On League of Legends, the finals of the MSI 2022 took place on Sunday, May 29. The Chinese champions, RNG, faced off against T1, the team led by veteran Faker. Faker’s fans were left pulling their hair out after the series: Why on earth did they let the Chinese play Gwen 3 times?
That’s why anyone can chime in on LoL: In football, there are millions of hobby coaches who tell the national coach from the bar, beer in hand, who he should field instead of the losers he curiously lets play.
In League of Legends, it’s similar: Here, professional teams go through a complicated “pick-and-ban” phase before each match, where they determine which champions they will use and which heroes their opponents must not play.
The draft often provides material for intense discussions after a match.
“Faker is eternal!”
What this match was about: On Sunday morning, the finals of the international tournament MSI 2022 took place in Busan:
- For South Korea, T1 competed – a legendary team with midlaner Faker, who is revered as a national treasure. T1 had buried the hopes of Europe’s team, G2, the previous Saturday morning. It was a slaughter.
- For China, Royal Never Give Up was in it. This is a team that doesn’t have a standout star: perhaps botlaner GALA or midlaner Xiaohu. RNG didn’t play in Busan, but from home in Shanghai. There had been trouble before.
“Form is temporary – Faker is eternal” – A great play by Faker leaves the casters astounded:
“Blue team” wins every match – Draft extremely important
What was the outcome of the match? The series was a complete back-and-forth. The teams each won their matches clearly on the “blue” side: The “blue” team gets to choose their champions first, while the red team bans first.
In match 5, the Chinese ultimately secured a clear victory on the blue side in 25 minutes and won the series 3-2.
There was no real jubilation; the winners played “at home”:
RNG’s top-laner wins matches when Bin gets his Gwen
What was the decisive factor? In all 3 victories of his team, the 19-year-old top-laner Bin at RNG was allowed to play with the hero Gwen, and he achieved strong stats with her:
- Game 1: 13-0-3
- Game 3: 4-2-5
- Game 5: 3-0-5
The “weakness Bin” decides the tournament
This is being discussed: On reddit, there is a general consensus that RNG’s superior draft phase decided the tournament.
T1 seemed somewhat clueless in the draft; they continually overlooked banning Gwen, giving Bin the opportunity to pick his favorite hero.
- One user says: “I think T1 overthought everything. RNG just played the meta and didn’t try to pull off any crazy stuff – their consistency won them the title.”
- Just the idea of T1 relying on a bot lane of Jhin/Yuumi in match 5 is criticized. It had nothing more to provide for T1 in match 5.
- Another says: “Maybe T1 was too arrogant to consider that Gwen secures RNG’s weakest link. T1 only won the last game in the Rumble Stage because they exploited Bin’s weakness – did the analysts switch off their brains?”
In the last game of RNG’s Rumble Stage against T1, which T1 won, Bin played Gangplank with 1-4-6 and proved to be the Achilles’ heel of his team.
Clearly, users on reddit seem to believe that top-laner Bin would actually have been RNG’s weakness but felt so comfortable with the hero Gwen that he became the jewel of the team.
Ultimately, however, the MVP of the finals was the jungler of RNG, Wei, who also had excellent stats in his team’s victories: 2-3-3 (Viego), 8-0-7 (Viego), 2-1-11 (Lee Sin). Although there are also voices on Twitter who consider midlaner Xiaohu as the MVP of the finals.
The MSI tournament was played with patch 12.8, thus with a different state than on the live servers. Currently, the balance in LoL looks completely different again, but one champ remains a concern:
A mage is currently the worst champion in LoL by far – why is Ryze so bad?
