Players to watch for Week 2 of the NA LCS Spring Split
Can Bjergsen prove that he’s still top-tier talent?
The LCS kicked off last week for League of Legends with some pretty exciting games. There were a few players that rose to the top to exceed all expectations- and others that didn’t do so well. Out of all of those players, here are the ones you should be focusing on in Week 2.
1. Bjergsen
Bjerg, Bjerg, Bjerg.. He did not look so well during the first week. TSM started their games last week against Cloud 9, and Bjergsen did not look like his usual self. In fact, most people were expecting WildTurtle to be the crutch of TSM during the first week as he readjusted himself to life on the team and pressure from the fans, but no, it was Bjerg that fell short.
Typically, TSM is a fun team to watch and a lot of that entertainment comes from the raw talent of Bjergsen, being called the “best mid laner in the world other than Faker” on multiple occasions. Because of this, bad games like we saw last week from him are usually very rare. Sub-par performance doesn’t look very well on Bjerg, especially when a good chunk of TSM’s success comes from him, so we’re hoping he can pull himself together for a strong appearance in the second week.
2. Contractz
WOW.
Not much more needs to be said after witnessing the slaughter that Contractz held on his enemies during the first week. The very young jungler made his LCS debut last week with Cloud 9, one of the League’s top teams. Last split, C9’s success was crippled by communication issues with their then-jungler, Rush, and they even ended up pulling in Meteos during the post-season and just letting Rush go.
That means that C9’s success this year was resting on the shoulders of their new jungler, and more importantly, if he could communicate well and fit in with his new team. Well, short answer: Contractz did well. The long answer is that he did so well that he ended up shocking Cloud 9’s fans. Not only did he fit in well and communicate with the team, but his aggressive play-style seems to sync up with them perfectly, and he ended up actually carrying them during Cloud 9’s first match against TSM. Contractz is in store for greatness and he’ll be a fun one to pay attention to as he makes more of a name for himself.
3. Akaadian
I’m just going to be straight-up with you guys here… Echo Fox looked like dirt during week 1. They might have been the worst team out there. Even their close games were only close because their opponents looked as bad or worse than them in those moments. Every game with Echo Fox could have been called a “Clown Fiesta.” The team fights were unfocused. Shot calling was indecisive (and usually wrong). It was a rough week. But, out of all that crap, there was one diamond in the rough for Echo Fox: Akaadian.
The Echo Fox jungler performed very well, securing first blood a few times and attempting to carry his team into the late game. His ganks looked very solid and fluent, and errors didn’t tend to show up until teamfights. In fact, he looked so good that if Contractz didn’t have such an awesome team around him enabling him to to better, I would consider Akaadian on the same tier. This week, we look to Akaadian with hope. Will he be able to carry Echo Fox to some wins?
4. Aphromoo
After seeing Hai lead his team to dominating victories through shot-calling, heads turn towards Aphromoo- “Can he do it too?”
Aphro is famous for his shotcalling abilities, and the team around him isn’t too shabby either. In fact, they’re pretty strong… on paper. Unfortunately, things didn’t pan out last week. They looked a little too sloppy to be considered top-tier talent, and their movements around the map for objectives even seemed second-guessed. Aphromoo is an excellent support and an excellent leader and we hope, going into week 2, that he can pull through for his fans and team and show FlyQuest that CLG shouldn’t be discounted just yet.
All photos via Riot Games
