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Everything that went down in the Mid-Season Invitational group stages
The Mid-Season Invitational group stage has just concluded. Here are the highlights and what we’ve learned.
The League of Legends Mid-Seasonal Invitational Group stages were exciting from start to finish. Even in the last day of play, every team was still able to make play-offs. We have seen Phong Vũ Buffalo step up with competitive games against every region, even managing to win both games against G2 Esports. The biggest winner of the week was Invictus Gaming, however, ending with a record of 9-1. SK Telecom T1 showed that Korea is still a region filled with winners as they were the only team to win against IG. Both Team Liquid and Flash Wolves had to secure their play-offs spot on the last day of play, while the North-American representatives beat their biggest rivals, G2 Esports, to secure their spots for the play-offs and ended the Flash Wolves’ tournament run early.
What were the best games of the group stage? Who is the player to watch from each team? The biggest highlights, outplays and more below...
The closest games
While Invictus Gaming might have gone 9-1, that doesn’t mean that all of their wins came easily. IG are known for their explosive early game and great skirmishing, but sometimes they are over-aggressive and give teams a chance to come back. The best example of this is their first game against PVB. The game ended at 33 minutes with 50 kills on the scoreboard. Not only did PVB have the better early game, they almost won through great split pushing. In the end, IG came back after a great team fight and managed to destroy PVB’s nexus.
Another great game was the second game of G2 Esports versus Invictus Gaming. This game had it all: outplays, scrimishing, kills and a great early game. The winner of this game was on a knife’s edge, up until the very last team fight. Rasmus ‘Caps’ Winther maximised the potential of Ryze while slaughtering members of IG in the botlane. Gao 'Ning' Zhen-Ning ended the game with a scoreline of 10-5-5 on Rek’Sai, showing once again that he is the best jungler at the tournament.
Power picks
Jayce, Akali and Sylas have had a 100 percent pick/ban rate all throughout the tournament. The sudden raise in priority for Akali might have something to do with the format. Like Jayce and Sylas, Akali can be played in both solo lanes which makes picking her early in a draft quite safe. Champions that can be reliably flexed are especially strong in a best of one format, since there is no game three or four where potential counters can be picked against the three strong champions. Rek’Sai, Jarvan IV and Ryze are the next three most picked champions. The two junglers are simply the strongest right now, Rek’Sai has great combat and skirmishing potential, while Jarvan IV provides great ganks and is overall very tanky.
Surprisingly, Sona and Taric were played only once, in SKT versus Invictus Gaming. IG managed to close the game out so fast, that it broke the record of the fastest international game ever. Since SKT is facing G2 Esports, which have a fast early game style (like IG) it’s unlikely that the Korean representatives will pick the duo up again in the semi-finals. They might have to respect ban them though, since G2 Esports have played the duo before in the LEC Spring Split Finals against Origen. Nautilus has also seen play in the botlane, but he wasn’t as successful as analysts thought he would have been with just a 30 percent win rate.
Caps on or Caps off
G2 Esports beat SK Telecom T1 twice and will face them in the semis, IG also beat Team Liquid twice and will face off against them in their match-up. This makes a G2 Esports versus IG finals quite likely. We think that the difference maker will be Caps’ performance. G2’s mid laner has some severe off games (like the second game against Liquid) or hard carry performances, and there doesn’t seem to be a halfway point. Caps either hard-carries or feeds. In order for G2 Esports to make their stand against the Chinese representatives, Caps needs to perform. In order to get there, they will need to beat SKT first though. But for the first time in League of Legends history, the Korean team is the clear underdog in a series versus a western team.
Will Lee 'Faker' Sang-hyeok make his return to the MSI finals stage or will Caps makes his stand against IG’s midlaner Song 'Rookie' Eui-jin? Stay tuned as we edge closer to the conclusion of this year’s MSI.
