Kabum single handedly made last year's Worlds awesome

 

inb4 FreeSM actually turns into wtfSM and gets out of groups.

 

Group stages were pretty exciting. You had cool moments like the aforementioned Kabum upset, FNC-OMG failed backdoor, ahq forcing a tiebreak with EDG in front of their home crowd, Alliance perfect gaming Najin, and SK beating TSM to force them to play SSW.

The bracket stages were generally uninteresting, I'll admit, but i thought the exceptions were the games with Chinese teams. OMG 3-0ing NJWS was great (No one expected it). SHRC 3-2 against their rivals EDG and OMG was also great (Uzi run to second finals). The end outcome was expected (SSW dominating), but there were legitimately cool moments in both group and brackets.

 

This is a spoiler to the Fnatic vs IG match

Spoiler

Fnatic laying the beatdown. Real talk, Fnatic had a semi-shaky early game, and then almost lost baron, they should have let Huni or Yellowstar stand forward and tank the Ashe arrow so there was no possibility of a steal.

Edit: And now the C9 AHQ match.

Spoiler

We need a Mastermind Hai skin. My god that was beautiful. C9 to make it to the next round.

 

So hyped right now, need classes to end so I can watch the games!!

 

The faithful shall be rewarded! Dlift put on a hell of a show. Very close game.

 

Dlift got carried by his team. He didn't pull off anything except making the support go back, once, without being set up for it.

CLG in general is looking pretty weak. They took 42 minutes to beat the wildcard team from a weak region, and were on the path to losing until Flash Wolves' ADC mispositioned and got caught out. Considering Flash Wolves' general youth as a team and comparable Pro experience, the fact that CLG was struggling to beat them is not at all impressive.

After that, of course, it was over. Game was enjoyable.

Only thing CLG proved is that they can beat a team everyone else at worlds can beat too. Koo is going to stomp on them. Which will really show how weak they are, considering Koo is the only team in their group comparable to other top tier teams.

 

...

[IMGUR]mItNRmv[/IMGUR]

 

Honestly Koo should be disqualified for banning Morde against Brazil, pretty racist.

 

It felt like every team fight, pobelter/dlift/xmithie just watched Zion and Aphro engage and die, while they danced around in the back not even autoing turrets.

Then Pobelter started to take part in team fights too, and things started getting better.

Then Doublelift remembered he was a late game jinx, and started actually shooting people and chasing them down. That last fight in the base after CLG lost 2, dlift completely outplayed 2 full health FWs and melted both of them.


This was pretty much the archetypical clg game. I don't know if its a sign theyre bad and are gonna lose to everyone else, or just this is how they like to win games.

 

Basically Yeeeeeeee.

 

Inc TSM fan tears tomorrow.

 

Thoughts on games, now that the first day is over.

FNC vs. IG
Well, that wasn't good for my picks. I think FNC looked strong this game and seem to live up to the hype. iG looked uncharacteristic, but maybe they're just on their inconsistent phase again. Or maybe Fnatic is categorically better. Props to Fnatic for the clean win.

C9 vs. ahq
What a disappointment. This was a massacre. I don't think this is indicative of ahq's talent level, because that Rengar pick was atrocious and the match was way too lopsided. There were rumors of bad scrims and stuff, and it looks like there might be truth there. C9 looked good, and Hai played a meta jungler! That's a positive trend for C9. We'll see how both these teams do against FNC and iG, because those are the matches that matter the most in terms of coming out of groups.

SKT vs H2K
Snorefest. Some say Ryu is still dying.

EDG vs. BKT
EDG seems to be engaging in a time trial challenge against these shitty Wildcard teams. 22 minutes vs. Besiktas and 20 minutes vs. BKT. There were some utterly disrespectful moments in this (in terms of play). Fun to watch someone get utterly smashed, but not very good match in terms of narrative or play.

CLG vs. FW
CLG looked shaky in their first game. I think there was added tilt in the fact that one of their moves was thwarted by a glitchy ward. They were informed of it in the middle of the game, and it was probably a WTF moment. But shaky play is still shaky play. They absolutely fucked up their execution of the three top lane ganks. I don't know who the fuck would look at Doublelift in this game and would say he did nothing. He was so ahead of his lane opponent and was amazing in positioning. There were fights where Maple was almost on top of him and he was able to clutch out an escape. CLG showed resolve in their comeback victory. However, if they fall behind early vs. teams like KOO, they will be exposed.

PG vs. KOO
PG shows off their problems here. They couldn't capitalize on their early lead, and you can't afford to draft a scaling comp and rely on that against a good late game team like KOO. They were lucky enough to get those early kills. Doesn't look good for them if they can't demonstrate an ability to extend and win off a early game tempo/kill lead.

Anyways, this is still the first day. I'm not counting anyone out yet (except BKT/PG maybe). I expect some of these players have first day nerves and will play more confidently and more true to their talent level going forward. Last year at worlds, LMQ was 2-0 in Day 1 and ended up 2-4 at the end of group stage.

Edit: Oh, and every single blue side team (except PG, those combo breakers) won today. I'm guessing that's the case because the diverse picks in the meta make the first pick/pseudo-ban really important, but we'll have to see.

 

My forreal analysis of CLG-YFW - Spoilers yo:

CLG's early game was alright until Zion started dying to ganks. He played well, stayed dominant in lane, stayed ahead in CS, but xmithie's ganks didn't net anything and when Zion was ganked he wasn't taking anything elsewhere on the map.

Pob and Rush Hour had great showings in lane, but they were pretty much expected to be ahead. My boy bullied Maple a lot, but didn't manage to get a substantial cs lead. Disappointing. Doublelift didn't win the lane, but got a massive cs lead that catapulted him into the rest of the game.

Early fights were baaaaaad. CLG split up awkwardly, mostly due to very good play on the part of Maple, who dived the backline with Ekko, kept Pob and Doublelift from dealing damage and locked them down with his Zhonya's and burst damage, then ulted out to safety. Zion and Afromoo in the front line were then just taken apart by the rest of the team. Very good play by Maple, poor positioning and initiation by CLG.

Most important part was that though they lost fights over and over... but they didn't fall far behind. They kept up in gold, they rarely lost their carries, and they had some good rotations for objectives despite repeatedly poor teamfights.

And this ultimately paid off big - CLG's patience, their ability to keep it together and not fall apart, not to snowball behind, allowed them to win. Combined with their extremely powerful pick/ban (Lulu, Jinx, Darius) allowed them to capitalize on the slips YFW made in the late game and drive it home. They saw an inch and took a mile. Darius pulls, Lulu speed-ups, and Elise cocoons managed to hold YFW in place while Doublelift did his work and win them the game after a long decline.

Overall assessment: Poor jungling and fighting in the early game, poor positioning and intiation in the midgame, but their superior laning and ability to not go on tilt, along with their strong comp, let them wait out YFW until they slipped and then drove the win home. Hopefully their early jungling and teamfights will be superior, because not all teams will allow a team to come back like this, but it shows they have good coordination and can hold together when behind. It won't work against the top teams at Worlds, but if they can fix their other problems its a very good sign.

Regardless of the shit WalkingDisaster spewed... Doublelift was insane. Legitimately Uzi, Deft tier. Possibly the best mechanics I've ever seen out of him. I haven't seen many adc's able to use the Lulu speedup and Jinx passive so perfectly. A bit better positioning by his team in the midgame fights to let him actually be dealing damage and he may be one of the star players at Worlds, a sentence I didn't expect to write this year.