2019 LPL Spring Split Primer and Power Rankings
By Jack Coleman
The League of Legends Pro League (LPL) Spring Split kicks off on the 14th of January. With two new teams and a new format, China is going to be an exciting region to watch this year. This is a primer on each of the teams participating in the LPL this split as well as a ranking of their current strength compared to the rest of the league.
The LPL is the region that has given us our most recent world champions in Invictus Gaming. It’s an incredibly competitive region and well worth watching if you enjoy fast-paced gameplay and mechanical players.
The league has a new format this season due to it’s growing number of teams. Previously, the LPL was split into two groups, East and West, and teams would play their groupmates twice and teams from the other group once during the split. Now, the format has been simplified. It’s a single round robin where each team plays each other once in a best of three. This means the stakes are very high right from week one as teams won’t be playing their opponent again during the regular season. The top eight teams make playoffs, with the top two and the next two getting separate seeding from the next four.
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Two new teams, Victory 5 and SinoDragon Gaming, have been added to the LPL bringing it up to sixteen teams in total. The plan is to eventually have a total of twenty teams competing in the LPL.
Because of the high number of teams, there are a high number of games which means that the LPL will have two series every day for sixteen weeks. It’s going to be a tough league to keep up with as a result but we at Blog of Legends will keep you informed throughout.
Another unique aspect of the LPL is that it isn’t centralised to one city, certain teams have home cities where they host their home games. LGD host their games in Hangzhou, Oh My God (OMG) operate out of Chengdu, Royal Never Give Up (RNG) and JD Gaming are based in the capital Beijing, Snake Esports is in Chongqing, Team WE welcome their opponents to Xi’an and finally the rest of the LPL have their “home” games in Shanghai.
Now we finally move to the teams themselves. This is how all sixteen teams of the LPL stack up against one another.