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These are most dominating champions of the LEC's first week
After the first week of League of Legends competition in Europe, the meta has started taking shape. These are the most dominating champions of the new LEC so far.
After the League of Legends World Championship finished in Incheon, South Korea last November, we've been itching for the regular season of League to start up. Now the top flight of EU competition has started off, with a brand new look and name, the League of Legends European Championship, and we're already off to an incredible start to the season.
Old in name, but new to the LEC, team SK Gaming got the competition off to an incredible start by taking down the 2018 Worlds' runners-up, Fnatic, while G2 Esports and Misfits Gaming are currently leading by remaining undefeated in Week 1. With eight weeks left to play, it's still anyone’s game, but what we can do is take a look at the champion selection from the first 10 games of play. Join us as we run through the most dominating champions of the first week of LEC play.
Crit AD Carries are in a bad place in the current meta. They're lacking in the early game, continue to lack in the mid-game, and really only start doing some damage in the late-game. Unfortunately, with all the pre-season changes, it's difficult to reach the point in the game where crit ADCs are strong. This means that a lot of other early-to-mid game carries rise more in priority.
Turret plating, meanwhile, provides a nice boost of gold income, which can help snowball early game champions to a quick gold lead. That's important to note, as the early game is more vital than ever, which means that the team that gets the early game lead can very easily snowball it to a win.
With that in mind, and after an explosive opening week for the LEC, we've dived into the champions that dominated the first week of play, and break down just why they're so strong in the current meta.
Lucian
Lucian helped tear up Week 1
© Riot Games
Lucian is one of the champions that's perfect for an early game meta like this. He's a lane bully, which means that he can easily get priority in lane by poking his opponents. If Lucian gets to chip away at the turret plating, he can get some extra gold income. Lucian snowballs really hard, but gets out-DPSd by other AD Carries in the late-game. Luckily for Lucian players, this meta rarely gets to the late-game. Turret plating has another benefit for the gunslinger, because it makes the laning phase longer.
In the last season, if the enemy AD Carry had enough of the bullying, he could just leave the lane. Now this isn't possible anymore, since if the enemy laner does that, Lucian can just pick up all the turret plating gold, plus the first tower gold. This would give Lucian such a big advantage that he can just win the game by himself. So, enemy laners are stuck with Lucian until the 15 minute mark, getting bullied and harassed, while falling further and further behind. No AD Carry wants to deal with this, which is why he has such a high pick priority. Misfits Gaming's Hans Sama showed off just why Lucian was such an essential pick in the below clip.
Urgot
Urgot's been a prime pick so far
© Riot Games
The menace of the top and midlane is still around after last years Worlds. He hasn't really been nerfed or buffed, but he's still a very safe pick. Urgot doesn't really get hard countered in lane, which is why he is a safe early pick for both the mid and top lane. He's also very versatile: he can build tank or split push, depending on the role he has to fulfill within the team composition.
Team Vitality's Lucas 'Cabochard' Simon-Meslet showed how effective Urgot can be, even in matchups that he isn't favoured. He had to play against Andrei 'Odoamne' Pascu's Kennen, where Urgot is grossly outranged. Yet, he was still able to come out of the lane relatively even, and despite losing the game, Urgot was still really effective. You can see one such play below at the 2m 34s mark.
Urgot really shines in the mid game. After he builds some items, he can dash in and ult someone to trigger the fear. The Baron and Dragons have both been buffed, which means it’s quite easy to force team fights with Baron baits and Dragon fights. If an Urgot stands between the objective and the enemy team, it's very difficult for the enemy team to approach, all making Urgot a great pick in almost any team composition.
Aatrox
Aatrox remains undefeated
© Riot Games
Like Urgot, Aatrox is still lurking around. Nothing has really changed to the champion, and he's still very, very strong. Letting Aatrox through the draft basically means that you give up a single lane, or have a very good plan of dealing with him, as both G2 and Splyce used effectively in their wins over Schalke 04 and Excel, respectively.
His early game is fairly weak, but after the 10 minute mark, when he picks up a Black Cleaver, he truly becomes a World Ender. The extra cooldown reduction means he can tear through teamfights, and his ultimate makes him extremely hard to kill. Rasmus 'Caps' Winther showed off just what he can do with the champion, as he took Schalke to the cleaners in the video below.
Damage and survivability are both things that pros want from their champions. The longer a champion can stay alive, the more damage or utility it can bring. Focussing Aatrox while his ultimate is active is effectively lost DPS, since he'll revive anyway. All Aatrox has to do is hit a few of his sweet spots on his Q to decimate anyone who dares to stand before him, be it ADCs, junglers or mid-laners. Aatrox simply doesn't care.
These three champions have been tearing up pro play so far, but the season has just started, and a lot will change. Ezreal, Lissandra and Cassiopeia are being played more than usual too, but not like the big three above. We're excited to see what picks the LCS can bring to the table when it starts next week. In the meantime, we'll be monitoring every region and revisit this topic in a few weeks.
