Analysis and Opinion

The Most Underrated Players in the LCS

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There are always players whose value isn’t well recognized by the broader community, whether that’s because their history weighs against them, or their teammates outshine them, or their play style just isn’t as eye-catching. I have always had a soft spot for these players, championing players like Impact and LirA who have held their teams together without receiving nearly enough credit for their contributions.

Two names stand out for me in this category right now, and they probably aren’t who you’d expect.

If you ask around the community, the list of the LCS’s “most underrated players” features a few recurring names.

The Golden Guardians feature prominently, with FBI and Closer receiving frequent praise. Both players have been strong contributors, and should feature on the second or third All-Pro teams once award voting is completed. But I don’t think either player is really underappreciated, and the presence of their names in the replies to my tweet is evidence of why. (If either player fails to make at least the third All-Pro team, I will be changing my tune on this very rapidly and doing a lot of jumping around and shouting, but I think there will be justice!)

Instead, I want to point out one of FBI and Closer’s teammates, and then draw your attention to a much further reach for someone who I consider probably the least appreciated player in the LCS today.

huhi

We’re a very long way removed from huhi’s tenure as an LCS mid laner who became known for an Aurelion Sol pocket pick and a team-first play style that helped carry CLG to a 2016 Spring LCS championship and a 2nd-place finish at MSI. After some time in the 100 Thieves organization and a change to Support, huhi eventually found himself playing his new role with the Golden Guardians, but failing to make a strong enough impression to stick with the LCS roster for 2020.

Partway through the Spring split, though, huhi reclaimed a spot alongside FBI on the LCS squad, and since then he has gradually grown into arguably the most underappreciated Support in the league.

In-lane aggression, activation into the mid lane, Sett engages, huhi has been doing it all. His contributions to FBI’s laning should absolutely not be overlooked, especially given that huhi is only getting counterpick 44% of the time, which is in the bottom half of LCS Supports. Alongside huhi, FBI has been out-performing every other LCS Bot laner in straight up 2v2 laning outcomes, when head-to-head champion matchups are taken into account, and he’s second in GXD10 among current starting Bot laners even when you don’t adjust for matchups. But if you don’t give huhi credit for a good portion of FBI’s in-lane success, you’re not seeing the full picture.

It’s pleasantly ironic that huhi has arisen this way, given the Golden Guardians’s struggles to find a starting Support they were happy with coming into the 2020 season. Their choice to role-swap Keith into Support didn’t work out, and that happened only after they failed to sign Hakuho and then were underwhelmed by their remaining options, according to a behind-the-scenes video they released during the offseason. All along, huhi turned out to be the best choice they could have made, just needing some more time and stability to prove it. It’s very much a happy outcome, especially for an organization that has been making better and better choices, on average, without getting as much payoff as you’d hope.

Now, with huhi’s emergence as a key enabler and Closer’s continued climb into LCS stardom, the Golden Guardians have become not just a team with spoiler potential, but a legitimate threat to take down anyone they come up against.

The upper crust of the LCS is continuing to get shakier, due to Cloud9’s fall-off and identifiable vulnerabilities in Team Liquid and TSM. That puts huhi and his team in a very interesting position for the playoffs. It’s time to stop sleeping on huhi, and time to stop sleeping on the Golden Guardians as a whole.

Wiggily

I’ll definitely get less buy-in for this choice than for huhi, but I have a soft spot for Wiggily, possibly even a bias in his favour. I’m willing to expose that bias and make the claim that he is, as of today, the LCS’s most underappreciated player.

Here’s my assertion: Wiggily is, in certain ways, a younger Xmithie. The perception of both players is heavily influenced by their team environment, due to their profiles of strengths and style. On the best team in the LCS, Team Liquid, Xmithie was seen as a top 3 jungler in the league, but once he was placed on IMT, without strong carries surrounding him, Xmithie looked so much weaker that he actually lost his LCS spot for a while. (This was not a problem with Xmithie; it was a problem with perceptions of Xmithie.)

Wiggily is similar, for me, without having Xmithie’s list of past achievements and history of strong teams to play within. He does what his teammates need him to do, he paths reasonably well, and every now and then he can carry a little just to keep opponents guessing.

The best Wiggily has looked, unsurprisingly, was during 2019 while PowerOfEvil was in CLG’s mid lane, and Wiggily was able to play the supportive jungler who quietly propped up a good portion of his team’s success. At the time, Wiggily was the latest in a growing line of talented, but short-lived, NA jungle talents. Unlike players like Akaadian, Contractz, or Dardoch who came before him, though, Wiggily took a more measured approach to the game, giving me hope that he could have more staying power than the “up-and-coming-and-down-and-going” Junglers that we had seen before him. Wiggily took the 3rd All-Pro Jungler spot in 2019 Summer, as CLG reached the LCS Semifinals, and if 2019 had rewarded the Rookie of the Year instead of two separate Rookie of the Split awards, Wiggily would have been a lock due to his immense improvement from Spring to Summer.

So let’s unload some context about Wiggily’s 2020: this year’s meta has suited Junglers in the mould of Dardoch/Contractz/Akaadian very well, featuring mostly aggro carry-ish junglers like Lee Sin, Graves, Olaf. That champion pool doesn’t suit Wiggily as well; during his career, he has looked best on Sejuani, Gragas, Jarvan IV—”servant” junglers.

Then look at what has happened to the roster around Wiggily: CLG’s signing of Crown completely bombed, and Pobelter was brought in as a replacement. Among Mids with 6+ games played, Pobelter ranks 9th of 12 in GXD10. Meanwhile, Ruin is 10th of 12 in GXD10 among Top laners with 6+ GP, despite getting more counterpicks than any other LCS Top. Curious about Stixxay? He’s 9th of 11 in GXD10 among Bot laners, and that’s with Zven playing Sona Lux to asterisk his own laning stats.

Not only does Wiggily have the weakest assemblage of laning talent around him of any team in the league, but he is also tied with Broxah for the lowest counterpick rate among LCS Junglers with 6+ GP, choosing his own champion after the opponent’s just 25% of the time. By the way, he has also received less of his team’s post-15-minute farm than any Jungler except Meteos.

Wiggily has so little material to work with that it would make a bikini seamstress blush.

And yet, despite both the meta and his team context working against Wiggily this year, he’s 4th among LCS Junglers in Kill Participation, 2nd best in Death Share, middle-of-the-pack in First Blood rate and DPM, and 4th in wards cleared per minute.

I’m not here to lift up Wiggily as a suppressed superstar or a poor man’s Blaber (if anything, right now he’s a poor man’s Broxah, actually, based on Broxah’s recent champion pool); I just want people to realize how short-sighted it is to overlook Wiggily without recognizing what he has been able to achieve despite working against so many disadvantages. And I also want to express a hopeful perspective about what we could see from Wiggily if those  disadvantages are ever removed.

What might unlock Wiggily to challenge for that 3rd-team All-Pro form again? Well, it’s not just as simple as “put him on a good team”; he needs the right team environment. If you put Wiggily with Nisqy, he would not do as well as Blaber has done, because Blaber is super aggro and loves getting help from Nisqy to enable him to carry. Wiggily would rather do what he can to boost his mid, instead of having his mid boost him.

If you put Wiggily on TSM, instead, I bet he would fit super well with Bjergsen. He might work on Team Liquid, too, though he and Impact might fit too similar of a team-first, me-second niche. Wiggily looked best working with a straight-up carry mage player like PowerOfEvil, remember, so a Bjergsen or Jensen would be ideal. (As an aside, how good has Santorin looked playing alongside PoE this year? Also, Santorin is good, btw, and Wiggily has similar potential to rehabilitate his image given the chance.)

All things considered, Wiggily is the most underrated player in the LCS. It’s been a while since we’ve gotten to see him perform consistently, but I sincerely hope he gets a chance to redeem his character arc within a more ideal team setup next split, whether that comes from CLG reworking their carry roles or another team picking up the last year on Wiggily’s contract.

My fear is that Wiggily will be underrated enough, even misunderstood enough, that he won’t land in the LCS for 2021, which has happened to others of his profile in the past. With his demotion to Academy for the final week of the regular season, my fears are being intensified.

But I can still choose to hope.