GIANTS Gaming, Splyce, ROCCAT survive promotion tournament, return for LCS summer split

— -- The LCS Promotion Tournament has concluded Sunday with Giants Gaming's victory against Huma, the top squad of the 2016 European Challenger Series spring season. In doing so, Giants Gaming returns to the LCS alongside fellow League Championship Series spring season squads Splyce and Roccat, who had punched their tickets to the summer season on Saturday.

One day after its defeat at the hands of Splyce, Giants bounced back with a convincing 3-1 victory against Huma. Huma's sole victory came in the second game of the series, following a standout performance from Dan "Godbro" Van Vo on Quinn (8/1/4 KDA, 75 percent kill participation ratio) and with help from Giants' former top laner, Jorge "Werlyb" Casanovas.

The series was otherwise Giants' for the taking as the spring LCS squad held initiative throughout the series, and Lennart "SmittyJ" Warkus's efforts come as proof: a 21/8/27 KDA over the series with a kill participation of 81 percent. The team was able to stymie Werlyb's efforts at pressuring the side lanes, partly due to the current meta.

As SmittyJ points out in the broadcast's postgame interview: "Splitpushing right now is pretty hard because it's mostly tanks versus tanks and they can't kill each other. They can just farm." When his opponent picked Fiora, a damage and split-pushing threat, Giants used Sivir, Lulu and Nautilus to pick Huma's other members apart and prevail in team fights.

SmittyJ relied heavily on one of the two new Korean imports, Kim "Wisdom" Tae-wan, to pave the way for victory. The jungler's ability to contain Huma's Rudy "Rudy" Beltran in the early game helped his teammates in crushing their opponents and taking over the map slowly but steadily.