The League of Legends Championship Series just finished Week 2 of their preseason tournament LCS 2022 Lock In. Week 2 saw the conclusion of the group stage as well as the first round of the knockout stage. The quarterfinals showcased top team strength but a lot of drive from the little teams. Here are the lessons we learned from Week 2 of the LCS 2022 Lock In tournament.
100 Thieves have some consistency issues
In a tournament where most of the teams competing have roster issues, 100 Thieves walked in as one of the favorites. Their LCS 2022 Lock In roster was the same as their LCS 2021 summer championship roster. Through Week 1, 100T lived up to their expectations but in Week 2 it all fell apart. After a perfect 2-0 Week 1, 100 immediately dropped a game to a low-ranked Flyquest team before saving face against a hobbled Cloud9 to make it out of Group A as the first seed with a 3-1 record.
But in the quarterfinals against the 1-3 Dignitas squad from Group B, 100 got 2-0 clapped. Game 1 was close, but it never should have been based on the relative team strength. Game 2, however, was not close at all with 100T on the wrong side. Luckily for 100T this is just a preseason workout before the real season kicks off in early February. However, this event is a concerning one for the reigning North American champs.
CLG’s future looks bright with their new bot lane
Counter Logic Gaming cleaned house in the offseason and replaced their entire starting roster with some low-risk high-reward value pickups. The team is on the way up, since they really can’t go down from their last place finish in the LCS 2021 summer split. The team had no real expectations heading into the season, but fans were cautiously optimistic that this CLG roster could make some noise. Consider that mission accomplished already as CLG looked surprisingly good at the LCS 2022 Lock In tournament. A big part of their success came from their superstar in the making bot lane duo.
Fatih “Luger” Güven and Philippe “Poome” Lavoie-Giguere have played with each other for over a year in Academy, but never got a chance to play together in the LCS. This is because they were the Academy bot lane for 100T, who already had the best bot lane in NA with Choi “huhi” Jae-hyun and Victor “FBI” Huang based on All-Pro Team selection. In the offseason,. Luger and Poome took an offer to finally get into the LCS as members of CLG. So far they have proven that CLG made the right decision.
In CLG’s three wins in the Lock In tournament, two in the group stage and one in the quarterfinals against Cloud9, Luger had a combined 18/2/15 Kill/Death/Assist ratio in those games. Also according to Oracle’s Elixer, across all the Lock In games, Luger had 30.7% of his team’s damage share, the most among all bot laners. Poome is no slouch either as he had a 75% kill participation across all games as well, which puts him second in the support role. The rest of the roster needs work, but the duo of Luger and Poome is one to watch when the regular season kicks off soon.
(Most of) the top teams are who we thought they were
Heading into the LCS 2022 Lock In tournament, many people pegged a few teams as favorites to go far in the event. At the top of most people’s lists were Team Liquid, Evil Geniuses, Cloud9 and 100 Thieves. After Week 2 and the tournament progressing to the semifinals, three of those four teams are among the four teams remaining. The only team there that isn’t in the semifinals is 100T, who were upset in quarters by Dignitas. Even with roster issues plaguing teams, C9 and TL have shown that they just have too much talent to fail. As for Evil Geniuses, who entered the Lock In tournament with their entire starting roster, they have yet to drop a game.
In Week 3, EG faces off against C9 for a spot in the finals while TL will go up against Dignitas who are riding momentum after their shocking win against 100.
Published: Jan 24, 2022 06:59 pm