Worlds 2017: Group D Autopsy
Group D turned out to be full of surprises, but Team SoloMid’s elimination after a loss to Misfits Gaming in a second-place tiebreaker wasn’t one of them. No, the surprise was how richly they deserved to be shown the door.
No one who watched all 13 Group D games could argue—in good faith—that TSM deserved to advance. Their play in virtually every facet of the game was subpar, miles away from the swaggering NA champions we’re used to seeing domestically. Call it a Week 2 NA curse, but you don’t need a supernatural explanation when the reasons for TSM’s undoing are writ large all over the Rift.
I’ll eulogize TSM later, not that they earned one. Instead, let’s focus on the positives: Misfits rode their youthful enthusiasm to a quarterfinal berth. Once expected to be EU’s worst performer at Worlds, they will likely go down as the best. Team WE gave the home fans something to cheer about, debuting snowball siege compositions that made Royal’s pace look glacial. They might not see Caitlyn again for the rest of their knockout games, but damn, it was fun while it lasted. And while Flash Wolves couldn’t escape their Week 1 hole, they played well enough in Week 2 to save face, including a clinical win over TSM that essentially doomed the North Americans.
But how did TSM blow their chance? Wrong question. Ask not what TSM did to lose, but what WE and Misfits did to win.
Team WE Siege Their Way to Victory
Much like their fellow LPL representatives Edward Gaming and Royal Never Give Up, Team WE play fast. Their 31:32 average game time is the lowest at Worlds, and after watching their demolition crew roll through Week 2, it makes sense. After all, late game scaling compositions don’t work if you never get to the late game.
Good teams adapt to the meta they find themselves in; great ones poke and innovate long enough to create a new meta. In that, WE might be the forerunners of a different way to play. After a series of summer nerfs, Caitlyn’s return to the meta by Mystic signals the first major adaptation of Worlds 2017. It's a response to the continued drafting of passive bot lanes by teams hoping to scale their hyper carries into late game damage monsters; the old siege composition, but retrofitted to compete in an Ardent Censer world.
Given a lane to bully, Team WE obliged, using Condi’s already bot-focused pathing to quickly secure First Turret, and then unleash their bot duo across the map, breaking turrets at a rapid clip. But bot lane is only part of the story. As shown in their win against Team SoloMid, WE’s ideal sieging composition uses Jayce mid and a Rumble top, two excellent turret bullies with their range and AoE burst damage. Winning solo lanes puts pressure on turrets early, preventing the enemy jungler from matching Condi’s attention bot when both solo lanes need help.
Against TSM, WE destroyed all three outer turrets by 16:30. At 22 minutes, WE had taken all three TSM inhibitors and went to secure a free Baron. The game ended two minutes later. Tic, tac, toe.
Flash Wolves went down in a similar fashion, with Mystic’s Caitlyn functioning as the wind in WE’s sails. Mystic went a combined 9-1-10 in two Caitlyn games, but his deathless, 47.1% of team damage showing against an already eliminated Flash Wolves proved that, in the right hands, Caitlyn might be back. Imagine if she could Headshot turrets…
WE encountered adversity against Misfits, badly losing bot lane to Hans sama’s Varus and needing superior macro play and 5v5 execution to come all the way back from a 5.7k deficit at 19 minutes. It was this performance that impressed me the most, showing WE’s ability to adapt in the draft and play to that style, rather than attempt to achieve the same win conditions no matter the composition. This resilience and focus has propelled them from play-ins to quarters, and, if Mystic continues to shine, perhaps even farther. Cause of Death: N/A
Misfits Advance Playing Their Game
The EU resurgence at Worlds 2017 is undeniable now, with Misfits the second European team to advance out of groups, and the third that’s displayed the quality to do so (R.I.P G2). Misfit’s youth might show during certain late game fights or deeper macro considerations, but their teamplay and willingness to attempt off-meta strategies (especially in Week 2) has catapulted them to worldwide acclaim.
For the first time at the Worlds 2017 main event, a team won without building Ardent Censer. They said it couldn’t be done, but Misfits did it, with IgNar selecting Thresh against Flash Wolves. It was a move back to comfort for IgNar, who had spent all of EU LCS Summer split on engage supports that had fallen out of the meta, including his 60% winnrate Thresh. Seeing Rakan selected by FW in the first phase with Lulu and Janna already banned, Misfits felt that Thresh’s hook could stop every Flashless Rakan engage. And it did, highlighted by a late hook around the drake pit that caught Swordart mid-dash with MMD’s Shen having cast Stand United on him for a potentially devastating engage. The wombo was stopped in its tracks with SwordArt's death. Misfits won the fight, and the game soon after.
IgNar grabbed Blitzcrank against TSM, but that pick, plus a solo-queue counter in Yasuo to combat Hauntzer’s Gnar, proved too greedy. Misfits were unable to secure a big enough lead in the early game to survive a ferocious TSM comeback in the mid game, triggered by a 4-1 fight that saw IgNar miss his initiation via a Glacial Prison stun from Svenskeren. TSM were down 5k at that point; had Misfits not lost that fight, there would have been no way back. But credit the European side for the guts to draft what they wanted, rather than what the meta dictated. Too many teams don't.
Misfits gave Team WE a real scare, with Hans sama’s +1823 GD@10 over Mystic the largest of the tournament thus far. But MSF couldn’t close out the win, even with a 5k lead after 20 minutes. In this loss, they showed their inexperience, baited into a long Baron Dance WE would surely win with their bot lane pushing. WE found the fight they wanted with a clutch Glacial Prison on Hans and a kill on Alphari, opening Baron. A trade of epic monsters later in the game was admirable by Misfits, though misguided. I respect a team that thinks they can outfight a Baron-buffed enemy with an Elder drake buff. It didn’t happen, of course, but full marks for spirit.
The glass slipper still fits for Misfits. Once thought to be a team only one rung in power above a wildcard, this small organization has proved everyone but the staunchest EU homers wrong. I doubt they’ll make it out of quarters, but hey, I didn’t think they’d win a game in groups. Cause of Death: None, but punch-drunk.
Early Game Woes Bury Team SoloMid
Consider these stat lines, both from teams eliminated in the group stage:
Team A: 0.37 K:D, 1657 GPM, -345 GPM, -1402 GD@15, 32.7 CSM, 1786 DPM, -1.0 TD@15, 50% FB%, 0% FT%
Team B: 0.62 K:D, 1735 GPM, -137 GPM, -1889 GD@15, 31.5 CSM, 1885 DPM,-1.3 TD@15, 0% FB%, 28.6% FT%
Team B is Team SoloMid, and yes, their -1889 GD@15 was lowest among the 16 group teams. By comparison, Team A is 1907 Fenerbahçe Espor. From the TCL. Think about that.
TSM’s performance at Worlds will not soon be forgotten, and for all the wrong reasons. It was a team failure at every level: preparation, drafting, execution, everything. No player or coach is exempt from blame, and the cost of this lackluster performance will haunt the organization forever. I wish that was hyperbole.
It was a train wreck we all watched in slow motion, unable to stop despite our most fevered hopes. TSM consistently underperformed in the early game, attempting to passively farm for late game scaling while the meta was changing around them, particularly from teams within their own group.
This was a tentative TSM, fully reverting to the Hauntzer-centric MSI squad that couldn’t adapt to the meta or get anything meaningful from their bot lane. Doublelift’s inclusion in the team was meant to resolve this exact issue. WildTurtle wasn’t good enough for TSM at MSI, consistently getting caught out of position and outputting meager damage because of his quick deaths. You could say the same of Doublelift at Worlds; his maddening deaths to two PowerOfEvil Shockwaves with Flash available during the tiebreaker acting as final evidence. No AD carry in the group stage died more per game (2.7) or averaged a lower percentage of his team's damage (29.6%) than Doublelift.
But piling on Doublelift misses the point. We could just as easily call out Biofrost, whose inability to play Janna influenced more than a handful of TSM drafts, or Svenskeren, who was utterly invisible in the early game. Bjergsen and Hauntzer's off-brand impressions of Khan and Bdd lack the original's decisiveness and cross-map influence. And Parth, who failed to establish an identity for his team despite a lengthy Korean boot camp, might have coached his last game on stage.
Quick question: What’s TSM’s identity? I know what I’m getting with Team WE, or Misfits, or Gigabyte Marines. What style is distinctively TSM’s? As I watched them flounder through groups, unable to manufacture wins unless their opponents made mistakes in the mid game, I thought: My God, they’re just Samsung imitators. This is the best NA can offer: A group of Korean-less knock-off Koreans who will always be second-best to the real McCoy until they figure out how to play the game themselves and not by following a manual. With these players and staff, I’m not sure they ever will. Cause of Death: Panicked impotence.
Flash Wolves Cannot Close
A short word about Flash Wolves, the top seed from LMS that waited to win a game until it would screw over Team SoloMid the most. I’m only half-kidding.
Flash Wolves improved over the course of group play, but it wasn’t nearly enough to save them after an 0-3 start in Week 1. The dynamic duo of Maple and Karsa were good at creating early advantages where they could, but when it came to the bigger macro decisions, Flash Wolves failed the test every time. They should have beaten Misfits in Week 2, but gave up a 6k gold lead when they disrespected Misfits’ Baron speed with a Cassipiea and Cho’Gath. They should have beaten TSM in Week 1, but lost the macro plot and took unnecessary fights, putting themselves in danger instead of waiting for their super minions to end the game.
I would have liked to see Flash Wolves prioritize Janna more for SwordArt, who looked fantastic on the champion in their 25-minute upset of TSM. His play in the laning stage kept Doublelift and Biofrost from getting the advantage the matchup dictated, and that was with multiple (though limp) ganks from Sven. SwordArt’s knockbacks and knock-ups were incredibly well timed, preventing TSM from shifting their focus to top lane, where Hauntzer’s Jayce deseperatly needed jungle proximity.
If Flash Wolves won the games they were supposed to, they would have been in the tiebreaker for second place, not TSM. Instead, Wolves head home flagbearers of a region that has dramatically underperformed at Worlds. But hey, it was enough to beat TSM. Cause of Death: Delusions of Grandeur