Image credit: Michal Konkol/Riot Games on Flickr
A UK low elo League of Legends player was surprised to come up against an LEC champion – Rogue jungler Malrang – in a match the other day.
Bronze 3 player Lemi came up against the South Korean pro player, who recently won the Summer 2022 LEC, in a normal draft match on the PBE (Public Beta Environment) test server.
Lemi was playing Diana in the mid-lane and noticed Malrang as Lee Sin jungling for the opposing team.
The two faced one another in a 1v1 in the river just after the 12-minute mark, and well, it went as you’d expect!
The PBE would explain why a low elo player could come up against a pro, as matchmaking can be skewed somewhat on the PBE, though it’s still odd to see such a difference in elo – even in a mode outside of solo queue.
The match finished 21-3 to Malrang’s side and Lemi’s team surrendered at 15 minutes. Malrang went 11/0/4 and had the most gold in the game with 8.2k.
You can watch the VoD back on Lemi’s Twitch channel here.
Lemi said he took smite by accident, and died to Malrang and the enemy mid-laner a few times, which put him behind. It’s fair to say it was a tough time for the Bronze player, who was playing on locked screen.
“The smite was auto’d from the previous champ select that got dodged and I didn’t realise in time, and the cs is a result of Syndra and Malrang cooking me,” he said in this Reddit post on being matched against Malrang.
Despite the loss, Lemi said: “I loved the match and had a great time! I was honoured to be in a game with him, seeing his performances at LEC I was starstruck, but I didn’t annoy him in chat.
“Part of me really wanted to try and kill him. I was thinking, imagine how sick it’d be if I got to kill Malrang! That’s why I challenged him, it felt like a proper 1v1 the way he looked at me and our movements.”
Lemi, Bronze 3 player
“I took [the loss] on the chin, I’d much rather lose to someone as good as Malrang than some random in my elo, plus it’s honestly just sick to be in a match with him, he even liked my tweet when I tweeted the clip.”
Malrang will be playing at Worlds 2022 with Rogue, which kicks off on September 29th 2022. Rogue are in Group C with Top Esports, Gam Esports and a team from the play-ins.
Last month, in separate news, Rogue won the Six Berlin Major.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
