FlyQuest's Quest To Fly High Surprises The LCS
FlyQuest has taken part in what has been one of the most LCS splits yet, how'd they do it?
André González Rodríguez
18th Feb 2022 12:41
Colin Young-Wolff | ESPAT
As it stands right now, the 2022 League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) is home to some of the most exciting League of Legends the region has ever seen. From team’s like Cloud9 with their surprising strategies and Team Liquid with their superteam to Evil Geniuses punching hard with young talent, there is much to enjoy. But one team, in particular, has surprised the league the most, FlyQuest.
FlyQuest - outside of 100 Thieves - has garnered some of the most accolades out of the newer organisations in the league. They remained a stalwart team that no one could undermine nor underestimate throughout all of the 2020 season. As a result, FlyQuest garnered themselves two back-to-back LCS finals visits and their first-ever World Championship appearance.
Even though they had what would many consider a fairly successful year in 2020, they failed to replicate it the following year in 2021, not even close.
After the 2021 offseason, FlyQuest were on every LCS watcher’s radar. As a team that could be a solid middle of the pack team with the likes of jungler Brandon Joel "Josedeodo" Villegas - who came off of an impressive Worlds 2020 performance - and newcomers from the Academy scene such as mid-laner Palafox "Palafox" Palafox, they had some of the most potential outside of the big dynasty organisations. However, unfortunately for them, the roster didn’t pan out as their performances left them with zero playoff appearances for the year.
Going into 2022 though, they decided to shake things up. They kept their 2021 top laner, Colin "Kumo" Zhao who had a solid showing and kept Josedeodo. FlyQuest ended up rounding out the roster with mid-laner Loic "toucouille" Dubois, ADC Johnson "Johnsun" Nguyen and experienced support, Zaqueri "aphromoo" Black.
In many ways, this roster wasn’t the flashiest, it didn’t attain any big-name performing talents and in mostly every LCS enjoyers’ Power Rankings failed to break out of the bottom three. Despite that, once in the 2022 Lock In tournament they broke into the playoffs for the second year in a row where they got swiftly defeated by eventual tournament winners, Team Liquid.
Once in week one of Spring Split though, a flip switched, one that used the new Janna playstyle that has Janna use Smite in the top lane and an absolute nuisance. Although scrappy in their two games that also were against lower-ranked teams, they still managed to start the week 2-0. During this week, it’s worthy to note that Johnsun dealt 41.1 per cent of the team’s total damage while also leading the role in multiple categories.
According to Oracle’s Elixir, the 23-year-old led in kill participation, first blood rate, average gold difference at 10 minutes, average experience difference at 10 minutes, average creep score difference at 10 minutes and average damage to champions per minute. To top it all off, he only died twice in FlyQuest’s matches, racking up a league-leading 18 kills.
The following week, during their first match of the week, FlyQuest completely outclassed each and every one of Team SoloMid’s players. With notable performances by Toucouille who stood out with his 8/0/10 scoreline on the Zoe and Josedeodo’s supreme early game. This performance kept them alive as the only undefeated team across all of the LCS.
1st Place in the LCS Secured!
3-0 after our win against @TSM! #ShowcaseGreatness #FLYWIN pic.twitter.com/OLhLV4uSCy
- FlyQuest (@FlyQuest) February 13, 2022
That impressive scoreline got knocked down a peg as once they faced off against the reigning Lock In champions, Team Liquid, they quite didn’t show up. And although they kept it as close as they could, they ultimately fell. Even though they lost their title as the only undefeated team, they still remained atop the LCS, although tied with four other teams: Cloud9, 100 Thieves, Team Liquid and Dignitas.
These past performances and the team’s current standings were a surprise to the LCS and in a way, a nice change of pace. Not only are FlyQuest taking part in making the LCS as exciting as it is right now, but they’re carving a name for themselves out of nothing and undoubtedly will look to continue doing so in the future.
About The Author
André González Rodríguez
André is a Freelance League of Legends Journalist at GGRecon. He has written about his state’s local esports teams such as the Florida Mayhem and the Florida Mutineers on the Valencia Voice (Valencia College’s online newspaper). André has been watching esports since 2013 spanning different titles such as Call of Duty, League of Legends, Overwatch, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Super Smash Bros. Melee, and Ultimate, as well as other FGC titles.
