LCS Summer 2020: Week 4 Player Power Rankings
By Josh Tyler
Our LCS Summer 2020 Week 4 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. Juan Arturo “Contractz” Garcia (100 Thieves)
Contractz saw his first LCS action in 2020 and looked about as I remembered: a bit prone to over-aggression but otherwise fundamentally sound. His 2/4/13 stat line over the two games is hardly anything to brag about, but Contractz managed to do something that the man he replaced, Meteos, has struggled to do this year: not give away kills.
Contractz accounted for only 18.2% of his team’s deaths, well below the average for junglers of 23%. Compare that to Meteos, who has a death share of 26.4% in his six games of action.
5. Joshua “Dardoch” Hartnett (Dignitas)
Another jungler with a history of over-aggression, Dardoch actually looked a bit more in control and restrained for Dignitas…right up until he didn’t. In both games Dardoch had some very strong early game plays followed by one or two colossal late-game blunders that cost DIG the game.
That said, Dardoch has shown that he’s capable of elevating the rest of his team, securing nearly 30% of his team’s kills, the second-highest kill share in the LCS behind only Blaber. He also tops all junglers in terms of his damage-to-gold ratio (1.23) meaning he’s getting a lot of value out of all the gold that’s being funneled onto him.
6. Matthew “Akaadian” Higginbotham (Dignitas)
7. Jake “Xmithie” Puchero (Immortals)
I’m just going to say it, Xmithie looks washed. He went 2/10/9 last week on two aggressive junglers (Lee Sin and Graves), making numerous mistakes and giving away countless costly deaths. The only thing keeping him rated this high is that his sample size isn’t as big as other junglers below him in the rankings, but he could easily be a bottom-two jungler based on his level of play.
8. Mingyi “Spica” Lu (TSM)
9. Joseph “Potluck” Pollock (Immortals)
10. Dennis “Svenskeren” Johnsen (Evil Geniuses)
11. Mads “Broxah” Brock-Pedersen (Team Liquid)
12. William “Meteos” Hartman (100 Thieves)
13. Raymond “Wiggily” Griffin (CLG)
Speaking of sample size, how much longer is CLG going to give Wiggily before realizing that his play has severely regressed this split? He currently has the worst kill participation (61.9%) of all junglers in the LCS and is far below the position average of 72% KP. He also has the second-lowest adjusted gold per minute (265.7), the worst adjusted damage per minute (169.9), and averages one of the biggest gold (-470) and experience (-576) differentials at 15 minutes.