The first week of the 2020 LEC Spring Split brought us some crazy upsets and led to a big shakeup at the top of the power rankings. After leading the region for years, G2 Esports all of a sudden looks vulnerable, at least if you think they’re not still trolling.
Meanwhile, one of the oldest brands in the region is making a bid to regain its throne. After a year of playing third fiddle to G2 and Fnatic, Origen has seized control of the LEC after the first week of play.
After seeing that impressive performance, our League experts were forced to rethink our LEC power rankings. As always, each voter assigned the worst team one point and the best team 10 points.
| Rank | Team | Points | Rank Change |
| 1) | G2 Esports | 39 | — |
| 2) | Origen | 37 | +1 |
| 3) | Fnatic | 32 | -1 |
| 4) | Rogue | 27 | +1 |
| 5) | Excel Esports | 23 | +1 |
| 6) | FC Schalke 04 | 20 | -3 |
| 7) | SK Gaming | 17 | — |
| 8) | Mad Lions | 12 | +2 |
| 9) | Misfits | 9 | -1 |
| 10) | Team Vitality | 4 | -1 |
It turns out Origen’s 2-0 week wasn’t enough to send them to the top spot—yet.
What we thought: Mad Lions, Misfits, Vitality
Before the split, we thought each of these teams would struggle. So far, we’ve been right. They’re a combined 1-5, with the only win coming when Mad Lions took down Vitality. They’ll need to do more than beat up on each other to move up these rankings.
Not 2016 anymore: Excel, Schalke, SK
The LEC chat lit up last weekend with mentions of Schalke’s new ADC, European legend Konstantinos-Napoleon “FORG1VEN” Tzortziou. People were spamming his name and messages of support in both English and Greek.
It didn’t actually work out for Schalke, though, since they dropped both games. FORG1VEN wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t much of a factor either, playing safe ADCs like Varus and Xayah while the rest of his team was obliterated. He isn’t one of Schalke’s problems, but he hasn’t proven to be a solution either. There’s still talent here, but so far, FORG1VEN hasn’t proven himself up to his 2016 level when he led H2k to the semifinals at Worlds. In fact, Schalke aren’t even quite to their 2019 level when Elias “Upset” Lipp manned FORG1VEN’s role.
Excel had one strong early game and one bad one, but they lost the first game and won the second. Ideally, we’d like to see them play well and win, but we’ll have to wait until week two for that. SK hung with G2 and made it a game before collapsing in the late game. Their other win was over Vitality.
Prove it: Fnatic, Rogue
Fnatic were beaten convincingly by Origen in their biggest match of week one. They should be fine in the long term but new jungler Oskar “Selfmade” Boderek was outplayed by Andrei “Xerxe” Dragomir while Origen made plays all over the map.
Because of that loss, Fnatic sit below Rogue in the standings, though not in these rankings. Rogue moved up one spot in our rankings by virtue of a 2-0 week. But before their fans get their hopes up too much, they have to consider that one of those wins was against Misfits. Rogue’s win over Excel was better, but even that required a crazy flank into bush gank. It was more of Excel beating themselves than a clean win by Rogue. They play the first game of week two vs. Origen, so it won’t be long before fans see how real Rogue’s 2-0 start is.
Top tier: G2, Origen
Origen look like the cleaner team through two games since G2 struggled early. They beat two solid teams in Fnatic and Schalke, but our voters aren’t ready to give Origen first place yet. We’ve seen G2 troll entire splits and come back, and that’s what we’re still banking on.
All photos via Riot Games.
Published: Jan 30, 2020 05:48 pm