Before diving into the upcoming matches I wanted to take a good bit of time to discuss the absolutely insane quarterfinals, what went wrong in our predictions, and what we could have seen or couldn't have seen coming. First I need to make something clear, if it wasn't obvious. Korea is my "home team." No I'm not Korean or a Western League of Legends hater, I watched all but a couple games of the NA and EU LCS this year and every year but the LCK is the league I pay the most attention to, rewatch the most, and have followed for the most years so to me these losses have been a bit of a shock. Think of me as the League of Legends version of a New England Patriots fan; I don't know what losing feels like because I haven't experienced a lot of it. It's not that I'm completely devastated or anything but it's important to know that that is the lens through which I'm viewing this and it's important for you as the reader to know my perspective.
A little less than a year ago I was discussing strategy for the upcoming season after they announced the preseason changes with some friends of mine, the team I've played with off and on for years in LAN events, leagues, and solo/duo queue. We all watch the professionals in some capacity and one of the topics I brought up was that the changes to vision and other changes would either push the game in a scrappier, more aggressive direction or would create hyper conservative games in professional play. We quickly came to realize that aggression and higher kill games would become the norm. From this I extrapolated that this would be a huge "buff" to the Chinese/LPL style of League of Legends. This was the level one thinking of impact on the professional scene. The level two thinking, which I never got to, was that this would severely hinder and potentially end the vision heavy style that every Korean team has played with over the years.
So why bring up preseason changes 9-10 months later? Now that we've seen Korea's worst performance at Worlds and the "Rise of the West" taking place it has made me look at the sort of plate tectonics of the competitive scene and how important it can be. If you figure vision was reduced by a good amount, let's say 20% just for the sake of discussion here, that would affect the region that prioritizes vision the most right? This isn't the sole reason Korea lost this year. The reason Korea is out of this tournament is that they failed to adapt while Western teams did.
If you have 10-20 LCK and Challenger Korea teams scrimming each other (throw Flash Wolves in there too) and they're all still playing the old way but just a lesser form of it because of reduced vision/knowledge then you get a very imbred metagame. Micro-meta's develop all over the place every year and it's one of the most fascinating things about bringing it all together at international events but I think this year Korea was it's own worst enemy. If the only thing you practice against isn't optimal anymore like it's been in years past then you don't have the mental fortitude or the flexibility to adapt when a curveball is thrown your way. In this case the curveball was an optimal read on the metagame, something Korea has never struggled with. "Strength of competition" which has so frequently been Korea's strongest asset became it's weakness.
I can sometimes sound like an elitist when talking about this stuff and I definitely did when discussing these matchups as I assumed, for the most part, that the East would return to their normal form and take care of business. Most analysts and coaches would have said the same thing. What I failed to see was that there was a bigger story underneath all of the team storylines and that was that the East flat out wasn't prepared to face this kind of decisiveness and aggression because they simply were not practiced enough against it.
Cloud 9, Fnatic, and G2 eSports all 100% earned their spots here. Do I think G2 and C9 got a little bit lucky to get out of their groups? Yea. I think their groups sort of self destructed around them, I didn't think they even played particularly well and their opponents were horrid but you know what? In these quarterfinals these three teams absolutely destroyed their Eastern counterparts and it wasn't even that close. They played with no regret and had no fear whatsoever and that psychological edge along with a Korea weakened by it's own ability to adapt internally created a script for "upsets" that, in hindsight, I should have seen coming. I say "upsets" in quotes because really, if I had thought to the sub-surface level on this I could have seen this freight train coming and they weren't even really upsets.
Is this a bigger picture shift toward an era of Western dominance? Was this just a weird, flukey tournament and things will return back to normal? Was it the metagame? Was it the pressure of playing at home for Korea? Were these teams just really bad and shouldn't have been here? Ultimately we won't know until we see some data points from next year for perspective. I, for one, am curious to see how Korea responds to this. There is a bit of a changing of the guard happening in Korea right now. Some of these young teams like Griffin, who we saw this year, and Damwon are showing a lot of potential and some of the old guard might shift to younger rosters. One thing is for sure, a showing like this will not sit well in the hearts of Korean fans and players and the world can expect a hungry, vengeful LCK come next season.
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I know I didn't discuss much about RNG and EDG in this because it was mostly focused on Korea but I'll quickly mention them. RNG smashed game one against G2 and got cocky handing over three power picks without banning them to G2, who took advantage for the game win and eventually the series win. I'm not sure what the fascination with Lucian was here, It's good against stuff like Kaisa but with limited scaling on the rest of your team you're more or less forced into dominating or you lose. RNG lost both in drafts and in execution as G2 took it to them. They were simply outplayed and while it's shocking to me that it happened given the year RNG had, it also doesn't surprise me to see their arrogance be their downfall. EDG and Fnatic I think was similar to KT vs IG in that it was going to be a close match regardless of the amount of respect you had for either side. Fnatic were just the better team and are looking like a favorite to make the finals at this point.
I'll be releasing my semifinals picks either tomorrow or Friday.
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