Impact Players: Mithy

Leading up to the 2015 World Championship Semifinals, we'll be discussing four of the top impact players left in the tournament -- one from each team.

• Position: Support
• Team: Origen
• KDA: 2.97
• Origen wards per game: 146.9 (2nd to Worlds teams)
• Origen wards killed per game: 46.8 (2nd of Worlds teams)
• Assists: 82 (6th of Worlds players)
• Kill participation: 74%

Champions Played: Thresh (3x), Tahm Kench (2x), Annie (1x), Morgana (1x), Alistar (1x), Braum (1x), Kennen (1x)

Mithy has always had the reputation, among fans and analysts, of being a good but not world-class support. I think it's safe to say that perception of Mithy is changing as a result of his 2015 World Championship performance.

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It's unfair to put Lemondogs' Season 3 Worlds collapse entirely on him, but going into the Season 3 World Championship, many thought Lemondogs would be a dark horse to take their Group in the tournament.

Given that history, it's not fair to say we expected Mithy to struggle, but we certainly didn't expect anything like this. Mithy first showed signs of greatness in the Group Stage on aggressive supports like Annie and Braum, but has shown his versatility and utility throughout the tournament -- both in the number of champions he's played and for his part in Origen's excellent late-game shotcalling, which has been praised by other teams.

Though we put his stats here, they don't really encapsulate everything that Mithy does for his team. Mithy has been the primary playmaker for the team, both offensively and defensively. On champions such as Tahm Kench and Morgana, he's protected Origen ADC Niels in the early-game and enabled his aggressive frontline playstyle in the mid- and late-game. On initiators such as Annie and Braum, he's found key engages to lead his team to victory. Finally, on versatile champions such as Alistar and Thresh, he's known when to go into a fight and cause havoc in enemy front and back lines, and to protect his own carries from harm.

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Most of all, Mithy has been the escape pod for squishies in danger. Mithy half-jokingly referred to himself as a lantern bot -- frequently waiting on the outside of engagements to throw a timely Dark Passage to turn the tide of a fight, or a fast Devour to gulp Niels out of trouble.

Origen isn't the best warding team at Worlds (their high ward totals partially a result from their long avg. game time), but Mithy's warding has been a huge reason for his team's success, often controlling vision around major objectives for minutes at a time, zoning out enemies and clearing out opponents' vision.

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For Origen to defeat SKTelecom, Mithy will have to do all he has done and more. His vision control skills will be put to the test against what has been the best vision-control team in the world this year. Even more than his playmaking skills, his macro skills will need to be the shining star to guide Origen through to the Finals.

To find out if Mithy and Origen can defeat SKTelecom, watch their match on Saturday October 24, 2015 at 16:30 European Time or 7:30 AM Pacific Time.

To read about the other three impact players going into the Worlds 2015 Semifinals, check out these articles on MaRin, Febiven, and Smeb.

Frank Fields is a Senior Editor for Riot Games Esports Web Content team. Talk to him on Twitter about ordered lists, where your comments will be assimilated into the Matrix. You can also find him in Solo Queue in the Diamond 5 retirement home.