LCK Spring 2022 Week 3, recapped

 

Week three is over – and LCK is going on a short vacation due to the Lunar New Year. As this season’s completely stacked when it comes to the sheer amount of talent present on the scene, there’s plenty of stuff to talk about in the meantime. Let’s start with the basics – the team standings.

LCK 2022 Spring Standings
	Team	Series		Games			Str
1	T1	6 – 0	100%	12 – 3	80%	+9	6W
2	Gen.G	5 – 1	83%	10 – 4	71%	+6	1L
3	DWG KIA	3 – 3	50%	9 – 6	60%	+3	1L
4	KT Rolster	3 – 3	50%	8 – 6	57%	+2	1W
5	Nongshim RedForce	3 – 3	50%	8 – 8	50%	0	2L
6	DRX	3 – 3	50%	6 – 6	50%	0	3W
7	Hanwha Life Esports	2 – 4	33%	6 – 9	40%	-3	1W
8	Fredit BRION	2 – 4	33%	5 – 9	36%	-4	1W
9	Liiv SANDBOX	2 – 4	33%	4 – 9	31%	-5	1L
10	Kwangdong Freecs	1 – 5	17%	2 – 10	17%	-8	3L

With the raw numbers out of the way, let’s remind ourselves how we got there: after all, cold data doesn’t tell the whole story.

T1

As of week three, T1 remains the only team with a spotless record. The haters no longer have the excuse of T1 farming free wins against less prestigious teams as week three had the leading team against the ropes facing both Nongshim RedForce and DWG.Kia. The team’s matchup against DWG was called the match of the week before it even started – and that prognosis was in no way a mistake.

Saving the good for last, the star matchup happened right at the end of the week. And what a closing series it was! Watching T1 perform like a well-oiled machine throughout the series, where not a single member of the team wasn’t pulling their weight was incredible. And, for the last match of the series, we saw T1 Faker unleash the champion he is most known for – and for all the grandpas out there, it’s not Zed, it’s LeBlanc.

Gen.G

In a surprising turn of events, Gen.G went from the clear favorites to take the event’s trophy – even with T1 being around – to a team with a lot to prove first. The star talent lineup is absolutely to be respected still, but KT Rolster have proven that Gen.G can bleed.

Still, Gen.G absolutely remain one of the top contenders for the event’s ultimate prize – and perhaps even beyond. It can’t be any other way when you have the likes of Chovy, Ruler, and Peanut on the team. Even the less decorated and experienced Doran and Lehends are playing out of their minds. The team’s match against Kwandong Freecs ended up as a very expected 2-0 stomp in favor of Gen.G’s side.

However, should Gen.G defeat T1 in the upcoming T1 vs GEN match on Week 4, they will regain their standing as the clear favorites of the event. If.

DWG KIA

For DWG KIA, Week Three went pretty much exactly as predicted. As expected from a star lineup playing under the banner of a World Championship winner organization.
With DWG’s toplaner, Hoya, failing to show up on the high stage during Week One and Two, the organization decided to bring Burdol into the mix. Although Burdol isn’t as experienced – in relative terms, of course – as his teammates, he did learn from the best during his time at SKT T1 academy. Facing off against Hanwha Life Esports in their first match of the week, DWG KIA were able to masterfully counter HLE’s combo of Camille+Galio in map number one. And Burdol definitely played a big part in that.

Things looked a lot trickier in their match against T1. The match of the week was indeed worthy of that title as both teams showed up big time. While DWG were able to topple T1 in game one in a dominant show of force, game two had T1 lash back. It all came down to an absolute fiesta of game three where DWG went for a hail Mary “Solo Queue stompers” composition with jungle Gwen and Yuumi. It seemed as this strategy was enough to topple T1 as they kept taking the fights were DWG was favored. In the end, it didn’t quite work out for DWG – but going head-to-head with the best team in a region in such a fashion a powerful statement nonetheless.

KT Rolster

For KT Rolster, Week Three was an absolute rollercoaster. In the most KT Rolster fashion imaginable, the team went from awkwardly dropping a series versus Liiv Sandbox to the biggest upset of the week against previously undefeated Gen.G.

In their matchup against Liiv, KT Rolster opened up in an absolutely smashing performance in Game One. Even with Liiv paying utmost respect to Rascal’s incredible toplane Lee Sin, KT had enough power in other lanes to win the game in 28 minutes. No joke – looking at Aiming’s score and gold in game one might make someone think that the enemy team was intentionally feeding him if this were a match of Solo Queue. Winning game one to give the fans false hope and then getting reverse-swept isn’t something new for KT, however.

But if you were to think that surprises from KT would be over, you’d be severely mistaken. Week Three was the quintessence of KT Rolster as the seemingly tilted team would bounce back and beat one of the main contenders for the throne, Gen.G, in a clean 2-0 series.

Game two of that match was an absolute symphony of KT: with Rascal doing Rascal things beating the flummery out of his toplane opponent on Lee Sin, Cuzz completely denying Gen.G’s Peanut’s attempts to contest objectives on his Poppy, Aria playing out of his mind on his LeBlanc comfort pick, and Aiming and Life playing a Kalista+Jarvan IV botlane duo of all things – and completely smashing their opposition.

Nongshim RedForce

For Nongshim, Week 3 must have felt like a contrast shower as they went from facing T1 to facing DRX. The unfortunate and alarming news for the team is that they’ve lost both matchups. Going from a solid top-3 to the very middle of the pack within a single week is disheartening. While the team’s series against T1 was a solid matchup spanning across three maps, the loss against DRX was a sudden and abrupt fall for NS.

It is unclear to us what exactly was the cause for Nongshim RedForce in this week’s match against DRX. Seemingly taunting their enemy – and their fans – by leaving one of the most contested and game-deciding picks of midlane Corki open for grabs by DRX, Nongshim brought scissors, lasers, spears, and hextech pistols to a rocket fight – and lost. Whether it was the team’s confidence in their ability to bait out and defeat the absolute poke machine that is Corki, or it was simple hubris and lack of caution against a “worse” team, their draft in the map two left them woefully unprepared.

DRX

DRX was probably the most hyped-up roster in the region – besides the big two, of course. Rumors about their absolute dominance in scrims reached far and wide – so the first two weeks were anticlimactic, to say the least. Still, DRX aims to fix their mistakes as they leap forward two positions!

Another big thing for DRX has been a sudden decision to part ways with their head coach, Kim “KIM” Jeong-soo. Although KIM wasn’t sacked altogether, he was removed from his position mid-Week Three.

Seemingly unfazed by this change – or perhaps even relieved by it, considering coach Kim’s reputation – DRX went on to claim an easy 2-0 this week, defeating both Nongshim RedForce, the previously solid top-3 team, and Fredit BRION, the mid-tier team with a heart of tier-1 roster.

DRX’s toplaner, Kingen, deserves a separate mention for his Week Three record. Busting out previously unseen in LCK picks of Akshan and even Gangplank, this player made Fredit BRION look like boy scouts and tilted Ghost out of existence. Well, his jungler and botlane were the main culprits on the last one, but Ghost will remember that Comeuppance for a long time, that’s for sure.

Hanwha Life Esports

After Hanwha’s unfortunate three-game losing streak, Week Three raises more questions than answers even after they’ve managed to break the downward spiral.

Opening up the week in a match against DWG KIA felt like an unfair matchup for Hanwha Life Esports. Even with DWG still adjusting to new teamplay coordinates as they have fielded a new player for their toplane, Hanwha struggled to get any competitive advantage, even when using a team composition that explicitly shuts down enemy toplane.

Hanwha Life Esports made short work of Liiv Sandbox, however. Finally defeating the absolute monstrosity of midlane Corki, Hanwha dominantly closed off both games, with Game Two being over in just 25 minutes. Props to OnFleek, as he was the player of the game on both maps.

Fredit BRION

For Fredit BRION, the two previous weeks must’ve felt like entire splits passing by. The team weathered the storm of the region’s top contenders and held their own – and now the only question is their will to push forward.

And that is exactly what we’ve seen in their match against Kwandong Freecs. One thing that stands out when you watch Fredit play: even though they’re not a star team with some groundbreaking internationally known names, they are a team. They move together, they have great team play, and they have loyalty – something that many other LCK teams forsake in order to fill their ranks with the internationally recognized stars

Still, that isn’t always the free pass as we’ve seen DRX completely dismantle Fredit. One downside of playing as a coherent team – when you lose, you lose everywhere. Fredit BRION’s match against DRX is best explained in a Solo Queue term of “team diff”.

Liiv SANDBOX

Another team, another confusing series of events. Going 1-1 isn’t bad for the roster, what’s worse is the way this 1-1 score occurred.

Taking KT Rolster head-on in their first match of the week, LSB for sure pulled off a surprisingly clean reverse sweep after a catastrophic game one. With Clozer’s signature pick, Irelia, Liiv were able to capitalize and punish KT Rolster’s misdrafts and misplays to the fullest.

The game against Hanwha Life Esports wasn’t as clean. In fact, it was not clean at all: while Clozer was the hero of the match against KT, he was definitely the villain of the match against HLE with his atrocious Corki performance. In fact, he actually gave Corki the first loss of the split. For game two, his Viktor wasn’t an inch better. As he’s seemingly unable to adapt to the ever-shifting meta, this is not the Clozer we’re used to seeing. Perhaps the “Faker killer” will come online once again – but not yet. Not yet.

Kwangdong Freecs

The obligatory “you can take the Freecs out of Afreeca, but you can’t take Afreeca out of Freecs” goes here. The team has settled down all the way on the very bottom on the leaderboard after Week Three, after losing three matches in a row and five in total.

While the outcome of their match against Gen.G wasn’t surprising to anyone given the sheer difference in tiers, the match against Fredit BRION was still up for grabs for the Freecs. Still, if you were to watch both of these matches without the player and team names on, telling them apart would’ve been nigh impossible – that’s how stomped Freecs were both times.

Since I’m not a professional analyst, trying to go deep into “why” and “if” isn’t going to work out. One thing is clear – the Freecs have a lot to change and learn before they can comfortably perform at this stage.