You promised a top lane tutorial, but you're just using Worlds as material for your videos?

Chapter 423 I'm going to take on the elite! A shocking upset on the first day of the quarterfinals?
All I can say is that this year's World Championship was the most united one ever for the LPL.

But this so-called "unity" is only relative to the past.

People have their own stances.

How can they possibly unite when their demands are not entirely aligned?

Zhou Dian didn't care about the arguments going on online.

So what if you spray it? So what if you blow it?
None of it matters.

The important thing is to play well in the upcoming knockout rounds.

In Zhou Dian's view, if your ultimate goal is to win the championship, then it doesn't really matter who you are drawn with in the quarterfinals.

In the League of Legends World Championship, the quarterfinals, semifinals, and even the finals can all be decided by luck.

But to win the final championship, you need real strength!

In a single-elimination tournament, the champion is the strongest player.

However, the runner-up is not necessarily the second strongest.

There are teams stronger than the runners-up who might have been eliminated by the champions much earlier.

In Zhou Dian's view, being the runner-up is nothing to be proud of.

It could even be said that the runner-up who falls short on the final road is the biggest loser.

As for the idea that reaching the semi-finals constitutes success, that's utter nonsense.

If a team's initial goal is to reach the quarterfinals or semifinals, then it can only reach the quarterfinals or semifinals at most.

In esports, the ultimate goal is to win the championship.

Below the champion, there's nothing left to compare; everyone is a loser.

Given this situation, Dragon Ball, as the current top favorite to win the championship, has no choice but to fight sooner or later.

Elite?

I'm fighting against the elite!

Many people believe that Longzhu Gaming, the only team to advance from the group stage with a perfect record in this S-series tournament, is currently the strongest team.

After all, the odds of winning the championship from the betting companies are there for all to see.

However, Zhou Dian had a different opinion.

Based on their performance in the second round of the group stage, Dragon Ball is not the best.

Take Samsung as an example. Although they lost to RNG in the second round of the group stage BO1.

But that match really showed Ruler's poor performance against Uzi.

Moreover, BO1 is too unpredictable, and it's a completely different game from BO5.

The best-of-five knockout stage is where a team's true strength is truly revealed.

Based on the practice matches we've played and the content of the second round of the group stage...

Zhou Dian believes that Samsung's understanding of the version and the overall game content it presents are superior to Dragon Ball.

Dragon Ball's ability to advance with six consecutive wins and a perfect record in the group stage is, to be fair, a testament to the weakness of the other three teams in Group B.

Of course, winning all six BO1 matches, which are highly unpredictable, at least demonstrates that Dragon Ball's strength is quite solid.

In the knockout stage, even teams from the same region will not easily play practice matches against each other if they are in the same half of the bracket.

When people arrange practice matches, they always choose teams from different halves of the bracket.

Teams from different halves of the bracket can only meet in the main event in the finals.

There are still nearly twenty days between the end of the group stage and the start of the finals.

Playing scrims with teams from different halves of the bracket allows you to experiment with any special moves or novel strategies you come up with.

If they both make it to the finals, and then meet again in 10 or 20 days, their strategies and tactics might have changed several times over, so it won't have much of an impact.

On October 15th, the group stage of this World Championship was completed.

After a four-day break, on the 19th, the quarterfinals of this World Championship will begin.

One best-of-five series per day, for four consecutive days.

It has to be said that although LGD had a bad draw, their schedule was quite good.

The quarterfinal match between LGD and Longzhu was scheduled for the last day of the quarterfinals.

Not only did we have three more days to practice and prepare.

You can also watch the first three quarter-final elimination matches to learn from other players' strategies.

Just like the second round of the group stage, the knockout stage will definitely see the weaker side pull out all the stops.

The day after the group stage ended, the entire LGD team set off for Guangzhou.

SKT and LGD were among the last teams to arrive in Guangzhou.

Other teams that finished their group stage matches earlier had already finished two days ago.

Guangzhou, a first-tier city on the southern coast of my country, is also the venue for the four best-of-five elimination matches in the quarterfinals of this World Championship.

The entire LGD team arrived at the hotel arranged by Riot Games. After settling in, the team immediately began intensive training.

The date is October 19th, Thursday.

Four p.m.

The quarterfinals of the S7 World Championship have begun.

Today's best-of-five knockout match features SKT against MSF.

MSF, the second seed from the European region, is also jokingly referred to as the "Rabbit Team" by many viewers because their team logo features a rabbit.

Of the four matchups in the quarterfinals, this one is widely considered to be the one with the biggest gap in strength.

It might even surpass the group that includes RNG and FNC.

Everyone thought that SKT would easily defeat the Rabbit team and advance to the semifinals.

However, the actual course of the match was beyond everyone's expectations.

In a best-of-five series where the skill gap is significant, the weaker team will definitely have to come up with some unconventional strategies to beat the stronger team.

The Rabbits team certainly pulled off some unexpected moves today.

In the very first game of the BO5 series, Team Rabbit immediately made their move, picking Rumble for the top lane, a pick that no one had chosen in the group stage.

However, the Rabbit team released Jayce in this game.

Huni's Jayce is far more than just a fan's level; he's got real skills.

In this game, Faker played Galio mid for the first time at the World Championship.

Faker's Galio completely revitalized all three lanes, and Huni's Jayce in the top lane also dominated his opponent Rumble.

In a crushing 16-1 kill score, SKT took the first game of this BO5 series in just 25 minutes.

Just when everyone thought that the next two games would be just like the first game, with SKT crushing the Rabbit team 3-0 and easily taking them down,

The situation on the field suddenly changed.

In the second game, the Rabbit Team unleashed their ultimate move.

After banning Jayce and Galio, the Rabbit team's Korean import, support player IgNar, pulled out Blitzcrank support.

In this meta where soft supports and Ardent Censer-type champions are rampant, picking a hard support takes courage.

Not to mention robots, who are tightrope walkers who either succeed or die trying.

However, in this game, IgNar's Blitzcrank's Q was incredibly accurate, completely crushing SKT's three lanes.

Bang's mentality is almost broken by the robot.

The Rabbit team returned the favor to SKT with a crushing victory.

The score is now tied at 1-1.

This was something no one had anticipated before the match.

Many people might have thought that the Rabbit team could win a game against SKT in a best-of-five series.

But unexpectedly, the Rabbit Team's victory was a complete rout of SKT.

After the score was tied, the third game became crucial as the match point was contested.

SKT made a personnel change, with Xiaohai replacing Xiaohua.

SKT's current jungler rotation system is simple: Peanut starts, and if they lose, Blank will take over for the next game. In this third game, the champion selection alone drew cheers from the audience.

After SKT banned three support champions, the Rabbit team countered by picking Leona as support.

On SKT's side, Bang pulled out Vayne.

That wasn't all; the Rabbit team actually picked Ivern as their jungler on the fifth floor of the red team.

While the other heroes weren't entirely unexpected, this pick of Daisy as a jungler was something no one anticipated.

The Rabbit team's strategy was clear: after the support picked a tanky support like Leona, someone on the team had to build Ardent Censer.

As the strongest and most overpowered equipment in this version, if others buy it and you don't, you're already at a disadvantage.

In the last game when picking Blitzcrank, Team Rabbit had Karma in the mid lane and built Ardent Censer.

In this game, Leona was picked, and the Rabbit team picked Ivern jungle with Ardent Censer.

European teams are indeed full of cutting-edge technologies.

The title of "European and American artist" is well-deserved.

Facing Ivern, SKT's top, mid, and jungle players invaded Ivern's jungle from the start, preventing Ivern from having an easy early game.

The top and mid laners of the Rabbit team naturally came to protect their own jungler.

Just as the top, mid, and jungle players from both sides were having a great time battling it out in the upper jungle, bad news came from the bottom lane.

SKT's bot lane duo was double-killed by Rabbit's bot lane at level one.

The cheers from the audience have continued since the selection process began.

Actually, most of the people at the event today were neutral viewers who support the LPL.

However, in any competitive sport, neutral viewers are naturally inclined to support the weaker side.

Therefore, the audience below the stage was cheering for the Rabbit Team.

The Rabbit team's bot lane, with Tristana who leveled up W at level 1 and Leona who leveled up E at level 1, simply auto-attacked and killed both of SKT's bot lane duo.

When a level 1 cannon jumps right in front of you, most people's reaction is, "Why is this cannon feeding?"

Then, Leona with runes focused on attack damage and the talent Fervor of Battle taught everyone a lesson.

Bang's Vayne couldn't out-attack Leona at all; Leona's auto-attacks completely numb her.

In fact, the combination of Leona with Fervor of Battle and Tristana in the bot lane can still be seen from time to time in solo queue games.

This is purely a casual, random match strategy.

I never expected that I would actually order the Bang dish!

The robot from the previous game was the same; it could only be used to order food.

In the current version, if a hard support can't pick off any bad items, its effectiveness is far less than that of a soft support.

Actually, looking at the group stage as a whole, including the scrims and information revealed by some teams that SKT has played against, we can see that...

Bang's performance is far worse than his championship-winning seasons of the previous two years.

It's even worse than when Brazil had its MSI in the first half of this year.

Describing it as a precipitous drop wouldn't be an exaggeration.

Throughout the group stage, Bang truly shone only in the first round of the group stage, in the match against LGD.

His performance was mediocre at other times, and he also had many episodes of illness.

In today's BO5, we've only reached the third game, and the European team's bot lane has already dominated for two games.

That's a bit of an exaggeration!
This year's SKT team at the World Championship has seen a significant decline in its bot lane, and its top laner, Huni, is unpredictable, sometimes performing exceptionally well and sometimes poorly.

Peanut, the jungler, is extremely out of step with the recent patches and seems to be out of sync with them.

As for the other rotation jungler, Xiaohai, he's just riding the wave of the mid lane situation.

If the mid laner is strong this game, that's fine; if the mid laner is restricted and has little impact, he can't step up at all.

It's fair to say that SKT right now is somewhat being carried by Faker alone.

Although still powerful and with a high potential, they are no longer as invincible as they were in the S-series of the previous two years.

The Rabbit team figured this out. After suffering a loss against Galio in the first game, they banned Galio in the second and third games.

Without Galio, Faker isn't as good at helping his teammates.

If your teammates don't step up, how can one person fight against five?

In the second game, Faker picked a champion that needed to farm, but his teammates completely destroyed him, leaving him no choice but to wait to die. As a result, the Rabbit team won a crushing game.

Facing strong opponents now, Faker doesn't dare to pick late-game heroes that require farming, and his teammates simply can't hold on.

So, without Galio, Faker picked Taliyah, a champion that can roam.

After SKT's bot lane duo was double-killed at level 1 by the opposing bot lane, SKT's bot lane collapsed.

However, thanks to Faker's Taliyah roaming around and providing support, the collapse in the bottom lane did not quickly spread to other lanes.

The inherent difference in team composition meant that SKT's lineup was simply unable to engage in team fights when they were at a disadvantage.

After struggling for more than forty minutes, the Rabbit team still managed to break through all three lanes and push them all down in one fell swoop.

In this game, Bang was playing Vayne with Lulu's buff, but his damage output was less than half of the enemy AD carry's, which was a really poor performance.

After winning the third game, Team Rabbit took a 2-1 lead over SKT, securing match point in this BO5 elimination match.

This was something no one had anticipated before the competition.

Many LPL fans in the audience cheered and applauded for the Rabbit Team.

For most of the clapping audience, this was not due to any inherent hostility from LPL viewers towards Korean teams.

Rather, it is the Rabbit Team's competitive spirit of daring to fight, take risks, and make bold moves that deserves everyone's respect.

With the match at this stage, many RNG fans are already speculating whether Team Rabbit can pull off a stunning upset and defeat SKT.

Because RNG and SKT are in the same half of the bracket.

RNG's quarterfinal opponent, FNC, is not very strong, so there is not much suspense in RNG winning against FNC and advancing to the semifinals.

If Team Rabbit can pull off an upset against SKT, then RNG's opponent in the semifinals will be Team Rabbit.

This basically means RNG has secured a spot in the finals!

So how could RNG fans not be excited after the Rabbit team took a 2-1 lead over SKT and secured match point?

However, SKT is SKT after all; the three-time world champions are not just a name without substance.

SKT's ability to adjust is quite strong; in the fourth game, they directly secured Tristana before the Rabbit team could.

SKT also realized that no matter what hard support you choose for offense, the most suitable AD carry is Tristana.

Tristana is arguably the most aggressive ADC in the current version.

Since Bang can't withstand the pressure from your bot lane, he might as well just pick Tristana first.

At the same time, SKT abandoned the idea of ​​insisting on picking a support with Ardent Censer in the bot lane and directly picked Braum as their support.

You like picking tank supports, right? Then I'll pick a tank support too.

Braum, as a support, has an extremely strong counter-engage ability and is a hard counter to champions like Blitzcrank and Leona.

Sure enough, in this game, Rabbit team's support IgNar didn't dare to pick Blitzcrank or Leona again, but instead chose Alistar support.

However, the combination of Alistar and Sivir was far less effective than in the previous two games, failing to put enough pressure on Bang.

After all, in the bot lane, when the support is a soft support, it tests the AD's performance more, and when the support is a hard support, it tests the support's performance more.

Bang played poorly today, but Wolf's performance was still decent.

In this game, the Rabbit team banned Galio again.

From the Rabbit Team's perspective, Galio is definitely a champion that Faker cannot be given.

Faker chose Ryze in this game, continuing his strategy of roaming and helping his teammates from the previous game.

When Ryze comes out, he really carries the game.

With constant help from the mid laner, Bang finally managed to put up a fight in this game.

SKT pulled one back, bringing the score to 2-2.

The two sides have entered the decisive game!

(End of this chapter)