After three weeks of action the League of Legends Championship Series, one thing is clear: The best teams aren’t just dominating, the rest of the teams aren’t even close.
On that note, the most important stat this week is gold income rate, where we see a vast difference between the best and the rest.
SK Gaming (1,965.00), LMQ (1,862.29), and Alliance (1,855.33) had a massive lead over their opponents last week. The next closest team was CompLexity with 1666.26, almost 200 gold per minute behind. In layman’s terms, the top three teams had more money, and with it, much more power as the games went on.
Overall, trends throughout the LCS are starting to take shape. In Europe, Alliance and SK Gaming have rocketed to the top and seem intent on staying there. Third place Supa Hot Crew are doing well too, and outside a mediocre week 3, should have some time to push for a better finish than last split.
The real story, however, is the powerhouses from the spring. Fnatic, Gambit, and ROCCAT, who dominated in the first few months of games this year, are on the backslide, with only Fnatic showing signs of life. ROCCAT, who sat in the top three for most of the Spring Split, had just 1435.5 GPM last week, along with a measly 36.36 percent objective control. They need to step it up if they want to avoid relegation.
Meanwhile, over in North America, LMQ have come back from a rough week 2 to again post some mind-blowing stats, including 90 percent objective control. Especially impressive was mid laner Yu “XiaoWeiXiao” Xian, whose 29.0 KDA saw him again take the Weekly MVP title.
Other notables include Evil Geniuses’ marksman Johnny “Altec” Ru and his breakout performance of the split, a clear plus on EG’s acquisition policy, and CompLexity setting the second-highest GPM of the region. Could the CompLexity crew be on the verge of breaking out themselves?
Perhaps the biggest scare to fans of Cloud9 is their low KDA for the week—2.35. These guys set some major records last year, and appear to be struggling against some new and improved competition in the form of Dignitas and LMQ. Still, they’re just one game behind the leaders, and with 20 games to go, anything could happen.
Finally, a look at objectives. While first blood and first dragon appear to be more or less important, just take a look at those first turret statistics. Out of 16 games, only two were won by teams that didn’t take down the first turret. And no game went longer than 20 minutes without a turret being downed.
The message here is clear—down those turrets, dudes!
