Group Stage Day 7: Korea Rises as Legends Fall

With Group D being one of the groups of death, as well as one of the groups with some of the biggest upsets in terms of power rankings, the stakes couldn’t be higher during Day 7 of the 2015 World Championships.

When we last left this group, Europe’s squad of veterans, Origen, surprised everyone by going undefeated against some of the strongest and most popular teams at the tournament.

China’s #1 seed went an unprecedented 0-3, which is probably the worst showing of a team of their caliber on the world stage ever. Many will remember how MVP Ozone similarly crashed on the Worlds stage in 2013, but some will agree that LGD’s slip ups were even worse.

Still, there was a lot to take away from this group, starting with:

Origen: Triumphant but Exposed

Along with North America’s Cloud 9, Origen are definitely one of the biggest surprises of the tournament. Yes, Enrique “xPeke” Cedeño Martínez’s handpicked squad were the only team in Europe to even scratch Fnatic, let alone push them to the limit… but even they weren’t expected to do well against the likes of KT Rolster and LGD Gaming.

With Origen only needing one game to advance they managed to secure their quarterfinal berth with a win against Team SoloMid. But boy was it not clean. After a lot of hesitation and messy Baron bait plays by both teams, Paul “sOAZ” Boyer’s Kennen play narrowly saved Origen (and the audience) from a 60-minute game.

Despite their key strengths in Week 1, which included one of the smartest draft phases of any team at the event, and a well-oiled rotational playstyle, Origen were found lacking in the next couple games. With LGD already knocked out of the tournament, the Chinese squad played spoiler to European dreams by taking early leads against Origen. LGD Closed out the deal in surprisingly strong fashion, as their Olaf and Diana dive composition was too much for Origen.

In a game deciding the number one spot in the group, Origen’s early game was again exploited by KT Rolster, leaving many questions in people’s minds. Yes, Origen advance, but now they look far from the invincible team we saw during the first week of competition. If they can’t fix their inability to recover from an early deficit, can they still make it far in this tournament?

KT Rolster and Korean Pride

As previously mentioned, KT managed to take first in this group. This means that all the Korean teams that qualified for Worlds made it past groups.  In KT’s case, I’ve already stated that this tournament has been the thinking man’s tournament, and KT looked to have learned the most out of their opposition from week 1.

They kept with their trend of being the team with the outright best vision control at Worlds, combined with their top lane carry style that funnels the majority of the resources to Kim “Ssumday” Chan-ho. In the 3 games they played, they always allowed for Ssumday to get the counter pick against the enemy top laner: Renekton into Darius, Olaf into Malphite and Darius into Kennen. And each time, Ssumday wrecked his opponent.

And it’s not just Ssumday supported by the key vision control of Lee “Piccaboo” Jong-Beom anymore. Their mid laner Kim “Nagne” Sang-moon has only gotten stronger the more games he’s played. Originally written off as an unimpressive but serviceable player, Nagne nearly won KT the game against TSM single-handed with his Azir.

KT was a team characterized by their map play and cohesion, but now that their individual members are starting to shine on top of that, it’s not hard to see them making a deep run in the tournament.

Legends Fall… and Retire

For LGD (which does stand for Legend), though they did have a horrendous Week 1 and a truly painful loss to KT to start this week, their Worlds run actually ended on a bittersweet note.

It may have happened when they were already eliminated, but they managed to perform extremely well during their last two games. Their dominant victories over the two western teams in their group reminded the world what a top caliber Chinese team was capable of on a good day.

World champion Gu “imp” Seung-bin managed to style on his opponents with Graves and his signature Vayne, going a combined 20/6/12 KDA over two games. Even mid laner Wei “GODV” Zhen was back to his old form on his beloved assassins in Diana and LeBlanc, even outplaying TSM’s star player, Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg to the horror of North American fans.

But LGD aren’t the only ones that have something to be proud of in the face of defeat. For TSM, they didn’t just end the group at 1-5, they ended an entire era of League of Legends. Their game against LGD was officially the last professional match of top laner Marcus “Dyrus” Hill.

Dyrus was one of the true originals of the North American scene, making a name for himself on EpIK Gamer, then joining TSM and staying true to that team for over 3 years. He’s one of only two players who’ve been to all World Championships so far, the other being Fnatic’s Bora “YellOwStaR” Kim.

Say what you want about Dyrus, but he’s outlasted so many metagames and still remained relevant in terms of the NA region. He’s had his share of haters over the years (me included), but nobody can deny the impact this man has had on the professional scene. The amount of work he put into the game and how much passion he had for it is something to look up to no matter what.

 

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