LCS 2021: Ranking Every Single Starting LCS Jungler

2. Lucas “Santorin” Tao Kilmer Larsen (Team Liquid)

Santorin was an underrated monster in the jungle last year, and earned a nice contract to come and replace Broxah on TL as a result. The move was among the shrewdest in the offseason, as Santorin has shown that he is an exceptional jungler.

The only two criticisms that can be made about Santorin are that his gold per minute (330) is slightly below the average for junglers and his damage output is low. The -2.8 EDD is probably more concerning than the GPM (because that can be influenced more by his team’s performance).

But doing a deeper dive into his damage output, it seems that Santorin was bogged down trying to play the high-damage junglers like Graves and Lillia. When put on more tanky, enabling champions like Rek’Sai, Sett, and Trundle, Santorin was actually able to outpace his expected damage. In fact, his Trundle was rated elite from his champion pool.

Speaking of champion pools, Santorin was tied for the lead of most unique junglers picked in 2020 with 18. Although he only had three champions (Trundle, Volibear, and Graves) played in at least 10% of his games, he had good performances on almost all of them (though I submit his Graves needs some work).

Otherwise, Santorin posted decent early games based on his matchup (58.9 MAGXD @ 15) and, as noted earlier, had one of the highest adjusted KDAs (4.08) in the role. Santorin’s signing will certainly be a massive upgrade over Broxah, as he stylistically fits TL’s aggressive solo lanes, is fine playing enabling champions, and is solid enough to help get them early advantages.