Five weeks into the League of Legends European Championship Spring season and the standings have really begun to take shape.
G2 Esports lead the way with Schalke and Vitality looking good value for 2nd and 3rd.
Origen are the form team though and they head into Week 6 on a five-game winning streak.
At the moment the question appears to be which
other two teams join those four in the play-offs.
Origen
have impressed
Sticking to their strategy of giving both
Alphari and Nukeduck strong comfort picks while allowing Patrik to have
relevant late-game carries with the likes of Ezreal and Kai’Sa has done wonders
for this team.
Defeating G2 to close out Week 5 truly put a spotlight on just how strong this team can be, with Origen generally viewed as the best team bar G2, with G2 only remaining the top dogs given their overall performance during this split which has seen them lose just once.
The sky appears to be the limit for this squad, but something to pay attention to is the play of Support Mithy, who at times has been caught out of position in the mid-game.
This week Origen face two veteran teams in need
of wins – Fnatic and Misfits.
Rogue
finally off the mark
After making changes to their starting roster, Rogue
claimed their first win of the year against a Misfits team who continue to slip
down the table.
Rogue brought in Finn into the Top lane and long-time veteran of the scene Vander as Support and in their second match of the week they finally broke through.
Pulling out an unexpected Pantheon jungle selection was the sort of move Rogue needed to make in order to end their losing streak. It kept their opponents in uncertain situations but also played to their own strengths such as Kikis’ early game.
The win is a just a single drop in the bucket for Rogue, and a play-off spot remains unlikely, but if they are to have any sort of relevance moving forward it was certainly a start.
Rogue have a workable schedule this week, going
up against both Excel Esports and Splyce, who just lost last week to Fnatic.
Misfits
heading wrong way
The aforementioned Misfits Gaming appear to be
in freefall after dropping their last four matches, capping it off with the
disaster that was losing to previously-winless Rogue.
Misfits’ fall has been shocking, given they appeared to be one of the stronger teams in the league at the start of the season, and their overall talent is not that of a squad that loses four games in a row to this level of competition.
The major issue Misfits have had is that their playbook is fairly straight forward as they put all the early resources possible, both in draft and in game, to Bottom-laner Hans Sama to give him the best opportunity to pay back in spades late in the game.
However, things have not worked out as planned
and they do not exactly get a break this week, facing two teams on solid win
streaks in SK Gaming and Origen.
SK
showing signs of life
That SK Gaming side have now posted three
straight victories. Two came against fairly unimpressive opponents in Rogue and
Fnatic, but nestled between them was a useful success against Vitality.
Jungler Selfmade has performed well in recent weeks and despite the team generally not blowing away the competition in terms of skill or name value, they instead work well as a squad and are able to slowly whittle away their opponents.
SK could arguably have some sustained success
given they have been selecting strong champions and not relying on pocket picks
to keep their opponents guessing, but time will tell just what the squad can
achieve.
SK
follow up their clash with Misfits with a rough match-up versus FC Schalke 04.
