The beginning of this week marked the second week of this year’s SPL Spring Split. There are some new teams and new rosters so it’ll be interesting to see how they stack up this year.
In North America Team Eager, Enemy, In Memory of Gabe and Luminosity all won both their games against their first opponents. This puts them all at three points. While this is certainly expected of Luminosity and Eager, Enemy won almost no games the previous season and had minimal changes to their roster. But from the looks of things, these changes have been beneficial. In Memory of Gabe is a new team that came threw the Challenger Circuit. Their first showing has made quite an impression on the community thus far.

On the other side Flash Point, Noble e-Sports, SoaR and Team Allegiance. Have all lost their games putting them all at zero points. None of this is very surprising except for SoaR’s standings. It’s probably too early to call, but to me this seems like the decline of SoaR. But then again they replaced three of their players so team synergy is lacking and they may be better later.

One other thing that was unexpected was when MLCst3alth joined Noble e-Sports after being kicked from Allegiance. The former world champion is considered to be one of the best mid laners in the Smite scene and he’s joining one of the worst teams in the league. The reason Allegiance gave for kicking him was due to him being “toxic and angry” as  Support player PolarBearMike put it in a tweet.

When asking how he thought MLCst3alth was doing on his new team AHS student and Jungler Ryan Tate had this to say “It seems like [on Noble] he plays about the same [as before]. The only difference is that he dies more often.” He also added, “Also NRG are terrible.”

In the European League they’ve played one more set so the numbers are a bit different. Right now both Lion Guard e-Sports and Valance Squad are tied for first place with four points each. This is unprecedented as both these teams came through the challenger circuit.

Tied for third place is SWC 2016 finalist Obey Alliance and Team Dignitas. They both have three points from having won both their games against their opponents. Tied for fifth with only one point a piece is more surprising. The two that are tied is Elevate and two time SWC Champions NRG despite their roster staying the same. I can’t imagine what’s happening on their team to fall from grace so fast and so suddenly, but there’s clearly an issue here. Finally tied for last place is CycloneGG and Sanguine e-Sports.

Sanguine’s ranking is kind of unexpected put not uncharacteristic. The reason they were expected to be higher is because before the season began Sanguine overhauled their team and people thought that Variety (a well known mid laner) was going to be joining them. This turned out to not be true explaining Sanguine’s poor performance.

This week has been an eventful one with some upsets and some new teams proving themselves. It’ll be interesting to see who comes out on top in the coming weeks.