang-gyeom who looked terrible. Luckily for them, the early success of SANDBOX keeps them in a fairly safe spot for playoff qualification.
Despite this, SANDBOX needs to figure out and make the needed changes to return to their early season form. Otherwise, making playoffs will be pointless if an early exit will be their fate.
Courtesy of: LCK Flickr
With a rough 1-1 week, the gatekeepers of Korea has let another team through the gate to the other side as they fall to the middle of the pack once again. While the team continues to look fairly solid, they’re still outclassed by the top teams in the league as seen in their loss against DAMWON.
With a very close victory over Afreeca, the time has come for Hanwha to begin worrying about their chances at making the playoffs with Kingzone constantly improving. With their last regular season match against Kingzone coming up next week, this will be a chance for Hanwha to ensure their playoff chances are left mostly in their hands. However, if they’re unable to win, their chance at making playoffs become very small.
Courtesy of: LCK Flickr
The Kingzone question of whether they’re good or not continues with a return to the other end of the spectrum as they have another 2-0 week. While it was a great performance by everyone, ADC Kim “Deft” Hyuk-kyu put on an absolute show as fans have come to expect from the world-class player. With their great play against SANDBOX, Kingzone will ride a nice wave of momentum into a fairly important week 6 against Hanwha and SKT. With a solid showing, Kingzone’s playoff spot will be easily secured. But a return to the “they suck” end of the spectrum will likely leave Kingzone fighting for the playoffs for another week.
Courtesy of: Inven Flickr
With a rough loss to DAMWON, SKT drop back to 3rd in the power rankings. Through the week, issues with the draft and general team play became apparent this week. Notably the decision to put top laner Kim “Khan” Dong-ha, a player that’s comfortable on carries on Tanks. Along with that, it became somewhat clear through their loss to DAMWON that the team heavily relies on the play of jungler Kim “Clid” Tae-min which was notably off for the during the series.
Make no mistake, though – SKT is still one of the best team in LCK at the moment and as such, one of the favorites to win the season. With half of the season left, these issues can easily be fixed. Because of this, don’t expect SKT to make an early exit in the playoffs as they continue to improve for the playoffs.
Courtesy of: LCK Flickr
DAMWON made a huge leap back into 2nd on the power ranking with a 2-0 week in very important matchups for the overall playoff picture. The surprising hero of the week for DAMWON was the newly signed top laner Lee “Flame” Ho-jong making his return to Korea. In his LCK debut against SKT, he came up huge in game 3 against SKT going 6/1/5 as Urgot and made a key Baron steal during the game.
With Flame now in the roster, star player Jang “Nuguri” Ha-gwon will have a chance to develop into an even better player. Meanwhile the team as a whole will have a more consistent option in the top lane offering them the stability needed in some matchups.
Courtesy of: LCK Flickr
Should it be a surprise at this point that Griffin is 1st? With a fairly easy week, Griffin dominated through their matches on the way to a 2-0 week. Mid laner Jeong “Chovy” Ji-hoon continues to play at an incredible level along with the other members of the team who simply outclasses their opponents. With no matches on the schedule for Griffin in week 6, they’ll likely remain 1st in the power rankings as they look forward to matches against SANDBOX and SKT in week 7. The regular season is still far from over but if Griffin continues to play at this level, an 18-0 season continues to look more and more likely.
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Featured image courtesy of LCK flickr.
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