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6 thoughts going into Groups Round 2
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If you are surprised by the fact that the LPL and the LCK are dominating Worlds so far, then I have stuff I’d like to sell you. If you are surprised that the LCS is *not* doing well, then all I have to say is thank you for naivete and thank you for believing in the teams and I’ll see you next year after we spend nine months carving little bearings of hope into our hearts again. Here’s 6 thoughts ahead of the second round robin!
**1. “This is our year.”**
Upon landing in Shanghai, every team and every player was isolated to a hotel room for 14 days. There, I imagine, many of them grew restless as they counted away the days. There -- before any of the games started -- perhaps they let their minds wander into an imagined future where they would be celebrating victories with their teammates. Maybe, even, they dared to imagine lifting the Summoner’s Cup. The more pessimistic ones, though, the ones who have lost at this stage over and over, maybe imagined the exact scenario that unfolded in front of us over the weekend. Every year I drum up a little hype for NA teams heading into Worlds in part because it’s my job and in my part for my own sanity -- what use is there in pounding the hammer on the same nail that everyone else is pounding? If I’m going to emotionally invest in a region, then I should hope for the best. I never really understand the comments from non-LCS fans that say, “What did you expect? I told you NA sucked!” Are we supposed to relentlessly flame NA before every international event, too? What do you get for being “right?” Having posted a 2-7 clip over the first round robin, it’s pretty clearly been an awful showing for the LCS, and it’s pretty likely to not get much better. You can crunch the numbers all you want, but with only a single off day, it’s not like the teams are going to drastically improve. We are what we are. There are three games remaining for each team, and I would tell you it’s not over yet, because it isn’t. But you’ve heard that one before, and you’ve been here before, and you can imagine what comes next.
**2. G2 taketh, G2 giveth**
The one silver lining for NA is that Team Liquid managed to close out the round robin with an impressive victory over G2. I think there can be this weird [wrong] perception among fans that winning automatically means you “did something” and losing means you “did nothing,” but TL very clearly did something in the win over G2 as opposed to keeling over and dying. Which is to say they had a plan from their draft and that they had players willing to make aggressively uncertain plays. You saw CoreJJ die a few times on overextensions despite his otherwise brilliant game, and you saw Tactical make a super aggressive Flash forward in bot lane in a late game fight that ended up netting a couple extra kills for Jensen. That’s exactly what you want to see as a fan -- even if it doesn’t work out -- and it’s the exact thing that has separated the top teams from the bottom teams in recent years. Sometimes, as in the case with TSM against LGD, you have the right idea but you just end up missing skillshots. And sometimes, as in the case with G2 against TL, you have the right idea and the right execution but you are simply too far behind. The TL win blows the group wide open and now it kind of feels like anything can happen, even if G2 still feels like the favorite. G2 gets a pass because they seem to be the ones who dictate their own fate -- win or lose -- but if they end up dictating even two more losses (which wouldn’t be surprising), they might find themselves eliminated. This makes them simultaneously one of the most entertaining and most frustrating teams in the World to watch, but they also have a penchant for stepping up when it matters, and it’s about to matter a lot.
**3. The Big Looming Wall: TES and DWG**
Two teams remain undefeated through the first round robin, and to nobody’s surprise, they are the #1 seeds from the LPL and the LCK. Those of you who tried to game the Pick’Em (like me) by placing random upsets here or there should have simply trusted Korea and China to crush the Group Stage. Both teams have looked dominant thus far to the point where I feel like if we somehow don’t get a Bo5 between them we will have been robbed of a great joy. One thing that has really stood out so far this tournament is that the best teams are able to generate massive gold leads even without getting the early kills (and sometimes being behind in kills, even) -- there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding from some of the weaker teams on how to play the map early. It feels like the best teams are able to maximize early farm and turret plates -- more surefire ways to get gold -- than relying on ganks and the like. TES’ game against DRX in particular is a good one to study because they’re actually at a gold deficit for a large chunk of the game but it doesn’t even once feel like they’re not in control -- it’s a really neat example of what playing to the win conditions of the draft can look like. I remember at one point the gold was essentially even and one of the casters said the game was all-but-won for TES, which was entirely true but also a strange thing to believe from an even gold state. I don’t expect TES to drop a single game in Group D, and while DWG is the favorite to do the same to Group B, the rematch against JDG could prove to be the best game of the tournament so far.
**4. The Gap**
The LEC, LCK, and LPL are indisputably the three best leagues in the world, and right now 9 out of the 10 teams from those regions are posting winning records in the Group Stage. The lone exception is Rogue, who only lost to JDG and DWG, who are both considered to be in Top 3 teams in the world. It is absolutely a fun Group Stage if you are a fan of one of those regions and it is absolutely miserable otherwise -- the rest of the teams are a combined 3-15, which means both TES and DWG have as many wins as those regions combined. That’s, as the kids say, a yikes from me. It makes me wonder about whether or not the gap will ever be closed, and when you think about the way resources are divided up, it’ll probably never really close. Those are the regions that have the biggest bases with the biggest fan investment and large pockets to boot -- you can’t have just one or another to consistently compete. You need it all. But I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing or a reason to completely ignore everyone else. League of Legends is a beautiful game because it *can* run on a toaster, and so long as you have five toasters and five people, you can form a team. And if you can form a team and load onto the Rift -- nothing else really matters. It doesn’t matter if TES has a giant megaplex as a training ground, and it doesn’t matter if DWG has won 20 games in a row. It doesn’t matter if Korean kids have been playing together at PC Bangs since they were 10. None of that changes the fact that League of Legends always starts at 0 kills to 0 kills. There *is* a gap, and it is clearly massive, but the thing about Worlds is that we can always find teams and players who will look down, see all the failed attempts and still, despite it all, try to jump across.
**5. Hanging On**
FlyQuest and Rogue are in very similar positions in that both are 1-2 in Groups where they are expected to be the third best team (at best). It is lucky in the sense that they won’t receive the kind of flame that, say, TSM is facing, but it is unlucky in the sense that they aren’t likely to escape the Group Stage. Both teams have put up mostly admirable performances thus far, and FlyQuest especially had a really great shot at taking down DRX if they’d caught a lucky break here or there (which they needed since DRX was clearly the more skilled team). That’s the nature of Worlds, though -- you spend all year preparing and practicing and then you qualify and everything is great until you see what group you land in. Part of me says that if you can’t beat X or Y team, then you aren’t going to win Worlds anyway, and if you don’t win then what really is the point of making it far? But the other part of me says that teams absolutely improve as the event progresses, and if you are a team with a ton of potential, maybe being capped on time by a tough early group really is just bad luck. I’m not saying that’s definitively the case or even likely the case for either of these teams, but it feels a little unfair (not that it’s wrong or should be changed) for them to run into such massive walls now. I hope they can prove me wrong in the second round robin to spice up the group a little bit, but even if they don’t, well, that’s really just tough luck. The only way to avoid this is to enter Worlds next year as a team where there are no bad draws for you, because *you* yourself are the bad draw for others.
**6. What is there to say?**
There is a joke or a meme -- I don’t know what to call it but it is needlessly cruel -- where people point out how Doublelift and Bjergsen have made similar tweets every year they’ve been knocked out of Worlds. For Doublelift, it is a simple apology to his fans, and even that now is being mocked. What, exactly, is he supposed to say otherwise? People want him to speak with his actions, but isn’t that what he literally tries every year? I don’t think anyone wants to end the string of failure and disappointment more than he does, and there should be no doubt he’s sticking around because he wants to rewrite his legacy. He could quit right now and become one of the most popular streamers -- as could Bjergsen -- and no one would really bat an eye at the decision from a financial standpoint (let alone a mental health/stress standpoint). It’s crazy to me that he’s not even allowed to apologize for failing without facing scrutiny. Y’all riding him for that need to reevaluate your levels of empathy. From a gameplay perspective, one thing I’ve appreciated about this TSM roster is that they *are* trying to make plays on the map. They are just either getting pulled apart on the map in a way that is slightly too fast for them, as was the case against Fnatic, or they are losing out on individual mechanics in fights, as was the case against LGD. They aren’t losing like the TSM of a few years ago -- the one that felt like it wasn’t willing to make any sort of proactive plays. Maybe one day TSM will be more than just a chant -- a literal meme -- internationally, but it seems this will not be the year. It’s true we will likely see the same tweets from their stars, but, really, what else is there to say?
