LCK Power Rankings: 2021 Summer Split Week 6

The LCK Summer Split playoff race is entering its final stretch. Each team’s schedule is narrowing down, and the regular season is slated to end in just four weeks. With eyes on the postseason—and eventually, international play—the teams of the LCK are gearing up for their most pivotal chunk of games this season. 

Keep in mind the LCK has been given four berths to the World Championship later this year, meaning the top four teams from Korea will all head to the international stage in September. That race to the finish line is heating up, and our power rankings are still shifting as the postseason approaches. With four weeks left of play left in the LCK Summer Split, the league could undergo several more changes before the playoff bracket kicks off next month. With that in mind, here are our LCK Power Rankings after six weeks of play in the 2021 Summer Split. 

Struggling to hold on: DRX, KT Rolster, Fredit BRION

Normally, 10 wins have served as a historically reliant benchmark for playoff-qualified teams in the LCK. In order for KT Rolster to hit that benchmark, they’d have to win every match from here on out, which is a difficult task to say the absolute least. If the team’s caliber of play should serve as any indicator, it’s going to be a long road back to playoff contention for KT.

The same goes for Fredit BRION. Although the team mounted its second perfect week of the year, the road ahead is quite difficult. Five of the team’s last six matches this split will come against teams who would lock a playoff berth if the season ended today. If Fredit BRION wants to join that conversation right alongside their impending adversaries, they’ll have to bear down and win a few matches that they’re definitely not supposed to win on paper. 

Fighting to squeak in: Liiv Sandbox, Hanwha Life

It’s going to come down to a matter of inches for Hanwha Life when it comes to the Summer Split playoff race. The team has looked incredibly inconsistent throughout the course of the summer, and if they’re going to pull off the seemingly audacious feat of snagging a sixth seed in the LCK playoff bracket, they’ll need to tighten up their gameplay quite fast—especially in the bottom lane. Among qualified players, Deft and Vsta both rank in the bottom three of their respective positions when it comes to Summer Split KDA ratios with marks of 3.0 and 2.7, respectively, according to League stats site Games of Legends.  

This summer, inconsistency has been a consistent theme for Hanwha Life, as they’re the only team in the LCK to have gone on both a three-match winning streak and a three-match losing streak. This past weekend, Hanwha Life extended their current losing streak to two matches, but nearly took down Gen.G in a close 2-1 series. They’ll have the chance to rebound in two very winnable matches against KT Rolster and Fredit BRION this week, but if Hanwha Life drop even one of those contests, their legitimacy as a playoff (and Worlds) contender needs to start getting questioned more intensely. 

A first time for everything: DWG KIA, T1, Afreeca Freecs

The DWG KIA slide continues, as the team finds itself out of our top two for the first time all year. What’s most startling about the team’s current two match losing streak, though, is that the losses that the reigning world champions are racking up in recent times are coming against fellow playoff competitors. Teams like T1 and Nongshim are teams that DAMWON need to beat down the stretch of the Summer Split if they want a chance at making a run at a second straight Worlds crown. Thankfully for DWG KIA, their upcoming schedule sports four consecutive matches with teams ranked in the bottom half of the LCK. 

One of those teams happens to be the sixth-place Afreeca Freecs, who will eventually face off against DWG KIA on July 29, the finale in a pivotal three-match stretch for the one of the LCK’s darkest of dark horses. 

Afreeca have a real chance at turning their season around and reaching the World Championship if they can continue to build momentum, but they’ll have to get past the brick wall of Gen.G, T1, and DWG KIA over the span of the next nine days if they’re going to have a shot. Unfortunately, the track record isn’t promising. Against those three particular teams, Afreeca sport a 2-7 record this season, with their only two wins coming against T1. 

Increasing stock: Gen.G, Nongshim Red Force

It’s pretty surreal to think that Gen.G and Nongshim are leading the way in Korea, considering the absolute stretch of dominance that DWG KIA had been on throughout the first half of the season. With just two months to go until the start of the World Championship, however, it appears that these two teams are essentially locks to secure two of the LCK’s berths at the tournament. All they have to do is keep playing at their current level of consistency. 

For first-place Gen.G, that shouldn’t be much of a concern, considering the team play Afreeca Freecs and Liiv Sandbox this week. Gen.G won both of their matches with those two teams during the summer’s first round robin, winning by an average of 9,000 gold across those victories. 

For Nongshim RedForce, the road ahead is arguably even easier than Gen.G’s. Nongshim will play four of their next five matches against bottom-five teams over the span of the next three weeks. Their Summer Split run leads up to an ultimate matchup with Gen.G to close out the Summer Split. If these two teams are still tied by the time the last day of the regular season roll around, we could be in for a serious treat.