| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||
| It's just impossible not to talk about Ruler. Despite playing since 2016 the man is currently playing at peak level. He is also THE frontrunner in the coversation about best player in the world at the moment. His move away from Gen.G to JDG has massively paid off. After winning MSI earlier this year he has become the second player (after Deft) to win LCK, LPL, MSI and Worlds. And if Ruler continues his insane form, he might as well be part of the team that fulfils the first 'Golden Road' in LoL history. |
It's hard to believe Bin is hardly only 21. Out of nowhere the rookie toplaner shooked the whole world by getting the first ever pentakill in a Worlds FINAL in 2020. The years after were turbulent, winning LPL and MSI with RNG, getting traded to BLG after one split, and not making Worlds again. For 2023 BLG built a roster around Bin, and he has been able to shine again. Although he has expanded his champion pool, Bin remains a carry toplaner to the bone and is ready to bring picks like  Gwen and Fiora to the Worlds stage. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Scout is one of THE players to watch coming into Worlds. After 7 succesful years with EDG, the 2021 Finals MVP joined LNG for 2023. He quickly formed a great partnership with Tarzan and become the driving force of the new roster. Scout had an insanely good performance all year long. He was awarded LPL MVP of both spring AND summer as he picked up 31(!) Man of the Match awards across both splits. It's an understatement Scout is in the form of his life, and now is the perfect time to show the whole world. | Most will be familiar with Crisp, 2019 world champion with FPX. He has been one of the best mechanical supports in the LPL and beyond ever since. Despite the tumultuous time on BLG in 2022, Crisp kept up a high level which earned him a spot on WBG's superteam. Especially in summer he has really been a backbone of the team together with Xiaohu to carry them to Worlds. He even picked up 7 MotM awards last split, rather uncommon for a support. But Crisp always catches the eye with his play. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| G2's Mikyx is the first Western player to pop up in player rankings heading into Worlds. And rightfully! Mikyx had a fantastic year, earning himself LEC MVP alongside the domestic 3 trophies with G2. Just as one may have expected his career to be in its twilight, joining XL and plagued by wrist injuries, he had one of his best ever years upon returning to G2. A class support with many unique picks and tons of experience. Europe's finest. |
It says a lot about Razork how he didn't fold after Fnatic's desastrous winter and spring splist. The Spaniard came into summer with renewed confidence and carried his team across the finish line. What distinguishes Razork from other junglers is his willingless to pick up new champions, including lots of carry junglers. In summer he played Kindred, Viego, Taliyah and even Karthus to a great level. His great form came right in time for his second world championship. |
Even though he's never been considered a true elite midlaner, one can't deny Nisqy has put lots of effort into becoming the best possible version of himself. He's mostly known as a facilitator, but at the start of the year Nisqy surprised with his improved laning and carry play. At the end of the year it was also him carrying MAD even when things were hard. After the disaster of last year, hopefully Nisqy and the MAD Lions can finally shut up the doubters with a good run at Worlds. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Palafox, aka 'Palafaker' has proven that LCS can do just fine with homegrown talent over imports. Funnily enough Palafox has literally improved his results year after year. From climbing the ranks of academy to finishing at the bottom of LCS with FlyQuest to ending mid table with CLG and finally winning LCS last split. Palafox played a great spit, both in stats as in terms of eye-test. But surprisingly he was left out of all-pro teams. Though none of it matters as he's the one attendin his first Worlds as NA's 1st seed. | Berserker famously was part of T1 Challengers. If not for Gumayusi, he might as well have started for T1's main roster one day. So he went abroad, to great success. 2 LCS titles in 2 years with C9 as he's widely considered the best ADC in North-America. He was also MVP of the league in spring and made 1st or 2nd all-pro team in every split so far. If there's any player who can hold up against the best, it'll be Berserker. And still only 20 years old. His future looks bright. |
Just one year ago, who would've guessed Pyosik would get to call himself world champion? Even better, now he and Deft are the only 22 DRX members making it back to Worlds. Pyosik's just such a colorful persona. From being a Kindred OTP streamer, to being a wildly inconsistent LCK talent, to iconic celebrations and dances while winning Worlds and joining Team Liquid. TL and Pyosik fell flat in spring, but the jungler came through in summer with a much better performance. And we've all seen what his skill ceiling looks like. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ONES TO WATCH | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In addition to hosting all the biggest superstars in the scene, Worlds is the perfect place to discover up-and-coming talent. So here is an additional highlight of 4 players, 1 for every major region, who will be playing their very first world championship. Remember their names. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||
| At just 17 years old Peyz is set to be a next-generation superstar, although he probably already is. In his first year since joining from academy, he won LCK spring and summer and played at MSI. All while showing a very high individual level already. Which resulted in several individual awards such as 2nd & 3rd all-pro team awards (in a league with Viper, Deft, Guma...), spring Finals MVP and Rookie of the Year. That's more than most players win in an entire career. Gen.G legend Ruler won Worlds at 18. Can Peyz do even better? |
Zika made his LPL debut on IG in 2022. He had to fill the shoes of none other than TheShy. And funnily enough he's a similar player. Most played champions that year were Gwen, Jax and Camille. Even 5 games on Fiora and Riven each! IG was a bottom tier team that year, but during last offseason Zika was allegedly the most expensive transfer as he joined LNG. There he needed more time to find his footing, as the team did not spend many resources towards toplane. But by the end of summer, Zika had grown into a versatile player who regularly plays weakside, but still more than capable to pull out the carries. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Yike was presented the impossible task to replace LEC legend Jankos on G2. But the rookie did it with verve anyway. Just 2 years ago Yike was playing in LFL's 2nd divison, now he has won multiple LEC trophies, attended MSI and is now heading to Worlds. All we could wish for is to see him continue his great form at Worlds and finish his near perfect year in beauty. LEC's rookie of the year already impressed the international community at MSI, so not much doubt he'll do just fine at Worlds. Yike plays almost everything ranging from Kha'Zix to Maokai, including some uncommon picks like Lillia and Bel'Veth. Whatever the meta, G2 can rely on him. |
APA (Always Plan Ahead) is more proof that NA talent should get more chances to prove themselves in LCS. He had been making a name for himself for a few years, both through soloqueue as Aurelion Sol main and across multiple amateur and collegiate teams. Yet it was only until he reached 1st place in NA Champions Queue during Worlds 2022 that Team Liquid signed him for their challenger team. In those few months APA impressed, which earned him a chance to play in LCS summer over Haeri. APA made a stellar debut, in particular with his pocket Ziggs pick and never left the starting lineup. In the span of 3-4 months, he went from NACL to Worlds main stage. APA's been living a fairytale. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Fantasy Tournament Tips & Tricks |
|
| Assign the right captain. Captains will earn you 1.5x more points across the board, so do a little research once you've assembled your team to figure out which player should be made captain. In general, bot laners followed by top and midlaners tend to make great captains, as they tend to garner the most kills and creep score across the games. Supports, on the other hand, may be a bigger gamble because they are comparatively weaker which could spell dying a lot. |
|
| Choose teams that you predict will do well. Sounds obvious, but basically, you'll earn points if your fantasy players' teams win. Moreover, if your fantasy player is on a team that keeps losing, they'll probably not be able to deliver on fantastic stats. It's a lot harder to not die when your whole team is losing inhibitors by the 15th minute mark. There are players that tend to do well even on underperforming teams, but make sure to have at least a few players on your roster that are on winning teams. |
|
| If you do end up in a situation where you've selected and captained a player that, against all odds, is now eliminated from the tournament, you can always sell them. You have one sell token per stage, so this is a precious resource and you should treat it this way though. Beware that this is a knockout tournament, you could be in a situation where several of your players have been eliminated, so let your sell token count! |
|
| Invest more $$ on bot lane and top or midlane. As mentioned previously, these are the key roles when it comes to KDA. You won't be able to purchase five $200+ cost players, so focus your funds on bot lane > .... > supports. While supports can have great KDAs, and often do, most of the supports cost less than $200 and are actually fantastic. This is one category where it's totally okay to go low and not feel like you're missing out at all. |
| Conclusion |
That wraps up the Swiss stage preview! Worlds brings about lots of teams and players casual viewers may be unfamiliar with, but we hope this article helped you with that! Likewise it's the perfect time to get started with your Fantasy team, which you can create here if you haven't already. Games only start on Thursday so you still have some time left. It's gonna be an exciting 10 days of peak League of Legends action between the Worlds' best, so make sure to enjoy the show!
Credits go to LoL.fandom Wiki for their collection of player portraits, up-to-date statistics, overviews and all-around fantastic work documenting LoL esports.
Thanks to @ Jovy for the signature!
You need to log in before commenting.
Hello all! Welcome to the Worlds Main Stage! Play-ins have just wrapped up in spectacular fashion, but we couldn't wait to get started with the main stage! This installment will be slightly different, as this will just be a preview and guide to the upcoming Swiss stage specifically (which still is a lot of content). So you can get to know all teams in time and have enough time to properly build your Fantasy teams. The awesome Jovy will be back with a recap of Play-ins very soon!
This year marks the end of the classic group stage format and the introduction of Swiss format to Worlds. First of all; why change things up? Well, the classic format led to some issues. Sometimes a team would go 0-4 and mathematically be eliminated from the tournament with 2 more matches left to play. Similar with teams who would qualify for knockouts very quickly. Some games near the end of group stage didn't matter anymore. With Swiss format, every single game matters. And no team has to rely on others nor tiebreakers to advance.
So how does it work? Every team plays up to 5 rounds. For the first round teams have been drawn against each other based on seeding, and no inter-regional matchups are allowed. 1st seeds were matched against a 4th seed, 2nd seeds face off against a 3rd seed. These are the seedings:
LCK
LPL
LEC
LCS
LCK
LPL
LEC
LCS
LCK
LPL
LEC
LCS
LCK
LPL
LEC
VCS
For round 2 and up, each team will draw an opponent with an equal record thus far. Seedings are disregarded from now on and inter-regional matchups become possible. This continues round after round until every team has reached either 3 victories to advance to knockouts, or 3 defeats to be eliminated. Games are Best of 1, but qualification and elimination matches are Best of 3. This leaves 8 teams making it into the knockout stage.
Upon completion of the play-in stage, the matchups for the first round of Swiss stage have been drawn. Here's an overview:
Many interesting matchups right off the bat! To highlight a few:
with the power of friendship. On the other side there's one of the most expensive superteams with some of the biggest names in the scene and countless accolades. And they only scrambled into Worlds as 4th seed. Who will crown themselves the most counter-logical team? Non Rational Gaming or Born to Wintrade?Still unsure on how it all works? The new format can be complicated, but don't worry, the official guide by LoL Esports narrated by Atlus does a great job showing step by step how it works.
There'll probably be some doubts coming into Worlds after their disappointing MSI run, getting defeated by BLG in a quick 3-0 sweep. Though let it be clear: Gen.G is a very strong team with great players across all roles, one that should contend for the grand prize.
T1 looked fantastic in spring but ultimately fell short. MSI went okay, though most fans weren't satisfied with finishing 3rd. Then summer split was a rollercoaster. Faker had to step away due to an injury for a month, and the team went on a disastrous streak without him. Once Faker got back however, T1 resurged massively in playoffs, defeating regular season leader KT Rolster twice in 5 games, which gave them a rematch against Gen.G. Though that venture didn't end well, T1 gets a shot at revenge for last year's lost Worlds finals.
KT took a risk building their roster this year. Veterans Kiin and Bdd came off bad years on KDF and NS and remaining members Cuzz and Aiming have been inconsistent in past times. But it paid off. Their summer regular season in particular was insane with a 17-1 record. Unfortunately KT could never make the final push towards a title as T1 remains their kryptonite. Still this year marks their first Worlds appearance since losing to IG in 2018. No one really knows how good KT will be, but whatever happens; don't get excited for the KT Rollercoaster.
JDG has yet to lose a Bo5 this year despite playing 10 of them already. Even when not playing to their best level, they have the magic (and luck) that makes a true champion.
Now with a well-earned rest behind them, these psychos are ready to take their first Worlds by storm.
LNG has been one of the only teams to really challenge JDG in Bo5. They lost in close 3-2 twice against them, including summer finals.
LNG is only 3rd seed due to championship points. They even had to play regional finals to secure their Worlds spot!
WBG can be very scary when firing on all cilinders, but on a bad day they are vulnerable. Fun fact: somehow they are the only team with a winning record against JDG. Born to Win?
It won't be easy, but G2 should have a decent shot at making it to the knockout stage.
The ceiling of the current roster is high, but rookies Oscarinin and Noah will have to prove if they can weather the storm of Asian competition. Though Fnatic has a history of nurturing talent.
Expectations will be low going into the tournament, but if MAD peaks at the right time, they might be capable of redemption.
They finished regular season on a 9-9 score, with a losing record against teams ranked below them, but a winning record against higher placed teams. In playoffs they got clean swept by C9 in the upper bracket, but surprised friend and foe by taking revenge in the grand finals. In some way, the faithful have been rewarded. And so NRG went to Worlds as LCS' champion, all in a single split. Truly Counter Logic, or should I say Non Rational Gaming?
Cloud9's aim for Worlds should simply be to do better than MSI, where they only picked up a win against fellow LCS team GG. Both bogeymen GEN and BLG are potential opponents at Worlds. Time for revenge?
Team Liquid has stranded in groups with a 3-3 record every single time they've attended Worlds. 4 times in a row. Fortunately for them, with the introduction of Swiss stage, it's impossible to go 3-3 now. But how will the coin land now is the question?
At the time of writing Xayah is still at 100% P/B rate in play-ins, and let that be a champion Guma has over 75% winrate on in 37 games career-wise.