AC/AM Standouts highlights the players who performed best in the most recent week of NA Academy and amateur play. I’ll discuss a few of the most noteworthy standouts, then list some other players whose performances caught my eye below.
V1per/AnDa, Top/Jungle, No Org
No Org made a run through the Lower Bracket of the Unified Grand Prix and took out SolaFide 3-0 in the Grand Finals, and V1per and AnDa were the most instrumental pieces of that run. I want to acknowledge them both up front, but since I discussed both of them last week already, I won’t belabour the point.
Both of these players could be competing for top 2 or 3 in their role in Academy right now. Enough said.
Raheen, Bot, Zoos Gaming
Raheen is usually the main carry threat on Zoos Gaming, and his partnership with Rhino in the bot lane is starting to come together to form a real threat. He played a key role in Zoos’s run to qualify for Proving Grounds, and I’m excited to see what he and Rhino can do in that tournament with more time to practice against Academy-level duo lanes.
Raheen Stats
| Â |
KDA |
KP |
GXD10 |
DPM |
CSPM |
| UGP |
3.4 |
63.1% |
+671 |
519 |
8.2 |
5fire, Mid, No Org
I know this is really over-indexing on No Org, but 5fire deserves this shoutout and the team earned all the attention with their UGP tournament win.
5fire plays a very wide range of champions, with things like Sett, Yone, and Veigar all contributing to his UGP run and 17 different champions under belt in 2021 as a whole so far. He has a tendency to play with a bit too much variance, both in his champion pool and in-game, but I was impressed that even in his Veigar game, where he fed a bit early and was chasing his losses, he still found ways to contribute and get the job done without tilting himself out of the game.
5fire Stats
| Â |
KDA |
KP |
GXD10 |
DPM |
CSPM |
| UGP |
4.0 |
62.7% |
+194 |
598 |
7.5 |
If 5fire can keep working on his mental game and demonstrates that he can learn from his past experiences and from the mentorship of veterans and coaches around him, he can definitely have a very bright future.
Additional Standouts
The following players also stood out.
- Apollo, Bot, SolaFide
- Rhino, Support, Zoos Gaming
- Tuesday, Mid, SolaFide
- Value, Bot, No Org
- Zeyzal, Bot, SolaFide
Photos courtesy flickr.com/lolesports and watch.lolesports.com
V1per entered the amateur circuit this Spring hoping to rebuild his confidence and prove to the LCS that his potential is not defined or limited by the version of himself that we saw during 2019 and 2020. He became the focal point of the No Org team, developed a great partnership with AnDa, and ramped up his play continuously over the course of the past four months, starting by absolutely wrecking all of the amateur Top laners and ending by doing the same to the Academy players en route to winning the first ever Proving Grounds tournament.