This article is part of our LoL Previews series.
We continue our look at the teams that will be competing in Worlds with a look at the teams that earned their ticket based on their circuit point totals. As a refresher, each of the major regions will be sending three teams to the World Championship: the winner of their respective Summer Splits, the team that acquired the most circuit points between the Spring and Summer splits, and the team that "runs the gauntlet" and qualifies via the regional qualifiers. This second category includes four teams: Korea's SK Telecom T1, China's Royal Never Give Up, North America's Counter Logic Gaming, and Europe's H2k-Gaming.
Of peculiar interest is the fact that unlike the first batch of teams we looked at, where every team save G2 eSports had been a consistent player on the world stage, many of these teams are relative unknowns at worlds. Thus, this batch is even harder to read than the first, as many of the teams either have little international renown to judge or are currently in vastly different states than when they earned that fame in the first place.
To start, we will look at the defending champions of the Summoner's Cup, and the only team to ever repeat a Worlds Victory: SKT Telecom.
SK Telecom: Fate Defied
For the entirety of League of Legend's competitive history, there's been something of a curse on the Summoner's Cup: no team to take home the highest honor in the eSport has ever made it back to Worlds the year after to defend their title. Thus, in winning the Korean Circuit this year, SKT T1 has done what no other team has before -- themselves included -- earn the chance to defend their title. Whether or not they will succeed in that venture is an entirely different question, however, as the team that will take to the stage in North America is far removed from the one that took the world by storm in 2015. Then, they casually dispatched everyone that battled them on the Rift, including their now rivals, the GE Tigers. Whether Lee "Duke" Ho-Seong and Kang" Blank" Sun-gu, the team's new blood, can live up to the legacy of their predecessors, Jang "MaRin" Gyeong-Hwan and Bae "Bengi" Seong-ung respectively, is going to be the defining question of the event for SKT T1. For that matter, whether the rest of the team is capable of living up to the performances they had in 2015 is just as open a question, as the continuously evolving landscape that is the League of Legends metagame is an uncaring engine of change.
While few question the historical ability of SKT T1's most prominent carries, Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok and Bae "Bang" Jun-sik, it is hard to ignore the struggles that half of that equation has been mired in for some time now. Despite being unquestionably the best player in the world over the course of his career, whether Faker can be considered the best player in the world at the present is a question that's more complicated than it seems. His showings in both playoffs splits were quite hit or miss, and the fact that Fly, a player who will not even be attending Worlds, managed to outmaneuver him completely should be a worrisome sign for SKT T1. They historically have relied on his performance and had difficulties performing when their ace player is on the ropes. The fact that the metagame seems to be shifting towards champions that have been weak points for Faker in the past seems another blow against SKT. Both Karma and Lissandra saw widespread play during the regional qualifiers, both of which are champions that Faker is not exactly famous for -- at least not in a positive way.
That said, SKT T1 are still a formidable team, and while a hostile environment might force Faker to the level of the mere mortals that surround him, that does not mean the team is not capable of defending their title and legacy with or without his hard-carry performances. Both Blank and Duke have had moments of brilliance, and only a fool would discount the awesome power of the Lee "Wolf" Jae-wan/Bang combination that has time and again proven to be amongst the most powerful bottom lanes in the world. While SKT T1 may not be the favorites and may not be in the best shape of the organization's history, they have defied fate just making it to the event in the first place. No amount of naysaying and no quantity of minor handicaps can keep this team out of the finals if they live up to their legacy of impeccably measured play, and woe betide any team that underrates them simply because KT Rolster took the LCK crown from their heads.
Royal Never Give Up: Picking up the Pieces
On paper, Royal Never Give Up is mightier than they have ever been. The team turned heads in the Mid-Season Invitational after they tore apart the competition during the group stage, even managing to obliterate SKT T1 in their first meeting in one of the most memorable moments of the event. Immediately afterward they replaced their role player ADC Wang "Wuxx" Cheng with the Chinese legend Jian "Uzi" Zi-Hao, producing what many expected to be the greatest Chinese roster to have existed. For many casual fans, Royal's story ended there for the split, as the awkward viewing hours ensure that Western audiences rarely view the LPL. Thus, many casual fans will likely go into this event expecting to see more of the high-octane play that Royal is famous for, with Cho "Mata" Se-hyeong's expert shot calling allowing them to dismantle teams much as they did during MSI.
Unfortunately, barring some unprecedented and magnificent transformation, that is quite unlikely to be the case. The roster swaps that were supposed to give Royal the additional strength of having a strong 2-vs-2 bottom lane came at a high cost and were only questionably effective at achieving their original goal in the first place. One of the hallmarks of Royal's play throughout the first half of the year was their constant and two-dimensional pressure on their two solo lanes, as both Li "mlxg" Shi-yu and Mata would ruthlessly ensure that both Li "Xiaohu" Yuan-Hao and, to a lesser extent, Jang "Looper" Hyeong-seok, were able to transition into the mid-game teamfighting in which they excelled. With the introduction of Uzi, an ADC player well known for his desire to punish his lane opponents in a fashion that finds its closest Western analog in H2k's Konstantinos "FORG1VEN" Tzortziou, that dynamic has crumbled. Mata instead finds himself locked in the bottom lane for much of the early game, and he has never excelled as a laning support. Thus, mlxg is left to his own devices throughout the early game and has reverted to trying to find a lead solely by terrorizing the enemy jungler, a strategy that has had mixed effectiveness. Meanwhile, Uzi and Mata's duo laning has been a crapshoot that just as often sees them die to objectively inferior players as it sees them find a lead -- a fact that ensured Royal was unable to defeat both of their regional rivals during the regular season.
For Royal, the question is not whether the potential is there; no one argues that Royal are amongst the most talented teams in attendance on an individual basis. They need only find a way to assemble the disparate parts that make up the team into something resembling a cohesive unit. If they fail in that, they face the very real possibility of not even escaping the group stages and proving to be yet another link in a chain of unimpressive international performances by China.
Counter Logic Gaming: A Break from the Past
While many of the other teams at this event are fighting merely to reprise previously impressive Worlds performances, Counter Logic Gaming will be looking to do exactly the opposite. Their last showing at Worlds was amongst the most infamously terrible in the history of both the team and the region. The second week of the group stage saw NA as a whole go an unprecedented 0-10, a first for any major region at Worlds. While C9's failures might be the most heartbreaking after their excellent first week, it was CLG's failure that has lived on most in the memory of North American fans. Both TSM and C9 faced a terrifying array of teams in their groups, but CLG had the "group of life" filled with weak teams. It is CLG's defeat at the hands of Pain Gaming after one of the most obviously half-hearted games in recent memory that lives on in the minds of North American fans. The organization had much to answer for in the aftermath of the infamous match, even if they had already failed in their quest to advance out of the group stage by the time they faced the Brazilian team.
That incarnation of CLG is no more, however, and in its place is a team headlined primarily by its younger players, namely Choi "Huhi" Jae-hyun and Trevor "Stixxay" Hayes, both talents brought up from the Challenger scene. Both have earned harsh criticism due to their nature as role players, but Stixxay at least managed to silence his critics after CLG's finals showing at the Mid-Season Invitational. Huhi's results have been far more mixed, with his off-meta picks varying between windfall successes -- he was the first adopter of Aurelion Sol internationally, a champion who now has a few devoted and successful core players -- and horrifying failures -- like his mid Ekko that served him so well in NA Finals which had dramatically less success against the likes of Faker. Still, their performance at MSI raised more than a few eyebrows, and many predicted that CLG would be a dominant regional force again during the Summer Split.
To put it simply: that did not happen. The causes were many, as both the fatigue of CLG's players as well as a changing metagame combined with stiffer competition during the more relevant Summer Split to push CLG down into the mid-tier of teams. While they did manage to battle their way to fourth place and thus secure their ticket to Worlds, they did so in muted fashion. No one's putting their money on CLG to even make it out of their group, and CLG has not given anyone any reason to think otherwise. While it is impossible to write off a team as hard-working as this one -- as they showed the world as MSI when they gave SKT T1 their second loss of the event -- everyone at Worlds will be playing for keeps, and working just as hard as CLG to get their hands on the Summoner's Cup. Whether the ancient North American organization can measure up will be something they need to prove to their often critical and detached fanbase.
H2k-Gaming: A Moment in the Spotlight
After the complete implosion of Origen during the Summer Split saw them disqualify themselves from Worlds by dropping into the relegation bracket, H2k suddenly found themselves thrust into the international spotlight thanks to their consistent third-place finishes. No one seems more surprised about this chain of events than H2k themselves, who only just shook up their roster before the beginning of playoffs when they added FORG1VEN back to the team. Long heralded as one of the EU's premier teams, H2k has had endless struggles when it came time to translate their regular season successes into playoff titles. They so far have seen their consistently solid play eclipsed by the flashier play of the juggernaut teams that seem destined to cast their shadow over the London-based organization. In 2015, it was both Fnatic and Origen who held onto the limelight, and now G2 eSports looks to do the same.
However, considering H2k's weak showing the last time they took to the World stage, that lack of scrutiny may well be desirable. In fairness, fortune placed them into an almost impossible group, as both SKT T1 and Edward Gaming were widely considered favorites to take the title going into the event. Still, when faced with world-class teams H2k floundered, and the H2k that comes back to the stage is largely the same as the one that left it in ignominy last year. While they have since wholly revamped their bottom lane, it is mostly a side-grade with strengths that, if anything, are less relevant on the world stage than the excellent role-playing that Hjarnan brought to the team last year. H2k stands simply as a textbook example of a middle of the road Worlds team, one that has a decent shot at making the elimination stages with a good group, but one that has virtually no shot at the title itself.
For H2k, this journey will about making as good a use of the spotlight as they can. While no one can ever discount the possibility of a miracle run, no one would ever bet on it from this team either. With H2k you seemingly always get what you pay for, and in this case that will likely ensure that this is one team who'll be sitting in the red come the end of the group stage.
