LCS Summer 2020: Week 3 Player Power Rankings
By Josh Tyler
Our LCS Summer 2020 Week 3 player power ranking ranks the junglers.
Jungle
1. Robert “Blaber” Huang (Cloud9)
2. Lucas “Santorin” Tao Kilmer Larsen (FlyQuest)
3. Can “Closer” Çelik (Golden Guardians)
4. Matthew “Akaadian” Higginbotham (Dignitas)
With recent (unconfirmed) rumors that Akaadian is going to be subbed out in favor of Dardoch, I’d like to take this opportunity to re-iterate that Akaadian is not the biggest of DIG’s problems this split. Yes, he looked quite bad in their loss to Team Liquid, going 1/5/1 on Olaf, which was probably the reason for his benching, but the guy has no help.
Consider that he does nearly one-fifth (18.4%) of his team’s damage in a role where only two other players (Blaber and Santorin) do more than 15% of their team’s damage. And Akaadian does barely more damage than the average jungler, which is why he has the second-highest damage-to-gold ratios among LCS junglers (Santorin is the only one with a higher ratio). If Akaadian had competent solo laners, I think his performance could be judged a bit more fairly.
5. Jake “Xmithie” Puchero (Immortals)
Xmithie is back and immediately out-performing Potluck (not a slight against him at all, he was more than serviceable in his four games of action). With an 84.2% kill participation while also having bottom-three damage and gold shares, Xmithie showed once again that he is one of the best supportive junglers in the LCS. His performance on Trundle was exceptional against Golden Guardians (but we’re still scratching our head at the Ivern pick).
6. Mingyi “Spica” Lu (TSM)
7. Joseph “Potluck” Pollock (Immortals)
8. Raymond “Wiggily” Griffin (CLG)
9. Dennis “Svenskeren” Johnsen (Evil Geniuses)
10. Mads “Broxah” Brock-Pedersen (Team Liquid)
11. William “Meteos” Hartman (100 Thieves)
His benching was not without controversy in how it was handled by the parties involved, but unfortunately for Meteos I completely understand the team’s decision to try out Contractz after his performance through the first three weeks. Meteos is one of only four LCS players to average more than four deaths per game (Allorim, Stunt, and Gate are the others, with only him and Stunt having played in all six games this split).