Completely unrelated GIF here.
For each lane, I'm going to put who I think are the three standouts, and the "dark horse" to watch. I thought that would be a fun and easy way to organize players, but I'm very often wrong, so here goes nothing.
NA LCS
Top Lane
Impact - well he's the obvious standout in a region filled with mediocrity. Being a former world champion and all that, it's pretty easy to stand out when the second best top laner in the region is Quas. Rush and him are a pretty good duo, as in they pretty much consistently destroy the enemy top laner over and over again until he tilts and gives up on the game. Expect him + Rush to carry TiP (and my fantasy league) to many victories this split.
Quas - this guy is kind of like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Sometimes he's playing like he just 1v2'd MaRin and Koro1 and came up on top, other times he makes Cris look like a world class top laner. If playoff Quas can show up and not I-just-got-my-ass-handed-to-me-by-Hauntzer Quas, then Liquid has a good chance at taking down the top teams in the NA LCS (by that I mean C9 and TSM).
ZionSpartan - the fact that Zion is the third best top laner in NA shows how small the NA talent pool is. Not saying he's a bad player, but... for a region that has aspirations to win worlds one day, NA should probably concentrate on getting better talent before we think about conquering the world. Zion's a good splitpusher, he's a mediocre teamfighter but then again, all of CLG is rather mediocre at teamfighting. He does his job on the team well, and that's good enough for CLG.
Player to watch out for: Seraph - he's the one Korean who's actually carrying on a team full of Koreans. Seraph essentially carried the crap out of TDK in the challenger series, and his insane splitpushing with some help from Alex Ich put them into the LCS. I don't think he's better than the top three top laners in the region at the moment, but he is potentially looking a hell of a lot better than he was on CLG last split.
Jungle
Meteos - in the NA LCS, there is a jungle hierarchy. Meteos and Rush are the kings and queens, Santorin and IWDominate are the servants, Xmithie is the guy who tries to lead a revolution against the monarchy but always falls short during the most critical of times, and everyone else is, as Doublelift would elegantly say, trash. Meteos and Rush just play... better than their counterparts. And since Meteos has had more experience in the LCS, he makes slightly less dumb plays than Rush does. Therefore he gets the number 1 place on my list (wow that's quite the accomplishment right?)
Rush - This guy plays League like its Call of Duty Domination. He plays one style and one style only - full balls to the wall rush at the enemy and kill them. It works on something like Shrek'Sai or Vi, but when you aggressively flash forwards to try to Nunu someone to death, it's not quite as successful. Seriously, put this guy on something that's not Nunu and he'll dominate the game. He's also #1 on the Korean SoloQ ladder and #1 on the NA SoloQ ladder, which has got to mean something.
Santorin - I'm pretty sure Santorin is secretly into cosplaying, because during MSI he must've been doing his best Invisible Woman impression. He was like Lust Cena - because you couldn't see him. He was pretty good during the regular season, above average during playoffs and somewhere in the negatives during MSI. Overall he's still a good jungler, and has got exactly what CLG likes - lots of potential.
Player to watch out for - Trashy: Remember how C9 dominated the challenger series then came out to eventually become the #1 team in NA? Or LemonDogs? Or even UoL and H2K in EU LCS (well not first... but 2nd and 3rd is still pretty good)? NME completely trashed everyone in the challenger series since they brought in Trashy and Innox. Trashy's damn good at jungling, slightly less so at name picking, but look for him to become a force to be reckoned with.
Mid Lane
Bjergsen - one bad MSI showing does not make him a bad mid laner. I think he's a little bit overrated, because when people were calling him the best mid in NA his stiffest competition came from the likes of Hai, XiaoWeiXiao and Link. One of which was basically a LCS level Zed one trick pony, another of which had no consistency whatsoever, and the last one who was more prone to choking than the Vancouver Canucks during playoffs. But he's still good, and he's got some more competition this year in the forms of a re-incarnated C9 mid laner and the scrim god himself in Fenix. But remember, he had a 10 CS lead on Faker at 10 mins... so therefore Bjergsen > Faker confirmed.
XiaoWeiXiao - watching this guy play is like watching a tractor on a farm - he's a farming machine. Sometimes he plays like he's the next incarnation of Faker, other times he plays like he doesn't know what a keyboard or a mouse is. When he goes off, he goes OFF, like that one game in the playoffs vs Gravity where he eventually went 12 - 0 - 1 on Zed. And I didn't even know that he played Zed! If Impact can ban Yasuo before XiaoWeiXiao picks it, he can become the second best midlaner in NA.
Incarnati0n - I know next to nothing about this guy except for that one cheesy "Incarnati0n - The Movie" video by dodgedlol. He's apparently a EU SoloQ god known for his assassin plays, his Froggen-like ability to DDoS his opponents, and his verbal abuse of said opponents. Hopefully his assassins show up and not the DDoSes.
Player to watch out for: Fenix - Team Liquid always says that Fenix is a scrim god. You could've paid me $50 and I wouldn't have thought that watching Team Liquid play during the regular season. But during the playoffs, Fenix rose from the ashes of their train-wreck of a regular season to his true form, where he completely dumpstered Link in the first round. His team would eventually get stopped in the semis by an amazing comeback by C9, but Fenix had proved himself. He was no longer trash (turns out I can get that distinction too by subbing to Doublelift on Twitch).
AD Carry
Sneaky - the undisputed king of NA ADCs. Can you think of anyone who is better than this guy in NA? WildTurtle resembles his oxymoron of a name - he plays too wildly sometimes and pays the price for it. Piglet seems to be the "other toxic Korean who doesn't show results." Apollo is the dictionary definition of average. Cop retired. Doublelift is, well, Doublelift. Nien is alright, but not really god tier. So, by process of elimination, Sneaky is the best NA ADC.
Piglet - Piglet isn't exactly like Impact - he's had his fair share of troubles in NA. At the start of the split, these problems were so intense that Liquid had to bench him. They benched Piglet for Keith, a 17 year old with an affinity for playing Jinx and the uncanny ability to spout dank memes. But during playoffs, Piglet (like most of Liquid) took off the ankle bracelets and proceeded to make Doublelift look like a Bronze V player who deserves challenjour gg. So depending on which Piglet shows up, he could either be the best ADC in NA, or the worst.
WildTurtle - meh he's alright. Unfortunately, Fnatic's Rekless took the most fitting name for him, because Turtle plays recklessly. Sometimes, he'll initiate fights that he has no business initiating and still somehow come up on top. He's not a world class ADC, but I honestly can't think of anyone better in NA, other than Piglet and Sneaky, and sometimes Doublelift.
Player to watch out for: Doublelift - didn't this guy used to be amazing in Season 2? I don't know, I didn't watch League in Season 2. But judging from Reddit comments (which admittedly isn't a very good source), it seems like Doublelift has only gotten worse since then, not better. I think that this split is his opportunity to prove that he is still a great player, and more than just a Worlds analyst.
Support
Lustboy - for a support that is very vision focused, it sure is weird that I can never see Lustboy on stage during the NA LCS. Personally, from a completely unbiased point of view that definitely is not a huge TSM fan, I feel like Lustboy is by far the best support in NA right now. He has impeccable vision control, knows how to lane well, is willing to sacrifice his KDA (and my fantasy points) in order to protect his ADC, and generally does everything a support player should do.
Xpecial - he just got a huge ADC upgrade. When Piglet and Xpecial (or Hamlet?) both get going, that is one heck of a scary lane. He was always a solid player to begin with, so when you pair him with Piglet, the other lane really has no chance. He's also been playing League since the Jurassic age, so with that comes a lot of experience. I don't really know what else to say here, but he's definitely a Top 2 support in NA. I think. Maybe.
Aphromoo - the bot lane in NA is weird this split. We've got an invisible player, a hamster, a nation of lemons, a bunny hooker, Adrian, and a mooing cow-like creature. Link said in his 17 page retirement rant that Aphromoo was being held back by Doublelift, which, if true, is just a little bit scary because the (inconsistently) godly Aphromoo we were seeing in the Spring split is not even his final form. He's definitely got the potential, now we have to see if the potential energy can be transformed into kinetic results.
Player to watch out for: Adrian - Keith's boyfriend looked really, well, average last split, but there were most certainly glimpses of brilliance from the TiP support. He looked really good on Leona, especially when paired with the Graves of Apollo. He looked pretty average on almost every other support champion, but he and Apollo did their jobs well in the bot lane - go even. This is his opportunity to prove that the TiP bot lane can do more than just go even - they can win.
Team Rankings:
1) TSM
2) TL
3) TIP/C9
4) C9/TIP
5) CLG/NME/T8
6) CLG/NME/T8
7) CLG/NME/T8
8) GV
9) TDK
10) DIG
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