LEC power rankings: 2021 Summer Split week 4

With half of this Summer Split’s games officially in the books, it’s pretty clear that the LEC is still trying to find its bearings. Eight of the 10 teams in the league shifted positions in our rankings this week, with the top and bottom squads remaining perfectly in place like two pieces of bread in an ever-changing sandwich. 

Still, there’s nine games left on the board for each team in the league, and by the time those games are played, we could easily see these rankings shift even more dramatically. If the first half of the Summer Split is any indicator, you shouldn’t bank on the league “returning to normal” any time soon. Here are our LEC power rankings after four weeks of play in the 2021 Summer Split. 

Let’s hope for a stronger second half: Schalke 04, SK Gaming

Although there’s still plenty of League left to play in the LEC, it feels like hope is already running out for the two teams at the bottom of our rankings.

For Schalke 04, this situation isn’t foreign, since they’ve had to make miracle runs happen before. There were, however, a ton of things that needed to go right in order for them to get the chance they had back in 2020. This split, the team hasn’t looked good at all, sitting down at the bottom with the second-lowest team KDA in the league and a horrendous average gold difference of -1106 at 15 minutes, according to Oracle’s Elixir.

They might not be 1-10, but they still need a turnaround of massive proportions that might not be possible with the caliber of competition in the league. There are a plethora of teams that have shown signs of greatness this summer, and although consistency hasn’t been in abundance among many of the top rosters, Schalke might need another miracle to get into the postseason.

SK, on the other hand, has been definitively the worst team in Europe so far. They have a measly 76 team kills, with 131 deaths to boot. They have the worst early game in the LEC with some of the worst objective control stats, and they have some of the lowest vision stats in the league as well.

Things have been difficult for this team, especially when trying to garner any sort of cohesion with their multiple roster changes, and it feels like they are constantly on the backfoot from minute one in their matches. Once they can find the roster iteration they want to focus on, then we might see some improvement in this lineup. It’s wild to think that SK was once a dark horse in the 2021 Spring Split, but hopefully, time can heal some of their wounds.

On the fringe: Excel Esports, Team Vitality, Astralis

It remains to be seen whether or not it is indeed coming home for England’s soccer team, but for Excel, the team notched its first 2-0 week since third week of the Spring Split. And the wins came over G2 and Vitality, which, while maybe not impressive on its surface given how those two teams look right now, are still two wins that could prove vitally important given that they’re in a four-way tie with both teams and Astralis in the standings. They also clobbered both teams. If nothing else, Excel should feel vindicated that, at least so far, its roster swaps have paid off. Markoon looks very, very good. He was all over the place on Volibear against G2 and had a top game on Lee Sin against Vitality.

Vitality, meanwhile, may have officially hit the panic button. Szygenda has been smurfing in the LFL and has earned himself a callup back to the LEC. SLT, meanwhile, is down to Vitality.Bee. He had a particularly brutal week, going a combined 0/10/3, but his woes have been split-long. The French top laner is last among LEC players at the position in share of team’s deaths at 26.7 percent—2.5 full points more than the next-worst—and also is in the bottom five in every laning metric, according to Oracle’s Elixir. Something needed to change in the top lane, but it remains to be seen whether it’s enough for Vitality to turn it around in the second half of the split.

Good, but not quite great: Misfits, Fnatic, G2 Esports

Despite ending the weekend with a big win over G2 Esports, Misfits still moved down the power rankings ladder thanks to a brutal performance against defending champions MAD Lions. Plus, it’s not like Misfits was able to beat G2 convincingly. The team’s come-from-behind victory featured the biggest deficit any LEC team had won a game by since 2018. If they want to be considered a top team in the league on a more consistent and reliable basis, they’ll have to rack up more impressive wins against the “big three of the LEC.” Misfits can beat up on the rest of the league all they want, but a 1-2 record against Rogue, MAD Lions, and G2 isn’t going to propel them through a deep playoff run. 

And as far as G2 goes, beating the teams that matter most will be an important task moving into the second half. G2’s 4-5 record across the first half of the Summer Split is destitutely embarrassing for a team of this caliber, and if winning Worlds is truly the goal for the squad, they’ll first have to figure out ways to win the games where they’re up by 10,000 gold first. They’ll open up the second half of the LEC Summer Split with matches against Astralis and Rogue, two teams currently on winning streaks while they ride a four-game loss streak. 

A Spring Split repeat?: Rogue, MAD Lions

It looks like the LEC landscape is going through its first real radical shift since G2 took command of the top of the leaderboard back in 2016. MAD Lions and Rogue have shattered the glass ceiling of European League of Legends, and the future continues to be bright for the LEC’s greatest young prospects. 

MAD Lions entered the Summer Split fresh off the back of their best-ever international showing, but they’re not quite living up to the expectations they set at the Mid-Season Invitational. They sit with a 4-5 record in fourth place, trailing one win behind Fnatic. They’ve looked good in some games, but they also dropped a loss to Excel, one of the LEC’s lower-tier teams, and Vitality, who have looked explosive but uncontrollable and sit in a tie for fifth. For a team that was previously considered to be one of the LEC’s most explosive, their games are some of the longest in the LEC at 32.7 minutes on average. Their decision-making hasn’t been quite as crystal clear as it was in Spring, and they’re going to need to up their game if they want to defend their Spring title. 

Rogue, however, are sitting pretty at the top of the standings. After missing out on an MSI spot to MAD, they seem to have reverted back to their more traditionally slow and measured style. Their games are the longest in the LEC at 32.9 minutes on average, but they’ve managed to accrue the third least deaths in the league at 99. They take very few risks, and they generally win through snowballing Larssen to the point of no return. Exciting? No. High-reward? Yes. It’s looking more and more likely that Rogue will be one of the two teams lying in wait in the Summer finals. 

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