BUSAN, SOUTH KOREA – MAY 10: Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok of T1 gestures a thumbs up at the League of Legends – Mid-Season Invitational Groups Stage on May 10, 2022 in Busan, South Korea. (Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games)
MSI kicked off with the hometown heroes taking over the Vietnamese 2nd seed in Sport 1 of this perennially ill-advised match. Whereas it was undoubtedly a breath of recent air to see the VCS and their balls-to-the-wall gameplay again out on the Rift, they had been castrated fairly swiftly as soon as T1 acquired their ball rolling.
The primary day of any worldwide match is among the most fun in League, particularly after Riot delivers one among their trademark bombshell patches main as much as the occasion. There appears to be a pair outliers when it comes to meta and itemizations that I’ve stumbled throughout, however I’ll follow the issues I’ve seen on this recreation for now.
Ahri appears to be a mainstay mid lane decide, as she is scheduled to be nerfed within the upcoming patch of 12.10. T1 banning her on blue facet appears much less of a testomony to Froggy’s aptitude on her (particularly given how badly he performed this recreation) and extra of the energy of the decide basically.
The junglers had been the most important speaking level of the draft – Vi for T1 and Wukong for Saigon Buffalo Esports. Wukong was much less of a shock given how he had been freshly buffed for MSI. I can see groups’ reasoning for selecting him – he have to be doing effectively in scrims given his buffs and snowballing by video games. Nevertheless, his early recreation is sort of weak on stage, and with out robust laners to usher him in the direction of his ult spike, he was largely a nonfactor throughout not solely this recreation, but additionally all of his different video games as we speak.
Vi was far more of an fascinating decide; T1 paired the Vi with Faker’s Twisted Destiny and used their now-trademark decide combo to speed up the mid recreation. The combined harm in addition to the choc stuffed with CC that this mid/jg duo offered was instrumental in gaining again the momentum after T1 shockingly misplaced bot lane attributable to some heroics from Shogun and Taki. Gumayusi is thought for enjoying with out respect for his opposition in a variety of his video games, and I doubt he’ll take the Buffalos’ bot duo flippantly after they merely posterized him and Keria.
