LEC Playoffs week 2: Unexpected upsets and new challengers to the throne

Three best-of-fives were played in the second week of the LEC playoffs and not everything went according to plan.
A painful exit for Fnatic

After a relatively weak regular season, lots of eyes were on Fnatic to improve during their playoff run. After beating their opponent SK Gaming in relatively simple fashion, despite still looking shaky, hopes were high among Fnatic fans. It looked like the line-up, filled with star players who like to play aggressive such as Bwipo and Hylissang, had found their groove. Schalke 04 would send them home however with a painful 3-0 sweep, after finding an answer to their playstyle.

If there’s one thing to take away from the series between Fnatic and Schalke 04, it’s that the latter just played way too aggressive and as a result got caught out a lot. Support Hylissang had a bad series in general, while top laner Bwipo looked shaky. Fnatic attempted to try new things, such as putting Bwipo on a Lulu or Cho’Gath, but to no avail. Jungler Selfmade seemingly struggled in this current jungle meta as well, grabbing Lee Sin in their second match, which didn’t work out at all. It’ll be interesting to see how Fnatic will try to improve over the offseason, looking ahead to the Summer Split.

The MAD Lions roar once more

When G2 Esports and MAD Lions started their series, most people expected G2 to prevail. While they have looked shaky in their previous series against Schalke 04, the amount of talented and experienced players they have playing on their team is insane. MAD Lions has been on an upward spiral however and their upset win over Rogue only proved the ceiling this team has. Their teamfighting style has been one of the most interesting things to watch over these playoff series so far.

Things started out as expected in the first twenty minutes of the game, with Caps finding an advantage for G2 Esports on the Tristana. After a great Baron play by MAD Lions, everything started shifting however. MAD Lions viciously attacked Caps and zoned him away from any kind of potential engage, locking him out of the game. Without the necessary damage as Rekkles played Karma, G2 Esports was unable to stop MAD from cruising to a first win from there on out.

Then G2 started forcing things with an early-game composition, which was shut down by MAD, now 2-0 up. After slowing things down G2 Esports did find a comeback win to bring the score to 2-1, but MAD Lions took away all doubt and closed out the series with a convincing victory in the fourth game. G2 Esports obviously has a lot of issues to resolve and not a lot of time to do it. This time around however, MAD Lions was just the better team and they moved on to the LEC finals. G2 on the other hand will have to face Rogue in the lower bracket final.

Rogue look shaky but get it done

If people told you ahead of the playoffs that Schalke 04 was a team to keep an eye on, not many people would have agreed. They showed up against G2 Esports however and only narrowly missed out on the upper bracket. Rogue went looking for a much needed victory after that loss against MAD Lions, trying to regain their regular season form which was missing in their previous showing.

Rogue never really found that regular season form however and looked kind of shaky during multiple times of the game. There’s no denying that players like Larssen, Hans Sama and Odoamne are individually talented but we saw only glimpses of their calm and collected playstyle over the series. Schalke 04 was often right up there with Rogue, even picking up a win through Abbedagge’s Ryze and Neon’s Kai’Sa in game two. Things often looked pretty chaotic. Rogue eventually pulled through and qualified for the lower bracket final, where they’ll meet G2.

Looking ahead to next week

Next week we’ll get to see the lower bracket final between G2 Esports and Rogue, with the winner moving on to face current team-in-form MAD Lions. It’ll be an interesting dynamic between two teams who seemingly struggle to claim their mojo and form once more and it’ll perhaps be even more interesting which player will step up to pull them out of the slump. There’s more than enough candidates for that role.

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