Everyone remembers the League of Legends World Championships last year. TSM came in as the most hyped Western team in the history of League of Legends. With their new rookie, support Biofrost, they had dominated every North American team and finished the regular season with a 17-1 record in Best-of-3 series. After a closer-than-expected win against Cloud9 in the Finals, they immediately flew to Korea to train against the best players and scrimmage against the best teams. During the boot-camp, the hype for TSM increased even more.



After the boot-camp, the group draw put TSM into a group with Korea’s SSG, China’s RNG, and Europe’s Splyce. Riot’s Sam “Kobe” Hartman-Kenzler ranked TSM 1st in their group. Furthermore, Kelsey Moser of theScoreEsports placed TSM as the 2nd best team in the world in her power rankings. Even ESPN’s Tyler “FionnOnFire” Erzberger ranked TSM 4th out of all of the teams at the tournament. Star mid-laner ‘Bjergsen’ gave an interview saying that anything less semifinals at Worlds would be a failure for TSM. No North American team had ever made it past quarterfinals.

TSM failed to make it out of the group stage. Failing to live up to the hype, TSM went 3-3 in groups and lost a tiebreaker to RNG to finally get eliminated. TSM’s players without world stage experience, top laner Hauntzer and rookie support Biofrost proved to be inferior to their Korean counterparts. Star marksman Doublelift made uncharacteristic errors like failing to flash Alistar engages versus RNG and dashing into a full health Viktor as Lucian against SSG. Even the best Western player, Bjergsen, faltered against SSG, being solo-killed repeatedly as Zilean by Crown’s Viktor.

Analysts were stunned. Forced to look at the analytical mistakes that they had made leading up to Worlds, they all published articles saying that TSM choked on the international stage and that they should not have been hyped up so much.

So how is this year different?

First, TSM’s domestic competition has been much more impressive. They may not have run over all of the teams like in Summer of 2016, but they faced much stronger teams and still went 14-4. North American teams have imported coaches and players from around the world (especially Korea) to improve their teams. Instead of a two team race between TSM and C9, there was a high level of play among the top 5 NA LCS teams in 2017. Hauntzer and Biofrost have had better practice against elite domestic and imported competition like Ssumday, Flame, Olleh, and Smoothie. They won’t be outclassed in any significant way by the competition at Worlds. Most importantly, in 2017 Summer, TSM won their 3rd consecutive North American trophy, something that had never been done before.

Second, TSM no longer has any players that are inexperienced on the international stage. 2016 Summer was Biofrost’s first split ever as an LCS player, and 2016 Worlds was both Biofrost’s and Hauntzer’s first taste of international play. Since then, TSM has competed in both the Mid-Season Invitational and Rift Rivals. While they did not perform well at the Mid Season Invitational, they did win Rift Rivals, a competition between North America and Europe. This is also the first Worlds where TSM is bringing back the same roster as the previous year; their team synergy and knowledge of how to play with one another has undoubtedly improved.

Third, TSM’s attitude is different. Before 2016 Worlds, they were cocky. They believed the hype and thought ahead to the bracket stage before they had passed the group stage. TSM did not understand how to play from behind because they never had to practice this while in North America. Things are different now. Doublelift gave an uncharacteristically humble interview to Travis Gafford where he says that he is just going to take it day by day and moment by moment. No thinking ahead during Worlds for this TSM team – just the next game. Win enough of those and maybe they can be happy when Worlds is done. But none of TSM’s players will be truly satisfied until they win a World Championship.

So, will TSM perform better than they did last year? Will they make it out of the group stage and live up to these lower expectations?

Probably. But I’m not counting my chickens until they hatch and neither is TSM.

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