Nongshim RedForce’s jungler Peanut has won the MVP award for the 2021 LCK Summer Split regular season.
The 23-year-old League of Legends jungler won the award with 160 points. He was trailed by DK’s ShowMaker with 138 points and Gen.G’s Bdd with 100 points.
Even though he was quite behind on MVP votes, securing only six votes throughout the split while other junglers such as DK’s Canyon had 10 votes, he was deemed to be much more impactful with his performance, leading to a turnaround for his team after a lackluster Spring Split finish. His strong play throughout the split also landed him on the LCK’s first All-Pro team alongside his AD carry deokdam.
Peanut had top-tier stats amongst all junglers in the LCK, such as a KDA of 4.8 (2nd), average deaths of 1.8 per game (2nd lowest, creep score per minute of 6.8 (1st), gold per minute of 364 (2nd), and vision score per minute of 1.76 (3rd), according to stats from gol.gg. Peanut is more focused on farming and helping out his team rather than being a carry jungler and take over the game by himself. He always puts a lot of focus on securing vision, especially around crucial objectives such as the Baron or Dragon Soul, making sure that his team doesn’t blindly walk into a trap that might be waiting for them in the fog of war.
Peanut played 14 champions in the regular season, showing a lot of flexibility, making it hard for opponents to target ban him. His three most played champions were Diana (10 games), Rumble (nine games), and Lee Sin (seven games). He tries to go for aggressive plays early on to help his team snowball, and has strong jungle stats early on. He is ahead in CS at 15 minutes 71.7 percent of the time with 8.7 creeps ahead of his opponent, which translates to a gold difference of 289 and an experience difference of 464. While he doesn’t have a high first blood rate, only 28.3 percent, he is also not the usual target for first blood, reading his opponent’s attempts to invade and avoiding the skirmishes which would result in a death for him.
Peanut will have the opportunity to earn his fourth LCK title in the upcoming playoffs. You can catch him and his team face off against Afreeca Freecs tomorrow at 3am CT in the first round of playoffs on the official LCK Twitch or YouTube channel.
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