League of Legends – LCS week 1 power rankings

The first week of LCS play is in the books, and we’ve started to see which teams are separating themselves from the pack. Where do each of the teams rank in our LCS week 1 power rankings?

The LCS is back and better than ever. After the first weekend of play, we’ve already seen teams looking stronger or weaker than anticipated. As a result, it’s time for some knee-jerk LCS week 1 power rankings now that each team has finished their first two games.

10. Counter Logic Gaming (0-2)

Who would have thought they’d at the bottom of our LCS week 1 power rankings. CLG came into this season with lofty expectations, but they end the first weekend winless and looking like a team in search of an identity.

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They’ve already swapped out players in jungle and top lane, with Moon playing over Wiggly in their first game vs. Liquid and FallenBandit playing over Darshan in their second game of the weekend. Neither swap did much to improve CLG’s fortunes, as FallenBandit looked completely out of place against Impact and Moon couldn’t get the team rolling against OpTic. With all these roster swaps this early in the season, CLG certainly does not feel like a team on solid ground.

9. Golden Guardians (0-2)

This team is an example of why you cannot win on talent alone. If that was the case, they would have put up easy wins against less talented squads like FlyQuest and Echo Fox. Instead, it was a case of disjointed plays, individual mistakes, and no consistency.

In the first game against FlyQuest, Contractz and Froggen looked out of place, going a combined 0/7/7. The next game, it was Hauntzer and Olleh dragging the team down, going 1/10/8 between the two of them. In every game so far, the Guardians have seen their roster not live up to their potential, that needs to change soon.

8. OpTic (1-1)

Even though there is another winless team still to be ranked, it’s hard to have a lot of confidence in OpTic even though they split their games. Beating CLG is looking less and less impressive, even if they did do it with almost all academy players.

On day two, they got rocked by FlyQuest, who is probably the weakest 2-0 team from this weekend. We still don’t know if they will bring in Arrow, Big, Dhokla, and Meteos to replace the academy guys, or if they’ll mix-and-match, but they need to figure it out quick. If they don’t Clutch and Echo Fox will take care of them with ease.

7. 100 Thieves (0-2)

Of the 0-2 teams, none had a harder opening weekend than the Thieves. When your opening game, the easier of the two, is against TSM, that’s a recipe for disaster. Yes, they should have been able to beat TSM and they got beat fairly handily, but most people agree TSM is still a high-quality team, so that’s not a terrible loss.

Then, they went up against the defending champions in Cloud9, and took an expected loss. This is another team that should be better than their current performance is showing, but I still have some faith in their talent level that they’ll rise to the top of the pack as they start to gel.

6. Echo Fox (1-1)

Echo Fox had a fairly strong showing in their first weekend Their one win came against Golden Guardians, a team that should be better than their 0-2 record indicates. In their loss they were handily beaten by Clutch, who are looking like the second or third best team in the league.

This team is likely going to end up in the playoff hunt, and they have been impressive even in their loss. They still have a chance to prove themselves going forward in more competitive matches against TSM and OpTic next weekend.