Sure, there are three teams tied for first place in the European League of Legends Championship Series, but Origen proved today that the middle tier teams aren’t as far one might think from the top tier. Although H2k — which won the match — made overall better map movements and threw its lead at Baron, Origen’s early game was good despite a few kills.

All Origen’s lanes were winning in CS, which kept the gold lead down after the first few kills. H2k, on the other hand, is continuously making costly game-changing Baron calls. It didn’t lead to a loss today, the way it did last week against G2 Esports, but it’s still troubling. H2k is still on top of the standings, but if it can’t iron out those bad calls by the time the Mid-Season Invitational rolls around, it won’t go over well.

Splyce is improving each week

Splyce has spent the entirety of the spring split toward the bottom of the standings, but the team looks a lot more positive than any other bottom tier team. Each week, Splyce looks like it’s improving, and this week was the best example so far. The most obvious improvement was top laner Martin “Wunderwear” Hansen on Nautilus, a champion that has not been that impressive and an especially risky pick when Fiora is available on the enemy team.

But Wunderwear’s teleport usage and engages with Dredge Line were spot on all game today against Fnatic. Jonas “Trashy” Andersen also got the better of former OGN champion Lee “Spirit” Da-yoon. While this split isn’t much of a success standings wise for Splyce, it should be looked as a success in terms of progress. This young team has potential going forward.

Giants looks better, Roccat not so much

This was a huge week for Isaac “Xpepii” Flores, who finally stepped up. The first few weeks, it looked like all was lost for Giants, but the last two weeks have brought about a tiny bit of positive change. Xpepii had the most kills this week in all of the EU LCS, and very much hard-carried the team today in the win vs Elements.

On the other side of the story is ROCCAT, which had another brutal performance today. All season, ROCCAT’s had good early games, even having gold leads at 10 minutes, despite losing almost every time. Today, ROCCAT picked Rumble in the jungle, a pick that just doesn’t fit well into the metagame. Who would have thought that Kang-yoon “Trick” Kim on Lee Sin could out-jungle Karim “Aïrwaks” Benghalia? G2 Esports is just a much better team on all levels than ROCCAT.

Perhaps the most puzzling part about ROCCAT’s season is support Vytautas “extinkt” Mėlinauskas. He’s struggled almost every week, and it’s just baffling that ROCCAT would sub its support with a player that isn’t even a support main. Let’s be honest, at times extinkt doesn’t even look like he belongs in Diamond 1, let alone the LCS.

Cover photo courtesy of Riot Games.