* Courtesy of Riot Games

Many will look at the beast that is South Korea, with Longzhu Gaming, Samsung Galaxy and of course SK Telecom T1, the reigning champions, and through all of this, realize that there is little hope to win the championship. I’m not going to pledge that North America have a chance to win Worlds, we might be a year too early for that, but I’d like to entertain how NA can make it to semifinals. There are a couple of conditions that NA need to construct before a semifinals run is possible.

* Courtesy of Riot Games

Immortals:

- Mid Must Suit Up for NA

Eugene “Pobelter” Park has had a fantastic split and it would be a misnomer to say that he’s a bad player. There have been questions of Pobelter being a top tier player in the past and now after a phenomenal split, he must prove he can stand up to world class talent in order to secure his team victories. He has been able to show up against Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg and Nicolaj “Jensen” Jensen, some of the best NA has to offer, but Pobelter has always been seen as the stoic laner, never quite losing but not quite gaining significant advantages either.

- The Jungle and Mid Synergy is Palpable

Jake “Xmithie” Puchero has once again shown that he can be a top tier jungler. He’s shown a new aggression that wasn’t previously there during his Counter Logic Gaming days. This allows for IMT to possibly get early leads, but more importantly, both Xmithie and Kim “Olleh” Joo-sung have shown to be able to work together in setting up vision in the enemy jungle, which then extends into a map-wide pressure to shut down the enemy jungler.

- Closing Out Might be a Concern

With IMT’s games during the NA LCS finals, it brings up the question of whether IMT are competent enough to close out efficiently with their leads. They hadn’t had much problems during the regular season, but when met against a tough opponent such as TSM, they faltered heavily in using their gold lead. IMT have strong early leads during most of their games throughout the split, but that might not be the case when they are facing against stronger laners.

IMT have Longzhu Gaming to face off against during the group stages and with such a mismatch in sheer skill and teamwork, they should look to focusing on the other teams in their group to secure a 2nd place finish. IMT have a lot to prove in terms of displaying consistency and to show their rookies have the ability to play on the international stage. Adversely, the veterans of this squad need to display that they still have what it takes to dominate a game.

* Courtesy of Riot Games

Cloud 9:

- Mid Lane isn’t the Only Lane that Exists

C9 have shown that they play strictly through Jensen. There have only been few instances where C9 have been willing to place everything onto Zachery “Sneaky” Scuderi with little to no other contingency plans to win games and this might be the biggest fault of C9. Along with this sentiment, Jensen has shown to get advantages by himself, but on the Worlds stage, the competition is much better and could spell C9’s doom in relying on Jensen to outplay world class players.

- Top Lane Only Knows One Style

With the absence of Jeon “Ray” Ji-won, C9 have been steadily reliant upon Jung “Impact” Eon-yeong to play tanks for the preferred team fight playstyle that C9 have opted for. This crutch shows its weakness through limited draft compositions of Impact only playing tanks and the enemy can use this to their advantage to put a stranglehold on tanks and either ban them out or force Impact onto either a carry or simply subjugate him onto a sub-optimal tank. Along with this, C9 have left Impact alone on his top lane island once more, which shows that C9 are only willing to play towards mid or bot lane. This makes the top lane an area for enemies to snowball and allow a split-pusher to wreak havoc onto C9, as they seem to have difficulty counteracting such strategies. If Impact is able to get more champions mastered, maybe C9 can reconfigure their game plan to allow Impact to carry from the top lane.

Realistically speaking, I don’t see C9 making it out of groups, as the only groups remaining for them to join are Group A and Group C. With Group A looking incredibly strong, Group C seem to be their only glimmer of hope, which still isn’t much due to the strong teams of Samsung Galaxy, the team to take SKT to 5 games in the finals of Worlds 2016 and Royal Never Give Up, having the best record in the LPL Summer Split. Not only do these beasts exist, but Europe’s temperamental G2 Esports are on the rise and dominated the EU finals to prove once again they deserve to be champions. This group isn’t the group of death, but it certainly won’t foster life for C9.

* Courtesy of Riot Games

TSM:

- Laning Phase

TSM have shown dominance with their win against Immortals in the NA finals match. Their big weakness seemed to be the laning phase, with IMT gaining advantages in multiple games during the early game. I’d like to think that many teams at Worlds won’t succumb to playing with their food and will systematically close out the game in textbook fashion without taking many chances. Both Vincent “Biofrost” Wang and Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng have played better in the past, so it’s up to them in coming back to fighting form to ensure TSM can make it through the group stages.

- The Jungle Must Prove Himself

Dennis “Svenskeren” Johnsen is at a similar place he was last year, an upper tier jungler which plays around Bjergsen getting an advantage in lane to then extend his jungle pressure into the enemy jungle. Svenskeren needs to pressure other lanes and the other lanes need to take more risks in order to gain dominance and extend jungle pressure. Svenskeren’s tendency last Worlds was to invade without having lane advantages and hopefully TSM can fix this problem or prove they have learned from their past mistakes.

- Slow to Adaptation

TSM aren’t known to be the fastest applicators of the new meta, with having games taken off them from Team Dignitas during the Summer Split, which was touted to be a team that boosted higher into the standings due to an early grasp on the meta. TSM at the past Worlds was also no different, with a lack of understanding the all-important Worlds meta of mage supports and picking winning top lane matchups. I hope that the boot camp can alleviate some of this concern.

- Multiple Playstyles mean Multiple Plans

TSM are able to play through almost any lane, which allows them the flexibility to plan out which person they want to force the game through. They are unpredictable in that sense, of switching from game to game playing through a different lane. This is probably the biggest strength of TSM and should be abused fully to extend their lead through a series, but the group stage is Bo1, so this strength is not pronounced.

NA’s hope this year hinges on TSM to do well, as they objectively have the easiest group out of any NA team. Everyone in NA has prayed for a scenario without a Korean team in a NA group and this year they have their prayers answered. NA has no more excuses to not make it out of groups and not only that, but since Riot has intentionally made the Worlds patch lighter this year, TSM shouldn’t have trouble adapting to the international stage like before. All of this should give NA hope.

In the end, there are many strengths and weaknesses in these NA teams and they have been blessed with at least one good group to escape the group stages. Now comes the time where NA must scrutinize themselves and apply the knowledge gained in order to attain synergy, regain confidence and reimagine strategies to overcome their opposition.