Azir top does work but bear in mind you might not have any frontline and Azir is a champ that kinda needs the frontline unless you’re good at Faker like engages.

Azir support is troll. Zero cc early, no damage without items, will never hit item spikes, will be severely underlevelled, etc. The key thing to remember with troll picks is that they might work in a few games if you’re lucky/it counters enemy champs and/or opponent also troll picks and/or you’re giga smurfing. But far more often than not you auto lose lane and make it high probability to lose game too. In sup it’s a lot worse unless you’re duo, since your ADC will probably throw the game on purpose since they’ll think it’s a troll pick.

I was plat (EUW) four years ago on three accounts playing 3 separate roles, which was my highest rank, since then I’ve been coasting in gold not really trying to climb just playing ranked for fun.

This season second split I decided to climb on two of my accounts (top and support), and hit Emerald in both. Gold and plat were fun, you still have some trolls especially in gold but plat was the best experience probably. Soon as I hit Emerald the game quality took a massive and immediately noticeable nose dive. Whereas in gold/plat this might happen every 5 or 6 games, if feels like in Emerald every 2 in 3 lobbies there’s people flaming in the lobby, making demands/threats, troll picking, then in game running it down or constantly spamming in chat whilst giving up and soft inting/semi afk’ing over the slightest thing. The amount of people on loss streaks in Emerald (I use Porofessor) who are mental boom and just looking for some random to take it out on is just insane.

My last Emerald 2 game I had someone decide my Renata pick isn’t a good blind support pick so they revenge first timed Sona APC and refused to press heal or R the entire game, whilst spamming things like “NECK” and “talon e through window” at me. That’s my Emerald experience in a nutshell. I dont remember plat being anything like this bad. I’ve basically uninstalled league because cba playing in this elo anymore it’s such a miserable experience.

Galio is kept weak because otherwise he is too strong in pro play. That’s why they nerfed his waveclear, his damage, the ability to flash whilst channelling W, etc, otherwise pros will pick him on stage constantly and Riot doesn’t want that.

Unfortunately unless they rework him or decide to have a Galio meta in pro play he’ll never be a good champ for soloQ, his kit is too good for coordinated team play. Lissandra is very similar to him in that she has weak damage and really high punishing cooldowns, again because the kit is too strong in pro play so they had to nerf the champ.

Ignoring Chovy who will have crazy offers no doubt, I’ll be really surprised if they don’t keep Delight, he’s had an outstanding 2023 and should be relatively affordable. Probably the best Rakan player in the world and good synergy with Peyz, and had a good Worlds overall, just unfortunate that GenG as a team had no answer/response or adaptation to 5 games of XUN’s J4 repeatedly fisting botlane early.

My man u/NamikazeEU heheheh. The premium Faker Hater. The One Who Was Silenced.

Sort of. Caedrel went over this in depth - 369 showing he can’t play Rumble forced JDG to ban it, his Aatrox isn’t that good and he doens’t play Aatrox counters (unlike Zeus), so yeah these posed big problems. But Knight not playing Azir was a very big issue when the meta is Ori Azir Neeko, it allowed T1 to ban Neeko then leave Ori open since they either take the Ori or soft counter it with the Azir as Knight can’t play it. And then Missing doesn’t really know how to play ranged support to the same level as Keria, with Missing’s Rakan banned Keria’s support pool in that meta was impossible to answer.

Basically this meta was absolutely perfect for T1 in addition to the players improving. I hope the roster stays together though because the meta will shift and I really wanna see if they’re now just better irrespective of meta, I mean it makes sense they would improve over time given that they were rookies previously crumbling under tremendous pressure and super high expectations, now they are World champs after overcoming this mental hurdle and every aspect of their play is improved. Oner especially being super proactive early against elite jungelrs was so refreshing to see given that up till this Worlds that part of his game has been the main weakness. I think if the meta shifts (e.g. tanky/engage supports or enchanters) we will still see this T1 be insane, they just need to persuade them all to stay.

The answer is I wouldn’t rate Gumayusi based on one series alone where due to no fault of his own he had low impact since the game was decided elsewhere.

Also, Guma Keria is the best botlane in the world bar maybe Ruler Missing (depending on meta), especially in laning phase. This Worlds they were by far the best botlane. This will have affected Weibo’s pick ban and draft decisions. If you swap out Guma for a mid tier ADC it probably changes Weibos strategy, and they probably don’t opt into botlane picks that their players aren’t good at (like first timing Bard, resulting in things like the Bard ulting over a teammate Kennen ult), or having to ban Ashe on the first ban rotation blue side.

I think he wants a Lux skin because Lux is the most popular champ in League and probably sells the most skins, so will be the biggest money maker for him.

Kennen pick was really weird, TheShy hasn’t played it for a long time and hasn’t won with it either for a while, not sure game 3 of a Worlds final at 0-2 is a good time to bring it out when he could’ve gone K’Sante or Ornn on B2/B3 instead and been more relevant/safe.

Faker the GOAT.

Zeus: I’m the God now.

Dopa : When things are hopeless we just grab on Faker’s pants.

Keria and Faker, and to a lesser extent Oner, had some nervous moments there (Oner had a good game overall but missed a lot of Q’s throughout). But substantially better macro and teamplay, some slick Oner Insecs, plus Zeus being unanswerable, ensured the win.

Hopefully that was just first game nerves and we see more focused performances in the remaining games. Might not matter though unless Weibo up their game.

Brother Daeny.

Weibo draft better, better scaling.

Dagda saying Knight might have been better at this Worlds. LPL stans smh.

I have watched Faker since his debut. It’s a hard question to answer because the game has changed massively since then, the standard of competition has increased greatly, the level of analysis and research and coaching has improved tenfold, etc etc.

I also think it’s easy to forget that Faker’s prime in past eras wasn’t as perfect as many think it was (especially those basing it on e.g. the RNG series in 2017). Peak Faker was susceptible to spells of bad form where he would play far too aggressive and cocky and get baited into enemy gameplans trying to focus/punish him, etc, and was sometimes dropped till he could regroup and be more focused. Usually the poor spells of form were in LCK and come international touranaments Faker would have gotten his act together and would peak, more so Worlds than MSI where he’s usually been a bit flaky.

It’s beyond debate that Faker has hit another peak this Worlds, but is he as good as when he hit previous peaks? I think the answer is probably that he’s actually better. His mechanics have been absolutely on point this Worlds (other than maybe game 1 vs Pyosik), and he’s doing it vs stronger opponents than what he faced in 2015-2017. Against BLG, LNG and JDG he’s put in immaculate performances with lots of outplays and super smart decisions, the micro and macro have been as good as it gets for a mid laner at this level, if he wins Worlds with a good series I think this is his best Worlds performance ever. I would say he is in a second or third prime.

T1 should win. However nothing is certain because in sports anything can happen on the day and there will always be some favourites underperforming and underdogs overperforming.

In terms of why T1 should win, they’ve looked the much better team throughout Worlds and have had the tougher matches, plus mechanically I think T1 are better overall.

Another thing I’d point out is that a lot of people are using DRX from last Worlds as an argument for why Weibo have a good chance. But I don’t think Weibo is like how DRX were last Worlds, both 4th seeds sure but there are some significant differences. DRX had a mid and top hitting all time crazy high peaks at Worlds in Kingen and Zeka, and Pyosik and BeryL’s unique off meta pools caused problems with pick/ban for T1. I don’t think Weibo has these elements, only top is in insane form and the rest play meta, it should in theory be a lot easier for T1 to deal with this compared to the problems DRX posed.

After watching Faker on Ori fist Knight’s Akali in game 1 yesterday, I definitely don’t want to see the reverse matchup. Faker’s Akali has been great at times but I just don’t trust the pick, unless the Akali gets fed early it seems to be a consistently useless pick with few viable targets in the late game and does way less for the team than something like an Ori.

But again, that’s been mostly vs Western junglers/teams and then one series against BLG where Weiwei had two poor/ineffective games.

Oner has also had some crazy performances and smite steals. I don’t really see how Weiwei has been on Oners level or better, but I will stand corrected if he gaps Oner in the final.