LCS Summer 2020: Week 5 Player Power Ranking

Our LCS Summer 2020 Week 5 player power ranking ranks the mid laners.

Mid Lane

1. Nicolaj “Jensen” Jensen (Team Liquid)

Perhaps the most surprising performance in the Summer Split, at least in my opinion, has been the rise and resurgance of Jensen. Not to say that he’s been a poor player during his time with TL, but I’ve always viewed him as more of a Robin than Batman. Without Doublelift, the pressure on him to carry more of the load for Team Liquid could have been a bit too much for him to handle.

But handle it, he has, as Jensen has posted the second-highest adjusted KDA among all mid laners (3.92, behind only Nisqy’s 4.88). He’s also been a more-than-capable laner, with the highest XP differential (+530) and best CS differential (+10) at 15 minutes. Though his damage (464 raw DPM and 26.5% damage share) are both lower than the average for his role, Jensen has shown he’s quite capable of being the man for Liquid this summer.

2. Tristan “PowerOfEvil” Schrage (FlyQuest)
3. Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg (TSM)

In a recent interview with Travis Gafford, Nisqy noted that Bjergsen has finally come around on the idea that he needs to have a much more of a carry role for TSM to succeed. While their play in Week 5 was anything but success, we did see the more carry-oriented side of Bjergsen come out with some impressive play.

He went 6/2/5 in the team’s two losses to Cloud9 and Immortals, posting a 91.7% kill participation in those games. Bjergsen currently leads all mid laners in solo kills (5), has the third-highest adjusted KDA (3.56), the third-highest damage to gold ratio (1.22), and the highest kill participation (74.6%) of all mid laners. If Bjergsen gets the help he needs and TSM fixes their drafts, we could be seeing the resurgence of Bjergsen.

4. Daniele “Jiizuke” di Mauro (Evil Geniuses)
5. David “Insanity” Challe (Immortals)
6. Yasin “Nisqy” Dinçer (Cloud9)

Speaking of Nisqy, I know it’s fashionable to gush over him and his play, but I think he’s a tad overrated. Yes, he currently has the highest adjusted KDA of all mid laners, thanks in large part to averaging the second-fewest deaths, but he also has among the lowest gold counts and damage numbers among LCS mid laners in Summer 2020.

Consider this, the only other mid laner with a lower damage per minute than Nisqy is Froggen, and Froggen at least did 27% of Dignitas’s damage when he was playing. Nisqy does only 21.6% of C9’s damage. And yes, I admit that Nisqy has been playing a lot of low-damage mid laners like Galio (twice), Twisted Fate (twice), Galio, and Karma, but you would still expect some more out of a player who is constantly sacrificing his own lane to roam for his team.

This isn’t to say that Nisqy is a bad player, he’s definitely one of the best in the league and better than his numbers indicate. That said, I wouldn’t put him above anyone in that top three for the mid laners in our power ranking.

7. Eugene “Pobelter” Park (CLG)
8. Jérémy “Eika” Valdenaire (Immortals)
9. Tommy “Ry0ma” Le (100 Thieves)
10. Kim “Fenix” Jae-hun (Dignitas)
11. Tanner “Damonte” Damonte (Golden Guardians)
12.Henrik “Froggen” Hansen (Dignitas)