LCK is in chaos. Week 2 of the 2019 LCK Summer Split has gone by. SK Telecom T1 is down at 8th place, Kingzone DragonX lost a game, and Afreeca Freecs and SANDBOX Gaming have come near the top. Aatrox and Sejuani were still the most frequently picked or banned champions and Yuumi's win rate did not improve. Come have a look at how this week’s LCK went.
This week’s hot and cold are a bit more obvious. Afreeca Freecs and SANDBOX Gaming won both games this week and reached 3rd in the standings. Most of Afreeca Freecs games involved many kills and SANDBOX Gaming was still strong in securing Dragons to their side.
Afreeca Freecs faced Hanwha Life Esports and Kingzone DragonX this week and won both matches. It was anticipated that the clash between Afreeca and Hanwha Life Esports would involve many kills, as both teams are very aggressive and like to fight. However, their first game had the least kills of this split, with a kill score of 3:2 in Afreeca’s favor.
The match between Afreeca Freecs and Kingzone DragonX was the most exciting match this season. A total of 88 kills came from the two teams’ three games. The first game was close, but Afreeca dominated the following two games to give Kingzone their first loss of the season. With their third win, Afreeca maintained a high position in the standings in third place.
SANDBOX Gaming beat two teams that were above them the last split. The players especially excited after their win against Griffin as it was their first win against them. They did give up a match against the Lucian-Yuumi comp against Griffin. After the match, Jang “Ghost” Yong-jun expressed how he felt about Yuumi. “Yuumi’s a champion that has all the most annoying factors in LoL rolled into one.”
SANDBOX had always been confident when it came to slaying dragons, and they continued to slay dragon after dragon. Ironically(?), their only loss this season was to Kingzone DragonX. SANDBOX rolled over SK Telecom T1 in their second match of the week, putting them in Their streak of securing the first dragon had come to an end against Griffin, but still had 7 dragons over SKT’s 2. SANDBOX mid laner Kim “Dove” Jae-yeon evaluated the two mid laners he faced during the week: “Chovy is a flawless mid laner. As for Faker, he's similar, but looking at the current results, I think Chovy is a bit better.”
Hanwha Life Esports’ strength has been the ability to fight. The current meta involves fighting… a lot, so many people predicted that Hanwha Life Esports would do well this season. However, they’re down at 9th place, just above Jin Air Green Wings. Although it could be said that their schedule was one of the hardest this week, but their strengths weren’t shown in the matches against Afreeca Freecs and Griffin. Hanwha Life Esports wasn’t able to capitalize early game leads and when they fell behind in the early game, they couldn’t stand back up.
SK Telecom T1 lost both matches this week. It could be a bit harsh to pick on SKT, as they didn’t have much time to rest after the MSI, but G2 Esports has been doing great. Like at the MSI, SKT’s ability to deal with rather unique picks or flex picks hasn’t been the best. They’ve been attempting change by playing Kang “Haru” Min-seung and Lee “Effect” Sang-ho, but it wasn’t enough. More drastic measures may be needed for this team to get them where they want to be.
Having a performance that is much improved compared to the past split, I didn’t want to mention Jin Air Green Wings as one of the ‘cold’ teams, but they’re the only winless team up to now. Jin Air has been outstanding in gaining early game leads, but it seemed that they don’t know what to do with that lead. Game after game, they get confused and turn over the advantage to lose the game. Time and experience may be the only cure to this team.
Afreeca Freecs jungler Lee “Dread” Jin-hyeok is playing out of his mind. His performance last week was worthy of being named player of the week, but Kingzone DragonX’s Kim “Rascal” Kwang-hee edged him out. This week, Dread stands strong as the MVP leader in the LCK. Playing Sejuani, Olaf, and Lee Sin, Dread boasted his ability to initiate fights, secure objectives, and simply help the team win.
"I'm an aggressive jungler whose style is closer to that of the LPL's than that of the LCK's,” said Dread, after their win against Kingzone DragonX. Maybe that could be the secret to his improved performance this split.
64 champions were picked or banned this week. Kled appeared in top lane, Renekton mid, and Urgot jungle. Griffin banned Heimerdinger and Singed against Hanwha Life Esports. Pyke, who is a very hot pick in the LEC, was picked as a support alongside Morgana bot lane.
Sejuani and Aatrox maintained a 100% pick or ban rate while Sylas took a step down. Irelia came in new as the most popular ban card, being banned 23 times. However, her win rate when picked wasn’t that great, winning only one of the three games picked. Ryze and Sylas both had a 5-5 record.
Tahm Kench rose to the top in winning games. He was picked in 9 games and won 8 of them. Even with the nerf, Tahm Kench has still being strong as a support, being paired with Sona, Draven, or Varus. Other than Tahm Kench, Yasuo won 4 out of 5 games, and Ezreal won 6 out of 9 games picked.
On the other hand, Yuumi and Olaf had a disastrous week. Yuumi won only 2 games out of 7, and Olaf won 2 out of 11. Both champions had a high pick or ban rate, with 76.9% and 80.8%, respectively, but it could be predicted that they would be less prioritized in the following games.
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