We close the second day of the sixth week of the League of Legends split from China. The second and last match of the day will be between Royal Never Give Up and Rare Atom. The meeting will be held as part of the LPL Spring 2022 tournament.
There is not much to say about Royal Never Give Up. On this split, their games speak for them. Not without mistakes, but the team justifies its title of S-tier team with a stable game. Moreover, just yesterday they broke their 7-win streak against LNG Esports, which were considered one of the two main favorites.
Rare Atom, in my opinion, is a very good A-tier team in China, which demonstrates a good game against teams from the bottom half of the leaderboard.
Royal Never Give Up Form
5th team on the leaderboard. Not as clean as the rest of the top 4 lineups, but solid and stable.
Even before the start of the split, I perfectly understood that RNG has all the potential and opportunities to take the top 5 of the tournament table at the end. So now, in fact, what is happening.
This is one of the few teams in China that has kept most of the roster, and even such a durable one. This, obviously, speaks of a stable and harmonious team game, which I observe.
So far, RNG are going 7-2. They earned good points on teams weaker than themselves, but among the favorites they met only with LNG Esports, who were able to defeat Victory Five, from whom they flew off with a score of 2:0.
Another defeat was the game against FPX on the first day of the split, but you can close your eyes to it. "We haven't warmed up yet."
I believe that the “know” will remain in their 5th place in the standings, only if V5 does not decide to lose a couple of times in a row, giving them one position.
Royal Never Give Up line-up:
- Bin - top lane.
- Wei - forest.
- Xiaohu - mid lane.
- GALA - bot lane.
- Ming - support.
Rare Atom shape
11th team on the leaderboard. One of the good mediocre teams, a competitor to FPX and OMG.
RA broke into the professional league very well at the beginning of last year with a fairly powerful roster, with which they could take decent positions in tournaments in their region.
But the fact is that after changing their line-up at the end of the year for NEST 2021 and Demacia Cup 2021, their teamwork disappeared and the results became much worse than before.
They started this split very well, with a clear victory over a pretty good mid-ranger in the face of Top Esports. But then a strong loss streak came from strong opponents, for which the team cannot be scolded.
I think that it was precisely this combination of circumstances and moral pressure that had a strong influence on the players, that they flew away from Invictus Gamin and Anyone's Legend.
Yes, Rare Atom came out victorious in the last two matches, but I wouldn't pay so much attention to these games: their opponents were the outsiders of this split, who couldn't lose.
Also, the team decided to replace the support positions right in the middle of the split. Young Zorah was replaced by a more experienced yuyanjia, but personally I don't see the result. In my opinion, the new support is less well-played with the main roster. For now, it looks like Zorah won't be returning in the upcoming games.
To me, the Rare Atom looks like a normal midranger. Stronger than most of the bottom half of the leaderboard, but still not strong enough to be considered by S-tier teams. As for me, now they have taken their well-deserved place.
Composition of Rare Atom:
- Cube is the top lane.
- JunJia - forest.
- Strive - mid lane.
- iBoy - bot lane.
- yuyanjia - support.
- Zorah - support (replacement).
Meeting history
Finally, we are waiting for quite revealing statistics, because the teams have not changed their main lineups much.
In 12 matches together, Rare Atom managed to win only twice, one of the victories was at NEST, for which RNG most likely did not even prepare. That is, the remaining 10 meetings took Royal Never Give Up.
Match result
Oil painting: another average team in the face of RA against the "nobles" from RNG.
Honestly, I do not think that Rare Atom will become an obstacle for their rival, as the statistics clearly show. Royal Never Give Up is in a very good shape now compared to the start of the tournament, so I think they can take a clean win.
In this match, I suggest betting on RNG to win with a score of 2:0 in their favor.
