As one of the teams that arrived in Iceland the earliest and with a rather packed training schedule, it’s no surprise that DWG KIA currently boasts players shaking up the Challenger rank on the EU West League of Legends server.
Recently, DWG KIA’s jungler Canyon has officially conquered the rank 1 Challenger position on this server. The MVP of the 2021 World Championship took just 2 weeks since landing in Iceland, achieving 87 wins and 46 losses with a win rate of 65% to reach rank 1 Challenger. Remarkably, Canyon’s account (provided by Riot) only increased by 11 levels (from 30 to 41) during the time he climbed from unranked to Challenger.
A notable statistic is that although Canyon is a jungler, when climbing ranks in EU West, he played in the top lane in 60% of his matches and only 20% as a jungler. It’s unclear whether this “off-role” play is part of DWG KIA’s strategy, as their main rival, RNG, is also employing a rotation strategy by continuously moving Xiaohu from top lane to mid lane.
Additionally, alongside Canyon’s rank 1 position, another DK member – ShowMaker is currently in the top 5 Challenger. Most DK players are hovering around the top ranks of the EU West League of Legends ladder. Except for Khan, who has been performing inconsistently in ranked games, all four members of DK’s main roster are trying hard and achieving quite favorable results in practice. (A fun fact is that European League of Legends content creators are currently “hunting” this jester in ranked games to… create content, which has affected Khan’s results negatively. However, he has befriended many prominent European League of Legends streamers.)
Although the results are not officially finalized, it’s clear that only a seismic upset could prevent DWG KIA from advancing through Group C in the MSI group stage. The current goal of the reigning world champions and LCK is likely to devise strategies to achieve the best results against RNG and MAD Lions in the upcoming Rumble Stage.