LCK Summer Week 5: Gen.G, T1 remain on top

The Summer Season of League of Legends Champions Korea or LCK has entered Week 6 after a thrilling end in the previous week. As the competition is only halfway to the playoffs, both Gen.G and T1 remain consistent with their equal 9-1 series record.

The Summer standings have been tight so far. In Week 1, DRX and DWG KIA were the leading teams. Unfortunately, DWG dropped to three positions below in Week 2, and DRX followed suit the following week. The teams were pushed further down when Liiv SANDBOX (LSB) climbed two positions up the standings only to have DWG bounce back to third in Week 5. While the three teams were scrambling, Gen.G and T1 prevailed in the first and second positions respectively.

T1’s great play in Week 5, still unable to pass Gen.G

T1 began Week 5 strong after posting three consecutive wins in the previous weeks. The team ended up winning the very first matchup of the week on July 13 with a 2-1 finish over Hanwha Life Esports.

The team’s MVP support, Ryu “Keria” Min-seok, tried an unorthodox approach by locking in Pantheon on the bottom lane. It was confusing to many since there are no LCK players who have used Pantheon for almost a year, let alone want to resort to the champion — and there are myriad good reasons why Pantheon was deemed ineffective.

Fighting against all odds, Keria and co. won Game 1. However, they conceded in the following game after losing much of the early game momentum due to wrong Runes placement by bot-laner Lee “Gumayusi” Min-hyeong. Game 3 was Chronobreak by the officials due to a game-breaking bug. This caused T1 in great frustration since they almost won the game early. Regardless, the team quickly took over and won the matchup.

Three days later, T1 extended their win streaks to five after besting DRX by a margin-wide 2-0 defeat. Despite their strong performances, the team was unable to slide past Gen.G in the standings.

Gen.G maintains control of standings

Gen.G had a similar Week 5 performance to T1 but was more explosive. The team played LSB, who just returned after winning five straight matchups. Gen.G must not tolerate any room for errors as they could lose to T1 in the standings.

Skill differences between Gen.G and LSB were very noticeable. The former had already gathered a 10k gold lead in 16 minutes and added an additional 3k two minutes later. Gen.G quickly annihilated all LSB members as they advanced to corner the enemy team on their own base. Surely enough, Gen. G finished Game 1 in under 20 minutes.

LSB tried to take control of the following game, which they did but was only limited to the early part of Game 2. Gen.G quickly regained their footing, and bot-laner Park “Ruler” Jae-hyuk spearheaded the team’s recovery. Ruler’s triple kill was enough to get the team back on track. Gen.G took care of their gold deficit in just three minutes and narrowed LSB’s 10-1 kill leads to 10-8. LSB turned to use a Baron call to no avail. Gen.G won the game in 29 minutes and wrapped the entire series with a 2-0 win.

Four days later, Gen.G extended their win streaks to three after forcing Nongshim RedForce to a defeat.