With all the teams settled now in Korea for the 2018 League of Legends World Championship, many fans across the globe will be cheering on their teams to make a strong group stage run all the way until they hoist the cup. 4 of the teams who are placed in group C will be among the contenders and we’ll review the teams looking to stamp their name in world’s history.

KT ROLSTER

Pool One: LCK first seed

Lineup:

Top: Song “Smeb” Kyung-ho

Jungler: Go “Score” Dong-bin

Mid: Heo “PawN” Won-seok

Mid: Son “Ucal” Woo-hyeon

Bot: Kim “Deft” Hyuk-kyu

Support: Cho “Mata” Se-hyeong

Touted as one of the best teams to never make worlds last year, KT Rolster finally won the LCK summer championship to cement their spot to make an appearance this time around. With a repeat 13-5 Spring and Summer split, in spring they fell slightly short of their goal in 3rd place, but were able to redeem themselves a championship over the new LCK in griffin in 5 games 3-2.

Players to Watch during 2018 league of Legends Worlds:

A lot of hype is coming this year for both Smeb and Score. With a stacked top lane roster amongst all teams, Smeb is still credited with being one of the best. With possibly the most versatile play style amongst the top laners, he can either carry his team or support his team depending on their win condition in drafts. Score is another player fans should be looking at to make world class jungle plays. Much like Smeb, Score has an ability to play a variety of champions at the top level, can carry from the jungle if his team gets behind or give his laners resources on more support style junglers. He knows where to be on the map to find opportunities to make those plays that can possibly blow a game wide open and this is one of the few reasons as to why he is one of the best junglers coming into this worlds.

For KT Rolster, it’s very difficult to say they will not finish 1st in this group. Across the map, this team has such a strong and consistent roster that can outplay their opponents from early to late game. Even in bo1’s this team is will be the one of the scariest in the group and possibly even in the whole tournament.

MAD TEAM

Pool Two: LMS second seed

Lineup:

Top: Wu “Liang” Liang-Te

Jungler: Lien “Benny” Hsiu-Chi

Jungler: Hsiao “Kongyue” Jen-Tso

Mid: Chen “Uniboy” Chang-Chu

Bot: Huang “Breeze” Chien-Yuan

Support: Ko “K” Kai-Sheng

In the LMS, nobody really is considered to be competition when compared to Flash Wolves. That being said, regionally MAD performed really well despite being in their shadow. From a turning mediocre Spring Split into a 3rd place finish, MAD improved greatly going into summer to make a 10-4 split turn into a 2nd place playoffs finish only to be swatted down by Flash Wolves in the finals.

Players to watch:

The team’s success is often credited to their coach GreenTea and newly acquired Jungler Kongyue for their notable improvement in the summer split. They went from focusing on a more split-push styled game to using the jungler as aggressive tool to accrue early advantages and Kongyue plays to this style very well. He’ll exert pressure on his laners opponents, helping them edge out going into the mid-game where they then look to create plays so watching him and the other junglers in this group will prove to be very exciting as to who can lead their teams to victory.

MAD has the double edged sword of being from the LMS region, where teams besides the top team are often looked over. This can work in their favour as teams can possibly sleep on them and with their early game centric play style, they can possibly sweep the rug underneath the enemy teams. With this being said, it’s mostly expected of them to fall beneath Team Liquid or EDG for a last place finish but it’s still fairly likely they can snatch at least 3rd.

TEAM LIQUID

Pool Two: NA LCS first seed

Lineup:

Top: Jung “Impact” Eon-yeong

Jungler: Jake “Xmithie” Puchero

Mid: Eugene “Pobelter” Park

Bot: Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng

Support: Kim “Olleh” Joo-sung

Team Liquid is undeniably the strongest NA team in the tournament. The squad put up a strong spring and summer split performance which was then met with both playoff championships in 3-0 fashion. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about their international tournament this year at MSI. Their EU counterpart, Fnatic was able to stomp out their run in a do or die tie-breaker in which they came up short in. Now the team is looking to bounce back to show they deserve to be on the same stage with the other world-class teams.

Players to watch:

Making many world’s appearances on several different teams, Doublelift will have many fans looking to see if this is the year where he can deliver. Fresh off an amazing domestic run, he was crowned with his first MVP award after many years of consistently strong ADC play. Despite previous years at worlds where he came up short, this year he looks better than ever and is hoping this can be his year to bring hope back to the North American region. He is one of the few who analysts can’t deny is a worlds class player even with an amazing pool of other great ADC players.

For this group, it is fairly possible they can make it out along with KT Rolster if the team can continue to play with their strategy of farming up doublelift until he breaks the game. With a relatively weaker top laner Impact and mid lane Pobelter, they will most likely form into a supportive style team that is hoping that their team play with help from their Jungler Xmithie to get Doublelift the resources he needs to take over the enemy team. The only worry for a 3rd or 4th place finish is their matchups against EDG and MAD. Team Liquid in the past have lost several games against teams ranked lower than them, and EDG and MAD are no opponents to look over and are hungry for the second seed.

Edward Gaming

Pool 3: LPL 3rd Seed

Lineup:

Top: Jiwon “Ray” Jeon

Jungle: Wenlin “Haro” Chen

Jungle: Kai “Clearlove” Ming

Mid: Yechan “Scout” Lee

ADC: Xianzhao “iBoy” Hu

Support: Ye “Meiko” Tian

Edward Gaming is coming in as China’s gauntlet champions after their victories over JD Gaming 3-2 and 3-1 over the Rogue Warriors despite a admirable 2nd place in spring playoffs and a less admired 5th place finish in summer playoffs. Historically though, the team has never missed a world championship in 4 years though the teams have had high highs and low lows much like their summer split coming into this worlds.

Players to watch:

This year Scout looks to show last year was a fluke when he failed to show up when it mattered most at worlds. The team has now molded to play heavily around Scout as the main carry of the team due to him being a all around stronger and more confident player compared to last year. He’s able to dominate a lane and spill over his pressure into his other lanes effectively and continue to actively make plays and skirmish into mid game and ultimately making the opposing mid laner collapse. A matchup sure to deliver will be Ucal vs Scout to see who can outplay the other and bring their team to victory.

EDG is a tough one to rank, while the midlane matchups besides KT Rolster being heavily Scout favoured, EDG has been known to lose fairly winnable games as we saw in the group stage. In bo1’s, strong resilience is needed to consistently perform at the highest level and really push leads until the nexus explodes. If EDG play at their highest level we can expect to see a 2nd place finish in this group, but if TL show up and EDG loses a game or two against them or even MAD, they might make an early exit from this years competition.