RNG Struggling to Find their Groove
While the 2022 MSI champions are still safe in the race for playoffs, they have been struggling way more than one would have expected after such a dominant run in the MSI. They are on a positive 5-2 series record, but out of 20 games, they have lost 8 and they still have to play against some of the stronger teams in the league like JDG, Edward Gaming, and Anyone’s Legend in the upcoming weeks.
In one of our last esports picks we talked about how RNG was seemingly starting to ramp up, but that notion has changed after seeing them drop the ball against Top Esports and barely overcoming the Team WE scare a few days ago.
Right now, Xiaohu and Gala are the most consistent players on the team, and on the other hand, Breathe and Wei are having some very shaky performances. In their series against Top Esports, Breathe barely had any impact in the outcome of the games. He finished the series with a 1.7 KDA and 359 DPM, which is quite low considering he played Gangplank and Irelia.
Now looking at Wei, he seems to be depending mostly on Xiaohu and the bot lane having a good laning phase for him to take over the game and to do that consistently against the best teams in the league can be hard.
Luckily for them, this week should be a relief for them as having to face a last-place Team WE and a questionable LNG team should secure them a 2-0 week. There is definitely going to be a huge gap in the top lane and the bot lane for this game, while the mid jungle matchup can be a very interesting one.
We can’t deny that when Xiaohu and Wei have a good start, they look completely unstoppable, but if they don’t get an early lead then it can be pretty rough, especially against Tarzan and Doinb, one of the most unpredictable duos in the league.
LNG Comes off a 2-0 Loss against FPX
Being an LNG fan can be an extremely fun experience, or a very frustrating one. Watching Doinb play in such an eccentric manner and pull-off weird picks is exciting to watch, but it also is very disappointing to see when it doesn’t work. In their last series against FunPlus Phoenix, Doinb was completely missing as he picked Gragas twice and we are still wondering why they thought it was a good idea. He had the 2nd worst KDA and 2nd lowest DPM of the series out of all the laners. My best guess is that he just wanted to have some fun because what he did wasn’t fair for all the LNG fans out there.
A very interesting fact about this team is that they lose considerably more while playing red side (10-4 on blue side, 2-7 on red side), and one would expect the complete opposite considering that they have Doinb in their team, a player that benefits from picking very specific champions. But in reality, it’s because Light is having such a strong presence in their games that they prefer to have a solid bot lane matchup, which is exactly why they secure a strong support/adc pick early on in the draft. Light is a very reliable player, he is tied for 1st in CSM at 9.7 amongst all starting ADCs in the league and it’s very rare to see him die (1.8 avg).
The main concern is that he is going up against Gala and Ming, one of the scariest (if not the scariest) bot lanes in the league. I think that LNG might need to look for a matchup advantage somewhere else and simply try to put Light and his support in a comfortable position.
RNG vs LNG Game Information
- Date: Friday, July 15
- Time: 7:00am ET
- RNG vs LNG Live Stream: Twitch.tv
RNG vs LNG Predictions
I’ll get it out of the way, RNG is simply a much stronger team and they are also playing much better than LNG right now. Yeah, RNG is far from being in their best form, but even if we consider how shaky they’ve been looking, LNG is in an even worse condition. The only ray of hope that LNG has is that Light and Tarzan somehow end up popping off hard, which is something unthinkable against their counterparts.
One thing that we keep seeing over and over again in league of legends betting is that teams like RNG always shape up after having a rough patch as they start to take the competition more seriously. We are already half-way through the summer split and the three-time MSI champions could use a few more wins. Unfortunately for LNG, they are going to be the victims of RNG’s wrath, though they are still in a top-10 position.
