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Groups so far B, C and D

Admiral Howe·10/14/2017, 11:52:40 AM·4 votes·598 views

Holy throw, i wanted to wait until Group A was over with but i have a lot from the past few days that i want to talk about, Group by Group.

Group B. This group gave me mini heart attacks, Im so glad FNatic made it out, LongZhu looks untouchable, GAM proved Vietnam can hang when they suprised everyone by smashing in a standard comp ironically, and IMT just exploding with so much problems. Lets go over these teams.

LongZhu: Terrible beatings were taken in some games, they proved even when Pray and Gorilla are having a bad time, Cuzz, Khan and BDD can step up massively and slug it out for the win. No rookie mistakes and no bad communication and out of all 3 Korean teams, until we see Group A tomorrow, LongZhu looked the cleanest so far. I have high hopes for them going deeper into this tournament.

FNatic: I feel like they were sticking too hard to what got them to win 3rd place in EU, relying on Caps to outplay, relying on sOAZ to be a rock in top lane and Rekkles to receive the ganks bot to carry later on if needed. It got them to an 0-3 start but they switched it up, letting sOAZ play more champs with damage and set up than just to Shen and Cho, Caps on the safe heavy farm mid laners and Rekkles on Twitch. They definitely have problems but with the experience of Rekkles whos been to Semis before and sOAZ who has been in worlds since worlds was a thing, FNatic adapted, learned and came out looking so good to finish 4-4 and break into Quarter Finals, the only thing i have problems even now is Rekkles constantly trying to do too much and sOAZ not doing enough, we saw in the first heartbreaker to IMT, Rekkles trying too hard threw the game and sOAZ has dominated Flame before but on the Cho and Shen, he cant do much. I hope they find a good balance and improve before their Quarterfinals opponent is made clear.

GAM: They bothered me, not the "Only cheese" thing but the fact that they had the potential to win so hard but decided to take odd and dumb choices, the Heal Ignite Lulu into Rakan, Mordekaiser vs Khan and not really pairing NoWay with their new support they brought in to finish the group earlier. That stuff aside, i was really impressed with GIGABYTE Marines and how they were able to find weird ways to win, seeing Levi work in the jungle and display great pathing, seeing NoWay look like a monster at times and Archie trying his best to be a decent top laner then all of a sudden become a god on Urgot was fun.

IMT: This was a giant disappointment coming from a team that was debuting at worlds. They had one plan during the entirety of their group and it was "Try to win early and pray it doesnt go too late". They got a nice first week but like TSM (ill get to them), theyre way too one dimensional and they blow it huge. They had a chance to win again vs FNatic and Cody tries to insec and throws the game, Xmithie not taking Adaptive helm vs a Rageblade/Wits End Varus and opting for the Randuins when Frozen Heart wouldve been far better, and the foregoing of the Knights Vow, forcing Flame to build it on Cho was just bad. Pobelter just kind of broke down as groups went on as well and IMT showed they still have massive holes in their game.

Group C.

RNG: I loved everything i saw out of RNG, MLXG looks so much better than last year, Xiye seems like he's also massively improved to become a danger to other worlds teams and replacing the Koreans in Looper and Mata with Ming and LetMe just meant better and smoother communication. Then there was the sad game where 1907 Fenerbache didnt get the memo on who Uzi was and forced RNG into a protect the Uzi comp while the dude got to play Vayne. RNG was so clean and i loved this group.

SSG: Crown looks to be slowly getting back to that worlds grand finals form, CuVee is still probably the best top laner in this tournament, Ruler and CoreJJ still make mistakes, Ambition is still inconsistent but a huge and needed voice in shot calling and Haru needs to go away, i know he has some shining moments but a SSG without Ambition looks lost at points of the game. Thats one concern for me is Ambition is an exploitable point of Samsung when you consider junglers like Condi, Peanut and Blank, Mlxg, Cuzz, and even contractz who looked really decent when he played against Peanut. If Samsung doesnt have someone like Crown or CoreJJ step up with their shotcalling, Samsung is going nowhere near the Grand Finals this year.

G2: This was a heart breaker, i had high hopes for G2 but Samsung and RNG just figured them out too quickly. Nothing G2 threw at them really worked for long and it speaks to a weak point in Trick not really, and i stress that this is a very small but exploitable thing, but Trick performs better when the rest of G2 treats him like a regulator in the early game rather than having him play for vision. Its small but the difference is a G2 who is capable of taking down teams like SKT and WE and a G2 that just struggles. I hope they can evolve even more next year, i really like G2 as a unit in general and Mithy is my fav support player.

1907 Fenerbache: They "forced" RNG to play a comp that they have been playing forever. That alone makes me think they didnt do much research into their opponents. They had good theory crafting but failed at everything. Unless EDG decides to start closing games, itll be no surprise if Fenerbache is the only 0-6 team at worlds.

Group D.

WE: I missed this team, i really did, it brought back memories to hear WE games being cast. 957 looked really good on Cho'Gath, which i believe only Huni was the other top laner to say "Wow he made such a boring champ look clean". Creativity coming From 957 in pulling off the Cho so well. Xiye has looked so damn dangerous and clean on both Lucian and Syndra. Xiye and Mystic just blew my minds when they would go for hero plays or solo kills, something about WE to me seems so formulaic yet refreshing, they play the meta very well but dont really stray from it so that might be an area for other teams to test them because the rest of group D sure as hell didnt lol.

MSF: The little engine that could turns into a Murder Train. Power of Evil made Bjergsen and Maple look useless, Maxlore just turned into a jungler where i was thinking "This is the Maxlore from Roccat? Really? I dont believe it."He just showed up so much but i want to give props to a player who has been hit with a stigma of being too overaggressive, Alphari. Being able to connect with Maxlore to bully someone like Hauntzer and MMD and going toe to toe with 957 who was putting on a beast performance all during groups shows me a top laner who was just seen as possibly a liability moreso than the rest of Misfits ended up looking the most improved. HansSama and Ignar, lastly, looked so much better today when the wins mattered so much more than they did last week. Im so happy to see new players like this get a chance to shine so well in Worlds. Misfits fans should be really proud of these guys.

TSM: Problems galore. If you read my NA LCS rankings a lot, you were probably one of the people flaming me for putting Doublelift under carries like Sneaky. I'll say this, it was painful to watch Doublelift all through groups. His problems showed where if he is not on Tristanna, he sucks. This groups he even went for the play that Cody Sun went for that threw IMT's chance to win vs FNatic and it went the same, TSM gets almost wiped and it led to a snowball. Hauntzer and Biofrost really stepped up since MSI, the two spots that didnt were the AD Carry position and Svenskeren. One of Doublelift's strengths was he was an amazing laner who was ok at teamfighting, he showed he had hard times laning against every single bot lane in his group, his team fighting made my eyes bleed as he frontlined too often, getting killed 3 times and dying a fourth trying to hold off the 5 man push from Misfits on Twitch. Svenskeren had the same probelms from summer, he felt either non existent or got caught out too much and forced the pressure that TSM had down the toilet. Finally they were so one dimensional just like IMT, it was easy to predict them, which was another problem they had in Summer, it gets too easy to predict what they want. IMT focused on nothing but early game and TSM focused on nothing but late. It was all bad.

FW: They arent the Korean team killers from 2 years ago. If you told me these guys had a win over SKT last year, id think you were high if i didnt see worlds last year. Maple looked absolutely lost, Condi and Maxlore made Karsa look so weak by constantly tracking him and being in his face, something nobody but guys like Peanut or Reignover were able to do in years past. I think Flash Wolves have been passed by when it comes to skill at worlds. It wasnt good to see such a great team who were these god slayers just implode and play their hearts out just so they dont go 0-6.

Thats really it so far, i want to focus all my brain on Group A, the hype group, Im looking forward to seeing if EDG can close, If C9 can be the only NA team to make it out of groups again and if AHQ can pull another upset. Its an interesting group in the fact that C9 can go 0-3 tomorrow and still get out of groups if SKT goes 6-0. So maybe after all the "Group of life" wasnt D, its whatever group SKT is in since they can literally breathe life into a region desperate to make it out of groups by just being SKT.

This worlds has been seriously fun, Uzi on Vayne, Misfits going from underdogs to strong contenders (Give Maxlore his nuggets dammit he deserves them), WE being a presence at worlds after them being gone for so long, bringing back the nostalgia, TSM failing once again to continue the 3 year streak of them not making it out of groups. The last time TSM made it out of Groups, Najin White Shield ad LMQ were still around. Finally, seeing Rekkles along with FNatic avoid heartbreak and fight a herculean effort to claim the number 2 spot in Group B just made this worlds so fun to watch, i cant wait for tomorrow. Chime in and let me know what you guys thought was hype or crap in groups so far. [galio-happy]

10 Comments

Miror B10/14/2017, 12:00:59 PM2 votes

See, I personally kinda enjoy GAM even if they could have gotten more wins by not playing picks they had no idea how to use properly (the 0-8 mordy, the urgot that only got a win because the rest of the team carried). For the past few years or so, wild-card teams have gotten a bad rap as ones that have zero chance of getting any wins vs "bigger regions" and should be banned from any sort of competitive playing at all. Now that GAM has consistently showed they can hang with the western/chinese teams, we can potentially start to sift through the good/bad regions and proceed from there.

GeminiRune10/14/2017, 12:19:26 PM2 votes

Was expecting you to make a post about this following tomorrow. I'm glad you did it now.

Beyond everything that's going on in the NA bandwagon camp, yeah I agree this Worlds Group Stage has definitely lived up to the competitive standard. No team - even Koreans - have looked like this indestructible juggernaut of epic proportions. RNG was close but then they had to lose their 1 game. Even the underdogs and perceived weaker teams have written a good story on the end.

GAM's own meta nearly got them to playoffs. 1907 FB had some legit games despite the 0-6 record. While G2 just fell out of the opportunity to settle the tie, they along with the rest of Europe showed that they are freaking hungry with a side of schezuan sauce.

I'll slip this in though: numbers be damned for NA. Between IMT and TSM: of the 14 games they played, I feel not a single one was a decisive start to finish victory. One team I can let somewhat slide. The other I need more time to think on.

ValyrianBlade10/14/2017, 1:55:30 PM2 votes

I don't know if I would call Misfits or Fnatic contenders. They're quarterfinals fodder in my head still - maybe they'll prove otherwise but it seems unlikely.

Both teams made it in to quarters because NA imploded like they always do in week 2. Both teams depended on the weakest team in the group beating the NA team in week 2 in order to make a tiebreaker that let them throw. If IMT beat GAM or TSM beat FW (both completely out of the EU team's hands and realistic possibilities unlike say, arguing that beating Longzhu would mean a different result) then Fnatic and Misfits wouldn't have gotten through groups. These two teams played much better than NA (which at this point I guess really needs different coaches? It's unimaginable that teams can consistently go through week 1 of worlds looking like serious contenders for semifinals or even an outside shot at finals [with lucky draws] berths, to hands-down the worst team in their group and have it be the player's fault... I'm wondering if the coaches spend weeks preparing a single strategy that does well but then fail to adapt to anything different).

Anyways, my point with Fnatic and Misfits is that both teams got through a group with only 1 Korean/Chinese team. So their qualification path didn't require beating a top-tier team, it merely required the top team in the group performing as expected and the other 2 teams not having a good game. Quarters is a great result for these teams and I don't mean to detract from that, but neither seems likely to beat any of Longzhu / SKT / RNG / WE.

After Fnatic made their miracle run out of their group, my only hope for worlds was for WE and C9 to make it out, to net a 3/4 play-in teams making it to quarters (there was no reason to hope for 1907 since their group was hopeless). WE winning their group is icing on the cake. I'd like to see C9 pull it through for the play-ins group. The one thing they'd have over Misfits and Fnatic would be that they've beaten a Chinese team (as poor a week 1 as EDG had), but despite that I can't see them winning against any of the group winners in a best of 5... I'd give them near 0% odds against Longzhu and only slightly better against RNG, and maybe up to 15% against WE.

At this point, the only group-second-place team that stands a meaningful chance of an upset over a first seed is Samsung. They'll be hoping to avoid the other 2 Korean teams and get WE though - while everyone else will be hoping for all 3 Korean teams to end up on the same half of the draw (I'm assuming that's possible?) to give a non-Korean team (aka RNG, with an outside chance to WE) a spot in the finals (and only need to pull off one upset to steal the world's title).

We'll see. Like always though, the NA-hype from week 1 that got me interested in watching again turned in to utter embarrassment. I think play-ins was a great idea though, and hope it's what C9 needed. They've already sort of adapted from play-ins to worlds, so hopefully they can not capitulate in week 2.

MysterQ10/14/2017, 2:18:21 PM2 votes

You need to call out Bjerg too, he did nothing for over 2 hours.

Ailiekpai10/14/2017, 2:25:44 PM2 votes

Good analysis and I agree with you.