LEC Spring: Best and Worst

With playoffs a week away in the LEC, we take a look at the individuals that made greatness and great badness in the regular season part of the LEC Spring Split.

It has been a split filled with ups and downs for almost every organization in the LEC. Apart from Rogue and Excel, every other team has had a good part and a part of the split they can look at and analyze. There has been no lack of bm-ing going around for the players also.

So the question goes: Which players were the best/worst performers in each role this split?

The best and the worst Top Laner

We kick off the analysis with Toplane and Splyce top laner Tamás “Vizicsacsi” Kiss.

Arguably the best performing top laner in the LEC in my opinion, Vizicsacsi has brought Splyce to playoffs with a plethora of situational picks and game intelligence like some of the world’s best top laners. When compared to other top laners we notice many of them depend a lot on the performance of the entire squad and have a tendency to falter when things go sour. Our man Vizicsacsi on the other hand has been the force of stability and balance that has brought Splyce the late game wins they needed to reach playoffs.

On the other side of the coin we look at the worst performing toplaner this split, and the prize goes to Fnatic toplaner Gabriël “Bwipo” Rau. A lot of hype has followed Bwipo coming into this split. He took over sOAZ’s spot in Fnatic at the start of the season, had a solid run at last year’s Worlds and a great rookie season. Naturally everyone put Bwipo at the top of the Top laner rankings. What we got in return was mediocre toplane plays for 9 weeks straight and sporadic glimpses of Bwipo of old, among a plethora of misplays and lack of awareness. Even in Fnatic’s glorious return to form in the second part of the split, Bwipo has remained an underperformer in comparison to the hype we crated around him.

The best and the worst Jungler

From Top we move to the Jungle and SK’s Oskar “Selfmade” Boderek.

As his own nick states Selfmade built his rep grinding with SK this split and delivering some of the best plays among all Junglers. He came out swinging from Week 1 and has not stopped since, delivering play upon play upon play. His playstyle paired with his no nonsense attitude away from the Rift make him the best Jungler of LEC Spring in our tally. (And possibly Rookie of the split.)

When looking at the worst performer in the Jungle role we can chose between a few bad apples but the most rotten has to be Misfit’s Nubar “Maxlore” Sarafian. At the start of the split, high praise was given to Misfits for creating a super team, creating hype and high praise for each individual player in their respective roles. Nine weeks later Misfits is the biggest flop of the split having missed playoffs after a horrible run in the second part of the split. A lot of the blame can be shared among the entire squad but a solid portion of bad calls can be directed specifically at Maxlore. Calls that created a domino effect and cost Misfits too many games and eventually their playoff spot.

The best and the worst Midlaner

As the Rift goes, next on the list is Midlane and Origen’s Erlend “Nukeduck” Våtevik Holm. Many would expect G2’s Caps or Vitality’s Jiizuke at the top of our list for best midlane performers. Nukeduck was never considered as a top midlaner in the LCS. At best, he was a decent performer but nothing to call home about. This split seems to have had a transformative effect on the veteran and he is popping off and deserving a lot more credit than he’s given. The Origen team is a well-oiled machine when playing together as a squad. And Nukeduck just like every other member is more than pulling his weight.

The worst performing midlane is a tossup between several players, but I’d have to go with Fabian “Febiven” Diepstraten. We expected Febiven to come back from NA and absolutely style on everyone with the Misfits superteam. Instead the former FNC/Clutch midlaner has not found his footing at all in the LEC and apart from some shining performances near the end of the split he has been underperforming through and through throughout the split.

The best and the worst Botlane Duos

Finally, we arrive at the Botlane Duos.

Arguably the hardest task is to match up the botlanes and compare who is better. When looking at two player synergy almost no team in the LEC has shown amazing botlane synergy. Misfit’s Hans Sama and GorillA tried their darndest to carry and faltered, G2’s Perkz and Mikyx did good but hardly flawless, Rekkles and Hylissang did good in the latter part of the split but are far from Worlds Runner up botlane performance. Patrick is no Zven, and Mithy has looked a bit lost in the earlier part of Origen’s run. They have only recently started picking up synergy. In my opinion, no botlane duo has been great nor horrible. They are all pulling their weight but none stands out as exceptional.

All in all, the first LEC split has given us a lot of competitiveness and a lot to look forward to. We are yet to see how the teams perform in a best-of-three or best-of-five scenarios.

See you next week for playoffs…