MVPs of the Week: Split 2 Week Three

Tectonic: Shok

Not a whole lot to write home about for Tectonic in this match, about their only positive point was their mid laner in Shok. He handed out relevant damage over both matches, though one wonders if his free reign was on account of the Wolves not looking to push an edge through Triple. It’s true of many mid-laners but Shok looks better when he’s on strong laners, so it will be interesting to see if he can get a beneficial lane moving forward and how he would plan to parlay that towards what ought to be strong side lanes.

Chiefs:  Raes

Babip was exceptional yet again, but you cannot go past the exemplary performance of Raes this week. He was their best player in the first two games, and even despite the (relatively) quiet game 3 was the best player overall for my money. Some might say it’s really easy to look good when you’re the beneficiary of a funnel strategy but I say that it comes with it a lot of pressure to perform as you have no choice but to be perfect when you fight. Now, the Chiefs had a different twist on this as they used a double-funnel strategy but Raes stood head and shoulders above the Graves funnel in his execution of that strategy.

Bombers: Looch

Looch is warming to this split, ever so slowly. Week 3 was a great step forward for him. I want to key in on his game 2 here, as Sleeping took the plaudits and most of the champion last hits, it was Looch doing the hard lifting. Sleeping’s Quadra Kill that you can find on our Top 5 Plays of the Week is set up almost entirely by Looch – he hits his Outplay Button on ry0ma, getting one reset for Sleeping, and hits a gargantuan two man Scatter the Weak in the middle of the chaos that secures the fight for the Bombers. Every week Bombers find a little bit more of an element of a complete performance which should be encouraging enough that they can string together a full match win sooner rather than later.

ORDER: Spookz

This was really difficult to pick given that ORDER fired on all cylinders. I could have picked four of them, and agonized over Spookz, giving Swiffer two in a row, and FBI, who was immortal this set.

In the end I went with Spookz because everything that went right for ORDER did so off of the back of Spookz being successful in his early game. The clever early pathing that he has combined with the fake leash start that ORDER creates gets him first blood in game one, and they’re off and racing. He gets it for Tally in game 2 and then almost immediately after gets third and fourth kills for ORDER and they’re off once again. Exactly what you want from your jungler in this kind of a meta.

Avant Gaming: Praelus

Trying to find a standout among this result was a real challenge. There wasn’t too much to speak for here, but Praelus was involved in basically every single moment that went well for Avant. He’s been decent so far this year, showing that his start with the Dire Wolves was no fluke and that he’s a prospect worthy of spending time on. It may be hard to draw any encouragement when the match went so bad so early on, but Praelus did his best to make something of the horror start in each game.

Legacy:  Mimic

I was inches from giving this to Raid but in the end, Mimic bopping Chippys in game one secures him as the best player in this series for my reckoning. It was a statement of intent for Legacy and while they drop the next game, his teleport was huge 15 minutes into the third game and his two-man knockup secures the teamfight for Legacy and gives them first brick, which turns that game around after it looked like Juves had set MAMMOTH up.

MAMMOTH:  Remind

I thought Remind played really well after what was a super-disappointing series against the Chiefs. He’s by some distance their best player in their win, and he’s offering the strongest resistance in the game one loss. I was really happy that MAMMOTH went back to the mid Irelia after I thought he was ordinary on the pick against the Chiefs – it shows faith in their new import where others may have been gun-shy to put him right back in the saddle, and Remind paid them off in spades in that second game.