LCS 2021: Ranking Every Single Starting LCS Jungler

8. Andrei “Xerxe” Dragomir (Immortals)

Now, Xerxe is a guy that I thought was in the upper echelon of junglers back in 2019 as a member of Splyce. Unfortunately, his 2020 season with Origen was not just a setback. It was a disaster.

Granted, he was playing against stiffer competition in EU, but Xerxe posted a 1.87 aKDA (second-worst, ahead of only Svenskeren), and a 294 gold per minute that ranks last among all starting junglers this year.

A lot of that was due to the fact that Origen often put Xerxe in losing jungle matchups, setting him up to get slaughtered. He was favored to win the early game in only 43.75% of his games in 2020 but still managed to put up a 235.3 MAGXD @ 15. This means that Xerxe’s poor KDA and gold per minute stats could be more a product of his team’s terrible play, as he seemed able to control the early game well, considering.

However, his low kill participation (67%) and kill share (16%) numbers undercut the notion that Xerxe was trying and failing to carry a team of weak players. Yes, he was handicapped by his picks (mostly Sett and Gragas) needing to enable his laners, but he also did less damage than one would expect given his champion pool (-12.5 EDD). That damage output isn’t terrible compared to the rest of the junglers in the LCS, but you’d still like him to be outperforming the average junglers.

One other area where Xerxe does shine, though, is in his champion pool. His Gragas play was rated elite last year, he had a fairly diverse champion pool (16 unique picks), and was able to get a considerable amount of games on champions like Karthus and Rek’Sai, giving him one of the larger comfort pools in the LCS.