Night Vision is your nightly recap of the 2020 League of Legends World Championships.
Look below for Recaps, Takeaways, and my pick for which player had a Night to Remember.
Recaps
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Game 1: G2 win
GEN Volibear Lillia Azir Kalista Taric
G2 Camille Nidalee Twisted Fate Jhin Pantheon
Ruler Life >> Perkz Mikyx. GEN get drakes, even gold, have scaling. But GEN expose themselves to picks during G2 prio windows, hand G2 Baron. G2 snowball mid-game.
Game 2: G2 win
GEN Camille Nidalee Twisted Fate Ashe Leona
G2 Shen Lillia Sylas Jhin Tahm Kench
Scrappy early; 21 kills at 15:00. G2 use TK/Shen ults to cheat tempo. Caps gets super fed. GEN keep chain-engaging because their side lane comp can’t side lane. G2 morale-deflating win.
Game 3: G2 win
G2 Renekton Graves Sylas Jhin Rakan
GEN Volibear Kindred Twisted Fate Ezreal Tahm Kench
Caps makes more side lanes plays than Bdd. G2 sloppy but lead growing, until massive Rascal TP flank -> Baron. Jankos outsmites Clid for soul. GEN fight valiantly; too late.
Takeaways
Pump the brakes, G2 fans
After Fnatic’s 3-2 loss to Top Esports yesterday, I wrote this:
The only way G2 Esports will be able to overshadow FNC’s achievement here today is to beat Damwon in the Semifinals, or at least play them to just as close of a 5-game series. Even if G2 beat GenG 3-0 and reach Semis, that won’t be as impressive as the show FNC put on here in Quarters.
I still stand by it. This series from G2 was neither as impressive nor as meaningful as Fnatic’s near-miss against TES. GenG, frankly, didn’t put up that much of a fight, aside from some early laning by Ruler and Life in game 1 and occasional moments of team fighting quality from Rascal and Bdd.
G2 won by embracing a play style that is far more comfortable for them than for GenG: high-paced, skill-checky, and rotational. The greatest strength of this G2 roster is their deep game intelligence and experience levels, which allows them to make lightning-fast calls in unusual, rapidly evolving situations. GenG would rather play within a script and execute the correct steps in the correct order, but most of the series they were taken very far off-script. And even when they had a script laid out in front them, like late in game 1, they failed to follow it.
There are good things worth saying about G2 in this series, but as a net takeaway, the series was more about GenG’s failures than G2’s successes.
Damwon next week will be a very different story.
GenG need a reset
GenG have some work to do in the offseason going into the LCK’s franchising era. Life was uncharacteristically bad today and can perform much better, but Clid was a liability, Bdd couldn’t match Caps’s playmaking pace, and Ruler wasn’t able to lift the team up above their mistakes and deficits.
I’m not saying GenG need to burn things to the ground and start over going into 2021. You should never give up on a player like Ruler, and Life and Bdd are high-quality roster pieces. But I expect to see something change in the top side, assuming there is any contract flexibility or existing talent within the org to try promoting.
Night to Remember
Of course it was Caps, who was rightly called out on the broadcast as the greatest Western player of all time. He still has so much more time to increase his legacy and catch up to the longevity and veterancy of Rekkles and Perkz, but he has already exceeded their peaks. His play today was a joy to watch.