So having just finished watching all the TSM games at worlds, I want to reply to this with a breakdown assessment of each player on the team.
TL;DR - Sven is problematic, Bjerg needs to branch out, Hauntzer needs to not be forced into stuff he’s uncomfortable with, and Doublelift and Biofrost got shafted by their team at Worlds, but still played amazingly. Sven should probably go, Hauntzer needs to prove he deserves to stay, Bjerg needs to get his head out of his ass, and people need to stop hating on Doublelift and see where he is actually really strong.
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Hauntzer - In general, he had decent potential, but he definitely struggled at worlds this year, and I think this is partially from them prioritizing those late scaling champs for him. We get it, TSM, you like the late-game, Team fighting comps, and while these were meta for a long while this season, the other teams in Worlds intentionally shook those up. Hauntzer’s problem here is that he so often likes playing aggressively, and he’s good at it when he has a champion in lane that can do that, but how many times did they give him Cho’Gath? And how many times did the enemy teams punish them for that? When he was on Gnar, he was amazing, even when he was counterpicked into a Yasuo, he still performed exceptionally, but they kept going back to Cho, and he just seems especially clueless as to what to do on that champion with no mobility. (Did anyone else notice that team fight against Flash Wolves where TSM’s mid inhibitor turret is being seized for about 2 minutes and Hauntzer is busy taking Krug camp?)
Svenskeren - This is where I’m sad, because I really liked Sven as a jungler during the season. He was pro-active, consistent and a wonderful play-maker.
None of that was here during this Worlds season, and part of that was he seemed lost whenever enemies were invading him and counter-juggling him. He would play jarvan and get invaded by a Sej, and then walk away while the Sej ganked his bot lane. At the very least, when this happens, isn’t the first rule of the jungler to try and make a play somewhere else if you can’t help bot lane? But he wouldn’t even do that. He’d just go farm another camp and then back. This is Jarvan we’re talking about too. How do you play Jarvan as a jungler and make no attempt to gank or assist your team before level 5?
On top of that, watch his positioning in some of those games. There were seriously times I wanted to scream at the screen, “Why are you walking that way? I’m a Silver pleb and I know better than that.” Cases I’m referring to here are he just sees the enemy jungler gank his bot lane (red side) and then he goes and tries to farm the Gromp. WHAT! THE! HELL!? The unfortunate thing is at the beginning of Group Stages, he did perform very well, with that methodical pathing and watching for openings, but once his opponents were savvy to his strategy there, they tried to mess with it, and it effectively screwed with his head space and caused him to flounder. I hate to say it, but you just can’t have a player like that in a competitive environment. Hauntzer either needs to look into working on his ability to adjust to the game, or TSM need to remove him.
Bjergsen - Lots of mixed feelings here, so I’m going to say this right now that I’m a huge Bjergsen fan. But I will also say that much of the criticism of him is not entirely unwarranted. I think he did have a bad habit of going to comfort picks like Syndra and Ryze just because they were comfortable, but I think the big thing to remember about Bjerg is that what he does better than any other NA Mid laner is punish mistakes. Seriously watch some of his predictive Syndra stuns. It’s kind of amazing. But come Worlds with the best of the best, and suddenly those mistakes are going to be even fewer than there were in just NA pro-scene.
Now, when it came to the team fights, he still shined, as that is both his and TSM’s strength in the long run: Team Fighting. Unfortunately, again, in the later games, his opponents became savvy to this and prioritized him to get him shut down, and this is where there’s some problems. While I don’t think Bjerg has bad positioning, I think he is relying a lot on some protection from his tanks (Hauntzer and Sven) who again, were not providing that role for their carries. I’m not sure how to feel on this, because on the one hand, he should be able to count on them, but on the other, he shouldn’t be doing things too risky, and there were definitely a couple team fights I saw where the enemies engaged when he was isolated, sometimes with just Doublelift and Biofrost, and their tanks are off away from their carries. Whose fault is this situation, if the carries are trying to get their poke on the enemies, but to do that, they have to move away from their tanks because their tanks are not in the proper spot to do their job of protecting (and I realize tanks have more of a job than that, but that’s a side point here). I think it was Misfits who had a Gaga’s engage on those three at the river bush, with Hauntzer nearby, but still about 700 units away from his carries, and Sven was busying killing the scuttle crab. That kind of situation is just unacceptable, and Bjerg and Double know better, but I can’t put all the blame on them for that.
Doublelift and Biofrost - I’m going to lump these two together because a lot of what I have to say involves primarily the drafting for them and what they allow for their opponents, because here’s the big thing. TSM at Worlds this year almost NEVER made bans with these two in mind, and this is an ADC/Ardent Censor Meta over anything else. Why!? Why would you do that to your biggest lane of import? Doublelift and Biofrost are both really aggressive players, and while that can get them punished, it’s also really effective when it works, and they can make it work well, so they needed more support in the bans for this. Every time I saw them let Janna go through with bans, they prioritized Lulu over her, let the enemies get super safe Janna, and still tried to play super aggressive and lost. But they still didn’t really lose super hard, they just couldn’t do anything because THEY HAD NO SUPPORT! And this is support from say their jungler, or their roaming mid laner (Another notch against Bjerg, he does not roam well or often. He needs to fix that). And occasionally they tried to give them a passive, defensive lane with the intent to scale for late, but even then, they just got bullied hard. I honestly don’t know what the solution to this should be. Doublelift and Biofrost, I think, got pretty heavily handicapped by the shot-calling of bans, roams and TP’s from the rest of their team, and I honestly feel they made the best of what they were given. While people say Doublelift has that tendency to get caught out because he was too aggressive, or had bad positioning, he has corrected that IMMENSELY this season, and honestly at Worlds, I saw those problems coming out more from Hauntzer and Bjerg than I did from Doublelift. And then Biofrost. He likes making plays, so why do they keep giving him Lulu? She’s seriously one of the most passive supports I’ve seen. Even Janna has more potential to make some plays with her Ult. Lulu doesn’t have that. She has the polymorph, some harrass, and pretty much everything else is a “Please don’t die!” Button. Nami also a champion they gave to Biofrost who has similar issues. Why? I don’t care if Censer is strong, give him the damn Thresh or Alistar. Hell, I really wish he had tried learning the Taric. I think he would be phenomenal on that champion. Censer user, who’s also tanky and can set-up plays? It’s everything Bio should want.
Ugh, this was just so frustrating to watch. So much was squandered for comfort when they got to worlds, and I think they got complacent after their first 2 wins. The big thing is TSM is bad at adapting and changing their strategies, and when you’re playing against the best of the best, it’s going to be easy for opponents to spot the weaknesses in your armor when you do the same things over and over again. This is ultimately what TSM needs to look at for Season 8, so I hope they do good at modifying their training to illuminate this.
VS 
WORKS. They literally did ZERO things from that video. They didn't even TRY. It was literally a clinic on "this is how to break Chogath."
