We were supposed to find out last week which LEC team was the top dog. Both G2 and Fnatic were undefeated so far in the Summer Split and their game against each other should have given us an early indication over who’s the strongest team in Europe.
Fnatic handled that game by running over G2’s heretofore indomitable top lane. But then on Saturday, they turned around and handed kill after kill to Excel, the worst team in the region. All of a sudden, what seemed so decided on Friday was thrown right back into the air.
Which performance was more important: Fnatic’s clean win vs. G2 or their extremely messy comeback vs. Excel? To find out, our power ranking experts again assigned point values to each team from one (worst) to 10 (best). Here’s how it turned out:
| Rank | Team | Points |
| 1) | G2 Esports | 30 |
| 2) | Fnatic | 27 |
| 3) | Splyce | 23 |
| 4) | Origen | 22 |
| 5) | FC Schalke 04 | 17 |
| 6) | SK Gaming | 16 |
| 7) | Team Vitality | 12 |
| 8) | Misfits | 8 |
| 9) | Rogue | 7 |
| 10) | Excel Esports | 3 |
It looks like our experts aren’t fooled by one week’s results and G2 get to keep their crown—for now.
Square one: Misfits, Rogue, Excel
Last week was disappointing for Misfits. They finally got some early jungle aggression with the insertion of Thomas “Kirei” Yuen into the lineup the week before. Kirei isn’t some godsend who will turn things around by himself: We’ve seen quite a bit from him over the years in multiple regions.
But he was playing to the style that Misfits needed. On Friday, however, Nubar “Maxlore” Sarafin was back in the lineup. Maxlore is fine in certain metas, but you can tell that something is off when he’s the jungler for this team. That was the case once again as 20 minutes into the game vs. SK passed by and the scoreline stood 0-0. That’s really bad for the team with Elise jungle.
It was even worse when Maxlore was the first death for his team. It’s sad to see players with talent completely unable to synergize. And then when Kirei was brought back into the lineup on Saturday, Misfits also brought up Adam “Lider” Ilyasov, who worked through some major growing pains on his pocket Yasuo.
If the team is really back at square one and starting to experiment, then buckle up folks, because they may have many more tough weeks to come.
Escape: Schalke, SK, Vitality
One team in this group managed to escape the clump at the bottom of the LEC. Vitality have looked out of sorts for months now, and while their first win over Excel was nothing to write home about, they did pick up a more convincing victory on Saturday vs. SK. They still had some loose moments to clean up, but jungler Lee “Mowgli” Jae-ha finally gave his bot lane some support and they responded by taking over the game.
For SK, that loss was disconcerting because they seemed to lose nerve in the draft and even after getting first blood, didn’t quite gain their composure. The other team in this tier, Schalke, took advantage of Lider’s first performance to end the week 1-1, but we’ll need to see more before we can put them much higher.
Meh: Splyce, Origen
These two teams continue to chill in this middle zone where they beat the teams that are below them and can’t seem to crack the top. Splyce come out this week because, well, they just beat Origen. Origen have definitely cooled off after a good start and need to figure out how to organize themselves around late-game objectives. We’re not expecting much to change with these two, though, unless they upset one of the two teams at the top.
Still kings: G2, Fnatic
Fnatic absolutely smashed G2 in that game on Friday. And yet we have G2 on top. Why?
Well, it’s not entirely because Fnatic turned around and struggled against Excel, but that’s part of it. The simple fact is we still think G2 are the best team in the world. And you have to take more than one good swing at the champs before you can take them down.
Fnatic did a great job of totally stopping G2’s top side, but we don’t think they can do that consistently. And we think that if these teams were to play a best-of-five tomorrow, a motivated and focused G2 would still carry the day.
But we’ve been wrong before, so if you’re a diehard Fnatic fan, don’t be upset. And hey, if G2 are the best team in the world, Fnatic just might be second.
All photos via Riot Games.
