In November 2018, a new Chinese League of Legends team emerged in the LPL led by legendary Star Horn Royal Club mid laner Lei “Corn” Chen.
The team, named Victory Five, had mostly unknown and untested players in the other roles, leading to poor results in their first few splits.
But after finishing three splits out of the playoff race and setting a winless record during the 2020 Spring Split, V5 look stronger than ever this summer. They delivered the first loss to an undefeated Top Esports and maintained a top-four placement in the 2020 LPL Summer Split regular season.
What changed within the organization to go from a last-place finish to a top-four placement in just a couple of months?
Split after split, the organization kept changing its players in most positions. Even though the roster retained two core players from the squad that had a 0-17 series record in the Spring Split, they’ve looked stronger than ever.
Y4 has been playing with mid laner Li “Mole” Hao-Yan since the 2019 Summer Split. While Mole did go through a couple of role swaps in the top lane and briefly in the jungle, he settled as the mid laner of V5.
The pair didn’t find much success in previous splits, but in the current Summer Split, they look on par with other top-tier mid and bottom laners. Better draft phases, less risky plays, and superior shot-calling from the team contributed to their impressive performances.
Prior to the 2020 Summer Split, the organization acquired three mostly-unknown players: top laner Yu “Biubiu” Lei-Xin and jungler Wei “Weiwei” Bo-Han from Suning and support Guo “ppgod” Peng from FunPlus Phoenix. All three of these players had mediocre results on their previous teams, with ppgod sitting on the bench since FPX fielded world champion Crisp for the role.
V5 had a great start to the split and maintained their performance throughout the entire regular season, securing a playoff spot as the fifth seed in the LPL Summer Split. They started the season with dominant wins over most LPL teams, finishing the first round robin at 6-2. They carried that momentum into the second round robbin, finishing the season with an overall 11-5 record.
V5 as a team have issues to fix if they want to get better, but neutral objective control isn’t one of them. According to data from Oracle’s Elixir, the team is:
- Second in dragon control (58 percent), with Top Esports in first at 60 percent.
- Second in Baron control (70 percent), with JD Gaming in first at 74 percent.
- Third at jungle control (54.1 percent), with first and second place tied at 54.2 percent
V5’s story sadly ended this season, but their performance was amazing overall.
