The LCO returns this week after a hiatus between the first and second split, as all eight Oceanic teams have their eyes locked on the second League of Legends championship of the year and the coveted prize of a Worlds ticket all the way to North America.
As LCO 2022 Split Two starts, everyone will be keeping a close eye on one particular team, ORDER, the reigning champions, who return after not a strong performance in the Mid Season Invitational from Busan.
This doesn’t mean ORDER is by any chance the favorite, however. The Oceanic League scene has several strong rosters who all had strong chances to claim victory in the last split, but fell short at the final series.
Alongside ORDER, teams like PGG, Chiefs, and PEACE are all title contenders.
PEACE fell quite badly off a proper title defense in Split One after being quickly dumped out of the postseason via back-to-back sweeps against Pentanet in the upper bracket and ORDER in a must win situation round two meeting.
Nevertheless, everything has changed for PEACE looking into Split Two.
Thien (top lane), LeeSA (jungle), and Apii (mid lane) remain on the team and are joined by two huge pickups in Vincent “Violet” Wong and his usual support Vincent “Gunkrab” Lin.
This new bot lane change puts PEACE right back in the hunt for their second LCO championship. Violet was extremely good as an ADC in 2021 and played a key role in leading PEACE to Worlds last season. His explosive play in the laning phase even earned him a spot on the All-Pro team for the split.
Next we have PGG. Of all the LCO title contenders coming into the new season this evening, Pentanet holds a unique advantage; they didn’t change their roster for this split, this can definitely help in the synergy department however last season they didn’t show enough.
Pentanet, also only has one place to point at last season. One single series loss to ORDER doomed their last split campaign to an unexpected third place finish and no international recognition. Days prior they had pushed Chiefs in an exciting fifth map series that almost seemed like the actual finals.
If that PGG shows up this split then Pentanet fans can rest assured that they will again be a deadly challenger for the Oceanic throne.
Lastly we have the Chiefs. Revenge, that’s the feeling around the blue and white team heading into the second LCO split. Raes returned to Oceania in 2022 to play internationally once more and the roster was certainly built to do that. So, it was a major shock to everybody when they fell just one game short in Split One.
Is important to keep in mind ORDER, who heavily relied on 2021 MVP jungle Kevy as a strong point, have lost their star jungler to Counter Logic Gaming in the North American LCS while the Chiefs have signed Worlds representative Ryan “Aladoric” Richardson to partner Raes back within the team.
This trio of contenders will certainly deliver a strong and show heavy split, so definitely keep an eye on the league.
