10 LPL Players You Need To Know

Believe it or not, Uzi was the only player regarded as best in his position on Royal Never Give Up. For every other role there were multiple LPL players that were seen as superior. Yet this RNG squad was more than enough to hoist the Mid-Season Invitational cup, and take home glory for the China.

The LPL has long been known for its deep talent pool and ever growing pantheon of stars. Every year, the world catches a glimpse of what rises to the surface, but we’re here to talk about the monsters that you might not have seen, but truely do exist. No RNG player is listed here, and that is a deliberate choice to take a dive into the depths of the LPL This is not a ranking about individual mechanical prowess (it is isn’t in any particular order either), but more of a nod to the cornerstones that even other LPL players profess to emulate. They are the classics, the best in their respective roles, and the players that can illuminate the entire LPL landscape. Without further ado, here is the list:

BLG AmazingJ = The Pain Train Conductor

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Broadly speaking you have two types of top laners in the LPL. The Korean imports with dazzling mechanics and a split push game like TheShy, Marin or Jinoo. And then you have the Blue Collar Chinese player, where success is measured outside their own lanes in initiations and teleports. AmazingJ is the epitome of the second class of player. His motto is immense impact for little investment. He can always take a blind pick, requires no jungle attention to get through lanes, and just never dies, allowing his team to focus other parts of the map.

Observers don’t show AmazingJ lanes, but come teamfights, all eyes are on him. BLG are blessed with having two players with the most initiations in the LPL in Road and AmazingJ. Charging in from screens away, AJ excels at champions such as Sion and Ornn(both over 75% win rate), often followed up by Road’s The Quickness. His job doesn’t end there either, as AJ has shown tremendous care in CC selection on enemy backlines, then backing out of fights after taking maximum punishment. On average it takes 12.6K damage to kill AmazingJ once (1st in the LPL), which is 60% of the damage dealt by an LPL marksmen throughout the entire game.

RW SMLZ = The Hyper Carry

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The LPL is filled with marksmen monsters like iboy and JackeyLove, but SMLZ still remains the second most terrifying player behind Uzi. Precise damage calculation, calm execution, and explosive windows of damage output are SMLZ’s hallmarks. It should also come as no surprise that SMLZ is the closest lineage to Uzi as well, starting his career on the RNG development team with the specific intent to observe Uzi play.

Unlike JackeyLove who is part of IG’s laning domination, or iboy’s EDG who plays for tempo and mid-game, SMLZ is the true hyper carry of the league. Kog’maw is a go-to first pick for Rogue Warriors, who’ve never lost a game during regular split on this champion. With the help of Doinb’s supportive midlaners like Karma and Lulu, SMLZ’s power spikes often come faster and harder than most opponents expect, resulting in sudden one-eighties after a single late game teamfight. At the end of the day, SMLZ leads the LPL in kills at 260, recorded multiple 13+ CS a minute games, and came in 2nd in damage share at 33.0%, just behind Uzi 33.6%.

SMLZ is easy to recognize on screen as he never shows emotion. Countless attempts have been tried to coax a laugh out of him, but none have succeeded. Thus, we have bestowed him with the sarcastic caster nickname “Smilez”.

WE xiye = The Savior

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Meet Team WE, the Worlds semi-finalists from 2017, the best teamfighting team the region had to offer. By all accounts, Mystic and WE should have been the true rival to RNG and Uzi. But unfortunately, things fall apart. WE lost a finals MVP in Condi due to a death in the family, Ben was benched, Mystic slumped, and 957 was lost in the bruiser centric start of the split. The only reason WE limped into playoffs this split was because of xiye.

Xiye was previously known as an x-factor player with quiet stretches punctuated by brilliant performances. However, this split he’s been consistently brilliant. 11 games with perfect KDAs, 12 game MVPs, most single kills in a game at 15 for a mid-laner. He is Mr. Bigshot, the player that always steps up in crucial moments. Highlights we can’t forget are: the Baron steal vs. JDG, winning a 1v3 against Vici Gaming on Galio, his patented mid-teamfight Kassadin teleport to turn the series vs. Suning Gaming, a comeback from triple inhibs lost vs. EDG on Azir...Xiye has repeatedly displayed patience and audacity against insurmountable odds. After the domination that Invictus Gaming put on in the LPL this split, xiye narrowly lost the MVP award by a single vote to Rookie, and was selected to represent China in this year’s Asian Games.

EDG Meiko = The Mastermind

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EDG’s unique playstyle is classified as mid-game/tempo focused. They typically have strong one-shot combos, tower advantage in bot lane, and semi-global abilities to out-rotate opponents. What this adds up to is unparalleled fight set-up. EDG forces you to walk into traps at objectives, and they snowball incredibly hard afterwards. If you haven’t disrupted them through laning phase or anticipated their possible rotations, you have no chance once the trap is sprung. This philosophy has allowed EDG to punch above their weight talentwise, taking away the burden of mechanical execution in favor of team set-up, thus granting them a longevity of success not seen by any other Chinese organization. There is a caveat of this play style however, and that is your shot caller needs to be two steps ahead of the entire map to make use of all the pieces that need to be set-up. EDG has always needed the best shotcaller of the league to be the best team of the league, and that torch has passed from ClearLove to Meiko.

Meiko is the last remaining starter of EDG’s 2015 triumph over SKT at MSI. With ClearLove sitting out most of the Spring split and two new players being brought in, Meiko has become the pillar which EDG’s dominance rests upon. He is the conduit that channels the organizations powerful logistics into the Rift, and the only remaining player in the LPL that still purports to full spectrum shot calling in the vein of Mata. Meiko is most dangerous when he can spearhead his own map-wide shot calling. Tahm Kench was Meiko’s most played champion this split, and he also opened the floodgates to Shen support as well. For this reason, EDG are the best global team of LPL.

There really isn’t another player that tries to do what Meiko does, and he is unanimously considered the best support in China. In the Finals tease video where Ming was asked what he would to combat Meiko’s superior mechanics and shotcalling, his answer was “Do not bully me” [plz]. Meiko is EDG at this point, and as long time viewers will attest to, EDG always makes finals.

RW Flawless = That Lee Sin Smurf

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Everyone in ranked has encountered this player at one point: the Lee Sin smurf. That omnipresent jungler who contests you at every buff, who seems to have all your timers, and who sends you back to base more often than you even take camps. The smurf seems untouchable, and he invades at will because he knows there is no mechanical contest at this level of play.

Flawless is the Lee Sin smurf of the LPL.

He remained undefeated on the Blind Monk throughout the entirety of regular season, while having the most solo kills for a jungler at 8. Froskurinn calls him “The Hunter”, Raz placed him at the top of the list of LPL junglers; the bottom line is Flawless is the most daunting jungler to play against in the LPL because he breaks down a supposed team game into a cage match. His prefered tools of Lee Sin and Kha’Zix can quickly score kills on the enemy jungler and retreat with unmatched mobility. Flawless has won games alone, simply by repeatedly killing the enemy jungler.  After 8.10, we should pay closer attention to Flawless, because “1v1 me at scuttle” sounds like a perfect meta for him.

It seems unfair to mention two Rogue Warrior players, but they were the second most successful regular season team for a reason. The one-two punch of Flawless’ early game provided a seamless transition into SMLZ’s indomitable late game. With the additional jungle pressure, SMLZ has been able to drastically improve his CS numbers when compared to his previous home in OMG.

Snake SofM = The Mad Scientist

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SofM stands for the “Style of Me”, a bold statement that declares a drive to be set-apart through his own creativity. SofM is the prototype that other Vietnamese junglers like Levi and YiJin profess to live up to. He gained offers from multiple regions while playing with massive ping issues on the Korean server, and quickly made a name for himself as one of the best tracking junglers in the LPL.

SofM is famed for his ingenuity, pioneering a list of jungle builds in the competitive scene such as evolving Adaptive Cloaking first for Kha’ZIx and Frost Queen's Nidalee. Pathing wise, he is a savant at maximizing experience gain, heavily utilizing single quadrant clears to force parallel jungling, started doing Krug/Blue simultaneously on a Zac, and also the delayed Red Buff clear, where he skips his own buff until needed for ganking. Talking to LPL pros, many actually point towards SofM as being revolutionary in pathing ideas.

A lot of people can claim to be good inventors, but very few then go on to become good practitioners, and this is where SofM stands out. He lead the LPL in experience difference @10 (+385 EXP), on average being close to a level ahead of his opposition. He also stole the most buffs in the league at 36, had the most jungle invades  at 70 (2nd place Haro stood at 38), and to cap that all off, he stole the most Barons too at 6. SofM just is on a different level when it comes to pathing. Even more remarkably, he rarely does so with contact (like Flawless would be apt to do), you only learn of his presence by the absence of your own camps. It is perplexing how he is able to do this, and I sincerely welcome the world to study “SofM-ology” where we can one day hope to understand the near mystical properties of Vietnamese junglers.

JDG YaGao = The Triple Threat

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At the end of 2017, JD Gaming was in flames. Despite fielding the Spring MVP of Doinb, the squad ended the split with a sub .400 win rate and then collapsed into rebuilding. The new JDG of 2018 was dubbed the “the starless team”, bringing in the unknown midlane rookie YaGao to fill the gaping shoes of Doinb who left for the newly formed Rogue Warriors. The last thing people expected was for JDG to lose a league MVP, then improve their rankings. YaGao became an overnight sensation, snatching his team the top spot of the Eastern Conference and then breaking the all-time damage share record of the LPL by his second week of professional play (58.2% on Zoe vs. RNG’s Xiaohu nonetheless).

YaGao’s playstyle is easily recognizable for two traits, heavy roaming and an aggressive teamfight posture. YaGao often sacrifices his own laning to create havoc in the side lanes, having the lowest CSPM for any starting mid laner, but ensuring high kill participation and up-tempo early game (2.00 K+A@15, 4th among LPL mids). His teamfight positioning is unique among mid laners as he often leads from the front, drawing tremendous amounts of attention, and allowing his backline plenty of space. LoKeN was the biggest benefactor of this, floating over 20 KDA for the first three weeks, and still ending up as the LPL KDA king of spring (6.80 KDA).

If you can’t tell who YaGao is in game, you should be able to recognize him in Ban/Picks by the sheer amount of bans thrown his way. YaGao’s is astonishing in terms of stylistic diversity. His three best champions Azir, Zoe and Galio each promote a different style of composition, creating a headache for enemy teams in an attempt to limit JDG’s strategies. The solution has often been to ban two and force an expected third, making Yagao the most banned player of the LPL in the process. 55 bans were levied at just the above three champions mentioned and in total he took over 17 full games worth of bans to keep down.

SNG Knight = The Assassin

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There is no other player in the LPL that takes over a game quite like Knight. If you like flashy plays and rewatch “Faker vs. Ryu” to get all the details, Knight is your player to follow. He is the premier assassin player of the LPL, with the highest amount of solo kills at the position with 16,  and is also the only mid laner to contribute over 30% of the team’s damage. While this is his first professional split, most surfers of OP.GG will be quite familiar with Knight. He’s the Leblanc dude that parks his account at KR rank 1 (still holding the spot at the time of writing 6/9), to the ire of many professional LCK players that seek to topple him.

What sets Knight apart from just being willing to all-in people with fast fingers is his tendency to play the sidelines, being one of the few split pushing mid-laners aside from Xiaohu. In lieu of his style, he pioneered the Time Warp Tonic Ekko, a meta-answer to tanky mid laners like Sion and immobile control mages. Later in game, Knight’s Ekko becomes a tower destroying machine that can never be caught. What’s awesome about Knight’s creation is that even when many have tried to imitate his Ekko, he remains the only player to win with his own build. That has to feel good.

In what can only be described as fate, our last two entries of this list are actually close acquaintances. Knight and Yagao, the two most talented rookies in China, grew up playing in the same internet cafe, spent their teenage years battling across TGA, and now face each other in the LPL on opposing factions of the the e-commerce wars. In many ways, they are the real-life version of what was depicted in Imagine Dragons: Warriors. Their friendship and rivalry will shape the saga of LPL for years to come.

IG Rookie = The Lane God

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Invictus Gaming had a historical regular split in Spring 2018, cruising in on an 88% win rate, and only dropping a single series to RNG in a total of 19 sets. The big changes were the introduction of long awaited marksmen prodigy JackeyLove, and TheShy taking over as the starter in the top lane. With these two mega-talents in place along with Rookie, IG executed one of the most straightforward game plans imaginable: win all three lanes, then group-up and smash. It’s a bit unfair to say IG are a purely win-lane, win-game team, but there really wasn’t much footage after laning phase. IG games lasted an average of 31:18 minutes, the fastest team to play in all major regions.

Even in light of the additions, the cornerstone of IG’s success still hinged on Rookie. Long regarded as the best mid laner in LPL, he dominated every laning phase statistic (+332 GD@15, +7.29 CSD@15, 2.71 K+A@15, all 1st among LPL Mids), playing a high pressure/low cs laning phase. A key to Rookie’s laning outside of his mechanics has been sheer size of his champion pool. IG often employed a strategy of triple banning mid lane champions on the red side, forcing opponents to lock their mid laner before the second ban phase, or face a penta-ban. This always ensured Rookie had a counter pick out of the 13 champion picks he wielded, and he was perfectly willing to ditch composition requirements to go for the Lucian, LeBlanc and Syndra picks to abuse the lane. Without a doubt, Rookie has been the most important and steadfast engine of Invictus Gaming’s win-lane win game system, and is a well deserved recipient of this Spring’s MVP award.

IG TheShy = The Duelist

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TheShy is possibly the best mechanical top laner the LPL has ever witnessed. A Korean Riven streamer turned professional player, he’s transferred his amazing footwork and razor thin margins of damage calculations well into the competitive setting. TheShy had a monster of a season, boasting the single highest solo kills in the LPL at 20, and is the only player that regularly goes for level 2 all-ins. His Camille and Jayce are considered must bans (52% and 31% ban rate respectively), and though he has a strong preference for carries, his tank play is stellar as well. The sheer level of dominance TheShy has displayed in the top lane is hard to comprehend, because there isn’t a global comparison that exists. He is the only top laner among major regions to top the 500 Gold Differential @15 (+555 GD). Think Khan levels of domination in the LCK (+262 GD), and then double that.

In our opinion, TheShy was most integral change that shaped IG’s dominance this split. While he sat behind Duke for the majority of the previous year due to the former player’s teleports, TheShy has eclipsed this role, because he can often do more damage without even teleporting. To profit off of TheShy’s strength in the lane, IG also retooled their jungler focus more towards the top side to allow more aggression. In turn, JackeyLove and Baolan took on the role of pressure absorption (they became the most ganked lane in the LPL, with 113 attempts on Jackey’s life) because enemy teams could not match the 2v2 top, and were forced to find ways to equalize on the opposite side of the map. Unfortunately, TheShy’s injury in the playoffs not only sidelined himself, it also took down IG’s well oiled machine with him.

While RNG could contain carry top laners like Khan at MSI, they didn’t have much to say when it came to TheShy. He destroyed Letme and then proceeded to dominate Zztai on Fiora, amassing a 1.9k gold lead at 15 minutes and ended up taking inhibs by himself.  A simple reason why you need to know of TheShy should be as follows: As long as TheShy is healthy, IG will remain favorites in the LPL playoff landscape. EDG’s Ray, RW’s Mouse and RNG’s Letme are all Blue Collar top laners, and frankly, they don’t stand much of a chance against the Duelist.

See the full LPL Summer schedule to find out when the action resumes. Check out the stream at https://www.twitch.tv/lpl1.