Mush
2020-09-22 06:10:29
FPX, the winner of Worlds 2019.
On the other hand, given South Korea’s poor showings at the last two World Championships, the region had to leave behind T1 in a season that has been one of the closest in the past few years. I feel like the region in itself will wonder what it could do with its top four teams instead of just three. The best example of this being a positive change is, of course, the insanely stacked LPL. Even with four seeds they still had an underperforming— but still scary— Invictus Gaming and the reigning World Champions FPX in their back pocket. When it comes to the teams that qualified, Suning have some questions around them due to their success being very recent, but TES, JDG and LGD are all legitimate contenders to win the entire tournament, fielding both insanely talented players and some very experienced members. No easy group A few days ago the Worlds Group Draw happened and the first obvious upgrade to the tournament happened. What’s usually happened in the past few years of World Championships in League is that the Groups are extremely unbalanced. There has always been a group of death, a very weak group and usually the other two groups are fairly easy to predict, with two of the four teams being obviously better than the rest. This year, even before the play-in teams have joined the main group stage, we already have much better competition all-around.
G2, Europe's powerhouse.
Group A is the weakest of the bunch with both G2 and Suning being heavy favourites against Machi and whatever team qualifies from play-ins— keeping in mind that MAD Lions and LGD can’t be placed in this group, it’s safe to assume that any other team poses little risk. Group B is one of the two groups of death. Headlined by DWG and JDG, the first seed from LCK and second from LPL, it seems like an impossible task for Rogue and whichever team joins the group from play-ins. Group D looks essentially as grim for Flyquest, who would need to place higher than TES, China’s first seed and DRX, Korea’s second seed. Adding to this, even another strong team like Europe’s MAD Lions could be placed into the group after play-ins. To cap it all off, we have Group C which, at first sight, doesn’t look easy for either Fnatic or TSM who have to go against Gen.g, LCK’s Third Seed, but it will almost surely get much worse. Since the other three groups all have Chinese seeds, LGD will automatically be placed in C if they make it out of play-ins. Fnatic have frequently been able to construct some miracles runs to eliminate strong teams during the group stages, and it seems like they’ll need to attempt another one here. This simple seeding modification gave us three groups that are overall much stronger than the ones we’ve had in previous years, and even Group A might surprise us due to the nature of the BO1 format and G2’s notably inconsistent regular season in LEC.