Alright gamers, you know what time it is.

Group A- Gamers 2 Esports (G2), Machi Esports (Japanese team? Weebs lmao), Suning (Taiwan numba 1) and To Be Decided. My hope is for Team Liquid to win play ins and get into group as that would be hilarious. In that scenario, I am 100% certain G2 wins this group but G2 losing would this group would also be a very G2 move so who the fuck knows lmao!

Group B- DamWON Gaming (holy shit they're smurfing they are really fucking good idk how they possibly lose this tournament), JD Gaming (Kanavi is probably the best jungler in the world don't @ me you piss randoms), Rogue (garbage eu team they're doomed lmao), and TBA. I don't care too much about this group, although it'd be a pretty insane upset if anyone besides Damwon and JD won.

Group C- Fnatic (Pretty well balanced team, all the players are pretty good although Hyli is a dirty fucking inter but sometimes he 1v9s so ya know), Gen G (former world champion team blah blah blah, Ruler is the best adc in this tournament imo he's really insane. His micro and decision making are super good I stan him.), TSM (Bjergsen and Brokenblade are good. The rest of that team are inters.) and TBA.

Group D- DRX (this team has a lot of talent but is a walking choking hazard. Chovy, Deft, and Keria are super good. Top players in the roles they play for sure, but Doran and Pyosik are coin flippers and DRX macro seems horribad. @frantic aka deepest knowledge can elaborate provide further analysis), FlyQuest (dude Santorin is so fucking handsome I'd love to hang out with him and talk about league holy shit. But yeah this team is kinda just meh I don't see them doing much. If Wildturtle pops off it'd be pretty neat, but I'm highly doubtful), Top (no homo) Esports (Chinese team, they're very good Knight and Jackeylove are big smurfs), and TBA.

Overall I'm pretty excited for Worlds this year. As you can see I'm very biased but I've watched a fair amount of all the major regions so I think my takes are semi decent trolling aside. I'd love to hear from anyone whose watched the the regions I don't know jack shit about. If we garner enough interest we can do skin bets again.

 

I'm excited for some good series this worlds. I think the meta is in such a state where 3-0 are less likely to happen, but we'll see.

 

WHATS UP, FRANTIC HERE WITH BETTER ANALAYSIS

GROUP A:

G2 -

Gamers 2 Esports is such a grief team. They're like, both good and not good at the same time. I think G2 is pretty reliable in post-season though, and they definitely improved in leaps during playoffs. Hopefully the good G2 shows up, and not G2 vacation.

MACHI -

I do not watch minor regions like Japan, but they are probably bad.

SUNING -

Taiwan #1! Suning's in the upper half of the Chinese teams that were eligible this year (rip IG, FPX, and Virgin 5), but they're kind of interesting to watch. Suning plays fast League, but not at the blistering pace of DWG/DRX. It's more subdued and controlled, so they could be decent. I only really watched their last set of games, which were not very impressive, so I don't know much about them.

GROUP B:

DWG -

Damwon is good. Like, really really good. Their macro is extremely clean and the way they pressure the map using both objectives and presence to threaten lanes and create unfavorable situations is really fun to watch from a strategic perspective. DWG and TES are my favorites to win the entire tournament, so seeing them compete in this monster of a group is pretty fun.

JDG -

Kanavi's insane. Lvmao is insane. Zoom is good. Everyone else is kind of a dirty inter. JDG is a team that plays almost exclusively around their jungler, which is interesting to see in modern league, because they don't really draft around Kanavi, despite him being their primary win condition. JDG is a newer grade of Chinese team, where instead of just fighting nonstop, they take fights fairly intelligently, but still fight all the time. It's sort of like IG but with a way better jungler and worse solo laners.

RGE -

Rogue is going to get destroyed. Let's be perfectly honest here, most teams would get destroyed by Damwon and JDG, but that's purely because of the pace they force compared to the opposing team. Rogue is a team that loves to play around the early and mid game, which not many teams bother with in EU outside of FNC, but they fail to execute the mid-late game transition. The issue is, JDG and DWG both just end every game in 20 minutes so they can first pick Renekton on blue side and get away with it every single time.

GROUP C:

FNC -

Holy shit, Fnatic. I want to love you but I can't. Fnatic has so many problems that it's hard to explain them concisely, but the way their players think about the game is all so different from each other they can't really have a consistent decision making process. They should be playing like JDG and DWG, with mid/jungle synergy already pre-made from the original Mad Lions roster, but instead they play more like Liquid - lots of small 1v2 ganks but not much care for 2v2 and 3v3 skirmishes. On a strict level, I think this is the wrong way to play League in the modern era, but they're still mechanically really good, and when the players are on, they're able to just out-macro the enemy team and win alone.

GEN -

Gen G is the quintessential, classic Korean team. They will outscale and out-teamfight you in the late game. Their players are really strong mechanically, but their early and mid game transition phase is pretty poor. Ruler, however, is on a roll right now. He's the classic ADC player at this moment, and might literally 1v9 games on his own purely because of his mechanical strength.

TSM -

TSM should lose, but this year is so grief that I 100% predict TSM to make it out of this group as second seed. BB and Bjergsen are playing out of their minds, but Spica is going to get hard exposed by Selfmade and Clid. DL and Biofrost have some anti-synergy going on with the rest of the team as well, which leads TSM to look totally lost in the mid-game and win purely through lategame fighting. How the fuck are they going to do that against Gen G or Fnatic?

GROUP D:

DRX -

On paper, this team is a superteam. They are truly a fucking bizarre team. Jesus Christ, I can't tell if they're even a REAL team. All the problems that KT 2016 has are also held by DRX. The only difference is they have a much worse top and jungle, so their non-existent macro decisions are more heavily exposed by their terrible jungle/top duo. Keria's mechanical talent is often held back by Deft hard-choking and sprinting a little, and the team entirely relies on winning lane to win games. Their macro, as it were, is "win every fight then win the Baron flip", which isn't like, actually a macro decision. It's strictly a meme. DRX has macro, in so far as a solo queue team has macro. Chovy is a shining fucking star in this team, and he might be able to carry them to victory alongside Keria. The issue is that Pyosik is the ultimate flip jungler, and you can't flip objectives so consistently at the world stage. Favorites for Group D, alongside TES.

TES -

The favorites for the year. TES had an absolutely monstrous split, and while you could argue that it was just rough at the start due to Karsa and Knight needing time to build synergy, Jackeylove completely changed how people looked at this team. Much like iG, TES is a multi-threat team, with Knight Jackeylove and Karsa all able to carry alone. TES are the favorites for good reason, as the summer finals showed that this team finally stopped mentally imploding.

FQ -

They'll lose.

 

I was recently informed that Machi is a Taiwanese team not a Japanese one. Woops.

I fell asleep like an idiot right after making this thread so I didn't catch any of the games. I watched the TL vs Bad Lions vod and was somewhat disappointed. Broxah seems like a Lee 1 trick, and Mad Lions just seems like they keep getting worse and worse. I honestly thought Mad Lions would be a good team the previous LEC split.

 

Wanna hear a joke?

LGD

*wheeze*

 

Losing Games Daily

 

Leagues Greatest Disappointment.

Also saying BB isn't a flip is lulw. At least Doublelift is consistently mediocre and Bjergsen is consistently good.

 

True.

 

I always knew the European Union would collapse in my lifetime. Fucking bad lions lmao.

 

Alright lads. Time to lay them out.

 

Group Winners predictions:

Group A. G2
Group B. Damwon
Group C. Gen. G
Group D. Top Esports

Group A and B I think are pretty safe bets without seeing any games yet, the two more clear groups.

Group C more of a coinflip group. Lots of talent, depends who shows up, I'm giving it to Gen. G. for mid dif. LGD or Fnatic could take it easily aswell if they rock up. Mid-dif though will always curse fnatic atm. TSM I don't really have an idea how they will go, how can you predict with the clusterfuck that the LCS ended their split with, but I think it is safe to say while they might pick up some wins, overall they won't contest too much. I could see Gen. G running away. But other teams have the talent aswell, and fnatic get group buff in worlds.

Group D.

Hard to pick between Top Esports and DRX but ended up going Top Esports. So looking forward to Knight V Chovy.

 

GG EZ

 

Group A: G2, Suning
Group B: DWG, JDG
Group C: GenG, FNC
Group D: TES, FLY

I want to hate on fnatic especially after they got hard exposed in summer, but they always seem to turn it on with miracles out of nowhere in week 2 so....

and nothing against DRX, i’ve just been cheering for wildturtle since c9 dropped sneaky.


today’s games went mostly how i thought they would, but RGE did much better than i thought they would and FNC v TSM was a lot closer than the first 2min would have said otherwise.

 

G2 - Suning pretty fun game. Might want to watch that back if you missed it.

 

That G2 Suning game holy shit. No spoilers, but easily the best game of Worlds so far. The most entertaining at least.

 

I expected G2 to lose to Suning, as it's a BO1 game and it's G2. Seeing as they won that, I now expect them to throw a game to TL or Machi.