Before the League of Legends Pro League heads into a two-week break for Chinese New Year, Week 3 of the LPL 2022 spring split gave fans and spectators a lot to take in. For some teams, they head into the break celebrating big wins; for others, they will have to hold their L’s for quite a while. Here are the lessons we learned from Week 3.
Top Esports need to figure it out
Heading into the LPL 2022 spring split, TES revamped their roster and, with a brand new overhaul, they even won the Demacia Cup 2021. This makes them among the favorites to win the LPL this year. However, three weeks in they can’t even win a series, let alone the entire season.
One of the biggest moves TES made in the offseason was acquiring Gao “Tian” Tian-Liang from FunPlus Phoenix, but he hasn’t played since TES’ opening match against Rare Atom where they lost 2-0. Since then, TES have looked to Wang “Xiaopeng” Peng to fill in the gap. So far, TES are 2-1 with their new jungler but they finished out Week 2 with that loss.
TES came into Week 3 looking to get back into the winners column after losing 2-1 against the upstart Victory Five squad. Their only match in Week 3 came against another rising contender in the LPL, Oh My God. Despite being the better-looking team on paper coming into the matchup, TES fell flat. OMG dismantled TES in back-to-back 30-minute games, putting TES at 2-3. This was the first time since the organization’s rebrand in 2019 that they’ve had a losing record this late in the season.
The season is still very young but the team that won the 2021 Demacia Cup is not the current TES that is playing on stage.
Weibo Gaming have figured it out
The now rebranded 2020 League of Legends World Championship finalists came into 2022 with a similar roster to their magical run two years ago. The only changes are their top laner and their support. Many pegged Weibo as a team to look out for. At the end of Week 3, Weibo are now on everyone’s radar.
WBG came into Week 3 with a very nice 3-1 record in matches and had a single series on the docket before the long Chinese New Year break. But that match was no lay-up, as they took on Victory Five, who came into Week 3 undefeated. After dropping Game 1, WBG came roaring back on the back of their super-star jungler Lê “SofM” Quang Duy. He went a combined 12/0/18 in the last two games of the series as he picked up back-to-back player of the games and WBG picked up their fourth win in the season.
Heading into Week 4, WBG sit at 4-1 and are cleanly in fourth place in the LPL. This would be good enough to get them into Worlds if the LPL receives four seeds at Worlds again this year.
Never forget about Royal Never Give Up
It was a wild offseason for the LPL with many teams making exciting changes. Even teams who made no changes, like Edward Gaming, had all the attention on them heading into Week 3 of the LPL 2022 spring split. But, after losing the first match of the season, Royal Never Give Up have been on a tear. They came into their Week 3 match against the hot streaking Bilibili Gaming with an even hotter streak.
In the clash of win-streaks, RNG got the best of BLG. Both teams traded blows before RNG closed out Game 3 in 33 minutes to win the series 2-1 and improve to 5-1 on the season. In the process, they handed BLG their first loss of the season.
RNG now head into the break as winners of five straight and are now in the top three of the LPL standings. Right in the middle of the two LPL juggernauts, LNG Esports and EDG. RNG have officially re-inserted themselves among the LPL elite.
