Lessons Learned from Week 6 of the LCK 2022 spring split

In Week 6 of the League of Legends Champions Korea 2022 spring split, only two of 10 matches went to Game 3. With only a couple weeks left in the regular season, here are the lessons we learned from Week 6 of the LCK 2022 spring split.

KT Rolster’s wheels have fallen off

Heading into the 2022 LCK season, KT Rolster were a team with some pretty good upside. Over the offseason, they acquired breakout Wild Card mid lane star Lee “Aria” Ga-eul from DetonatioN FocusMe, who were coming off their first group stage appearance at the League of Legends World Championship in the history of the League of Legends Japan League. Alongside Aria, KT Rolster revamped their entire starting roster to give the franchise a fresh appearance heading into the new year. For the first few weeks of the LCK 2022 spring split, it looked like the team was making the right moves as they hovered in the upper half of the standings. But after starting 4-4, they haven’t won a series since.

Week 6 was particularly painful for the KT Rolster squad. They went up against two teams also in the playoff race, Fredit BRION and Kwangdong Freecs. Not only did they lose to both of those teams, they didn’t even pick up a game. KT Rolster suffered their second straight 0-2 week and their once promising playoff hopes have faded away. Looking for anything to stop the bleeding, KT Rolster announced they are bringing up their academy mid laner Lee “VicLa” Dae-gwang to the main roster for Week 7.

Gen.G’s clean week brings them closer to the top

With a revamped roster of their own, Gen.G Esports came into 2022 looking to capture the LCK title that has eluded them in recent years. With the powerful combo of Jeong “Chovy” Ji-hoon and Han “Peanut” Wang-ho, the team was expected to be at the top. Although they had a couple of road bumps in Weeks 3 and 4, the team now seems to be firing on all cylinders.

In Week 6, Gen.G went up against Nongshim RedForce and the surging DRX squad. Gen.G dismantled both teams in back-to-back 2-0 victories. In fact, only one of the four games Gen.G played this week went past the 30-minute mark: Game 2 against DRX. That game lasted 31 minutes.

Gen.G’s success is not only thanks to Chovy and Peanut. Choi “Doran” Hyeon-joon is quietly having a fantastic split of his own. He sits tied for third in player of the game honors. This leads all top laners in the LCK in that statistic.

T1 are getting close to perfection

Coming off a Worlds 2021 semifinals appearance, all eyes have been on Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok and T1 to see how the team can improve even more in the 2022 season. Six weeks into the spring split, not many would have predicted T1 to be undefeated — but here they are. After 12 matches, T1 are 12-0 and have only dropped five total games in that span.

Faker is looking like an MVP candidate. Also, the bot lane duo of Ryu “Keria” Min-seok and Lee “Gumayusi” Min-hyeong are looking like one of the best bot lanes in the world. With a team this stacked, the talk of them going undefeated in the regular season is becoming harder to ignore.

In the modern era of competitive League of Legends in Korea, never has a team finished a split undefeated. The closest team to perfection was T1 themselves, back in 2015 summer, when they finished the regular season 17-1. That was the first year Korea adopted the spring and summer split format seen today.

T1 have only four matches left on their schedule but only one should be a true test for the squad: their next match against second-place Gen.G on Thursday.