Is Peyz the best ADC in the world right now?

Watching great League of Legends play, especially the mechanically crisp play of top ADCs, is a joy for fans. To find that kind of stellar ADC gameplay, right now, there’s no better place to look than , where 20-year old prodigy botlaner

Kim “Peyz” Su-hwan

is delivering carry victory after carry victory for T1 this year.

His game today against was one of his hardest carries yet, a 2-0 domination enabled by perfectly calculated aggression on his Game 1 Jhin and, especially, his Game 2 Lucian. His total KDA record across the series was a sky-high 18/3/8, contributing to 26 kills and only dying three times in the process. But stats and praise can only say so much about Peyz’s performance in this exceptional series. Just look at his Lucian engage to wipe DK, the kind of poised lethality that defines top-notch ADC play. The instant that Peyz executes a lightning-fast dodge on ’s Syndra W, he finds the angle to dash in and eliminate the enemy carries.

That play soon led to the end of the game, a win that marked Peyz’s 200th LCK win already. As caster Brendan “Valdes” Valdes succinctly puts it in the clip of the play, “Peyz puts the team on his back like he’s done all game long.” It’s true that Peyz has been having a split where he stands above the already world-class, (and three-times reigning World Champion) T1 roster, often carrying games alongside , the duo stepping up this split in a big way. The LCK analyst praise is serious, with unanimous votes agreeing on Peyz’s Player of the Match vote, after he won PoTM as well in T1’s last series, against , last week.

Peyz’s feats don’t stop there. As X user @MonsieurYordle pointed out, Peyz is the first player to ever reach 1500 kills in LCK and LCK Cup in under 300 games. He accomplished this in only 287 matches, nearly 100 less than . It’s also crucial to mention that Peyz’s recent domination comes in a bizarre meta for the botlane position, in which mages bot are more popular than ever before, and often picked over traditional AD Carries. And while Peyz had dabbled with these picks, playing Taliyah at events like the KeSPA Cup, and one game of Viktor to start out the LCK split, since then, he’s played only traditional carries in the role, a true hypercarry player through-and-through managing to perform outstandingly even in an unusual metagame. The more standout performances like this Peyz puts up, the more he stands out from the crowd as the potential best ADC worldwide.

But is Peyz’s form overall really enough to qualify him as the best in the world? Right now, it may very well be. Competition is fierce between him and other top LCK players, like Gumayusi, whose spot he filled on T1, and , who’s spot Peyz filled repeatedly, joining Gen.G after he left, then after he left there as well. And those are just in the LCK, where on the world stage, top LPL talents like, , , and , are certainly in contention.

A few Western players also stand out as being perhaps in the top 10, but without the international results, are hard to rank higher. And yet, Peyz himself, in discussion for best, hasn’t had those results either, after T1 faltered at this last MSI. With Worlds on the horizon, all the hypothetical talk about “who’s the best?” is rendered moot, as the competitors get to realize their play beyond imaginary tier lists, and forge real victories at the highest level tournament in the world.