ONIC Swept MPL ID’s First Team Award, Except in One Role

ONIC made their name known at the MPL ID S17 playoffs, even when they hadn’t played yet. They dominated some of the nominations at the MPL ID S17 Awards, even greedily taking four out of five roles in the first team awards.

The first team award is designated to the outstanding players in their respective roles during the regular season. They displayed exceptional performance worthy of praise.

Kairi, Kelra, Sanz, and Kiboy obtained the first team award for their respective roles. While ONIC dominated that nomination, you might notice that someone from the team is missing.

Aran from Team Liquid ID snagged the award for the EXP lane role from ONIC’s Lutpii, who has to settle for the second team award’s EXP laner. This upset implies that Lutpii might be ONIC’s weakest link, but is that really the case?

Make no mistake, Lutpii’s role in the team is very integral. We can also argue that if we didn’t have Lutpii, ONIC couldn’t have been dominating during the regular season. His inclusion as the best EXP laner during the fourth and sixth weeks is enough proof of his feat.

But, unfortunately for Lutpii, Aran is simply a step ahead of him. Aran played really well in a changing ecosystem. As one of the veterans staying behind, the team captain rallied his teammates to rise higher and punch harder.

Let’s take a look back at the regular season. Both of these EXP laners have been recognized as some of the strongest, being included as part of the Team of the Week several times.

Lutpii becomes part of this in the fourth and sixth weeks. Meanwhile, Aran edged Lutpii closely, becoming part of the Team of the Week in the first, second, and ninth weeks.

The devil is in the details, as we take a look at some of the official statistics below.

	TLID Aran	ONIC Lutpii
Total Games	37	37
Total Kills	89	79
Average Kills	2,41	2,14
Total Deaths	92	97
Average Deaths	2,49	2,62
Total Assists	221	219
Average Assists	5,97	5,92
Average KDA	3,26	3,18
Kill Participation	65%	58%

During the regular seasons, Aran is just slightly better than Lutpii in various aspects. We’re not talking about a visible advantage, but just a hair’s worth of lead to show how closely Aran and Lutpii performed.

As we can see, both Aran and Lutpii performed similarly with a few distinctions. Lutpii is more active in contributing to the body count for ONIC, while Aran is better at assisting and avoiding unnecessary death.

These head-to-heads are also closely tied. Aran is leading two assists over Lutpii, as well as five fewer deaths. Lutpii also has a 10-kill lead over Aran, a sizeable gap but not too overwhelming.

But at the end of the day, Aran had better average KDA than Lutpii, and it turns out that Aran had better kill participation than his rival. The difference is small, but the best one will always go the extra mile to achieve perfection.

This shows that the competition for the best EXP laner is intense, but Aran proved to be slightly better than Lutpii in some areas and, ultimately, in the overall package.

One of the reasons that Aran performed exceptionally well is also thanks to TLID’s effort to revolutionize itself. As the team who broke ONIC’s four-peat champion streak, they tried so hard to fix the mistakes they made during seasons 15 and 16.

Taking off their championship-winning players for no clear reasons, TLID suddenly lost their edge, which even affected their performance at the IESF and SEA Games while representing Indonesia. Losing at the play-ins in season 15 and even being the last-place finisher during season 16’s regular season shows how deep the team has fallen from their championship season.

Determined to redeem themselves, TLID has undergone an extensive overhaul, favoring fresh faces over seasoned veterans who have gone overseas. Yet somehow, it worked, and TLID dominated the early weeks of season 17’s regular season.

A four-match winning streak in the first two weeks made a good starting base for TLID. Even though they had rough matches in the mid-season, the team managed to bounce back and secured the second upper bracket slot near the final week.

Perhaps TLID’s biggest comeback story came from Kevinn. The Cavalry made him a scapegoat for last season’s abysmal result. This season, he worked so hard and improved leaps and bounds, becoming TLID’s key player in the process.

The result speaks for TLID. Aside from Aran’s first team award, TLID also obtained more awards, including rookie of the season (Drichel), coaching team of the season (Honjaw and Facehugger), second team of the season (Kevinn and Lyoni), and most improved player (Kevinn).

As the second day of MPL ID S17 playoffs starts, we will finally see Aran and Lutpii, as well as the entire ONIC and TLID rosters, back in action. Will they meet again in the upper bracket finals and settle the score? We shall see.