DAMWON Gaming Leads the LCK Spring 2021 Group Stage

Stage 1 of the LCK Spring 2021 Group Stage ended yesterday and unsurprisingly, the Worlds 2020 champions are on top with 7 wins and 1 loss. Here’s what we learned so far from the tournament.

LCK Spring 2021 Standings

The first 4 weeks of LCK Spring 2021 showed us that LCK is extremely well-balanced at this point. No less than 5 teams have identical or close to identical results: 4 W – 4 L or 5 W – 3 L. So we can expect a lot of fierce battles going forward. Apart from DAMWON Gaming, which is in a class of its own, most of the remaining competitors are near each other in terms of strength.

The standings table looks like this:

1^st place: DAMWON Gaming: 7 W – 1 L: +10 (the difference between won and lost games)
2^nd place: Gen.G Esports: 5 W – 3 L: +6
3^rd place: Hanwha Life Esports: 5 W – 3 L: +1
4^th place: DRX: 5 W – 3 L: +0
5^th place: T1: 4 W – 4 L: +1
6^th place: KT Rolster: 4 W – 4 L: +0
7^th place: Afreeca Freecs: 3 W – 5 L: -1
8^th place: Nongshim RedForce: 3 W – 5 L: -3
9^th place: Liiv SANDBOX: 2 W – 6 L: -6
10^th place: Brion Esports: 2 W – 6 L: -8

This situation is close to the one from LCK Summer 2020. The major difference is that Hanwha Life Esports was ranked 9^th with a massive negative streak. Now they are ranked 3^rd with an excellent score for South Korea. How come? Well, the answer is simple: almost the entire roster has been replaced and the new players are very young and hungry to win. Some of them, such as Chovy, come from reputable teams and are quite accomplished.

Teams, Roster Changes, and Expectations

Going forward, I expect DAMWON to dominate and Gen.G to stay near them, ahead of the other 4 competitors that are close to their level.

T1

One big question mark is T1. We haven’t seen Faker and his crew win anything important since LCK Spring 2020. And I wonder how much longer can he take this kind of punishment. Being the most famous LoL player in the world, Faker is used to winning, not to struggling. But he’s also very loyal to his club, which is why he’s been playing for T1 for 7 years.

The T1 roster has 2 new players: Zeus (Top) and Oner (Jungle). It’s a bit strange, to be honest, to see a team with 3 junglers. But it’s clear that T1 is doing everything it can to climb back to the top. I’m simply not sure they’re using the right approach. Where there’s so much competition (and not just for the Jungler role but for all roles except Support), the players no longer tell each other their secrets. Because they’re afraid that someone else might steal their spot. So instead of helping each other, you get a weird scenario in which everyone keeps to himself and doesn’t want to reveal too much. But who knows? Perhaps the Korean culture is different and takes such problems into account, preventing them through transparent communication.

DragonX

Another interesting team to watch going forward is DragonX. Prior to the start of LCK Spring 2021, I expected them to do better than this, just because they finished 5^th – 8^th at Worlds 2020 and 2^nd at LCK Summer 2020. It seems that their edge over the other competitors was lost after Worlds. The cause for this is without a doubt the numerous roster changes. DRX now has a roster of 6 and no less than 4 of these players are new. Of course, some of them got promoted from DRX Academy. But it’s still a new roster that needs to learn how to work as a unit.

Perhaps the DRX management felt like they should capitalize on the good results from 2020 and sell their great players to other clubs, which they did, and then simply rely on youngsters to carry the day under the wise leadership of the remaining crew. Psyosik and SOLCA are still around, most likely for that purpose.

Gen.G

Just like DragonX, Gen.G finished 5^th – 8^th at Worlds 2020 and is now sitting near the top of the standings table with 5 wins and 3 losses. But unlike their rival, they kept most of their players and brought in new ones as well, probably for sparring reasons. The new additions are Burdol, Flawless, and Karis.

Given the strong foundation of this team, I expect Gen.G to thrive going forward and prove, in the long run, that it’s slightly better than most of the other competitors that are on their level.

KT Rolster

The last team I want to talk about here is KT Rolster. They’re currently sitting at number 6 in LCK Spring 2021, but given the small differences, they could well be sitting at number 2. Like other competitors, this team changed almost its entire roster at the end of 2020. So it’s hard to say what they can or can’t do. So far, they’ve managed to keep up with the regional giants and prove that they can win not just small matches, but big ones as well. Two perfect examples here are the victories against T1 and DRX.

Going forward, KT Rolster may prove to be a very strong competitor. But they need more consistency to achieve great results. Their ceiling is high, as proved by their positive results against regional favorites, but their floor is super low, as proved by their failure to win against the likes of Brion Esports Nongshim RedForce.

Photo credit: Riot Games