LEC power rankings: 2021 Summer Split week 6

The LEC is hitting its breaking point. With just two weeks left on the schedule and five games remaining for Europe’s top League of Legends teams, the playoff race is coming down to the wire. If teams are going to make it to the pinnacle of the season, they’ll have to play practically perfectly from here on out since any minor slip-ups could throw them right out of the postseason picture. 

And to make matters more intensely competitive, our power rankings can’t seem to stop shifting. Each week, the teams of the LEC all find themselves in a different position from where they were the week before. And this week, the situation isn’t much different. 

Nine of the 10 teams in the league all moved around our rankings this week, making the race for the playoffs all the more difficult to pinpoint. With all that being said, here are our LEC power rankings after six weeks of play in the 2021 LEC Summer Split. 

Fading fast: Excel Esports, SK Gaming, Schalke 04

With the LEC playoff race entering its final stretch, it’s fair to say that every team is still in the race, even despite the fact that many squads look a lot stronger than others. Considering a team with a negative record has reached the playoffs in each of the last two LEC splits, it’s not outlandish to consider these three teams as “contenders,” even with how rough they look in comparison to the rest of the league. But, keep in mind, actually breaking into the top six is going to be difficult for these three bottom-tier teams with such little time left in the season.  

Sure, SK Gaming managed to string together two wins this past weekend, marking the first time that they’ve won consecutive games since February. But that probably won’t be enough to propel the patched-together team to a playoff berth. Granted, SK are just one game out of a playoff spot with five games to play, but it’d take several more consecutive wins for them to start feeling comfortably far enough away from the pack. 

One of those teams they’ll have to pull away from is Excel, who, despite recent struggles, have a chance to simultaneously compete for a playoff spot and develop young talent at the back end of the year. After an impressive debut weekend from Markoon and Adrienne, the duo of rookies has been a part of four straight Excel losses. A large part of that equation boils down to Excel blowing leads. The team had a 15-minute gold lead in both of their losses against MAD Lions and Fnatic last week, according to League stats site Games of Legends, two wins that Excel could have desperately used to get back into the postseason discussion. 

Battle for the sixth seed: Team Vitality, Astralis

There’s not much to get excited about when it comes to a borderline playoff race between two ultimately uninspiring teams. Both Vitality and Astralis sit three games under the 0.500 mark with five games left to play. And with how poorly the bottom half of the LEC has been playing in comparison to the top half, it wouldn’t be totally unfeasible to suggest that whoever claims the sixth seed could potentially limp into the playoffs with a 7-11 record.

At the very least, fans can get excited at the prospect of these two squads playing each other on the final day of the regular season, potentially setting up a tiebreaker game for the last playoff spot.

Looking to break (back) through: Misfits, G2 Esports

There aren’t too many differences between Misfits and G2. The two wildly inconsistent teams have both experienced stretches at the very top of the LEC at some point this season, while they’ve also both gone on several major loss-heavy stretches throughout the Summer Split. Needless to say, it shouldn’t be surprising that the law of averages worked its magic and both G2 and Misfits are smack-dab in the middle of the LEC standings with just two weeks left to play in the season. 

The two teams will play tomorrow in an all-important game for both squads—one that could prove whether they have the chops to move past the middle portion of the league’s standings. 

If you think back to the last time G2 and Misfits faced off, Misfits managed to win an improbable game in which they were losing by 10,000 gold going into the late game and still down by 5,000 gold by the time they took down G2’s Nexus. Misfits’ gold deficit in that game marked the largest gold deficit any team faced while winning a game in over three years. If they want to win this time around against G2, though, Misfits need to play a whole lot cleaner. Macro mistakes are going to be hard to come by in what should be a relatively close game between two evenly-matched teams. 

Strength at the top: Rogue, Fnatic, MAD Lions

It makes sense to see Rogue and MAD Lions in the league’s upper echelon considering, you know, they were finalists just last split. But Fnatic’s run to the top of the league is starting to make more sense each week. After weeks of wondering if the team’s spotty, role-swapped roster was succeeding on the premise of a fluke, it’s fair to say that they’re at the top for a good reason. Fnatic sit in first place with a stellar record of 10-3 and even hold the head-to-head with fellow first-place squad Rogue thanks to a week one victory. The two teams will play an enormous matchup to close out today’s schedule and whoever wins that game could gain the advantage in a potential tiebreaker scenario. And with the way Fnatic have been playing, there’s no reason to bet against them right now. 

Fnatic’s proactivity has been paying dividends throughout the course of not just the team’s five-game winning streak, but the entire summer—especially considering how aggressive they play. It’s easy to believe that a traditionally teamfight-focused team like Fnatic is still playing with a sense of overwhelming drivenness. 

In fact, Fnatic lead all LEC teams with 19 kills per game. That’s four more than the next highest team in that department (Misfits). And it’s not like they’re just throwing themselves into their opponent and hoping to land some kills. They’re playing efficiently enough to have three of their players—Adam, Nisqy, and Upset—rank in the top two in KDA among players at their respective position, according to Games of Legends. Upset even leads the entire league in KDA with a mark of 10.8 and stands as the only qualified player in a major region with a KDA in the double digits this summer. 

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