Analysis and Opinion

What would “success” look like for each LCS team at Worlds?

Let’s be honest: North American expectations for the 2020 League of Legends World Championships are pretty low, especially if you’re asking someone from outside of NA. The LCS has become a punching bag for global commentary.

In the coach/analyst panel preview I assembled, Immortals coach Malaclypse even wrote, “[It’s an] appropriate question […] whether we will see a LCS team in top 8. I’m pretty sure we will not, and LCS will be taking some rough losses vs. wildcard regions this year.”

My own opinion is that the LCS is not quite as bad as the public narrative suggests, but I do believe that North America has fallen behind the curve of China, Europe, and South Korea by a noticeable margin.

So, with that being the case, what are some appropriate expectations for the three LCS representative at Worlds this year?

TSM: Reach Quarterfinals

The TSM organization shouldn’t come away from Worlds satisfied unless they at least get to play in the Quarterfinals.

TSM is North America’s number one seed, so it’s only fair that they should carry the highest expectations. That’s the simplest possible angle to look at it, but a more nuanced approach arrives at the same conclusion.

Realistically, TSM is not head and shoulders above FlyQuest or Team Liquid in overall quality as a team. Remember that they needed five games to beat each of those opponents in the playoffs and needed two series to knock off the Golden Guardians, barely managing it in five games the second time around, while Team Liquid 3-0ed that same opponent. And FlyQuest looked like the best team in North America for a decent stretch, beating TL more comfortably than TSM did. In terms of general “power level”, then, it might not be fair to set a higher target for TSM to reach.

But there are two reasons a “QFs or bust” mindset is fair. First, TSM’s advantage as a #1 seed meant they didn’t get TOP Esports, DAMWON Gaming, or G2 Esports in their group, and they managed to avoid JD Gaming and DRX via the luck of the draw, too. Their group isn’t easy, by any means, with Fnatic and Gen.G posing real threats and LGD almost certainly joining in with a pretty high threat level of their own. Even so, this group is escapable, with vulnerabilities and inconsistencies in each opponent, not to mention the potential for all three other teams to take games off each other and leave an opening.

Second, TSM’s play style is more flexible than FlyQuest or Team Liquid, with at least a reasonable ability to play through the top side of the map. Team Liquid haven’t shown themselves capable of doing that. FlyQuest should be able to, and even beat TL that way in the regular season, but they showed in the playoffs that they don’t prefer it (and either weren’t practicing it much, or weren’t having success with it in their scrims).

I’m not necessarily saying that I think TSM will escape their group. If pressed to make a prediction, I’d peg their chances somewhere between 40% and 50%. In other words, the Quarterfinals are very much an obtainable outcome, but they’re going to have to over-achieve a little to earn it.

There’s one other consolation prize TSM can aspire to: international stage experience for Spica. He has the potential to become a long-term cornerstone for the franchise. If he doesn’t look like a fish out of water, that will be a great sign for TSM. Regardless of the team outcome, just getting Spica to this event has already been a win.

FlyQuest: Play with Dignity

I don’t intend any flippancy, and I don’t mean to undervalue this team and its quality, but FlyQuest got drawn into a nightmare group, facing two of the tournament favourites in TOP Esports and DRX. No one expects FlyQuest to win more than a couple of games in the group stage, and that’s okay.

I just want to recognize that it has already been a massive win for FlyQuest to qualify for the World Championships in the first place. If they fail in the Group Stage, it’s going to hurt, but once the dust has settled I think the team can be pretty happy as long as they look reasonably competitive and hold their heads high.

The turnaround the FlyQuest franchise underwent in 2020 under the leadership of CEO Tricia Sugita has been nothing short of remarkable. Savvy, measured roster-building and great branding choices have flipped the team’s trajectory, both competitively and (as far as I can tell from the outside) on the business front. Their TreeQuest and SeaQuest campaigns carved out a great identity, their jersey designs have been sick, and they reached back-to-back LCS Finals to book their trip to Shanghai. FlyQuest should be very proud of what they’ve accomplished in 2020.

And let’s not finish off their eulogy quite yet: it might seem unthinkable for FLY to emerge from their group and reach the Quarterfinals, but stranger things have happened at the World Championships. FLY have a strong coaching staff and some very smart players; they’re going to give this their best shot. Maybe they’ll connect on some level 1 plays. Maybe they’ll overload the mid lane with jungle and support pressure and get PowerOfEvil snowballing. Maybe TOP and DRX will come in underprepared for FLY, or play too fast and loose in an attempt to assert their dominance, and FLY will be able to find some cracks. This is why you play the games!

At the end of the day, an 0-6 group stage would be a failure, a 1-5 will feel really bad, and a 2-4 will sting for a while, while 3-3 and/or reaching the Quarterfinals would a great showing. But in my opinion, FlyQuest can play without any real pressure or urgency; they’ve already won this year, and whatever happens at Worlds, it’s all gravy.

Hey, maybe that’s exactly the environment they’ll need to once again exceed my expectations.

Team Liquid

Team Liquid may be North America’s third seed, but from a certain perspective the standards I’m setting for them at Worlds are the highest of any of the three teams. They’ll be starting the tournament in the Play-In stage, so they can’t hide behind group draws or blame best-of-one limitations and volatility. In the Play-Ins, TL carry the burden of proving that North America still deserves respect as a major region. And if they acquit themselves of that task well enough, their reward might just be heightened expectations for the Group Stage.

The only satisfactory options for TL are to finish first in Group A in the Play-In stage, or finish 2nd to the MAD Lions and then comfortably 3-0 their best-of-five. I won’t be happy with this team squeaking through to Groups; they have too much skill and experience for that to be acceptable.

Some of this comes as carryover from TL’s playoff failures. Honestly, their final two series left a bad taste in my mouth. Against both FlyQuest and TSM, TL played far below the level I expected, with disappointing champion pools, weak game plans, and consistently poor in-game decision-making around which fights to take and how to set up for objectives. The team’s fundamentals somehow took a big backwards step between the regular season and playoffs. I can understand that happening with an inexperienced team, but when you have two World Champions on your roster, and two more players who have reached World Finals and Semifinals, that’s a baffling development. If Worlds doesn’t reveal a revitalized TL and the veterans don’t step up and play at the level of their pedigrees, it should be enough to trigger a roster overhaul, especially given the free agent statuses of Impact, Broxah, and Jensen.

I recognize that teams like the Unicorns of Love and Supermassive are worthy opponents, and I mean no disrespect to them, but I’m not going to give TL a pass just because they’re NA’s third seed. There has been plenty of time for TL to debrief the playoffs, regroup mentally, grind out some extensions to their champion pools in Chinese super server solo queue, and get back to the basics of how they intend to play the game.

I honestly don’t care whether TL continue to play the measured, bot side-oriented style that has been so maligned in public opinion. Sure, that game plan seems suboptimal relative to the global meta, and if TL remain inflexible it’s going to make them exploitable, especially in a best-of-five, but it’s far better to cleanly execute a suboptimal game plan than it is to fumble your handling of a perfect meta comp.

Sidenote: just like TSM and Spica, TL have a single young player to nurture at Worlds this year, so that counts as a back-up “win condition” for the tournament. It’s arguably even more important for TL to build up Tactical for next year than it is for TSM to gain development time for Spica, since TL may have to rebuild most of their roster whether they want to or not. The only guarantee for TL in 2021 is their bottom lane, so Worlds is an opportunity for them to invest in that future.