Top laner Breathe helped his new squad, Royal Never Give Up, secure a win in a back-and-forth series against Weibo Gaming today in week three of the 2022 LPL Summer Split.
Weibo Gaming entered today’s League of Legends series with a respectable 2-1 record near the top of the Summer Split standings. But to solidify their spot as a true contender for the 2022 LPL Summer Split title, they likely were looking to take down RNG, who are coming off of a dominant performance at the Mid-Season Invitational in Busan, South Korea.
RNG are the team to beat in the LPL Summer Split. But after trading for former Bilibili Gaming top laner Breathe, questions around how dominant the team could be at the beginning of the latest split began to form. And today, viewers had the opportunity to see the early struggles of adding a new player as well as what Breathe can bring to the squad throughout this three-game series.
In the first two games, Breathe was nonexistent for RNG and accumulated a 1/7/9 scoreline across two games. As a result of his subpar play, both teams traded games. In game one, RNG jungler Wei and bot laner GALA were the stars of their first victory against Weibo Gaming. Collectively, the duo was responsible for 15 out of RNG’s 16 game one kills while leaving every member, aside from SofM, without kills.
After a strong performance from two RNG players, Weibo Gaming answered back in game two, this time with a collectively strong performance from the entire team. One of the things Weibo Gaming did exceptionally well in their bounce-back game was to shut down any opportunity for Breathe to come back into the game. Instead, Breathe was constantly targeted during the early laning phase. All this resulted in the new RNG top laner playing to a 1/5/3 scoreline in Weibo Gaming’s 33-minute second-game victory.
But Breathe turned everything around in the final game when RNG drafted him Sejuani in the deciding game against TheShy’s Mordekaiser. Instead of a more passive approach in the third game, Breathe used this opportunity to demonstrate some of his mechanical prowess first seen when he was on Bilibili Gaming. The final game was Breathe’s best by far and he produced his first MVP performance in the 2022 LPL Summer Split after going 6/0/11 in the series decider.
With this victory, RNG are undefeated in the 2022 LPL Summer Split. They will look to maintain their flawless record when they take on Victory Five in a battle between two undefeated titans on June 25.
