League of Legends LEC: Grading Free Agency through Day 2

Origen acquires Upset, Xerxe, and Destiny

Origen completely rejiggers their line-up going into the 2020 season by replacing their entire bot lane and jungle. They add former Schalke AD Upset and former Splyce jungler Xerxe, while also importing support Destiny from the OCE’s Mammoth.
Upset Grade: A+
Xerxe Grade: A+
Upset Grade: A-

It is impossible for me to overstate how much I love what Origen did this offseason. I mean, they completely crushed it by adding (in my opinion) the best ADC in the LEC in 2019 and the second-best jungler without having to give up too much to do so.

Upset in 2019 was top two in categories such as adjusted KDA (5.08), adjusted Kill Participation (118.8%), and adjusted damage per minute (564.6 aDPM). He did this all while also receiving some of the lowest percent of his team’s income than any other ADC (he averaged 25.1% gold share vs the ADC average of 27%).

Xerxe, while not being an incredibly impressive early game jungler, certainly still held his own and made up for it by being the best control jungler in the league. His 1.78 deaths per game was lowest in the LEC and he had the best vision score per minute among all junglers (2.04).

Finally, Destiny is a very strong player who dominated the OPL last year (his numbers were so strong I rated him as the eighth-best jungler going into Worlds ahead of players like Beryl, Zeyzal, and Hylissang). I love the idea of using the import slot on a player with high upside, especially given the talent OG can get to replace Destiny if things don’t pan out.

FC Schalke 04 extends Odoamne, acquires FORG1VEN

FC Schalke keeps some continuity by re-signing top laner Odoamne and signing the biggest free agent in FORG1VEN
Odoamne Grade: D
FORG1VEN Grade: C

On the other side of the coin, while I loved Origen’s signings, I hated Schalke’s. I’ll get FORG1VEN’s out of the way first, since I know he’s the most popular and anticipated signing of the LEC offseason.

Yes, FORG1VEN was historically a very good ADC in Europe and there’s no reason to think that he couldn’t still have that skill. My problem is that, right now Schalke does not have a support to pair with FORG1VEN and they already had one of the best bot lanes in the league on their roster in Upset and IgNar. Personally, I would have moved heaven and earth to keep those two around, so moving on from that to a mechanically-skilled player who hasn’t played professionally in over a year is a risk.

Then there’s Odoamne. Hoo boy.

I won’t mince words, I thought Odoamne was the worst top laner in the LEC in the Summer of 2019. Now, to be fair, he was very good during the spring split and there’s every reason for Schalke fans to hope he’ll return to that level of play going forward. However, in the summer Odo was bottom three in the LEC top lane in the following statistical categories: deaths per game, kills per game, adjusted KDA, kill participation, kill share, death share, adjusted kill participation, gold share, gold difference at 10 minutes, XP difference at 10, and CS difference at 10.

Re-signing Odoamne is a gamble, a hope that he will return to his past form. If he doesn’t, I think this signing will cripple Schalke.