Photo Credit: Playertheory.com
Overview
The North American and European LCS Spring Split Regular Seasons for League of Legends ended last week with teams vying for the last few wins to put them over the top versus their competition. Whether it was Baron Nashor steals or last minute comebacks, the last week of the LCS regular season promises exciting games for the playoffs that will take place in a few weeks. This article will focus on the NA LCS with an article on the EU LCS to be posted tomorrow.
Photo Credit: LoL Esports and Riot Games
NA LCS Spring Regular Season
Rankings: LoL NA Rankings
Immortals (17-1): One team stood out from the rest in North America. Immortals showed a dominating performance in this split, topping the scoreboard with 17 wins and 1 loss. The team consists of several veteran North American players in Pobelter and Wildturtle and also 2 transplants from the Korea/Europe, Huni and Reignover. Rounding out the team is the rookie, Adrian, who demonstrated this split that he should be in contention for one of the best Western supports.
Counter Logic Gaming (13-5): CLG went through several roster changes to begin the season. In the beginning, it looked as though replacing star ADC and mid-laner, Doublelift and Pobelter, would result in a downward spiral for this team. However, strong performances by their replacements Stixxay and Huhi coupled with improvements from the team’s older members allowed this team to take second place this split going into the playoffs.
Cloud 9 (12-6): The fortunes of C9 seem to rise and fall with long time member and shotcaller, Hai. When Hai left the team for a brief period during the previous split, fans saw one of the top North American teams drop in the rankings. The moment Hai returned, as a temporary jungler for the team, an immediate resurgence occurred and the team went on a huge winning streak. This season, Hai has moved to the support role and the team added the Korean jungler, Rush. The team had a strong showing in the middle of the season, but dropped the ball a bit at the end with a loss to Liquid.
Team Liquid (10-8): TL was the team that could never seem to break into the top 1-2 positions in the LCS. They had a relatively poor start to the split losing to Renegades and TSM in the first week. At the end, they managed to win three of their last four games, finishing strong with a record of 10 wins and 8 losses. The last week of the spring season split also saw 3 of the 5 Liquid players in the OP 5 players of the week with Fenix, the mid-laner, taking the overall MVP award.
NRG Esports (9-9): NRG started the split red-hot jumping out to share first place with Immortals at a record of 4-0. Since then, their performance has died out a bit with the team struggling against the teams of the same level and sometimes even against lower tier teams. Still, NRG managed to clinch the 5th place spot over TSM who had the same record with a win against TSM in the last week of the split.
Team Solomid (9-9): Fan favorites, TSM, was another team to undergo several major roster changes at the beginning of the split. Long time top laner, Dyrus, was switched for the promising new star, Hauntzer, formerly of Gravity. Doublelift of CLG would replace Wildturtle as the ADC and Yellowstar and Svenskeren from Europe moved to the States to take over the support and jungler roles, respectively. The team had a decent performance in the split, breaking even at 9-9, but couldn’t take a top spot. TSM is the last team that made it into the playoffs.
Echo Fox (6-12): Echo Fox made a very high profile move at the beginning of the year taking, arguably, one of the world’s best mid-laners, Froggen, from Europe. The team was plagued by several issues including the fact that despite the roster move, Froggen couldn’t play in the first few games of the split leaving the team to begin with a record of 1-7. Echo Fox surged back in Week 5 with a 4 game winning streak, but ended the split poorly, losing the last 3 games.
Renegades (6-13): Renegades are the team that raises the question of, “What could have been.” Starting off with even a worse start than Echo Fox, the newest addition to the LCS saw their hopes of staying, dimming with each loss.. Some mid-season roster changes saw the team roaring back to take the last 4 games of the season by storm including a tie-breaker against Team Impulse to land themselves in 8th place for the split when most people thought they would come in dead last.
Team Impulse (5-14): Team Impulse went with a major revamp since the last split. The entire previous roster with different players scattered among the other teams in the LCS. The team imported several players from Korea and China in an effort to rebuild the roster into a successful LCS team. Unfortunately, the effort has not turned dividends with TIP losing the last 4 games of the split and even their tie-breaker game against Renegades to finish the split in 9th.
Team Dignitas (4-14): “How the mighty have fallen.” Dignitas were contending for best team in the NA LCS just 2 splits ago with their dominating performances. Now they are staring at potential relegation from the LCS and a 10th place finish, their lowest in the history of the team. The roster still packs a lot of untapped talent, with mid-laner, Shiphtur still showing that he is a top-tier player despite the games his team has lost. If Dignitas can solve their problems, they still have a chance in the next split to show the world the potential of this team.
The Playoffs
The Spring Split Playoffs will have Cloud 9 facing TSM in one of the classic matches of League of Legends with the winner getting a chance to play Immortals in the semifinals or CLG. Liquid will face NRG with the winner playing CLG or Immortals. The first game will begin on April 2nd. The full schedule can be found here or on LoL Esports when it has been updated.
Note: If C9 wins they will play CLG, if TSM wins they will play Immortals due to seeding. Winner of Liquid/NRG will play the other team. Thanks to LordAseny from Reddit.