With the announcement of the new Dignitas line-up, I thought it would be a great time to analyze and talk about their 3 new pickups. I’ll take a look at each of the players in 3 separate articles throughout this week.

Today lets talk about their top lane. Dignitas signed EU Challenger Series player Lennart ‘smittyj’ Warkus. Smittyj has been around the EUCS for 2+ years now, and has played in the playoffs for a spot in relegation matches for 2 big name teams.

In the 2014 Challeger series Smittyj was on SK Prime, the CS team for the popular LCS franchise, SK Gaming. As part of SK Prime Smittyj and his teammates took 2nd place in the 2014 CS playoffs, losing to eventual 2015 worlds participant, H2K in the finals 3-2. In that years promotion tournament SK Prime was pitted against Gambit Gaming and was unsuccessful in qualifying for the LCS.

In the 2015 Challenger Series Smittyj was playing for Gamers2 (G2). In the Spring 2015 playoffs Smittyj and G2 ended up in the 3rd place match against Reason Gaming losing 2-1. This loss put G2 in 4th place. The G2 team bounced right back in the Summer Split and qualified again for the CS playoffs. They lost in the first round to eventual CS winners Dignitas EU 2-1. But in the 3rd place match they found themselves victorious this time around, beating Wickd, Woolite and the rest of the Denial Esports crew.

G2 eventually qualified for the LCS knocking out SK Gaming 3-2.

Smittyj played a total of 13 different champions in the 2015 season. Hecarim, Riven, Rumble, Maokai, Gnar, Malphite, Irelia, Lulu, Jax, Sion, Fizz, Kennen, and Lissandra. What this shows us is that Smittyj is very versatile and is able to pick up crucial meta champions and play them somewhat efficiently. In the 2015 regular season he had a KDA of 3.27, 38 kills, 33 deaths, 70 assists, and a 58.3% kill participation. Pretty decent stats for a top laner playing against the likes of Wickd, and Kubon. However we did notice a drop in overall production in the playoffs. His KDA was at 1.59, 15 kills, 17 deaths, 12 assists, and a 43.5% kill participation. One thing that we can take from his EU CS playoff run is that he isn’t the most consistent player. In the playoffs against Mous Esports Smitty went 0/4/0 on Maokai in game 1, and was 2/5/1 on Hecarim. However against Denial with Wickd in the top lane he played Riven going 7/3/5 and 6/5/6 respectively. The same trends showed themselves in the promotion matches against SK. In the games that G2 won, Smittyj was 10/6/31, playing Maokai, Malphite, and Ryze. In the 2 losses he was 5/11/20 on Maokai and Malphite.

I think Smittyj is a player to watch out for in this season of NA LCS. However a few questions remain unanswered. Which Smittyj will we see? The one that carries his team to victory on champions like Riven? Possibly. We are heading into a season where we will most likely see carry bruisers dominate the top lane. However will he be able to shine in a league that has talent like Impact, Darshan, Quas, and another young star in Hauntzer? Will his challeger series experience enable him to hang with the top players? And finally will he be able to help this Dignitas team against some of the possible powerhouses such as C9, TSM, NRG, and Liquid? I believe a lot of his performance will depend on the resources that Dig provides for him, and how well they work together as a team.

Feel free to post things I might have missed/errors in statistics, or your thoughts in the comments below.