Origen vs. Team Vitality: LEC Match of the Week Preview

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Vayne, League of Legends, LEC Match of the Week

League of Legends. Photo Courtesy of Riot Games. /

We’re only two weeks into the League of Legends European Championship and we’ve already witnessed our fair share of shock results, dominating victories and a surprise team at the foot of the table. While the likes of G2 Esports, Misfits Gaming, and Team Vitality have wowed fans with strong performances so far, others have not been so impressive, as World Championship finalists Fnatic suffered a 0-4 start to their season.

Heading into Week 3 of the LEC Spring Split, there are still plenty of questions to be answered, such as “will G2 go 18-0?”, “will Fnatic go 0-18?”, and “will Flexius return to Ready Check?”. With this in mind, the third weekend of European League action promises to be another exciting one, particularly with the changes introduced by Patch 9.2.

The most exciting action may be found in the “LEC Match of the Week” between struggling giants Origen and the explosive Team Vitality. Fans from across Europe will be tuning in for Game 5 on Friday to find out if Origen will begin their revival and climb up the standings, or whether Team Vitality will stamp their authority on the league and continue their pursuit of G2 Esports.

Origen

Despite an incredible amount of hype surrounding their line-up during the off-season, Origen has found their start to LEC life rather challenging. The team kicked off the season in the worst possible fashion, falling to G2 Esports in what could barely be described as a contest. After dispatching Fnatic to conclude their opening weekend, Origen then went 0-2 in the second week with losses against Misfits Gaming and Splyce.

There is undoubtedly an abundance of skill and experience in this Origen roster, including veterans like Nukeduck and Mithy at its core. Nevertheless, so far, the team has looked anything but experienced as their games continuously fall apart in the mid-game.

It could be argued that even in the early game this Origen team seems lost. In their defeats to Misfits and Splyce they bled kill after kill before 15 minutes and even in the Fnatic win, they were slow to get off the mark.

Origen will be hoping to survive Vitality’s monstrous early game potential and recapture the late game form they showed in their only win of the season to take the win in the “LEC Match of the Week” on Friday. It will be no easy task for the squad currently sitting in 7th but their very capable roster will want to turn their fortunes around sooner rather than later.

One to Watch – Erlend “Nukeduck” Våtevik Holm

Throughout Origen’s first four matches, the brightest spark from the underperforming team has been their Norwegian mid laner Nukeduck, which comes as no surprise as he was arguably the strongest member of the roster in the 2018 season while at Schalke 04. Continuing a tradition of flaunting his endless champion pool, Nukeduck has already played four champions in the four games this season and holds a 2.0 KDA, despite his team sitting at a 1-3 record.

The main reason for this is the 8.0 KDA in his very impressive Vayne performance during Origen’s win against Fnatic, in which he secured himself a counter-pick to Galio in the middle lane and used it to full effect. Nukeduck found himself 38 CS ahead by 15 minutes and used this large gold discrepancy to carry his team to a victory with his extremely clean team fighting and huge damage output.

Not only this Origen’s mid lane star has also impressed in their losses. When coming up against the very strong G2 Esports, Misfits Gaming, and Splyce, Nukeduck has always made his opponents’ lives difficult and constantly been the most reliable performer on his team. It’s for this reason that Origen will be looking towards their star man in the middle lane to provide them with a course to victory in what will be an extremely tense match-up against Vitality on Friday.

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