Week 1 of the Groups Stages of Worlds 2020 has ended with the first round-robin of games done for each group.
Worlds 2020 Group Stage Week 1 has been a good showing for many teams and not so great for the rest. Week 1 has come with its ups and downs and there is a lot to take away from the four days of games. These are our takeaways of Week 1 of games.
1. Drafting priority is more important than ever
In most of the games, drafting has been significant to the wins of the respective teams. Counter matchups and power picks have defined a lot of the games. This year, it seems to be that the better draft is winning irrespective of team and individual skills so far. There have been different draft strategies but the team with the better draft has usually won.
Often times than not in this tournament, missed bans on strong champions has impacted the result. Lucian has been banned 18 times and the four times he went through, the team with Lucian won. Also, Nidalee has been picked 11 times and banned 12 times, she has a 50% win rate with four Junglers having a 100% win rate on her. We can expect the drafting phases for all teams to get better to make it more of an even playing field for upcoming games.
2. Jungle priority
Nidalee and Graves have been running rampant on the Rift. Nidalee has had a 92% presence in the draft phase while Graves has had 79% presence in drafts. Many teams have opted to ban Nidalee which has caused Graves and other junglers to seep into the games.
Meanwhile, Volibear has jumped into the draft phases as well with many of the teams pivoting away from the Nidalee/Graves/Lilia trifecta. One thing to keep an eye on is whether Sylas, Gragas, and Hecarim keeps rising with more jungle champions banned in the drafts.
3. Support Diversity
There have been 13 unique champions picked in the Support role with only 2 champions exceeding 5 picks. Each team seems to have a different idea on which support is the best for their team. Pantheon and Leona are the champions that stand out in the current meta.
Additionally, they have two of the highest win rates in the role while Leona has been banned more times than she was picked. Rakan and Nautilus are currently the highest picked supports but their win rates are below 50%. It will be very interesting to see how that unfolds in the rest of the group stage games.
4. NA is 2-7 in the first round robin
Things were not looking good for NA two days into the group stages. However, they have managed to grab wins in the last two days. Flyquest has looked like the best NA team in the group stages while TSM has been the most disappointing. Team Liquid and TSM sit at the bottom of their respective groups while FlyQuest is 3rd in their group. The groups for Team Liquid and TSM are more favorable however they need to run the table to have a chance to go to the knockout stages.
5. Group B and D is likely to set for the knockout stage
Top Esports and DRX are the top 2 teams in Group D and Damwon Gaming and JD Gaming are the top 2 teams in Group B. In both groups, based on the performances, it looks as if the two teams from each of these groups are all but confirmed.
Top Esports and DRX have looked like the two best teams in their group by a significant margin. Whereas, DamWon and JD Gaming are the same with their dominance. However, these two teams may trade the first and second spots given if they can force a tiebreaker for the seeding.
6. Group C and A are wide open
Group A has each of their teams with at least 1 win and Group C has 3 teams in 2 wins each.
For Group A, G2 and Suning are currently at the top of the group with 2 wins while Machi Esports and Team Liquid have 1 win each. G2 and Suning ended in a thriller with a teleport nexus kill and they went extremely back and forth, nothing is decided in this group. Meanwhile Team Liquid did manage to beat G2 but they lost to Machi and Suning and this puts a wrench in the qualifying hopes. Machi Esports have looked better than the expectations and this group is going to go down to the wire.
For Group C, except TSM every other team has two wins. TSM have looked lost against their opponents in their groups. LGD has bounced back strongly after their bad play-ins start and Fnatic and Gen.G have looked pretty good. TSM has to win all of their games to stand a chance at knockout stages. Meanwhile, LGD, Fnatic, and Gen.G hold games over each other which could lead to a triple tie for knockout stages if they beat each other on their next games. One key thing to note is that the side with blue team has won in the matchups between LGD, Fnatic, and Gen.G. If that holds up, we may potentially see 3 tiebreaker games.
7. LCK teams look formidable
DamWon Gaming look like one of the best teams if not the best team in the group stages. They have had the cleanest games in group stages and they are a team to be reckoned with. On the other hand, DRX has looked better than expected but they did lose to one of the favorites at Worlds in Top Esports. Gen.G have looked great barring the match against Fnatic where Fnatic got the better of them. It looks like Korean teams are coming back to their form that they did not have last year.
Conclusion
Worlds 2020 Group Stage has been great so far and the future matches are very going to be very exciting with the rematch of G2 vs Suning and DamWon vs JDG coming up. Worlds Group Stage continues tomorrow with Group A finishing up all their games.
