LoL - LTA North Split 1 Week 2: Team of the Week

In a meta with lane swaps nearly every game, it should be difficult for a toplaner to shine, especially on carries — but Thanatos is the best laning top laner in the LTA. He made it look easy. For the first time since he joined the team, Cloud9 was on the same page, and it helped Thanatos level up.

In his debut split, Thanatos stuck almost exclusively to Renekton, Gnar, and K'Sante, earning him a reputation as a boring, inflexible player. In Game 2, Bwipo counterpicked his Rumble with Galio, and Thanatos proceeded to take over the game — deathless and dominant despite the theoretical counter. In Game 3, his Camille counterpick into Urgot helped Cloud9 take down FLY's infamous Ivern comp. Last year, Bwipo and Impact were considered a cut above Thanatos — now, it's shaping up to be the inverse.

River has long deserved recognition as one of the best junglers in the West, and he's finally got a team that'll let him prove it. Since coming to NA in 2022, he's slowly climbed to better and better rosters — at times single-handedly carrying low-budget teams — proving that his gank-heavy, supportive, and highly cerebral style can be truly dominant.

It's not just that every player and coach on 100T cites his strategy, approach, and leadership as the backbone of the team's ceaselessly aggressive style — River seems to generate leads at will. With his newly consistent side lanes, River outpaced Team Liquid and Cloud9 around the map, building near-insurmountable leads with creative ganks and constant pressure. Without him, this 100T roster simply doesn't function.

Though Sniper and River's performances were incredible — not to mention that Bill "Eyla" Nguyen played the best series of his career and Ian Victor "FBI" Huang is back in peak form — Quid was unbelievable. "Player of the Week" honors don't begin to cover it. Mechanically, Quid made a mockery of his opponents in all four games.

Outside of a single — admittedly game-losing — mistake in Game 2 against TL, it's nearly impossible to find any real mistakes Quid made on Sunday. With career highlight clips in every single game, he quickly reminded everyone why he was the Spring MVP last year — and proved that he's still far from his ceiling. Heading into the playoffs, Quid is looking like the best player in the league.

Conventionally, it's difficult to look good as an ADC in losing games. Despite that, Yeon is the only player on this list who lost their series — his performance merited recognition. He wasn't the only player on TL with highlight moments this weekend — Jeong "Impact" Eon-young's Rumble was particularly memorable, for example. But, even with his team crumbling around him in the early game, under constant threat from the enemy solo laners, Yeon — almost singlehandedly — kept TL's hopes alive every game.

It was Yeon's outstanding teamfighting that forced Quid and Sniper to execute the unbelievable in order to win. If any other LTA ADC was in Yeon's position, Team Liquid would've lost 2-0 in record time. It's exceedingly rare for an ADC to be a team's playmaker in a deficit for a reason — almost no one can do it.

Despite a slow start in Game 1, especially for star jungler Robert "Blaber" Huang, Cloud9 roared to life in the latter half of the series, defeating FlyQuest in back-to-back dominant wins. It was a stark contrast to last year's unusually disjointed C9 — everyone was on the same page, and Vulcan, most notably, finally started to look like himself again.

Ever since EG blew up their roster in 2023, criticisms of Vulcan's play have grown. Alongside Prince, then Berserker, he was accused of holding back his international-class ADCs. This weekend, Vulcan reminded fans of his peak form, consistently finding perfect engages for the team and, alongisde Jesper "Zven" Svenningsen, taking over in the 2v2 against Massu and Busio. On Bard and Alistar, he seemed to win fights by himself — in this form, Zven and Vulcan may finally vindicate the international appearance they were denied in 2020.