Analysis and Opinion

DAWNBRINGER: Worlds Daily, October 16

Welcome to Dawnbringer, your daily recap of the 2021 League of Legends World Championship.

Every day of Worlds competition, I’ll post a brief rundown of each game, along with some larger takeaways about the team and player performances we’re seeing and what it might mean for the rest of the tournament.

For live updates, make sure to follow me on Twitter!

Game Recaps

DFM vs EDG: EDG win
DFM Poppy Xin Zhao Leblanc Jhin Alistar
EDG Jayce Talon Lissandra Miss Fortune Rakan

JieJie traps Steal for FB, but dies to Aria. EDG play slow, firm, controlled: H1, FD, plates, inexorable pressure. DFM pushback attempts come too late.

T1 vs 100: T1 win
T1 Jayce Jarvan IV Zoe Aphelios Thresh
100 Malphite Lee Sin Orianna Ezreal Leona

FBI is fed early but T1 lead. 100 lose patience, T1 get FT. Scaaaling. T1 win rotations at drg4, rush Baron, 100 sluggish. T1 siege inhib, kinda randomly 4-0 and end.

EDG vs T1: T1 win
EDG Jayce Talon Ryze Miss Fortune Yuumi
T1 Kennen Poppy Twisted Fate Aphelios Lulu

T1 macro into H1, FT traded for EDG getting bot plates. T1 keep up soft pressure. Canna engages on EDG mid for T1 3-0. Clean T1 Baron control. Sleepy LCK macro game.

100 vs DFM: 100 win
100 Gangplank Lee Sin Sylas Kai’sa Alistar
DFM Tryndamere Poppy Twisted Fate Miss Fortune Leona

Ssumday Closer bad dive. Aria ports top repeatedly to kill Ssumday; 100 get drakes. Aria carries hard, but DFM throw with backdoor attempt.

DFM vs T1: T1 win
DFM Renekton Shaco Zoe Jhin Yuumi
T1 Graves Qiyana Orianna Aphelios Lulu

Aria solo kills Faker under turret for FB. T1 win side lanes hard in CS; teams slowly trade picks and dives but T1 grow huge gold lead. Gumayusi is super fed. T1 crush them.

100 vs EDG: 100 win
100 Kennen Viego Ryze Lucian Nami
EDG Graves Xin Zhao Syndra Aphelios Lulu

100 play hard into bot, FBI huhi kill Viper Meiko multiple times, pop off in mid-game fights. Ssumday good ult gets Closer 3K->Baron. Good Closer/Ssumday engage at soul to close.

Takeaways

The NA Classic

Is there anything more iconically “NA League of Legends” than being mathematically eliminated relatively early in a group stage and then coming out when it doesn’t matter anymore and playing spoiler against a tournament favourite?

Great: 100 Thieves beat EDward Gaming and denied them the 1st seed from Group B. Hooray. NA isn’t that bad, see? You can’t even claim EDG weren’t trying their hardest, which has been used against NA teams in similar circumstances in the past, because this game was really important to them to help dodge a strong opponent for the Quarterfinals.

REYKJAVIK, ICELAND – OCTOBER 16: 100 Thieves competes at the League of Legends World Championship Groups Stage on October 16, 2021 in Reykjavik, Iceland. (Photo by Joosep Martinson/Riot Games)

I’d be more impressed by this silver lining a) if playing spoiler had any novelty anymore, b) if 100 had beaten DetonatioN FocusMe in any other fashion because honestly that game felt like a loss, and/or c) if Cloud9 hadn’t gifted us some 24-karat gold the day before and made the silver seem relatively valueless.

It was great to see FBI and huhi step up against EDG. It feels good that NA can claim a little more influence over the outcome of this international event. But I’m still left with a pit in my stomach. Or like FBI said in his postgame interview, it feels “more sad than happy.” Let’s leave it with that.

The Worlds Format is Due for a Renovation

Tournament formats are a pretty routine discussion topic around big events like Worlds, and I don’t often engage in them, but today’s matches were a relative letdown in terms of entertainment value, especially in contrast to Group A’s unlikely series of events, so I think it’s appropriate to make some comments.

There are plenty of reasons to want to play a round-robin format. You get a chance to see each team in a group play each other, which gives fans more unique matchups to get excited about. You also get format stability for the broadcast, because you know how many games you’re going to play, roughly what times your breaks and stage changeovers will occur, roughly how long your broadcast day is going to run, etc.

The biggest downside, though, is a day like today, where we had a couple of “play for pride” games with no actual influence on the standings while waiting for 100/EDG to see whether we’d get a tiebreaker. (It didn’t help that the T1 wins over 100 and EDG were boring games, but that’s not really the point.)

It also didn’t help that there were some loud voices on Twitter claiming that a 100 Thieves loss to T1 meant the final three games of the day were meaningless. I bought in to that incorrect information, because I wasn’t giving it enough of my own independent thought to realize the potential implications of upsets on the 1st/2nd seeding, and that was my mistake.

There are better ways to do things. Some people call for adopting a format more similar to The International. I personally would like to see something drawn out of StarCraft. The “GSL format” of double-elimination, four-player groups is very well known from SC2, but it’s also used in Afreeca StarLeague (ASL) in StarCraft: Brood War, and that happens to be my favourite esport to watch, so I may be biased!

I’m not really here to architect the one perfect solution, but I do want to add my voice to the crowd that is pointing to flaws in the current system. I know Worlds has a ton of history with this format, and there is value in that, but we should never let history and tradition stand in the way of improvement merely for the sake of that history in and of itself.