LCS 2021: Ranking All the Starting LCS Top Laners

2. Kim “Ssumday” Chan-ho (100 Thieves)

The only hold over from last year’s team, the organization made large changes to build around Ssumday and I think they were 100% right to do so. Ssumday proved he can be the carrying force for a weak team last year, and now with a better supporting cast the sky is the limit.

Surprisingly, though, Ssumday only showed elite performances on Ornn in 2020, and also showcased one of the smallest champion pools in the LCS (11 unique champion picks). That resulted in him having one of the weakest champion pools of LCS top laners.

In every statistical category, Ssumday was among the best in league. His laning was strong, with a 183.3 matchup-adjusted gold and experience differential at 15. And that’s even more impressive given the fact that he was favored to win lane in 67% of the games he played in. That means that, even though he was expected to win lane most often, he still won lane harder than expected.

His other impressive stat was his 3.42 aKDA, which was the highest of all LCS top laners last year. While most might assume that was because Ssumday was racking up kills, he actually only averaged 2.7 kills per game, which was around the average for his role. Instead, it was his low 1.5 deaths per game that drove his strong KDA numbers.

The KDA numbers also demonstrate just how little support Ssumday got from his team last year. He had one of the highest kill share numbers of all top laners despite that medicore kills per game amount, a result of his team’s weaker supporting cast. Hopefully, with an upgraded cast around him, Ssumday can prove that he deserves to be among the elite talents.