Starting with Zaozi Ge, a dream lineup

Chapter 259 I'll take this poisoned milk! What about you?

As Riot Games released the final group assignments, the entire LoL community immediately buzzed with excitement, even though it was late at night.

Countless Chinese players were excitedly discussing the topic, commentators from various regions shared their opinions on the group assignments late into the night, and even retired players joined the discussion.

"Wow, the champions and runners-up from last year's S7 are going to clash in the group stage this time? Group B is practically the group of death!"

"Speaking of which, Group A is also a group of death. Flash Wolves' FW, Doublelift's TL, Mata's KT, to be honest, Group A is even more outrageous than Group B."

"Without wildcard teams, it's all a group of death? What kind of logic is that?"

"Exactly, are people still saying IG's Group D is tough? They have FNC, a Hong Kong team, and 100T. If they can't beat them, they might as well swim back home."

"+1, even though IG is the second seed, I think they should have no problem playing against those weak European and American teams!"

"Hey, are you getting cocky? If IG finishes first in their group, there's a very high chance they'll face SKT in the quarterfinals, okay?"

That being said, when it comes to the difficulty of advancing, Groups A and B are still more hopeless for other teams.

If viewers of S10 saw this grouping, they would definitely exclaim that Group A is simply amazing.

A few days later, the entire RNG team departed for the airport.

Unlike in the previous life, this year, due to the delay of the Asian Games and the cancellation of the Asian Games, the S8 qualifying rounds that were originally scheduled have also been cancelled, and the group stage will proceed directly.

The group stage will be held in Busan in the southeast—South Korea’s second-largest city, known for its beaches, mountains and temples.

After passing through security and other procedures, boarding officially began.

As the influence of League of Legends continues to grow, visa issues, which used to be a problem, are becoming less and less common. The three neat teams walked down from the waiting hall one by one and boarded the shuttle bus.

As the LPL's number one seed, RNG was seated at the very front. Li Luo sat by the window, glancing out at the busy staff.

Unlike the grand scale of the Asian Games, the team was very low-key this time for the S-series, only bringing the necessary staff and leaving the rest at the base to provide remote support.

Going to South Korea to compete, especially after ending the dominance of the Korean team in S7, and then going to their home country to compete in S8, it goes without saying that the audience will definitely feel pressured.

This time, unlike the competition in China, there were Chinese people everywhere, and you could hear cheers in Chinese all over the place.

Given South Korea's distorted esports environment, it's inevitable that some extreme things might happen.

The plane took off smoothly, and after entering the stratosphere, the enthusiastic flight attendants began to distribute meals.

As Li Luowei received the food, she bent over and looked back. Apart from the RNG players who were full of energy, the IG and RW players were clearly exhausted.

Seeing Li Luo looking over, Doinb, who couldn't sit still in the back, waved repeatedly to indicate that he was there.

After some trial and error, guided by the flight attendant, Doinb and Ah Shui switched seats with RNG staff and sat behind Li Luo.

"Hey, hey, little dog, I'm here, Ah Xi, I missed you so much," Doinb said with a familiar smile.

"Brother Gou, it's been a long time," Ah Shui said shyly.

Looking at their heavy dark circles and Doinb's noticeably red and swollen wrist.

"Have you guys been doing group sex lately? The competition's coming up, and you're already like this?"

Li Luo asked curiously.

"How could that be? The World Championship is coming up soon, how could we dare to mess around?"

Ah Shui quickly replied, "After we qualified for the S-series, we rested for three days and then started training again. The coach was constantly pushing us, and we couldn't even rest for a while."

"What's going on? Are you guys working on a secret weapon?" Xiangguo's curious voice came from behind.

"There's no way around it, the recent patch has changed so much, we have to adapt. We haven't played the World Championship patch before, if we don't practice now, it'll be too difficult to get eliminated in the group stage."

Ah Shui shrugged and said helplessly.

"This shouldn't be a big problem for you, right?"

Li Luo suddenly spoke, his gaze falling on TheShy, who was sitting by the porthole gazing at the blue sky.

"After all, this is another patch where top laners reign supreme!"

Marin in Season 5, TheShy in Season 8.

As the first generation of legendary top laner Marin, his legendary career began with the reform of the Korean professional league's competition system. After the huge reshuffle of the incredibly powerful Samsung Blue and Samsung White teams, SKT also ushered in a reorganization.

The departure of various heroes from South Korea gave SKT a lot of resources and opportunities. The SKT team seized this "historic opportunity" and built the prototype of their peak dynasty.

However, Ma Datou's dominance is not without reason, which is inseparable from the abnormal version of S5 - heavy armor warrior.

S5 is the version where top and bottom lanes could freely switch lanes. SKT always managed to gain a crushing advantage for their top laner after switching lanes through various strategies, which was thanks to the team's shot-calling.

Replacing the top laner with another professional-level player wouldn't yield much different results. They should just focus on controlling the enemy top laner and dealing damage as needed. The enemy top laner has already been rendered useless by the game's macro-management, so as long as nothing goes wrong, we can win.

To put it simply, SKT has been winning consistently, has a high profile, and Marin plays a very scientific and error-free game, which gives people the illusion that Marin is very strong.

If we have to talk about the top lane position and judge who was the strongest top laner in S5, it would definitely be Smeb.

SKT's overall strength in S5 was already off the charts, but in the three games of the finals, Smeb was completely on par with Marui in both laning and team fights. The player who crushed Huni's Riven with Hecarim, who crushed Huni's Hecarim with Riven, and who solo-killed Huni's Riven with Fiora was Smeb.

In that era, Smeb was the one who shared the world with Ma Datou.

But by S8, TheShy's outrageous performance was astonishing no matter how many times it was reviewed, leaving people speechless and unsure how to evaluate it.

From a hindsight perspective, was there any top laner in the entire S8 World Championship who could rival TheShy?
Smeb, who performed even better than Marin in S5, picked Swain and got 50 CS behind TheShy's Sion. Not to mention his other opponents, he was completely crushed. In the entire S8 season, TheShy was the only top laner.

With RNG leading the way, everyone, including teams from other regions, realized that the World Championship patch was the "top lane tactic" patch.

Buffed Darius, Fiora, Jayce, Akali. Riot Games does some fancy champion balance stuff every year, and then they find that the same 20 champions are used in the World Championships year after year, which is not balanced at all.

S8 was even more extreme, with Urgot, Aatrox, Akali, Alistar, Irelia, and others having a ban/pick rate of around 100%, truly making them either banned or picked.

So, where do these heroes' strengths lie?

Let's do it! We have to do it!

Other strong heroes this year, including Xin Zhao and Lissandra, also rely on fighting strategies, resulting in extremely bloody matches in S8. Many heroes who needed to wait for their items often couldn't even get them to complete their builds before the war was already raging at their doorsteps.

Map resources and vision control. This year's map resources are the most abundant ever. The jungle has plenty of money and experience, the river crab provides health and mana regeneration, as well as money and vision. Players who control the lanes can even go to the river to eat fruit for supplies, not to mention the Rift Herald at 20 minutes and the coveted Baron and Dragon.

If you want to fight, first of all, you need to have a vision setup, so small-scale battles often break out over the struggle for vision.

Many weaker compositions can only avoid battles and focus on vision control, thus losing the initiative in resource contention and allowing the snowball effect to grow larger and larger. Building up vision is easy, but securing vision is difficult.

So this year, no matter how much a carry needs to develop, your jungler must be a hero who is strong enough in the early game to be qualified to compete.

At the same time, many items suitable for top lane warrior heroes have also been buffed to some extent.

Even more devastating are some minor changes that ordinary players wouldn't even notice.

The change to jungle experience means that top laners will reach level 3 faster than junglers, improving the safety of top laners in farming.

Improved top lane farming safety + reduced cost of Viktor's core item's Tier 1 recipe in patch 8.18 + some previous minor buffs to Viktor = top lane toxic Viktor.

The Rift Herald's base damage has been increased, and it now deals a fixed 50% turret damage to low-health enemies. This makes a well-utilized Rift Herald far more effective than a dragon in the early game, thus making the bot lane meta less crucial.

The passive scaling damage of AP Kai'Sa, a T0 marksman in previous versions, was nerfed, which significantly reduced her ability to participate in mid-game fights and her dominance in the late game, making her suddenly a bottom-tier AD carry.

This caused many teams that blindly relied on Kai'Sa to suffer heavy losses in the World Championship.

Stopwatch = a tool that allows early-game teamfight initiators to charge in without thinking.

Endless = a skill that slows down the development of late-game marksman heroes.

Furthermore, in previous versions, Riot Games secretly nerfed the stats of ADCs and tanky mages.

At the time, all the professional teams thought it was just a normal nerf, but looking back now -- damn, this was a huge trap set by Riot's designers, completely preparing for the arrival of the top lane meta.

The top laner-dominant meta in S8 was entirely a situation deliberately created by Riot Games.

Anyway, RNG has a champion top laner, right? If we tell others, no one will believe that we are targeting your team.

Before the competition, players couldn't notice any changes from the previous versions, but once they entered the competition, they found that the previously dull matches had changed. This time, even the European and American noobs changed their style and played aggressively with back-and-forth action.

Top lane, mid lane, and jungle will be the three most important and eye-catching positions in the entire S8 season.

As for the bot lane, picking a "standard" AD carry might result in the lowest contribution to the team in history.

Rw and IG have definitely practiced their "top laner"-centric system. Even if they don't have enough time, IG will definitely realize just how amazing TheShy is under this system.

Just how strong is the current version of IG and the current version of TheShy?

Before the World Championship started and IG defeated the number one seed from South Korea, only Li Luo would have been curious about this question.

But it's clear that Ah Shui won't reveal his recent training match results.

In the World Championships, even in the group stage, everyone is in different groups and won't meet. But in the quarterfinals and semifinals, as the results get better and better, you will eventually meet and become competitors.

With Doinb, who's always talking, around, everyone felt less awkward. The others, who were initially shy, also sat down and, without violating any principles, exchanged their opinions on the version.

The flight from the capital to Busan only takes two and a half hours, and before we knew it, the time had flown by.

Busan, we've arrived!
As soon as they got off the plane, staff from Riot Games picked them up, and the group boarded an official chartered bus to head to a hotel that had been prepared in advance.

With League of Legends growing stronger and stronger, coupled with Tencent's investment, Riot Games had become a gaming giant by Season 8, boasting deep pockets and immense wealth.

Unlike before, when S5 and S6 rented villas and converted them into hotels, they no longer needed to do that; instead, they directly arranged for the highest-class five-star hotel in Busan.

Compared to the seasons 3 and 4, when everyone had to find their own hotels and training venues, some veteran players and staff members were filled with emotion.

And this happened on the very day the LPL teams arrived at the hotel.
Riot Games, in collaboration with ESPN, released a leaderboard that everyone is familiar with.

S8 Participating Teams Power Ranking

S8 Participant Rankings

This is a routine operation for Riot Games every year. These two lists always appear as scheduled during the World Championship and never fail to appear.

The leaderboard, known for its "jinxes," is cursed by Riot Games every time it's updated, with any team or player ranking high up being cursed by Riot.

For example, the rankings from last year's S7.

SKT, ranked first, didn't even make it to the finals. Longzhu, ranked second, suffered a shock defeat in the quarterfinals, being swept by Samsung. WE, ranked fourth, also fell to Samsung.

We arrived at the player rankings.

First place: Brother Li; Second place: Rat King; Third place: Greira; Fourth place: Khan.
Riot Games has proven with its own record that our leaderboard is all about real results, no fancy stuff. If you're on the leaderboard, you're guaranteed to underperform.

Despite their fears, when the rankings were released, all the team fans were still eager to know where their favorite team's players were ranked.

The first thing I clicked on was the power ranking of the participating teams.

Top 1: Royal Never Give Up (LPL Region No. 1 Seed)
Top 2: SK Telecom T1 (LCK No. 1 seed)
Top 3: KT Rolster (LCK second seed)

RNG was officially ranked number one, surpassing two Korean teams to firmly establish itself in the top tier.

In the second player rankings, Riot Games has fully demonstrated its determination to make RNG number one.

Top 20 Global Players in Season 8
Top 1: Rng.Uzi——
Top 2: SKT.Faker
top3:Rng.mlxg——
Top 4: Rng.xiaohu
Top 5: kt.smeb
Top 6: kt.mata
Top 7: Rng.letme——
Top 9: Rng.Ming
Top 10: ig.Rookie
Of the top ten, LPL has six spots, LCK has four, and RNG has five.
This outrageous list instantly thrust RNG into the spotlight, causing a huge uproar in the global LoL community as soon as it was released.

RNG may be really strong, but isn't this a bit too exaggerated?
It's understandable that Uzi came in first place, but surprisingly, the "Mangfu Mala Xiangguo" (a nickname for a player who wasn't favored by ESPN) also made it to third.

As foreign media outlets, we can't stand players who are unpredictable and erratic, like Xiangguo. This time, for the first time ever, RNG's mid-jungle duo occupied 34 spots.

The two online forums for "Anti-Pressure and Blame-Taking" were flooded with posts, with dozens of posts per second angrily criticizing Riot Games for being careless and losing its "mother" (i.e., failing to fulfill its promises).

The Zhihu hot list is soaring, and the number one question is: "How do you view the ESPN rankings? All five members of RNG's starting lineup are in the top 10?"

Bilibili and Douyin short videos are everywhere, and countless marketing accounts, both familiar and unfamiliar, are jumping out to point fingers at the rankings.

And this online influence is gradually extending into reality.

With a VPN connected and scrolling through messages on his phone, Li Luo could clearly feel that the influence of esports was growing.

The new version of the equipment has me completely bewildered!

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(End of this chapter)