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League of Legends Worlds: what you missed during the intense semi-finals

From the grudge match between G2 and Damwon to the new rising stars from China, the 2020 League of Legends Worlds semi-finals have stunned us all.

This year’s League of Legends Worlds semi-finals left everyone on the edge of the seats. With revenge upping the ante, even the fans could feel the tension coming off their computer screens.

After watching the slaying of the LPL king and the tongue-in-cheek victory pose by Damwon, nobody knew what to expect and the games still delivered in spades. With the grand finals kicking off on the 31st of October, here’s our re-cap of this year’s semi-finals.

league of legends, worlds 2020

Damwon Gaming gets revenge on G2 Esports

After losing to G2 in the 2019 Worlds championship, Korean team Damwon delivered one of the best grudge match victories in League of Legends history. Damwon defied all expectations, and for their trouble they’ll be advancing into the grand finals.

After taking down Korean esports giants one by one, this match was skewed in G2’s favour despite the betting odds.

This match clearly meant a lot of Damwon, and despite vigorously applying salt onto G2’s wounds by mirroring their victory pose, the post-match moments were heartwarming. But this victory wasn’t simply a good stroke of luck – a good deal of strategy went into defeating their European rivals.

With Faker being benched and TSM losing six games in a row, it almost felt as if the previous era of League of Legends had come to an end. Damwon had proven themselves to be more than just a relic of the past – here they felt more like the future of Korean teams.

Damwon Gaming: masters of the old and new

Because ShowMaker reminds them of Faker in his glory days, many say that Damwon still resembles traditional LCK teams. There’s a mid lane monster with insane mechanical abilities in all our favourite Korean teams, and ShowMaker just happens to be the strongest one this year.

Looking over their data from 2019, ShowMaker had been experimenting with different roles and champions. Comparing his performance on Corki and Kayle to his Sylas or Twisted Fate, you can see a resounding improvement towards his K/D and kill participation. With less deaths and more presence, Showmaker had finally become a polished mid laner.

Breaking from the norm, Damwon didn’t show an over-reliance on ShowMaker in the semis. A difference in macro-decisions was especially evident when G2 got humiliated in their fourth match. In addition to their victory pose and emote spams, we mustn’t forget that they won within 20 minutes – the fastest game in Worlds history.

There are three reasons for this. Firstly, ShowMaker displayed an insane amount of map presence, his Twisted Fate had contributing towards 12 out of 15 kills. As a result, he was able to divert G2’s attention to the top lane, making space for Ghost to farm his Caitlyn.

BeryL even brought the Hail of Blades keystone on Braum, allowing for a passive-aggressive support style where he protected his team by beating his foes up. Finally, Canyon on Kindred was able to get near-perfect marks for her passive.

With a bit of luck and a truckload of strategy, Damwon had showed us all a game to remember. With ShowMaker leading his team towards victory, most of us won’t blame G2’s Mikyx for feeding. We’ll let their team founder do that instead:

Rising star Suning takes down LPL king, TOP Esports (TES)

Forget G2 for a moment, Suning have proven themselves to be the true David of this championship by taking down the biggest Goliath of all. Betraying all fan expectations, the top contender from the League of Legends Pro League have lost to Suning, 3-1.

With no regional pride on the line (both teams are from China) and with everyone hyping up the G2 vs Damwon game, no one would imagined that this game would be just as exciting. We’ve seen this match-up countless times in the LPL, with TES usually thrashing Suning, but this year’s League of Legends Worlds would prove us wrong.

Suning’s biggest improvement was towards their roster. Angel is another young mid laner with incredible micro-plays who managed to replace Knight. The former mid laner left the team for TES, forcing Suning to look for a replacement.

The new 18-year-old player responded to Knight jumping ship by dismantling his new team completely.

TES relied on an ADC hard carry and paid the price

The match between Suning and TES further embodied how horrendous the ADC role had become. The strategy wasn’t as complicated as the G2 vs Damwon match – TES seemed to put all their eggs in one basket with JackeyLove.

Despite having tons of gold and a high damage output, his contribution to team fights were limited. Suning punished TES by taking out their ADC with surgical precision.

Game 4 had shown us how one assassin could turn this one into a one-sided bloodbath. No matter  how good their early game lead was, TES simply sowed seeds with nothing to reap.

Each fight had Angel’s Akali waiting for JackeyLove’s Ashe to stick her neck out for a swift kill. Yuyanjia and 369 did all they could to protect their ADC, but they just couldn’t stop the nimble ninja.

The grand finals forecast

With both teams heading into the grand finals looking strong, it could be anyone’s game. I personally believe that Damwon is more favoured to win, as Suning will have to come up with a different strategy to take on the new Korean powerhouse.

The mid lane match is definitely on everyone’s minds. Between the 18-year-old Chinese prodigy and the more seasoned ShowMaker, I’m leaning in favour of Damwon to take home this year’s cup. But who knows? Something tells me Suning isn’t done being the giant slayer yet.

Tune in on the 31st of October for the final chapter of League of Legends Worlds 2020, streamed live from their official esports site.