Last week when T1 won vs LNG, it was mentioned that Faker had never placed worse than semifinals whenever he attended worlds. Eight appearances, and at least eight semifinals.
I found myself curious, thinking, who else falls into this category? I decided to look into it a bit, looking at players who have been at Worlds two times or more, and whether or not they’ve ever finished below semifinals.
This means we’re not counting players who only attended one Worlds and made it far, such as Huanfeng, Angel, Zeka, Kingen, GimGoon, and the like.
#Eight Appearances, Eight Semifinals or further
- Faker
#Three Appearances, Three Semifinals or further
- TheShy
- 369
- Oner
- Gumayusi
- Bengi
- Bang
- Wolf
#Two Appearances, Two Semifinals or further
- Bin
- Zeus
- Missing
- Duke
- Blank
- Ning
- Baolan
As far as I could see, this is everyone who has been to Worlds two times or more and never finished worse than top 4.
Honorable mentions go to the following players who have made multiple deep Worlds runs but have one or two black marks on their record:
- Beryl - Four appearances, three semifinals or further (eliminated in top 8 in 2019).
- Keria - Four appearances, three semifinals or further (eliminated in top 8 in 2020).
- Kanavi - Three appearances, two semifinals or further (eliminated in top 8 in 2020).
- Yagao - Three appearances, two semifinals or further (eliminated in top 8 in 2020).
- Knight - Three appearances, two semifinals or further (eliminated in top 16 in 2022).
- Jackeylove - Four appearances, three semifinals or further (eliminated in top 16 in 2022).
- Ruler - Six appearances, four semifinals or further (eliminated in top 16 in 2018 and top 8 in 2020).
- CuVee, Ambition, Crown - Three appearances, two semifinals or further (eliminated in top 16 in 2018).
Probably the craziest thing is how much perspective this puts on Faker, that his perfect record is across EIGHT appearances, while the next line of perfect attendees are capped at three appearances. If I’ve missed anyone, feel free to let me know.
Stuff like this is interesting to look at, but people overrate it insanely hard. Top western players (and to a lesser extent LCK players) get 50,000 chances at making deep runs, meanwhile in LPL it’s extremely difficult to make worlds, especially as a high seed. Then there’s the fact that like half the players on here were hard carried or things like the single elim format eliminating insane teams/players in quarters due to bad draws (hello KT).
Worlds placement is just unfortunately not a good metric for measuring player skill.