The story of a phoenix rising from the ashes is a well-known tale.

In the competitive scene, all teams go through their highs and lows. T1 has fallen from their prime multi-Worlds champion status, Invictus Gaming isn’t the same today as the 2018 iG world champions, and Victory Five never truly tasted the sensation of seeding into LPL Playoffs since their conception in 2019.

Much to everyone’s surprise, the consistent low rankers currently stand proud behind Top Esports in the LPL 2020 Summer Season for over 4 weeks now. Victory Five has won 5 series and lost one, and in these matches, they won 11 and only lost four games.

Let’s understand how Victory Five, the lowest-scoring team, suddenly started to live up to their namesake by looking at their history.

Tournament History

Victory Five came around in Spring 2019, and while the roster was completely different, their overall status was the same.

In the 2019 Spring season of the LPL, they ended up in 13th place with a 4-11 record. Following the Summer season of the same year, they only moved up by one rank in 12th place with a 5-10 record. Li “Mole” Hao-Yan, one of Victory Five’s most loyal players, started his career as a mid/top player in the Summer season.

In the 2019 Demacia Cup, the Chinese equivalent of an All-Stars Cup, Victory Five landed in 15th place at the lower half of the 20 teams that participated. They garnered a 2-2 score in their group against EDward Gaming, Top Esports, LGD Gaming, and Gama Dream (LDL team).

When the 2020 LPL Spring split was temporarily cancelled due to the Coronavirus outbreak, the 2020 LPL Online Scrims League was played and streamed to keep the eSports flame alive. Victory Five played with eStar, JD Gaming, Suning, and Top Esports. They ranked last with a 0-3 series score.

Their biggest disappointment was in the 2020 LPL Spring split itself. Victory Five sat in 17th place with 0-16 series score, and only won a single game while losing to 32 other games.

At this point, it was clear that no one was cheering for Victory Five, given their steady decline and subpar performance. All of those bad records were about to change during the offseason after the Spring split.

The Roster Change

For a team to garner a staggering 3% winrate in the professional scene, a simple roster change to one or two roles did not suffice. After the Spring Playoffs concluded, the organization started to move to find and fill new players to every necessary role.

Mole solidified his position in the mid lane after playing all five roles in Victory Five, which is not a foreign concept to him as he has drafting Mid/Top in 2019.

HanYi , the team’s head coach, left the team on June 4, and was replaced by Assassin on June 5. Assassin was a proficient mid laner who played on teams like Alpha Esports and Legend Esport Gaming – rosters that consistently ranked in the upper middle echelons of their respective leagues. His expertise will particularly serve Mole well, as well as the rest of the players we will talk about.

Aliez, the team’s top laner since 2019, was replaced by Yu “Biubiu” Lei-Xin. He was formerly Suning’s top laner, and before joining Victory Five, he was moved to Suning-S to train in the academy roster.

Wei “Weiwei” Bo-Han joins Victory Five as one of their starting junglers. He also came from Suning as the substitute jungler before leaving for his new home. He stuck with both Suning-S and Suning for over two years.

Lee “Samd” Jae-hoon, Victory Five’s starting bot carry, also came from Suning-S. In fact, he left Suning-S together with Biubiu and joined Victory Five along with the other Suning transferees.

Last but definitely not the least, Victory Five obtained a new support in Guo “ppgod” Peng. He’s the star of Victory Five today, and is the main reason why Victory Five’s new roster is holding up so perfectly. He originated from FunPlus Phoenix and FunPlus Phoenix Blaze before leaving in May 26 for Victory Five.

The Results

Sure, Victory Five has an almost completely new roster, but how far has this new roster gone?

Aside from their current 5-1 series standing, their most recent win was a 2-0 clean sweep against Royal Never Give Up. That’s right—Victory Five actually beat one of the Top 8 teams from Spring, and especially at a point where RNG is actually performing better than the previous split!

Their only loss was against LGD Gaming, but even they had to work to make V5 get a 1-2 score. There were some hiccups against Bilibili Gaming and Oh My God, but they did take a 2-0 clean sweep against Dominus, Vici Gaming, and RNG as mentioned previously.

While those victories don’t sound as loud due to them matching against lower-skill teams, their win against RNG has to raise some possibilities once they match against the better teams in later weeks.

Samd has garnered the most MVP titles with four, followed by Mole taking the title three times. ppgod may have only garnered two MVP titles, but never underestimate the importance of the contributions from this support god. This man has consistently brought the entire team to the peak of their power and made sure his teammates can do contribute.

Concluding Thoughts

While a team like Top Esports climbed from the middle of the group, Victory Five had to do it from the lowest of lows. Stories like these are what make the League eSports scene one of the most remarkable out there.

League itself is a hard game with the amount of knowledge needed to understand to play, and to do it with the pressure of expectations and accolades is an experience like no other.

To see a team renew itself from the scraps that they were left with into a top-level team is a rare sight to see, and this is exactly why if you haven’t been catching up with Victory Five, now is a great time to start.

We are soon entering the 5th week of the LPL 2020 Summer split, and Victory Five will be facing FunPlus Phoenix, a team who is redeeming its glory of being the World Champion. With the following weeks also awaits the rest of the top teams for a taste of the new Victory Five. Time can only tell how they will fare, but we are positive that their success is not a fluke.

Is Victory Five one of your dark horses of the season? Are you now inspired to become a follower of the ppgod gang? Let us know!