Tectonic: Praedyth

Notwithstanding game three, in which it looked like everyone on Tectonic had a bit of a disaster, Praedyth was the major reason this series was close. He was a relevant side lane consideration whenever Avant wanted to do something elsewhere on the map, and he basically single-handedly punked the entire roster on the way to pushing down the nexus in game 2. Hopefully he can parlay these last two weeks into a starting gig and show some consistency on top of these high highs.

Legacy: Raid

Claire might have taken home all the plaudits, but we always knew that Claire was a monster. My single biggest criticism of Legacy (after we get past their sometimes rancid baron play) is that we don’t see consistent stepping up of the other players around Claire. Now, two games does not consistency make, but Raid was remarkable this series.

Historically he has been the poster boy for my issue with Oceanic Ezreals in that he played within the confines of Arcane Shift. But in this series he stepped forward, took risks to secure kills and push around MAMMOTH members, and actually Dared to Deal Relevant Damage, instead of just Q-poking and walking away. This was an Ezreal performance where some of the limits of Ezreal were sometimes pushed, instead of being used as a secure warming blanket, never to be touched.

MAMMOTH: Mash

I thought this was a fairly huge effort across all the MAMMOTH members this week. It wasn’t for lack of effort or production from one standout member that was the reason they didn’t win this match. It was small margins across key moments that turned this series around on them. Even when things started to go south, Mash was the one member who stood tallest and when you secure a pick like Varus for your veteran import, that’s exactly what you want from them. I can guarantee it will be of little consolation, but this was as monumental an effort as any five could have put in for a losing 0-2 series.

Chiefs: Ryoma

Once again, Raes and Ryoma go toe-to-toe here. Two incredibly early towers along with the Babip-assisted whipping that was inflicted upon the Bombers bottom lane cast a strong vote for Raes, and while it was a fairly standard Rakan engage, Destiny did also bring out a clutch teamfight.

But through it all I thought Ryoma played really well in both games. He had a commanding, controlling performance on his signature Syndra pick, and then when the Syndra was picked into him, broke out another fearsome Zed and went ballistic. It’s a really valuable weapon the Chiefs have shown opponents, this Ryoma Zed and gives them an extra element of mind games they can wield in drafts during the gauntlet.

Bombers: Looch

Individually, I thought the Bombers fell flat in this series. They definitely had their good moments, but it was off the back of some good team coordination, rather than individual brilliance. I’m sure they’ll take that though, good teamplay going into gauntlet is definitely A Good Thing.

 

Of the individual performances, I thought that Looch had the best two-game set. Sleeping was okay in patches, Seb had a nicely timed Lamb’s Respite around baron but neither matched Looch across both lanes. Unfortunately the bot lane had a bit of a disaster so hopefully for Bombers’ fans they’ll bounce back against Legacy and maybe beyond.

Dire Wolves: BioPanther

For my money he was manhandled a bit in their loss, but there can be no denying the unbelievably high height that BioPanther hit in game 2. Down 1-0 in the series and with game 2 not going all the way according to plan BioPanther reached…well…not deep into his Mundo bag of tricks, but for the same trick he did last time and cleaned up another mid lane teamfight with a delayed triple kill. Save for Griffin, nobody else in the world has come from their challenger league into their premier league with this apparent fluidity. It’s been wonderful to watch.

ORDER: FBI

FBI’s ability to deal big damage without standing out as going incredibly aggressive is remarkable. That’s usually the sign of a great positional ADCarry. While he’s known for his Xayah and Ezreal picks this season, I believe he can play basically anything and be incredibly competent on it, which I would suspect is what ORDER were trying with the Kog’Maw – and while it didn’t work out, I’m not looking at the pick or the draft being the main reason behind that.

What’s exciting for ORDER fans is that I think his best suite of champions are being patched back in now – I really enjoy watching his Ashe and Varus, and I predict ORDER fans will as well.

Avant Gaming: Frae

If I am going to call Dire Wolves vs Avant a battle of the mid lane, I can’t just give the MVP to only one of the mid laners right? Frae’s performance on LeBlanc in Game 1 was able to keep the Wolfpack in check with some sick chains. He kept Avant in the game, trying to salvage their gauntlet dreams.

Whilst he wasn’t amazing in Game 2, he will need to bring his Game 1 performance once again this week if Avant wants to avoid a trip to the Promotion tournament.

Chiefs: Raes

Raes was unstoppable against Legacy on Kai’Sa, going legendary in Game 1 and following it up with a dominating performance in Game 2. He had a large presence on the map throughout the series, finding plenty of kills and dealing over 500 damage per minute during the series. This number would have been bigger, had it not been for his team ending the games before he could hit his final spikes.

He was critical in getting the boys in blue all 3 points and securing second place, whilst reminding his OPL counterparts to ban Kai’Sa or prepare for a lot of pain and grey screens.

Legacy: Mimic

Whilst Friday night might have been one to forget for the trees, Mimic’s performance on Fiora in game 2 is one to remember. He got the ball rolling with a first blood on Swip3rR in the first 2 minutes, and became a walking threat on a map, keeping the Chiefs at bay until mid-late game.

He will need to show up once again next week against MAMMOTH if Carbon’s boys want to be able to make the playoffs.

ORDER: Swiffer

Swiffer defied EGym’s orders against Tectonic, playing the recently reworked Akali less than 2 weeks from her re-release. While it might take him normally 100 games to master a new champion, Swiffer played the rogue assassin to perfection in Game 1 against Tectonic. He gave grief to the emergency substitute mid laner Anderu as well as the rest of the Tectonic lineup with his big roaming plays.

He went on a rampage in Game 1, but on his Game 2 LeBlanc, he took the backseat, allowing the rest of the team to shine. He ended his week deathless, with around a third of ORDER’s total kill count. If he is able to keep this level of performance up, the gauntlet looks bright for the boys from Melbourne (Melbourne BTW).

Tectonic: UDYSOF

In a week of change and chaos for the New Zealand team, there was a shining star in new starting jungler UDYSOF. Joining the team last week after playing the OCS season with the Dire Cubs, there was hype for the new boy, and he made some noise in Game 2, going 6/0/0 on Trundle.

It was a great introduction for him, and if he had been on a carry jungler he would of had the potential to dominantly carry that game into a victory, but alas he couldn’t because he was on a tank. If he can keep it up, expect him to make waves moving forward.

Bombers: Tiger

Bombers were able to secure themselves their first Gauntlet appearance after in a 2-1 win over MAMMOTH. Star ADC Tiger was crucial to the Bombers success, being able to land his shots and giving the woolly mammals the 1-2-3-4 on Jhin in their Game 1 and 3 victories.

The Frenchman was unstoppable, and was once again came up clutch for the team backed by the Essendon Football Club. This week was just another example of his ability to perform in high pressure situations, something the gauntlet rookies will need come the end of the month.

MAMMOTH: Chippys

While MAMMOTH had a bit of a shocker in our Match of the Week, Chippys was massive in Game 2 on what I consider his signature pick, Camille. He went legendary with an 8/1/4 statline, getting a triple kill as the cherry on top.

He was a large part of the reason that MAMMOTH were able to claim a win and a point from the series, which will be very critical in this Friday night’s showdown with Legacy, as they now only need to win a single game to qualify for the Gauntlet.

Tectonic: Value

Much like last week, we have a Tectonic game with a massive single-game performance from Value. Unlike last week, nobody else was good enough over two games to topple Value from the MVP spot.

In fairness to Value, the Varus game was absolutely huge, handing out crushing damage with the lethality Varus build as they pushed the Wolves out to 40 minutes. On the other hand, Tectonic are on an 0-8 run for a reason, and this is less a case of the Most Valuable Player for Tectonic and more a reflection of the Least Bad Performance. While I prefer to save this series for celebration of good play, they’re in a really tough spot right now.

Legacy: Claire

Claire earns another nod here in the face of strong competition from Decoy, who (as i’ve talked about in this week’s Power Rankings) turned in a strong week as he rose beyond his previous peak on a Rakan pick he’s struggled mightily with.

Through this strong play from Decoy, Claire still dealt monstrous damage, had the most presence and was the catalyst for so much about what went right for Legacy that he remains impossible to ignore when you look at Legacy’s play.

When you look at the schedule and the concentration of teams on the gauntlet bubble, we see a situation where Claire is the most important player to the gauntlet picture.

Bombers: Looch

Two strong performances from Looch and Tiger this week were not quite enough to get them over the line in what was a big match for gauntlet standings. They did, however, get a very important point out of it.

That point is where i’m looking to anoint Looch as the MVP. The kills might have gone to Sleeping, Tiger and Seb but Looch was everywhere, elusive and threatening and the driver of the win for the Bombers.

I had Tiger as the best player in game one by some way, and Looch as the best in games 2 and 3 so all in all it’s the nod to Looch with a very honourable mention to Tiger.

Chiefs: Babip

I was so impressed with Babip this series. It would have been all too easy to give this to ry0ma, who went deathless and had a massive 9-kill Yasuo game and call it a day. It would have been just as easy to give it to Raes, who had a FBI/k1ng-level Ezreal game and topped the damage charts in game 2 with a bot lane Orianna game.

But i’m going with neither of them, because Babip had such a complete performance. He barely gave Juves a sniff in both early games – he nearly put a flame horizon up in a 25 minute game two. Out of the jungle, that’s ridiculous. He dealt relevant damage in both games and on top of it all his vision game was understated yet exceptional. As the classic joke goes “Get you a man who can do it all” and in this set, Babip did it all, providing OPL junglers with a Taliyah masterclass.

MAMMOTH: Mash

Another rough week for MAMMOTH, who seem to be playing a gatekeeper role lately. I’m going to put game 2 in the bin and look purely at game one here where they gave The Chiefs their best shot.

In this game, they gave Mash room to work and he put incredible work in. In even situations he was enormous for them and while his damage numbers are amplified by pumping arrows into Swip3rr’s massive Cho’Gath, he was the major reason that some of these fights were even close. His ability to remain safe from damage while handing out this high amount of damage was impressive.

ORDER: FBI

There was a good case to be made for Spookz in this set, who was really good in both of ORDER’s wins but FBI was a cut above everyone this match, even in the loss. His game 2 numbers are a little higher thanks to the lethality Varus build into the low-armour Avant composition meaning that he could remain dangerous with poke, but his numbers are actually just ridiculous.

In both of his Varus games he deals more damage than the next two ORDER players, combined. In game 3 he does 200 fewer damage than the next two players on either side combined. That is a stupid amount of damage. Sure it might be poke, but in this set he was also mixing it up in skirmishes as well, so it’s relevant damage that is actively contributing to the team’s win. A massive match for ORDER’s young stud.

Avant Gaming: Frae

I had a hard time finding someone I was particularly enamoured with across the entirety of the set for Avant. Pabu was close but in the end i’m giving this to Frae for the way he took over game 2. We’ve seen games like this from Frae all year, notably his Ryze has been a signature pick where he’s been oppressive for Avant. He threw the LeBlanc into jeopardy time and again in their win, and time and again came away with kills and territory gained in Avant’s favour. He couldn’t bring them a win, but the point may turn out to be very important for them as there’s a plausible set of events that would see them reaching the gauntlet.

MAMMOTH:  Chippys

Hard to find a true MVP for this week in my opinion. I kind of arrived here by process of elimination – Cuden was underwhelming, Mash was really poor in my opinion, Remind had decent damage numbers but it was mostly “irrelevant” damage that didn’t help MAMMOTH when they needed it. Juves was okay at times but as he is wont to do, died a few too many times to truly be MVP. So that leaves us with Chippys.

He died to ganks a time or two more than one would like, no doubt, but he had to fight with a fairly fierce camp in game one and through it all was the one contributing the most to his cause. It won’t feel like a great week by his own high standards, but he was the closest thing to a real winning chance MAMMOTH had this week.

ORDER: Tally

Tally delivered a clinic to his old team this week. His Ornn was impeccable, as it went immortal, and his Cho’Gath was literally and figuratively gigantic in the second game. He gets the melee tank into Gnar matchup twice, and keeps pace well through the early part. Though they do give him two of the easier farming tanks, you’re not picking those two champions for laning strength, you pick it for later on and he played it very well early on. It’s performances like these against players like Mimic that make me think he’s gone past some very strong competition to be the most complete top laner in the OPL.

Legacy: Claire

Claire earns this for his early game on Irelia in the second outing. Only could have won it through some decent early games, especially on his Top 5-winning first blood, if he had just managed to turn it into a bit more as the game progressed.

Claire on the other hand, continued to be stronger for longer as the games went on, keeping his team in some fights and the match overall longer than they realistically had a right to be.

Bombers: Seb

I gotta be honest, I didn’t think I’d ever be writing this. I’ve long said that Seb’s best days are about four splits behind him and I’ve got a lot of crow to be eating after this performance.

Seb was magnificent – he got early kills and then didn’t fumble it. He transferred his advantage where it needed to be, when it needed to be and Tectonic were powerless to stop him. Truly it was as dominating a jungle performance as we’ve seen all split and now I would say to him: Prove me wrong again. And again and again. Your team needs you to in this gauntlet push, and now you’ve shown us all that you can be the hero.

Tectonic: Shok

The best single performance was Value by a landslide, his Xayah was immense. But I was bitterly disappointed by his game one – featuring a crushing flame horizon that was ultimately irrelevant in the impact he had on the map and on the game as it progressed.

Shok, while he didn’t reach the same highs, also didn’t hit the same lows – and in this particular case the high is not enough to overwhelm the total package. He was a consistent and stable performer who served as the fulcrum for any success that Tectonic had. Even the base hold at M3 where Xayah scored the triple kill, the play is started by a high-impact Shokwave. I really value the complete performance from Shok here, it was good to see.

Chiefs: Destiny

Destiny has had a quiet couple of weeks of OPL action – not just from appearing as an MVP but also on the rift. He was back to his dominating best this week though. A hiccup in an early 2v2 fight notwithstanding, he got better as each game progressed.

The Chiefs are team that is in their element teamfighting, and Destiny is the best teamfighting support we have. So it was little surprise that if The Chiefs were going to turn around two winning positions from Avant, it would be through teamfighting, and it would stem from Destiny engages. And he duly delivered – giving us yet one more example that while he’s on a playmaker, The Chiefs are never truly out of any game.

Avant Gaming: Frae

Absolutely brutal week for Avant. They came in heavy underdogs, put up two immense early performances, and let it all slip away twice, leaving with the 0-2 many expected but not the result they deserved.

Frae was a big player in their successes this series – I felt like he played really well in this early part, dealing well with Ryoma and contributing to early skirmishes in combination with Praelus, most notably in game 2.

Tectonic: Papryze

Another ordinary week for Tectonic and we start to wonder if they hit their absolute-rolled-a-twenty-peak instead of it being a representative performance when they toppled Chiefs and ORDER because they’ve looked really poor in these last couple of losses. Debated giving this to either of the solo laners but in the end settled on Papryze because he had the more impressive highs. It’s easier for Shok to look better in game two as well, because they really threw Papryze to the wolves in that final game.

MAMMOTH:  Cuden

Much like week one, I could very easily have given this to Remind or Cuden, but i’m giving the edge to the support for his overall strong play across both games. He’s played really well this split which has been wonderful to see. I was impressed with his Pyke, and moreover impressed with his presence with his team throughout the match, always being where he needed to be and contributing to MAMMOTH’s fight-heavy style.

Avant Gaming: DarkSide

I really wanted to give this to Pabu who I thought had a good series against a resurgent Chippys, but in the end I can’t go past the raw damage output of DarkSide. This is one time where Pabu’s good play isn’t enough to go past DarkSide’s also solid play, but just simply overwhelming damage numbers. Especially considering game 2, where MAMMOTH don’t have a pure tank (only their poorest member is building tanky in Juves, and he’s still gone Runic Echoes) for DarkSide to boost his damage numbers.

Dire Wolves: Shernfire

This one is going to look a little weird when you consider his game two performance. But I contest that Shernfire is the MVP, and that his game two play exemplifies the reason why this is true rather than takes away from his case. Quite simply, these matches went as Shernfire did. Either he put Seb in the bin, and the Dire Wolves won with ease, or he showed off some Big Int Energy, and the Wolves couldn’t make make up for being one short. He was spectacular in their wins, and the reason they lost, and so he held the most value for his team in this match.

Bombers: Looch

This is a pick similar to the style of DarkSide for Avant in that it is for the overwhelming damage numbers he’s putting out for his team, notably in game 3 on Karthus, rather than being the standout performer. I found it difficult to pick a standout performer for the Bombers in this set because they were not great in the win, and took far too long closing out the game as their lead grew stagnant and began to shrink before the final fight that really sealed it for them.. And there was very little chance to show off much in their losses because they fell too far behind, too quickly.

Chiefs:  Ry0ma

Tough pick here, mostly because I thought this was a pretty even effort from the Chiefs. They were all tugging on the rope together and no one player was clearly better than the rest of them. Once again, Ry0ma and Raes you’d have to put towards the stronger end of the group, but then Destiny was decent and then you realise you’re about to name all of them. Of all the players, I give the edge to Ry0ma simply for the way he took charge when Swiffer handled him quite well early. Previous iterations of Ry0ma would have tried too hard to force plays and lost them the game, but what we saw this week was patient and really good to see. Patience was the theme for the Chiefs this week – I think game 2 in particular was pretty close until they broke it open, and  that took more than 20 minutes to do. I think the Chiefs will be really encouraged that they were able to hold their nerve twice (once from even, once from behind) in this series against a strong-of-late ORDER lineup, especially as they start to answer some of the lingering label of being a front-runner of a team.

ORDER: FBI

I’ve long said that Oceanic players (with two exceptions) just should not play Ezreal because they can’t utilise it properly. FBI is one of the exceptions and he showed it in his game one performance. He was doing huge amounts of work on the pick and it was good to finally see him have a strong game. FBI has had a pretty quiet split I’ve felt and hopefully as we see more traditional compositions play out we’ll get to see FBI exploit the talent gap he has with most lane opponents on a 1-to-1 basis.

Bombers: Looch

Without Looch’s play the match against ORDER begins to look really ordinary for the Bombers. Both games hinged on how he went. As game one went on, the fights went worse and worse as the more ORDER pulled ahead and settled into their comp, the faster Looch was blown up – if Looch couldn’t get towards a second spell rotation, Bombers were never going to win a fight. In Game 2 he went blow-for-blow with Tally right up until the final fight, where, make no mistake, he absolutely blew it in the top lane, but without him, they were done long before that.

Dire Wolves: BioPanther

BioPanther makes the graduation from being “surprisingly Dire Wolves-ready fresh out of OCS” to “genuinely the reason his team has won this match”, and he’s done it against arguably the best opposition he can play against in The Chiefs and Swip3rr straight out of Big Swips’ amazing performance just one week earlier. BioPanther single handedly saved the first game which looked like a near-formality for the Chiefs. In Game 2 he turned in a performance which was reminiscent of Swip3rr himself during Split 1, turning aside gank after gank, nullifying the Chiefs at every turn. This was showing the most important and hard to develop skills at the pro level, against the highest quality opposition. Even at the risk of calling it early, this was BioPanther’s coming of age party.

Chiefs:  Ry0ma

It’s impossible to split Ry0ma and Raes for this match. They contributed almost equally in both gameplay and statistical production. If i’m being brutally honest with you i’m picking Ry0ma just to break it up a bit as i’ve given it to Raes two weeks in a row and I didn’t really have anything better to break the gap between them.  His Zoe in game 1 in particular looked really strong up until the match turned around.

MAMMOTH:  Chippys

“This week brings a salivating matchup against Tectonic and their rampaging top laner in Papryze – this could be as big as it gets.” – This is how I closed last week’s MVP for Chippys and so it should come as no surprise that he earns this weeks’ MVP. Chippys put Papryze to the sword, heaping misery upon him in game one in what was a dominating performance. You could tell that the swagger was back in Chippys’ game for game two, as he picked Gangplank blind into Tectonic for game 2 (after protecting it with two bans, to be fair) and nearly top-damaged with it. Top laners beware, Chippys looks like he’s back.

Tectonic: Gunkrab

Not a lot to write home about for Tectonic in this series, as they were fairly comfortably handled by Mammoth. Trance could have taken it again, but that would have been giving someone MVP for one flash-devour which doesn’t thrill me. In the end i’ve given it to their young stand-in ADC bot laner in Gunkrab, who piled on the damage over two Heimerdinger games. His Stopwatch use in game 2 was less than ideal, but i’m confident they’ll have handled that in review. I’ve been an on-the-record believer in Gunkrab since watching him in OCS last year so i’m glad to see him have another decent performance.

Avant Gaming: Frae

Frae finally takes home an MVP after being a top-2 player for Avant almost every single week. He’s been by far their most consistent player and it showed up against Claire who arrived to the match after having displayed some of his best-ever form. When you’re looking to break a losing run, and you’ve suffered a shocking loss as Avant did last week, this match was undoubtedly a must-win for Avant. In this situation you need your best players to be your best players, and Frae was so today. Especially on his Lucian, which I thought was superlative.

Legacy: Raid

As i’ve often said, you won’t find a bigger fan of Raid than me, but it’s been a quiet split for him. While he hasn’t yet hit his stride I thought he was the best out of a not-great bunch for the trees this week. He had the best underlying numbers and save for being the third death in that spectacular set of three kills for DarkSide’s Caitlyn, he wasn’t a huge contributor to the reasons Legacy lost this match. I’m hoping to see Raid’s name back in this page soon, with a win for Legacy so we can see that he’s unlocked his best once again.

Chiefs:  Raes

Another week and another impressive showing from the Chiefs’ star player. He’ll be frustrated by the loss but he’s just in such a clean vein of form that he looks sublime on everything he touches. For my reckoning, Raes is the “any champ, any time, any place” player and it lends such flexibility to what the Chiefs want to do that he can show up and Be Excellent on anything he touches. It’s immensely valuable in the current metagame and his performances have been commensurate with this value.

Dire Wolves:  Triple

Could very easily have given this to k1ng this time around, but Triple is the reason they’re able to really take Legacy out behind the woodshed and give them the ol’ Lassie treatment. As those of us who went to Rift Rivals got to experience first-hand, Claire has the capability to be destructive in the mid lane and Triple has shown a repeated ability to shut down the enemy mid while being highly influential in his own right.

Legacy:  Only

Hard to find a positive point in this match that went really wrong, really quickly, in really a lot of areas for Legacy. Once again, when a team has a bit of a roughie, we look for the positive points about the map when things go this badly. And not for the first time this split, the best things happen around their jungler Only. He didn’t get much of a chance to do what he wanted to do but the few times that Legacy was able to mount resistance, he was on hand to be a contributor to that.

ORDER: Swiffer

Swiffer takes this on the back of some superlative Galio play. Some may cynically call that an oxymoron but I love Swiffer on this pick, and I love how ORDER plays when Swiffer is on this pick. He’s such a smart player that it really allows him to bring all of Galio’s kit exactly where it needs to be, exactly when it needs to be there. I think it brings all of their strength in fighting around objectives to the fore when he can be handling lanes and then come to the fight whenever he’s needed. Rogue deserves a shoutout too for playing a pair of very strong games to open the set, but as the third game played out it became clear that Swiffer had pulled ahead as the stronger player on the day and the MVP for ORDER as they continue their recovery from the first couple of weeks.

MAMMOTH:  Chippys

Hopefully Chippys has shown MAMMOTH fans this week that he has acclimatised to life outside the Wolfpack, as he turned in easily his best set since departing the Dire Wolves. It wasn’t him at his dominating best, and it  wasn’t enough to get the W, but it was three really hope-inspiring performances from Chippys. This week brings a salivating matchup against Tectonic and their rampaging top laner in Papryze – this could be as big as it gets.

Bombers: Tiger

There are those that may want to give the glory for this set spread across the roster, and indeed it takes a full team effort to hand out a beating like the Bombers did, but Tiger was the catalyst in every sense of the phrase this week. He’s been a top-2 performer for them all year and he was at his dominant best. Perhaps he’s finally comfortable in Oceania, perhaps he took this week a little personally paired up against another European import in DarkSide…whatever it was, we saw a complete Tiger, one we hadn’t yet seen, one that had only been teased to us off of a few encouraging early performances way back in Split 1.

Avant Gaming: Pabu

This has been two straight beltings that Avant have been on the end of and this match was almost without bright spots. When it comes to perhaps finding the player who least leaked things over to the Bombers, i’d have to give it over to Pabu. He won’t feel great about the first blood death in game 2, but other than that his faults were not of his own making. Until it became untenable, he was at least a bother to Bombers on the Singed and his Aatrox after the aforementioned first blood diverted the Bombers’ attention to other parts of the map, and he managed to take turrets in the split push, which at least kept the Bombers honest. Pabu did well into Mimic in split one, so Avant fans will be hoping he continues that form up now that the Rift Rivals break is done with.

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.

MAMMOTH:  Mash

It was a little difficult to find a continuous presence throughout the entire series for MAMMOTH. Players stepped up individually in single games, but for my money Mash was the only consistent player across both games. He had a couple of clunky moments on Vladimir in game one but overall was solid and was really the only one who had any sort of relevance or hint of a real pressure point throughout game two, which was rough for the new MAMMOTH squad.

Legacy:  Only

I initially had Claire down here but when it came time to watch these games over again I was consistently impressed with Only’s performance, even in the game one loss. He was bossing Seb that game until they botched the top dive which got Sleeping back into the game and reset Legacy’s tempo. That misstep aside, Only was extremely proficient, ever-present and a huge contributor to their wins. It was a very controlling performance in my opinion – you could see a lot of the maturity that Carbon had in Only’s performances, which made me very pleased.

Bombers:  Rosey

Looch may have had a higher high, but Rosey had a stronger overall set for my money. I still want to key in on Rosey’s game one performance here: I was super-impressed with Rosey’s Pyke overall and he was instrumental in the Bombers’ first victory of the split. He broke the game open with a great passage of play around Legacy’s blue buff and from that point, whenever he was on the same screen as his direct counterpart in Decoy, really took him to school. Then he closed the game for his team by keeping Only from basing after Legacy’s botched baron. While it didn’t get the Bombers the full set of points, it’s a strong building block for his team and a reminder of just how good he had reached by the end of last split.

Tectonic:  Sybol

More than just a random two-set quirk from the end of the previous split, Sybol’s ability to crush ORDER is utterly compelling viewing. Sybol has been, and was again, the chaos that unravels ORDER with timely aggression. His positioning in the tribush when Spookz came to counter the top dive was as deliberate as one who knew where Spookz was going to cast his skills before Spookz even knew himself. He gave us a real throwback experience on his Elise, and more importantly had great presence on the somewhat more standard Skarner pick, having the highest kill participation for his team. If you look back over his last half-dozen-or-so sets dating back into split one, Sybol is starting to find some form, which is great to see for the well-respected veteran.

ORDER:  Swiffer

As this series played on, different members of ORDER raised and lowered their hands to take the series by the horns. Spookz was mere pixels from sending the snowball the other way in game one, and their young, dynamic botlane had an equally dynamic performance – indeed we saw some of the very best and some of the worst from FBI when everything was put in his hands in game two.

Through all of this, Swiffer was a dependable presence. As someone who heavily criticised him for most of split one, I have been happy with the way he has gone about his business so far this split, looking assured and dependable for the most part. His game two Vladimir in particular gave his squad a fulcrum to lean on, providing resistance in at least one part of the map as FBI’s Tristana accumulated gold. It was a “Captain’s Knock” in everything except the W, but the result does not undo the way he did his part when things threatened to boil over even faster than they ended up doing.

Dire Wolves:  k1ng

k1ng impressed me this week with strong play on what was an intriguing new bot lane option in Jayce. I can’t recall having seen Jayce ADC since the ill-fated EDG game at Worlds 2015 and I liked the way he used it even in the game two loss. He’s always top-damaging, despite BioPanther getting to chuck Cleavers into tanks for 2/3 games and his Lucian remains a treat to watch. I’ve long said this about k1ng since his losing grand final performance vs the Chiefs back when he was on Legacy: the Lucian of k1ng is a pick i’d pay money to see.

Avant Gaming:  Jayke

I feel bad because this the second week that a strong performance from Frae is going to be narrowly eclipsed by his bottom lane but I was really encouraged by Jayke’s play this week. He showed a strong Pyke and what I liked the most is that when things were bleak and AV were down 3K about 21 minutes into game 3 that Jayke put his best foot forward to get his team over the line and played what I thought was a strong end to the match. It didn’t get them the result in this particular game, but on another day if he continues to play like he did those last 8-10 minutes, I think they’ll win more than they lose.

Bombers: Sleeping

There was really only one option for this. Sleeping was exemplary against the so-called MVP in Chippys and outplayed him through the laning phase in definitely one and arguably both games. It can be hard to play Jayce into Tahm Kench but he was still getting relevant damage onto key targets, but he just didn’t have enough assistance enough of the time to extend the series. Tiger was decent in patches but the rest of the lineup was very disappointing.

Chiefs: Babip

The story of Babip is not just a crushing performance on his signature Nidalee, though that is always very nice to see. Nor was it his superlative Taliyah, though adapting so impressively to the new pick on stage was also encouraging. What impressed me the most about Babip this week was the total package, showing mastery while facilitating standard compositions and the unorthodox no ranged physical damage carry compositions alike. Outstanding from the young Chief this week.

Legacy: Mimic

Another layup of a selection, as Mimic was the only one showing any real resistance from Legacy this week. It might be hard for Legacy to take much heart from such a disastrous opening, but they can take comfort in knowing they’ve still got a legitimate top laner in a region where it’s so important to have one. Mimic showed why his Gangplank had been banned in 2/3rds of his prior 24 games – the rest of the roster will fire with him sooner rather than later and he will become overwhelming on the pick.

Avant Gaming: DarkSide

I really, really wanted to give this to Frae because I was very happy with his performance, but it’s just too hard to go past DarkSide. I was more impressed with his game 3 than his game 1 as his ability to run a train on Tectonic was much more impressive the time when they didn’t fork over kills hand over fist in the first six minutes. I was initially worried about this pickup, but this was a bright debut, shenanigans in game 2 notwithstanding.

Tectonic: Papryze

Papryze’s play backed up his offseason talk with a really impressive set against Avant. In Game 1 the rest of the map fell apart around him, but he was instrumental to game 2’s success and was serviceable on Gangplank in game 3. Of the rest of the squad he seemed the most at ease with the substitute ADC situation. Papryze showed that you don’t get 700LP on Korea for nothing, and if he maintains consistency as the split progresses will have delivered on all the promise he entered the OPL with.

Dire Wolves: Triple

I had tentatively pencilled down three of the four other Dire Wolves for this spot during the course of the match before I somewhat stupidly realised “…waitaminute, it’s just Triple.” He was bonkers in game one and was a constant catalyst for his team, putting up repeatedly good performances – especially important into what was a solid effort coming out of Swiffer. He was everything Sharp would have wanted from his midlaner and he very quickly is becoming the Wolfpack’s best player, even considering the presence of Shernfire.

ORDER: Tally

Tally was great in this match, despite getting a surprising lack of help in the draft phase He was competent on tanks, save for one teleport that completed that was picked up by the casters, and as good as BioPanther was, showed the gulf in class between the two in the game ORDER won. I wonder how this series would have gone had ORDER not done the Wolves a solid and let BioPanther toe his way out into the Ocean.