Who were the Best Laners in the LCS in the 2020 Season?
By Josh Tyler
We break down which LCS players were the best laners in 2020 to help inform how they might do in 2021.
Top Lane
Eric “Licorice” Ritchie
When it comes to top laners, one player clearly stood above the rest of the LCS in 2020, and that was Licorice. With a 718 AGXD @ 15, Licorice was ahead of all other top laners in the league by at least 400 gold/experience, factoring in the matchup.
With a champion pool as deep as Licorice’s, he didn’t tend to play the same matchup too often. Sett into Aatrox was the only matchup he played more than twice. He did typically win the matchup, but his AGXD @ 15 for those matches was +327, so he wasn’t performing that great.
However, Licorice was a god when it came to playing Ornn. His average AGXD @ 15 was +2461, despite the fact that Ornn is almost always expected to be down at 15 minutes.
Jung “Impact” Eon-yeong
Shockingly, Impact actually followed up on Licorice in terms of his laning stats. His average AGXD @ 15 was +303, the second-best mark for top laners. Although his champion pool was far narrower than Licorice’s his performance on two champions – Shen and Sett – both stood out as exceptional. He had a +810 AGXD @ 15 on Shen and +1172 on Sett.
While this seems to illustrate that Impact is, in fact, the best weak-side top laner in the LCS, I must push back on that narrative. The numbers show that Impact is actually favored to win lane in 64.8% of the games he played in 2020. That said, he did tend to win lane harder than he should have, and is to be commended for that, but there is a much better weak-side top laner who still goes overlooked.
Colin “Solo” Earnest
Favored to be ahead in only 44.8% of the lane matchups he entered last year, Solo still managed to post the fourth-highest AGXD @ 15 in the LCS (Ssumday rounded out the top three with Licorice and Impact). Like Impact, Solo made his living off playing Sett in 2020 (AGXD of +523) but he was also a very good Renekton (+203).
The one knock you can have on Solo for 2020 is that his two most-played champions, Aatrox and Ornn, did not have great laning stats (+73 and +50 AGXD @ 15). That said, he can still confidently lay claim to being the best weak-side top laner in the LCS last year.