LPL Spring Split: A Complete Guide
The LPL region is still reeling from their incredibly poor showing at Worlds – despite importing a host of Korean superstars into their ranks during 2015, none of the three teams came home with anything to be proud of.
Both LGD Gaming and Invictus Gaming failed to qualify from their respective groups, bowing out with 2-4 records. Invictus in particular would have expected to qualify from a group containing no Korean teams.
Meanwhile, EDward Gaming managed to finish second in another relatively weak group with a 4-2 record. European Summer Split champions Fnatic were their opponents in the quarter-finals and on home soil, they quickly ended the dreams of LPL fans with a convincing 3-0 win.
Prior to Worlds, LPL’s own Summer Split saw EDward Gaming emerge victorious, with Qiao Gu Reapers finishing second.
In the Summer play-offs, LGD finally started to show their undoubted promise, finishing first and booking themselves a spot at Worlds based on circuit points. Meanwhile, Qiao Gu again finished second, with heartbreak following in the Regional Finals, where Invictus and EDward Gaming took first and second, meaning the new squad missed out on a World Championship debut by the narrowest of margins.
The Spring Split is usually less competitive than Summer, with fewer circuit points available and no direct qualification to the World Championship. Teams will have new rosters that need time to gel and a new meta – brought about by changes to the game during the off-season.
Last year, the LPL’s Spring Split saw a strong performance from EDward Gaming, who went on to win the Spring play-offs, while Team Snake impressed and OMG had not yet collapsed. The play-offs saw LGD and Invictus join EDward Gaming in the top three; that all three eventually qualified for Worlds is no coincidence.
Chinese League of Legends has a point to prove in 2016 and the hard work needs to begin in January as the LPL Spring Split begins.
The Format
The competition format for the LPL Spring Split sees the 12 participants split into two groups of six based on their placement in last year’s Summer Split and the Regional Finals. Teams will play in a double round robin, using a best of three format for each meeting. Teams will get one point for winning their Bo3, with each group having its own league table.
The top four teams from each group will proceed into a play-off bracket, with a bye into the semi-finals given to the first-placed sides from each group. The second-placed teams will be given a bye into the quarter-finals. The third and fourth-placed teams from each group will face each other, with the third-placed side given a one win advantage.
Teams that fail to qualify for the play-offs (those that finish fifth and sixth in their groups) will be forced to play for their LPL spot in the Summer Promotion Tournament.
The Spring play-offs offer teams the opportunity to win circuit points towards Worlds qualification, while the winning side also earn themselves ¥ 800,000.
So let’s take a look at the two groups:
Group A:
Group B:
And let’s assess the key teams from these two pools:
Group A
LGD Gaming
After a disastrous World Championship that saw them crash out in the group stages, LGD managed to compound the humiliation by losing to North America’s TSM at IEM San Jose.
Unsurprisingly, major roster changes took place in December, with newly crowned World Champion and god of the Top Lane MaRin joining. MaRin boasted the highest Gold Per Minute of any Top Laner at Worlds with 416 and showed a fast mastery of Fiora. With 4.88 kills per game, MaRin demonstrated that the notion of the Carry Top Laner is still alive and well.
His countryman Imp – himself a former World Champion – was LGD’s only bright spark at Worlds, boasting 5.83 kills per game (the highest of any player to take part in more than five games). Imp must be hoping that MaRin’s arrival can knock this squad into a higher gear.
Snake eSports
For a while during the LPL 2015 Summer Split, it looked like Team Snake might come from nowhere to beat all-comers in the LPL and qualify for Worlds. Sadly for them, it was not to be as they inevitably stalled, finishing fourth and making little headway in the play-offs. Despite that, they can be proud of their achievements last year and will expect to push on.
Mid Laner Tank joins them from Korea’s NaJin e-mFire after the side released the majority of its roster. Whether he can replace U is yet to be seen, with U posting strong stats when allowed to play Azir, with a KDA of 6.47 in the 11 games he was able to wrangle himself as the Emperor of the Sands.
Qiao Gu Reapers
Qiao Gu were the newcomers in last year’s LPL Summer Split and they certainly upset the apple-cart with a series of strong performances that saw them finish as eventual runners-up in the regular season. They missed out on going to Worlds, but with the addition of Chinese superstar ADC Uzi, they will want to push on and could challenge for the Spring Split.
Uzi boasted a KDA of 4.24 during the LPL Summer Season and play-offs while playing for former team OMG, although at times the side looked better using their substitute ADC North, whose style perhaps meshed better with OMG Mid Laner Cool. Uzi is likely to revel playing for a side where he is the undoubted star and central figure of the team and QG will hope he can improve their performances, propelling them up the table.
Team WE
Another sleeping giant, Team WE are China’s oldest eSports club, perhaps best remembered by western LoL fans for a gruelling match during Season 2’s World Championship against CLG EU, where technical issues caused the third game to be abandoned and played again at a later date.
Last season, Team WE were the first team to beat the GE Tigers (better known as the KOO Tigers by season’s end) at IEM’s World Championship. Their success there was not to be repeated in LPL Summer though as they secured a dismal 11th place finish, forcing them into the promotion tournament. With legendary Jungler Spirit moving to Europe, WE’s roster has been heavily tinkered with during the off-season, leaving them as an unknown quantity.
Group B:
EDward Gaming
EDward Gaming did not have an impressive World Championship, going out to European side Fanatic in a 3-0 sweep during the quarter-finals. Unlike the other LPL teams, EDward Gaming have a scapegoat for their poor performance though. Having been forced to use substitute Top Laner AmazingJ during the group stage, they lacked the rhythm and cohesion they needed to go much further.
With Koro1 returning to the Top Lane and an otherwise stable roster, you would expect them to finish in the top two in the Spring Split. Korean duo PawN and Deft provide them with world class players in the Carry roles, while Jungler ClearLove boasted the best KDA of any LPL player during the Spring Split of 2015 with an astonishing 10.63.
Invictus Gaming
Invictus Gaming’s failure to qualify from the group stage at Worlds was perhaps less surprising than the poor performances of the other two LPL sides.
Particularly disappointing during Worlds was the performance of their Bot Lane of Kid (whose KDA of 2.15 was among the worst ADC performances at the tournament) and Support Kitties, while substitute ADC Time was given one game and played exceptionally.
The rest of the squad is retained, with the god-like Jungler KaKAO hoping for another shot at glory, while Mid Laner RooKie will want to shed his Minifaker reputation once and for all. Their chances of a successful 2016 hinge on the performances of those two, while it may be time for them to give starting berths to new blood in the Bot Lane.
Vici Gaming
With the arrival of Faker’s understudy Easyhoon, hopes will be high that Vici Gaming can lose their reputation as a team that should be better than they actually are. They have a roster filled with talent, but inconsistency is their Achilles Heel. Easyhoon is a control mage specialist, particularly adept when playing Azir, Orianna and Viktor. Although his playing time was limited during Worlds for SKT T1, he boasted an impressive KDA of 11.25 in the four games he started.
Royal Never Give Up
Royal have a weird looking roster, full of players you might once have expected to form the basis of a real high quality team. It may be the last chance saloon for players like inSec, Looper, Mata and NaMei, but the talent there is hard to deny.
NaMei in particular was once thought of as one of the world’s finest ADCs, with a positional style that is less flashy than QG’s Uzi but no less effective. During LPL 2015’s Summer Split, he showed a strong preference for team-focused picks, playing as Sivir 18 times in 41 games.
Beyond the star names in Royal, it’s important to note that they have an 11-man roster and may well use Spring to blood their newer players, with letme and mlxg potentially preferred to the higher profile names of inSec and Looper.
Conclusion
LGD were a team that spent the majority of the last season underperforming – only good runs in the play-offs saw them qualify for Worlds – but with the addition of MaRin, Group A is theirs to lose. Meanwhile, the Qiao Gu Reapers have a real opportunity to put the disappointments of 2015 to bed. With Uzi joining their hungry-looking squad, they should be aiming for the top of the standings.
In Group B it’s difficult to look past EDward Gaming for the top spot. They were perhaps the only LPL team to demonstrate consistency in 2015 and while the year may have ended in disappointment, they are at least armed with the knowledge they were the best Chinese team at Worlds. However, ‘Best team in China’ probably won’t be good enough in 2016 and they’ll want to aim higher. Invictus’ issue in 2015 was less that they underperformed, but that a weak Bot Lane was propped up by strong players elsewhere. If Time and newcomer Mo can usurp Kid and Kitties, then 2016 might look a little brighter for them.
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