2022 LEC Spring Split: Week 6 Day 2 Recap

The rise of the next EU mid stars. Hylissang 1v9s as a support. Malrang and Vetheo battle it out for this week’s MVP.

XL vs AST: The old wise man’s bag of tricks

Excel cut the Astralis party short owing to a vintage game from Nukeduck pulling out the Veigar and being an absolute difference maker in the game. Astralis came with their now-usual early game aggression and were able to find plays, but unlike some other top teams, Excel did not get caught unawares by the last place’s team strategy and were able to go toe for toe in them and establish a small lead. Nukeduck’s Veigar took over the rest of the game with his great cages that kept leading to picks over and over again, allowing XL to coast into late game with the veteran mid laner’s intelligent counterpick into Dajor’s Ryze, and take the win as Excel looks to finally make playoffs for the first time in the organization’s history.

BlogOfLegends MVP: Nukeduck (1)

SK vs BDS: Sertuss Rising

People will be putting more respect on Sertuss’ name after that MVP performance versus BDS, as the rookie mid laner put on a clinic of a Corki performance as SK handed BDS yet another loss off of his back. A relatively quiet name that hasn’t been apart of too many narratives (let’s be honest, no one in SK is) Sertuss has been quietly impressing on his slow, consistent gameplay. Although his laning phase leaves a lot to be desired against the top European mids, the rookie has shown a penchant for intelligent teamfighting and positioning with his backline champions, yesterday with his disgusting Orianna shockwave and today with him blowing apart enemy mid NUCLEARINT in a most hilarious display of power. Although the team does not have any stars to make a run for playoffs, I do believe they can be fun to watch come Summer Split given the trajectory of their team.

BlogOfLegends MVP: SK Sertuss (2)

MAD vs MSF

In what shaped out to be quite an interesting game, Misfits claw back from the heinous early game to eventually take the game off of a rebuilding MAD Lions. MAD jumped out to a massive lead owing to the Elyoya counterdive in the early game, followed by two more quick kills, but the young team floundered their leads with poor baron starts that eventually gave Misfits time to scale and eventually end the game off of two gorgeous kicks from Shlatan’s signature Lee Sin. MAD’s macro game has been especially disappointing since they have lost their carries and the much-hyped Elyoya/Kaiser combo has not even come close to living up to expectations. Reeker especially continues to display his greenness in the league as he remains a fly on the wall in yet another game. If they can’t even win this game with such a giant early game lead, barring some sort of miraculous development, I do not think MAD Lions will be making playoffs this year – not least because of Reeker, but also because of a relative underperformance from Kaiser and Elyoya, who should be leading the team.

BlogOfLegends MVP: MSF Vetheo (2)

Vetheo picks up yet another MVP by solo-winning some of these tense mid game objective standoffs with his accurate Corki poke. The man lives up to his SoloQ moniker as the 2022 LEC Spring Split MVP as he is probably the current frontrunner for this prestigious award. And what a developmental cycle he has went through – from being an ostensible Zoe and Leblanc two trick, to broadening his champion pool with melee champions like Sylas, to now being good enough to warrant last picks to set him up to carry the team. It has been truly inspiring to watch him blossom into the star he is today and I look forward to how his form will hold up once he gets into the playoffs.

VIT vs RGE

Rogue steamrolls over Vitality to clinch Playoffs without having to do too much of anything. The dive buddies comp from Vitality were well defended by the 1st place team as the “superteam” could not find a way to exploit Odoamne and snowball the game for Alphari. Vitality continued to look as uncoordinated as ever as they fell in the mid game owing to a couple of greedy mispositioning that resulted in picks for Rogue, and the team completely ran over from there.

Perkz’s Galio, although proactive, was relatively useless this game as Larssen was able to farm up freely and carry alongside Malrang’s Xin Zhao, who will pick up his 2nd MVP after dropping another dime of a performance with his Stridebreaker Xin Zhao. At this point, we are just holding out hope that Perkz will deliver on his promise when it comes to the playoffs because so far, Vitality has been nothing but a hot mess throughout the split.

BlogofLegends MVP: RGE Malrang (2)

G2 vs FNC

The El Classico of Europe delivers as Fnatic take the decisive win over a faltering G2, owing to one of the most dominant Pyke games I have ever seen from Hylissang. The game was largely sloppy from both sides, but it made for a fairly close bout between both teams as blunders were traded back and forth. Although the gameplay has gotten cleaner, it is still evident that Europe needs more time with their new rosters before they hit their final form. Hylissang might as well have been in final form this game, with his now-patented early game hook accuracy into snowballing topside by delaying his recall, it was one of the few times I have seen a support literally carry a game from start to end.

BlogOfLegends MVP: FNC Hylissang (1)

Let’s talk G2 for a second, primarily about Caps and Jankos. Now Caps has been looking lackluster this entire split, and he continues to have a decent game where he plays his part and tries to win the game – just as a regular player. Gone are the days where Caps can just run over an entire team by himself and 1v9 carry his team to victory; in this sense, his career is following a sort of Bjergsen arc where he starts out as a world-beater and gradually becomes a safe, control mage player. It is quite demoralizing to see yet another rare talent resort to playing safe in order to minimize mistakes; Caps is sealing off the rest of his potential by being more passive and trying to do things the “right” way. As for Jankos, it is one of the very seldom times I have seen one of the greatest junglers of all time have a genuine slump, and a quite bad one at that. He has been fairly invisible in the early game with ganking junglers, with is literally his biggest strength over the years. With the veterans of the team having an off split and the rookies needing time to develop fully, it seems as if BrokenBlade is solely responsible for carrying this time over the split, at least until playoffs.

2022 LEC Spring Split Week 6 MVP: RGE Malrang

The first place team bounces back in a big way, led by the man who has had steady criticism leveled at him for his inefficient pathing. Malrang simply took over the early game with his devastating ganks, which European teams still haven’t figured out how to play against, and gave the Rogue engine the fuel it needs to bulldoze over their opposition. Off the Lee Sin picks that handed him his two losses, Malrang goes back to champions with some form of CC in the Hecarim and Xin Zhao, to better fuel his ganks. We’ll see just how far this style can take Rogue because despite them being the undisputed first place team, no one is really hyped about their chances of converting this regular season success to a trophy, especially since we have seen them fail so spectacularly in the past. Here’s to hoping that adding the ex-Damwon jungler can change around their fortunes.

I would also like to give a shoutout to Misfits Vetheo, who also doubled up on the MVP counts this week. He was just as much of an impact-maker as Malrang was this week, but he got online in the mid to late game, where Misfits were even or somewhat behind to carry them to victory. I valued Malrang’s more early game domination which clipped the opposition from ever taking flight, but Vetheo’s steadfast poise and nerves of steel in the face of a gold deficit could have easily gotten him MVP as well. At the end of the day, it is about what the eye test looked like and what aspects of a player’s performance one values more – and for this time around, I value Malrang’s monstrous early game gank proficiency, which remains an unsolved mystery in the LEC.