LCS 2021: Ranking Every Single Starting LCS Jungler
By Josh Tyler
5. Mingyi “Spica” Lu (TSM)
Spica overcame a slow start to his first full split in the LCS and developed into a very solid jungler. I don’t think he’s quite yet deserving of the hype that the LCS seems to be heaping on him, but the arrow is definitely trending up for Spica heading into 2021.
On the encouraging side, Spica had one of the strongest champion pools of all LCS junglers, playing 17 unique champions, one rated elite (Jarvan), and five within his comfort pool. He’s show flexibility in being able to pick up unique champs like Kayn, but still has the familiar fallback of picks like Lee Sin and Jarvan.
He also proved to be an efficient early game jungler (186.8 MAGXD @ 15) given that he was often put in disadvantageous jungle matchups.
For the negatives, though, Spica had an extremely low gold per minute (316) and a below-average aKDA (2.21) due to his low number of kills (1.9 per game). Again, this is a stat that started trending upward towards the end of 2020 and at Worlds, but his struggles in the early game cannot be ignored.
Spica is still young enough to grow, and the growth that he did show at the end of last year was encouraging enough that TSM fans should be confident that he will get even better in 2021. For now, though, I need to see it to be convinced.