EU LCS Stats for Week 1

Hey LOL fans, the EU LCS has finally come back and we can enjoy Fnatic bushes and Froggen dominance once again. We saw a lot of action in just the first week. Forg1ven after joining SK Gaming destroyed his opponents with veteran support nRated. Fnatic came out strong with their new line up, being undefeated in the first week. From the challenger scene, Giants Gaming defeating both of their opponents and reigning at the top for this week with Fnatic and SK. It was a good start for the new studio in Berlin, the new caster PiraTechnics and Season 5 in the EU scene.

We started the LCS with a match up between the EU LCS's past time winners Fnatic and Elements. With Fnatic's old AD carry Rekkles on their team, Elements were predicted to dominate the EU scene with this line up. They came up a little short against the new Fnatic roster who appeared to have everything going for them. Strong solo laners, a killer bot lane and an effective jungler who can help his allies throughout the game. Fnatic kept forcing fights on Elements with their strong crowd control and mobility. Yellowstar kept all the players of Elements in place with his Flash-Tibbers while Huni and Reignover as Lissandra and Rengar got to the back line and destroyed priority targets with the help of Steeelback's Sivir. Fnatic came out on top which was the start to their 2-0 lead after they defeated H2K in their second game of the week.

SK Gaming also came out big during the first week of the LCS. Forg1ven from SK showed us that he's still a force to be dealt with after his departure from Copenhagen Wolves in the midst of last season. Alongside nRated after Candypanda left, the bot lane did work for the SK logo. Not discounting the rest of the team, Fredy122 is known to be a steady force on the top lane and he kept to his name this week on Gnar and Lissandra. Svenskeren controlled the Jungle domain with Jarvan IV and Fox performed with the uprising force of Kassadin and the new arrival of "The Serpent's Embrace", Cassiopeia. To conclude, Fnatic, SK Gaming and Giants Gaming hold at the top for the LCS and should be interesting to see if they can stay there. 

Picks and Bans for the EU LCS this week shows where the meta is right now. As mentioned on the stream by casters such as Quickshot and Jatt (if you watched the NA scene), there are so many champions teams want to ban. Rek'Sai, Lissandra, Kassadin, Jarvan IV, Lee Sin, Janna, Azir, Gnar, LeBlanc, Zed, Cassiopeia, Sivir are instances of bans wanted by teams every time. This isn't even counting team orientated bans that are aimed at players. For example, I don't think I would want Yellowstar on Annie if I was facing Fnatic this week.

Back to the regular picks and bans, we saw teams eventually adapt to the Gnarvan. In both EU and NA, teams eventually started to ban Gnar or Jarvan IV away or pick one of them in their first rotation so the champion combination couldn't occur. The reason for its concentration in the pick/ban phase is the amount of crowd control in team fights they can provide. With Jarvan forcing a piece of collidable terrain in a fight, Gnar can get extremely effective GNAR!'s off in fights to lock down multiple enemies that dictate team fights. 

Overall final standings are depcited here for the end of Week 1 in the LCS. With all the hype around some of these teams, it will be interesting to see if they perform in Week 2. Unicorns of Love after defeating TSM at IEM a few weeks back showed they're not to be counted out of the running. Defeating Gambit in their match but losing to Season 4 winners, Elements. A prominent showing by Froggen on Kassadin was a reason for that loss. Alongside the EU centric pick of Aatrox, Unicorns of Love looked heavily surprised by the composition and played with reduced effect as they faced Elements. 

MYM had the unfortunate situation of their mid laner leaving the team a few days before the LCS began. You could see the impact that it was having on the team as they played. His replacement, Blizer3000 who continously played as Ahri in his games, performed adequately but didn't seem to synchronize with the rest of his team. That takes a lot of time in any team so it wasn't surprising the synergy wasn't there. Let's hope for the sake of the Meet your Makers team that they've been able to synergize with Blizer3000 or any other replacement in the period of time between the LCS weeks.

Finally, will Fnatic continue their dominant play in the LCS after their strong showing during Week 1? Will Giants have as much success with the harder opponents coming up in the weeks to come? Can Froggen and the newly appointed Rekkles with Elements show why they were the Season 4 champs? Can Gambit bring it back after their continious placement of being at the bottom of the standings? There are multiple questions that will be answered in the next few weeks of the LCS. It's only the beginning and these teams have time to develop and understand each other to make a much more interesting LCS. 

Heres some other stats for the teams during the LCS. There's total kills, total assists, total deaths and the accumulated KDA for the team at the end of the week. From the stats, Fnatic had the highest KDA with their team bring 128 assists to the table. This shows the amount of synergy and teamwork Fnatic had in their games, fighting together at most points in the game. Gambit, H2K and MYM were close in their KDAs working around 1.65. These teams will have to up their game a little bit in the next few games to go up in the standings. 

The second column of stats looks at the teams pick and ban phases. Looking at the champion of choice for the team, the champions they banned the most and the champion banned against them the most. In some instances during week 1, there was only 1 pick, 1 ban and 1 banned champion against a team. So as the weeks go on, these stats will get more concentrated as more picks and ban phases occur. A variety of the top tier champions seen by teams were prominent in the pick and ban phases with a few oddball picks. This stat will see more development as the weeks go on. 

The last few stats look at everything else related to the game. Dragons, Barons, wards, Towers and the accumulation of gold earned by the team. As you can see by the stats, MYM didn't get any Dragons or Barons during their games. This could be one of the factors for their losses during Week 1 so maybe having a more objective focused approach would be good. It's also surprising to see that Giants Gaming were one of the teams to place the least wards during their games. They will punished for a lack of vision against some of the higher calibur opponents. Teams will control the jungle, create more gank paths and control objectives against teams with a lower vision threshold.

This table depicts player performance dependant on their final KDAs. It's not really surprising to see that the players from Fnatic, SK Gaming and Giants Gaming have the highest KDAs. Four players at the end of Week 1 came out with 0 deaths to their name. Fnatic Steeelback showed up big with his final KDA of 37.00. Not dying in any of his games while having a total of 11 kills with 26 assists. This guy came up big for Fnatic and anyone that has him in their Fantasy LCS would've been happy.

nRated and Yellowstar were good support picks in Fantasy this week as they performed well on one champion. nRated bringing out the pocket Lulu support pick while Yellowstar showed why Annie support is making a return from Season 4. WerlyB also came out big as well on one champion, coming in at 9th on the table while only playing Jax against his opponents. The synergy he had with his Jungler Fr3deric, helped him establish dominance on the top lane and lead his team to victory in the late game.

The most banned champion for Week 1 was uncontestably Rek'Sai for Week 1 in the LCS. Unline the NA scene, all the EU teams basically agreed to never allow that champion in a game. Every team was banning the champion so Rek'Sai's global pressure and strong early damage weren't present. The mid lane was highly targeted in terms of bans as well and it does make sense. Well know for having strong mid laners in EU, assassins such as Zed, Kassadin and LeBlanc were prominent bans. With the nerf to Athene's Unholy Grail, LeBlanc has started to see play once again as her common opponents won't have as much early game magic resist.

Graves was highly contested throughout the ADCs in Europe. His high burst and strong laning phase makes him a good pick right now in EU. Especially when combined with champions such as Janna who can buff the damage in his burst while shielding him for any return damage. Janna is also a prominent champion and seen to be top support in the meta. Her mass amount of disengage from "Tailwind", "Howling Gale" and "Monsoon" makes her one of the best peeling supports. The Jarvan IV and Gnar (Gnarvan) combination was a prominent pick in the EU scene also. They defined it to be a strong composition choice and teams after the first day were taking them champions if they were up.

When I say "Most Involved", I'm talking about the accumulation of picks and bans together. From this grid, you can see Jungle was highly contested in the pick and ban phase. Seen to be the strongest trio of junglers, Jarvan IV, Rek'Sai and Lee Sin were banned and picked in a 100 to 90 percent of the games. Their early game pressure and unique traits that they bring to a composition is wanted right now. Creating terrains, making people be out of position and having global pressure is highly regarded. Graves and Janna were the other picks at a 90-80 percent showing. A really strong bot lane duo right now, so you can understand why teams want to target their picks a little.

Final evaluation of contested picks, you can see per role which champions teams regarded to be the strongest in the meta right now. Gnar and Jarvan I've mentioned so many times already. These two champions can be your team fight and they can win team fights as a duo really easily, setting up for you carries to do damage. Kassadin was more banned than picked in EU but you could see in the games he was picked why he has made a resurrgence. With a lack of counter picks in lane, Kassadin has a good time scaling till 6 where he can then create a lot of pressure on the map. Graves and Janna are prominent picks for the bottom lane due to their innate strengths in the laning phase which they can then transition into the mid game fights where their tools come to fruititon. Dictating fights with the overwhelming damage spike Graves gets with 1 to 2 items and the amount of disengage Janna can pull off to reset fights. 

 

Some final little stats about the champions played in the EU LCS this week. Unfortunately, these stats can be affected by how many times they were played in the LCS. As you can see, Corki reigns to have the highest KDA but he was only picked in 1-2 games when you compare it to a champion like Graves who was picked in nearly every game. Though that is true, it's still interesting to read into it. As you would guess, the carry roles of ADC and Mid lane got the most kills in a game. Jarvan is up there as well with his high amount of play and early game damage. Annie with Jarvan got the most assists. I think we can say the reason Annie is so high in EU is Yellowstar for his 2 amazing plays on the champion. In terms of deaths, Janna is high on the list as we didn't see her win many games in EU. So even though the champion is strong right now, it doesn't mean she was played well. Annie appeared to have a higher success rate this week.

Next week, I hope to get some other stats for the article as I'm noting down a lot more than this. Looking at CS, win percentages on champions etc. I hope you like the demonstration of this information and maybe use it in your games. I personally expect to see a lot more Jarvans and Gnars being played together due to their amazing synergy. Annie will be in the bot lane again and Kassadin will take over the mid lane. I'm really looking forward to Week 2 of the LCS to begin. Last week was only a starter to what could be the best season of League of Legends competitively. With a variety of champions and new players, this season could be potentially awesome.