Top Teams Getting Ready for the LoL World Championship

Riot games have announced the roster of 24 teams that will compete in popular League of Legends World Championship, with team SK Telecom T1 having their top laner  Heo “Huni” Seung-Hoon back in first five, after being subbed for 3 matches. The World Championship in League of Legends begins on September 23.  The tournament is going to be held in 4 different locations all over China. This event is expected to be one of those bigger, maybe even the biggest event in the League of Legends competitions history.

There will be a 24 teams in total: three teams from South Korea, North America, China, Europe and Taiwan/Hong Kong; one team from Brazil, Latin America South, Latin America North, Japan, Turkey,  Oceania, Southeast Asia and Russia each, followed by one team from the Wildcard region having the highest rank finish in the 2017 Mid-Season Invitational tournament. The prize pool is expected to be around staggering $2,130,000 in addition to Fan Contribution.

The freshly added play-in stage will last up to September 28.  The play-in group stage will last up to September 26, having six games played every day. Top two teams from each of four groups will go further to the knockout stage that is going to be held on September 27 and 28. After that, the remaining four teams will proceed to the world’s group stage.

As for the rules, each team can bring 6 players maximum, having five first lineup starters, and one substitute. Also, each team can have one coach to attend the team through the draft stage. World Championship for League of Legends is scheduled to start on Saturday, with the opening play-in stage. There will be twelve teams in the play-in stage, from which four will go further, to join remaining twelve teams to form a group stage, consisting of 16 teams. The tournament is expected to run through the first week of November.

Faker from SK Telecom T1 on Roster’s Draw

Lee Sang-hyeok, better known as “Faker”  said that his team, SK Telecom T1 has never had an “easy group” on World Championship and that this year his group consists of some very fierce opponents. SK Telecom T1 will take part in the very competitive Group A, which is the major group as famous China’s Edward Gaming, and Ahq e-Sports Club will also face their opponents there. Ahq and EDG are probably one of the strongest teams from their regions, but it is reasonable to still regard SK Telecom T1 as the favorites to win the first place in the group and to reach the playoffs, in a pursuit to have their third consecutive World Championship victory.

Teams’ Roster Changes

Rosters, at least most of them, were straightforward, but there were some decisions that turned up to be interesting, especially for two teams, and those are team SKT and Longzhu gaming.

Team SKT was using two substitutes freely, having „Untara“ ( Park Eui-jin) and „Blank“ (Kang Sun-hu) rotating. Huni had worse win rate than Untara but, somewhat surprisingly, the SKT team decided to take only Huni, to cover the position in that top lane, and to use his sub position to make some more jungle security in Blank. As for the team Longzhu, they had four subs to choose from. Eventually, the team decided to have “Rascal” (Kim  Kwang-hee)  to back up  “Khan”  (Kim Dong-ha) in the position in the top lane.