LEC Spring Week 8 Recap: Playoffs teams locked in
The League of Legends European Championship (LEC) returned this weekend with games played remotely online as a result of Covid-19.
LEC organizations and staff in Berlin pulled together to bring much-needed esports entertainment amidst the current pandemic. Week 8 of the LEC Spring split saw the top six teams locked in for playoffs, with Excel Esports, Schalke 04, SK Gaming and Team Vitality all missing out on playoff spots.
Two games remain before the 2020 LEC Spring split is wrapped up, with all the top six teams battling it out for the highest seeding heading into the knockout stages.
Week 8 – Day 2
The first day of Week 8 saw a lot of one-sided affairs as MAD Lions clean-swept SK Gaming, only dropping four deaths and two towers. Norman “Kaiser” Kaiser continued to impress as he flexed Trundle into the bot lane, going deathless against SK Gaming with a scoreline of 1/0/12. Enabling Kaiser’s Trundle to impact the game more so than a traditional support Trundle was Matyáš “Carzzy” Orság playing ‘Fasting Senna‘ — a strategy that allows the support player to farm creeps whilst Senna still gains gold and valuable stats through her passive, Absolution — who finished with an impressive scoreline of 4/1/8.
Another one-sided stomp came from Fnatic against Excel Esports, a game that was riddled with audio and live stream technical issues. Fnatic made light work of Excel, closing out the game in just over 30 minutes. Patrik “Patrik” Jírů and Tore “Tore” Hoel Eilertsen threw a spanner in the works as they played Draven and Blitzcrank, a draft from Joey “Youngbuck” Steltenpool that focuses on Excel’s most consistent performer, Patrik. Outside of Tore’s random death at level one (that was not captured on the broadcast), the Excel bot lane was on track for setting Patrik up to solo carry the game but a great engage from Zdravets “Hylissang” Galabov and a teleport flank from Gabriël “Bwipo” Rau capitalized on Patrik’s overextension, shutting down his CS lead and Adoration stacks. From there on out it was the Fnatic show and at 25 minutes, Fnatic won a team fight in the mid lane, trading 2-for-1 in kills, taking down the outer mid lane tower, and killing Baron Nashor, to then end the game four minutes later.
Schalke 04 impressed the entire community this week as they took down a strong team in Misfits Gaming. Misfits started the split in a formidable fashion, especially given their roster is composed of mostly rookies, but have struggled to find consistency as of late. Nevertheless, Misfits were expected to beat out S04 who sat in 8th at the time of the game. Felix “Abbedagge” Braun’s Azir was the stand out performer for Schalke in their win over Misfits, who teamed up with Lukas “Lurox” Thoma to gain early game advantages in two vs two skirmishes, whilst also picking up a quadrakill around the Elder Dragon pit to round off the game.
Additionally, Origen took the win over Team Vitality after a rocky early game and G2 Esports took down Rogue in the final game of the day.
Week 8 – Day 2
Schalke 04 took down Team Vitality to hand them yet another 0-2 week in the first game of the day on March 21. Simultaneously, Schalke picked up their first 2-0 week of the Spring split, providing some form of hope to the Schalke fans for the upcoming split in Summer. For an organization that has been riddled with roster issues throughout the entire split, a 2-0 week was a huge accomplishment given how much their current roster continues to improve on a weekly basis.