League of Legends: five players who missed the LCS all-pro teams
By Josh Tyler
The LCS announced the fifteen League of Legends players making up the three all-pro teams for the split. Here are five players who were not included, but should have been.
Riot announced their LCS all-pro teams in an announcement Saturday. Chosen by players and coaches from each team, along with analysts and media personalities (unfortunately, excluding us), these choices represent the professional League of Legends community’s opinion on who has performed the best this year. Of course, we are free to disagree.
While almost all of the players named to the teams are deserving of the honor (in fact, I’d give the first-team an enthusiastic thumbs up, as all five are definitively the best in their roles), some choices pushed out other, more deserving nominees. As per the metrics we have been tracking throughout the split, here are five players that we think deserve a spot on one of the three LCS all-pro teams.
1. Kim “Ssumday” Chan-ho (100 Thieves)
I’ve long been saying that Ssumday has been the best top laner in the LCS by a wide margin. Although 100 Thieves have been an abjectly terrible team throughout the year, Ssumday has been an absolute animal.
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Among the statistical categories Ssumday leads the LCS in are solo kills and gold difference at 15. While the rest of his team averages a 150 gold deficit at the 15-minute mark, Ssumday averages over a 400 gold advantage.
In addition, Ssumday is either the best or second-best top laner in terms of damage (both per minute and as a share of the team’s total) and vision control. While other contemporaries like Impact are lauded for their high KDA and low deaths per game, I note that his numbers come thanks to his team’s unprecedented success and by him largely remaining out of the action (evidenced by his pitiful kill and damage participation numbers. For my money, I’d say Ssumday deserves first or second-team honors for how well he did on the worst team in the LCS.