Hey guys, welcome to my World 2024 Top 5 Players in Each Role tier list. Today I'm going to be ranking my 1-5 in each role of players at the tournament. I understand that the tier list video for the teams was very long, so I'm going to try and make this one a lot shorter and a lot more concise, so you can get to the content a lot quicker, because I think the long version was a bit too much for people. Don't forget, I'll be co-streaming every single day of Worlds 2024 on my stream at twitch.tv slash Kajol, where you can join in and watch the games live with us. Otherwise, all of the votes will be uploaded here on the YouTube.
Enjoy the video and don't forget to subscribe. I can't do it pre-recorded because I spend all my time streaming. Okay, I already kind of have the list in my head.
I might think out loud a little bit, but this list has basically already been formed in my head. Top lane tier list. I think the best top laner at the tournament is Bin.
I think the meta is perfect for him. I think he has been the best performing player in top lane. I think his finals were a little bit underwhelming, but I don't think this will come as a surprise to anyone that Bin is, in my eyes, the best top laner in the world.
I think it's... I'm turning off alerts. I think one of the main points of criticism for Bin last year was like he's not as good of a tank player as 369 and that was a struggle that BLG had at MSI last year if you can remember because coming into MSI last year when he was on BLG and JDG was running this 369 player there was a tank meta at MSI Bin struggled he was a little bit exposed in a way by how the game was supposed to be played where he was slotting in these carries and he couldn't really match up with tanks and then you would go into summer split of last year And Bin would essentially just play tanks at the start of the split only. Gragas and Malphite and stuff like that.
And quickly realized, yeah, I'm not a good tank player. Fuck tanks. Even though he got okay at them, he kind of went back to his carry style.
And he went back to his Renekton. And this year, it's been a very similar story. He's a very big Renekton player.
Very big kind of like a Kassante player. Carry style oriented player. I expect him to be the best carry player at the tournament.
And yeah, I definitely think that the addition of Wei has helped Bin out a lot in playing more towards the top side of the map. So Bin is my number one. I expect him to do big damage at the tournament. My number two, again, will not shock anyone. It's Keen.
I think I had a lot of criticism of Keen last year in terms of flexibility, but I was quickly proven wrong. I think Keen is kind of like, in essence, everything you would want from a top laner. He strikes me as a player similar to Zyka, just a lot more experienced and better. I mean, he's still got this narrative around him that he's Keen Sante. You might see that he plays a lot of Kassante, but he's extremely flexible.
He plays a lot of different unique picks. He plays things like the Mordecai's, the 369 plays. He plays things like the Gangplank, which is kind of unique to players like him and Doran. He's great at champs like Rumble.
He can play strong side top. He's got a very big champion pool going into Worlds. And yeah, Keane is a player that you can play on strong side. He's mega reliable, mega, mega reliable player.
And yeah, I mean, you can look at his finals performance and say that he got solo killed by Doran, which is obviously not a great trade to have. But I don't like the idea that finals leave kind of like soury taste in the mouth. I don't think he had the greatest of finals, but it wasn't like he was getting outperformed.
Keane's a player in draft that you can put resources in, and he will give you value in top lane. He's also a player that you can blind pick Kassante on, and he will go even. And if anything, he's probably, I think, up for debate, the best Kassante at the tournament, which is extremely good player to have on your roster, considering Kassante will probably be quite high meta champ. I think the one-twos of a lot of these lists are going to be where people are not really too surprised but I think the 3-4-5s are maybe where players or fans or viewers or whatever have a lot more debate. For me the third best top laner tournament is Zeus.
I think a lot of T1's problems don't really stem from Zeus. I think that Zeus's lane phase is one of the best lane phases of the tournament still. I think he is the epitome of a carry player as well as Bin but I think Zeus is just sometimes a little bit unreliable.
The way I see T1 as a team, and I'm going to talk about this later when I talk about other players, I think T1 is a unique team where I think if the meta was stale and it was kind of like a locked in meta of blind pick tank support, tank top, no value anywhere, very stock standard meta, T1 sucks. They're just not a good team in that meta. T1 is a team with two side lanes, with Guma, Keria and Zeus, where if you put resources in them in draft, They will pull off counter picks and lanes that other teams cannot do.
And that's what T1's advantage over other teams are. T1 in a very standard game, standard draft, is not a powerful team. T1 with a meta and a draft and a game state where they have a lot of tools to work with and they can utilize players like Karrie and Zeus in their draft phase to counter or to get value out of picks. They are the players who can get the most value out of those situations.
And that's why they were successful over the last two years. But I think in a very stale... game state stale meta and against a very slow team with they just can't shine but i think if you look at zeus's year overall big positives really good champ pool really good carry playstyle really good regional finals in their five game series against KT to get them where they are. The two problems I've seen from Zeus this year, in my opinion, are that one, he gets really caught up on picks and doesn't drop them when he needs to drop them. Like he will not double down, he will not triple down, he will penta down on a champ until he realizes actually this is actually pretty bad.
So you might see a consistent factor of him early in a tournament, perhaps, where he repeats similar picks. And I don't know if this stems from him or his team or whatever, but I've just noticed that with him that he will, not that he has an ego, but he will play a champ and not drop it when he needs to drop it. Like he had this with TF, which was a problem, but he also had it with Kennen in this split, which was also a problem. Eventually he dropped it, but he has a tendency to linger on things.
The second problem is Zeus gets caught a lot. He does. And he is a greedy side lane player. He's an aggressive side lane player, where if you do not punish Zeus, he will take over a game on side lane.
but he is definitely a player that will overpush his limits on side and get caught a bit too easily. And so that's why I'm a bit worried of him heading into Worlds. But I think raw individual caliber, Zeus is easily one of the best tops in the world. And yeah, I think he's extremely strong. All right, this is where the 4-5-6 gets...
The 4-5 gets a bit tricky. Because for me, right now, there's three top laners floating in 4-5-6. For me, there was a toss-up between three players for these last two spots.
and i think you'll notice that there's a trend in the next few tier lists that the first four is okay the fifth is quite tricky to slot in um so you have 369 you have zika you have doran and you have kingen i think these four top laners are good and they're unique in their own ways but only two of them can be in the top in the top five right now i'll give you quick rundowns on all four of them even though this is on the top five list 369 reliable solid Great player, neutralizer, similar to last year. He has not really changed much. He won't be an incredibly strong side top. He can play his tanks well.
He can play extremely low resource if you need him to. He can be reliable. He can play Mordekaiser to neutralize blind pick Kassantis.
His Renekton's decent. That's 369. I think his style fit on JDG perfectly because JDG needed exactly that. Zyka is a player who, coming into last year, was the tank and carry player. he could play both but maybe a little bit he was like in my eyes i would compare zika in a sense to a player like keen except i would say a little bit worse zika has had incredible growth like over the last four to five months zika has been improving a lot he's been getting extremely good uh i mean in their series against weibo in the regionals he absolutely gapped breathe incredibly hard and uh yeah he is growing into quite a strong player uh doran is he's got a narrative around him he's a choker everyone laughs at doran I think Doran had a very Doran finals where, I mean, one game on Camille, he basically solo lost the game.
I'll say solo. He completely ran it down. And then the game after he solo kills Keane and finds comfort in Jax, which gets him to the rest of the series without being a liability. But that's the problem with Doran.
The way you look at Doran sometimes is, is he a liability or is he doing okay? That's sadly like what the most recent Doran idea is. If he's not being a liability, he's doing well.
And the problem with me is last year... I was a big advocate for Doran. And I put Doran in my top five last year.
And I was arguing that Doran was an extremely good player. And I was battling people saying that he will show up at Worlds. He is going to be really good. And obviously he didn't. He like made his even bigger choke play, which then obviously shuts my narrative down.
And then there's Kingen who... Kingen is kind of having, I won't say exactly the same as his 2022 run. But it's coincidental that him and Zeka are both peaking incredibly high. I think a big strength for Damwon, similarly to a team like T1, is their side lanes. I think their side lanes are very powerful.
And I think Kingen is great in this meta on sides. He's not as flexible as players like Keen, right? Where they can play things like Mordekaiser and GP and Camille. And they can play all these champs at an extremely high level.
He definitely does have his pocket picks. But he hasn't played. any Aatrox this split really. He's played three games of Aatrox, nothing really crazy.
But he's been playing extremely good, like good lane phase, holding his own against players like Zeus. And he's never really been a problem. So Kingen's been peaking in a way. Doran has had his ups and downs. Zyka's been getting good growth.
And 369 is like good old 369. So how would I rate them? Well, I think Zyka's growth is extremely noticeable. And I think you're not doing justice to the player that 369 is, if he's not on the list.
So for me, 369 is the fourth best top laner in this tournament. Despite these players having their ups and downs, I think I personally, the way I view 3609 is absolute reliability rock. And I think all these three players have flaws in consistency.
I think 3609 will show up to the tournament and the way I see it is top laners like We'll say Western top laners as an example will rock up to this tournament and they'll probably lane against 369 and Kingen and they'll probably say, ah, Kingen's a bit better in lane. They might say Zyka, he's a bit better in lane. But 369, as much as he won't be able to punish those lanes as hard, he'll be able to kind of pick matchups which kind of turn out a lot different than the way they should, negate deficits, and he will just be like, he's just incredibly smart, super stable.
You won't be able to catch him off guard. And I think that's a really reliable thing to have in a team at the World Championship, especially when he can do that against the best players in the world. Then you have three players left for the top lane list.
This is a really hard one. The sad thing is they're all really close in my eyes. When I did this tier list initially, when LCK Regional Finals ended, it looked like this.
I put Kingen on fifth and I was really convinced that Kingen is that guy. And I really have a good feeling that Kingen will show up at this tournament. And I have a really good feeling and viewpoint on Kingen's current form. I do think you're doing a disjustice to a player like Doran by just going with the narrative of him being a choker because he is a really good player.
He is flexible. He has got all the qualities you want from a top laner. And I think like analytically, if you watch the games from Gen.G throughout the whole split, sorry, he has Peanut on his team who kind of out-jungled everyone in LSK playoffs. He has Zekka on his team who's extremely flashy and like is popping off in form.
And Viper who's also a bit of a bad end to summer but still ramped up in playoffs super hard. So anything Doran does on any roster, Gen.G is even a good example to use. Goes under the radar.
HLE goes under the radar. And I don't know. I feel like he doesn't get the praise that he deserves mainly because of the rosters that he's on. There's not many points at the year that you can point at Doran and say, yeah, he choked there or he misplayed. The problem is this Gen.G game 3, the things he was doing was vile.
And I don't think Doran has shucked off everything yet. He definitely has... still got the qualities of being Doran and having Doran moments like some of the deaths in this game were just pathetic and the way he approached some of these fights were I mean if you want to take the Aatrox flash over the wall thing and then compare it to this game there are moments where you can comparatively say that like this is just equally worse if not just bad uh like him I think he missed his E on the wall here if I can remember correctly right I don't know if you can see it but like what is he doing honestly The whole of this game, his deaths are just... I just think he's just doing the stupidest mistakes I've ever seen out of him. He missed his E on the wall here and he just dies.
And kind of that's what he's doing. And then eventually he falls behind top and starts roaming and dying and going he made and dying. And it was not fun to watch. But then you go to game four and then he picks Jax against Keen. And he does well.
And he gets a solo kill and he's really strong on side. Yeah, I think Doran's a bit slept on. I think Zikai, great improvement. I think Kingen is peaking and I'm very Damwon biased, but I think you're crazy not to put Doran in this list, especially 5. All right, I'll be quick about this because otherwise this is going to take forever. My 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 of jungle.
All right, who's the best jungler in the world? I think after the finals, there's debate on the best jungler in the world. I wouldn't be surprised.
I mean, Wei, Peanut and Canyon are the three names you think of coming into this tournament. Canyon. For me, the main thing that impressed me about Canyon is Canyon is the guy that has, for lack of better words, aura. And he has clutch factor in the sense that he is so creative that, I mean, he won in the finals last split by playing Kha'Zix when they're on match point and carrying the game, right? And that essentially got Gen.G back on the horse to win the series.
Canyon was invisible in their finals, in my opinion. Descarno was decent. But other than that, he got really, really, really, what's the word, another fight by Peanut.
I think the meta for Peanut was perfect. And I think people fail to realize how much Peanut tanked for HammerLife. How much did he tank? He did so much in covering their lanes and making sure everyone else around them succeeded. But it wasn't just from gameplay.
If you watched HammerLife's games, on blue side, every team was banning Vi, Sejuani, Maokai against them. Let's open up every single Gen.G HLE game. Let's see how many target bans are targeted towards Peanut.
Round one, there's two bans from Gen.G against Peanut. Round two, three bans on Peanut. Round 3, one ban on Peanut on red side.
Round 4, no peanut bans. Round 5, Sejuani, Maokai, Vi. Sejuani, Maokai. Like, he was tanking two to three bans on red side most of the games, playing up against a player like Canyon, right?
It's not like he's set up for success from draft, is he? In his own sense, as much as people have, I need to ban Nidalee versus Canyon. Peanut also had this, I need to ban Vi versus Peanut.
I need to ban... Sejuani, RuspeNut, and it's been Maokai, RuspeNut. If I take him off these three champs, he will be useless, right?
Wrong. He was fine. He played champs like Poppy.
He played champs like Ivern. He was okay. I definitely think these are his three best champs. And I definitely think that one of them has been hit quite hard for this international.
But on paper, he's insane. However, for me, I am... Slightly, I don't want to say I'm biased, but for me, Canyon is the jungle goat.
And I think no matter what the meta is, I think Canyon will succeed. And just because he lost the finals, I still favor Canyon. And I still would rate Canyon higher than Peanut.
I think people will use the argument of like, well, Peanut's a choker. I'm not going to use that argument. I actually don't think Peanut is a choker. I think the problem is you look at that rail flash and you say he's choking. I don't think Peanut's a big choker.
You know, he's been around for long enough that I don't think that he should... It feels wrong to call him a choker. When this guy was like...
playing since 2016 on the biggest stages. I just don't really want to get bought into the narrative and use the argument that he's a choker-esque player. So yeah, I think coming into this tournament, I would still favor Canyon as the best jungler at the International. I think he is just the carry jungler, and he is the player who will take over a game single-handedly.
And as much as he won't, Peanut has a reliability factor that Canyon also has, except I think Canyon just has that extra bit of oomph to him, you know? Like... If you were to ban, you can't ban Canyon out, you know, I really, you cannot ban him out, and you cannot do it. He will play something like Kha'Zix, he will play something like Kayn, he will play something like Karthus. No matter how much you target a meta onto Canyon, he will find something.
And I think that's why I give him the edge over Peanut, in my opinion. And actually, I put Peanut second and Way third. I did. I'm a big fan of Way.
I think Way is a super good jungler, and a lot of people don't call him a veteran for some reason. And I think the good news for Way, actually, before I get into anything else, is... Historically, Wei, the meta right now, towards Worlds, will be good for him. Lee Sin, Viego, Wukong, Xin Zhao, Vi, Graves, Olaf, Udyr, Jarvan.
That's like fucking 10 AD champs I just listed in an AD jungle meta, so he should be fine. I just think Peanut is a better version of Wei, and Canyon is gifted more mechanically. Canyon is more flexible, and I think Wei's job in BLG, it's kind of...
I don't want to say it's similar to Peanut's, but I think it's... TN, Peanut, and Wei are in this realm of my laners are super strong. I need to make sure that my laners are even or ahead. Therefore, I will take the back step. So they are comparable in some ways.
I mean, you can see it in the way they draft, right? Maokai Sejuani is a very big thing for BLG. They obviously go Lillia as well. Tian as well was a big Lillia player. But he's more of like this facilitator-esque player for top esports.
And Canyon never really got sucked in too hard to that back step. You could see he was a very big Nidalee Lillia player. And that was his dynamic.
I would personally say... that don't underrate Wei coming to this tournament at all because accolade wise he turned the whole BLG roster around. He might not be as flashy as a player like Canyon but I think Wei's pathing is one of the best in the world. I think Wei is one of the best pathings in the world next to players like Peanut and Canyon. I don't know if I'm being slightly LCK biased here.
I think that the problem with the jungle tier list is you have four insanely good jungles in this tournament and then the fifth is quite a difficult choice. I think you could do any iteration of this Maybe not Wei first, but any iteration of this, and I think there's easy arguments for either. So I would say that all three of these players are extremely strong. I think the fourth best jungler in this tournament is Tarzan, and these are my top four, hands down. I think there is a gap here before fifth.
The reason I say Tarzan is, it's funny that you bring Tarzan into LPL. He starts off the split, he looks terrible, and then he grows into this kind of like single-handed threat for Weibo. I think if Tarzan never got Weibo, they would have collapsed.
I'm so impressed by how much work Tarzan does for this team. He does the early games. He carries games by himself. He sets up games by himself. I don't know why, but if you watch LPL, and you actually don't just sit there and say, look at that World Series vs T1.
If you actually watch LPL, you will know that Tarzan domestically is one of the best junglers in recent years in LPL. He is domestically, this guy is on a, he's on a Kanavi level. He is just such a driving force. He kind of had that flair behind him in summer as well. Yeah, I've talked about Tarzan before.
One of his big qualities is his play to bot. I've already viewed it on the world's team tier list. If you want to check it out, people are already complaining this is going too long, but you can check the world's team tier list that I did somewhere on the YouTube and you'll see me talk about Tarzan and show like three or four examples of like his bot play style.
The fifth one I think is difficult. I think the easy one is Tien because I mean, Tien's had a great year domestically. I mean, he won MVP. I am adding a little bit of flavor to the jungle tier list because it's my role. I am a certified TN hater and I did discount that in the world's teams tier list.
I think that there's a few options that you can put for five. I think I'll show the options that I think are very easily arguable for fifth best jungler in the tournament. I think inspired is actually a lot easier to argue than you would think at this tournament. So if someone had inspired in their top five, I actually wouldn't hate it. I think owner as a player is...
Actually, I don't know if this narrative is around Owner, but for me, Owner steps up very hard when it comes to internationals. I've just noticed that I feel like the only time in my head where I feel like Owner kind of let the team down internationally was... msi 2013 when it was uh was it msi 2013 i think it was uh 2023 sorry when he played this kazakh kindred meta i think he was really disappointing but other than that i think his international performances have been very solid and i think he definitely steps up the problem with owner is his summer playoffs were abysmal i think the first few series on their way into playoffs here especially this homolife series i think this is the one series where i've never seen owner get gapped harder in my life I don't know what happened to T1 in this series, and Owner, but this was probably the worst series I've seen from Owner that ever I've seen from him.
And that was only a month ago, right? That's the only concern I have for Owner. And then I think you can say Razork is one of the strongest junglers from the West, if not the best, next to Inspired, and then TN is obviously the last one I touched on. I think there's four, I think there's easily four junglers that you could argue and dispute here.
Sure, you can give me reasons as to why and stuff like that. I'm going to take Razork out because I think as much as I am a big... Razork fan and Fnatic fan.
I think Razork is an extremely strong player and it's a big driving force of Fnatic and for me was maybe MVP. I'm gonna take out Inspired as well because I like Inspired and the way he plays and I think he is a really good carry jungler but I don't know if this is me having a false sense of narrative around me or being like Eastern biased but I just see this selfish style in him and I don't know why I can't shake it off Maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm the one going crazy And that one thing just, it just kind of like pushes it out to me.
And I will admit I didn't watch every LCS game this year. Of course not. I only started coaching in the LCS in playoffs. But I just kind of noticed it even in their best of fives.
And again, I've been through this in the team's tier list. So I'm not going to sit here and go through it all again. Like, don't get me wrong. Pathing wise, insane jungler, world-class.
Carry potential, world-class. Champion pool, fantastic. But yeah, I don't know why I have this like self-sense of selfishness in a sense. So then for me, it's between TN and Owner.
I think Owner's had a pretty bad playoffs and I didn't like his playoffs at all. I think T1 as a whole is struggling. I think the biggest reasons why T1 is winning is top and bots, really, side lanes. So I'm going to put TN.
I am a TN hater. I will never trust TN at internationals. But if I don't trust Dorian at internationals already and put him on my tier list, I can't not put TN, right? This is my tier list. This is what I think.
TN also fits into the category of peanut in a way, I think. I feel like these three are quite similar players. And yeah, I'm going to put TN as number five. I mean, look, you can use the choker argument. I don't like the choker argument, even though I'm the biggest advocate of it.
I've spread the idea that TN's a fraud so many times. And the fact that he will probably play domestically, bait you into a false sense of security, rock up to an international and get knocked out of group stage. And it's because of him. And trust me when I say I am the biggest advocate for that narrative.
As much as it may be a bad narrative, that's my thing. But I just can't discount it from a top five list. If I was being biased to what I personally really do expect to happen, then I would actually put King in five. And I would put Owner in five. That's actually what I think will happen.
I'm not even kidding. That's what I think will happen. I think that's...
Maybe I would even do this, you know? That's what I think would be a... A better guess, but I think based on their years and performances, if you take out the idea of choking, I think Doran and Tien can be in here. Easy. All right, mid lane.
Mid lane is pretty easy. I think a lot of people can think the best players in the world right now are already kind of out there. For me, Chovy, best mid laner in the world still. I think Zekai gapped him a little bit in the finals, but I think all year he's flawless, perfect, the peak of mid lane, best player in the world. I think Knight.
Where's Knight? Knight, right behind him. Also, insanely good year. There's nothing you can point at Knight other than maybe a little bit of his regular season.
You can kind of harp on his regular season a little bit, but I mean, what more do you want from a player like Knight? What more does he have to prove to not be top two in the world? Seriously. Like, there's nothing. BLG have proven enough.
This one series against Top Esports where they played Yasuo, Diana, was disgusting, but I'll let them off the hook for that disgusting series. Other than that, flawless. I think this Worlds, I hope, this Worlds is a big narrative around Chovy versus Knight. I really hope that that's the...
Because I think that's like the modern day rivalry in my eyes. If someone like Faker is knocked out or Zeka is knocked out, it should be like really heavy focus on these two players. Because I think that these two could be for the next few years, like the big titans against each other.
Number three is Zeka for me. I think Zeka is... Insane.
He's having the year of his-the split of his life actually. I would go as far as to argue as domestically, Zekka is having the best split he's ever had in his career. This split was insane from Zekka.
Summer split Zekka was incredible. I was a bit worried about his champion pool. He's actually grown so well in his champion pool. He's not the Akali Sylas guy.
Don't get that mistaken when he gets to Worlds 2024. Don't sit there and go, why is he not playing Akali? Don't worry about that. Will he struggle in a Syndra meta? Maybe he will, but will he struggle in a Syndra Orianna meta? Yes, he might, but right now he's great.
Yonez, great. His AD carry mids were great. His Azir, even though it's 28% win rate, I think his Azir was good.
I mean, you saw it in Worlds 2022, right? Zekka overall is just a really strong laner right now, which is important, and he's a really strong side laner, which is a huge reason why Hamonife even beat Gen.G in the first place was Zekka side laning and Zekka clutch factor. You need a player like this in your team at Worlds.
You need a player like this. A player like when a team like Gen.G has a map state where they're covering Drake off really well and your team's kind of zoned off and can't really enter Drake pit. A player that can blow the game open.
And instead of backing off and TPing and being first to Drake, a player that like sees this angle and just fucking sends the play, right? You need that. That cracks open the game.
He gets top tier 1, he can base, he can TP into Drake. All of RedSide's position is gone. He's broken them, right? That is clutch factor.
And that's what Zekka has going into this international. I think Chovy most well-rounded, Knight also incredibly well-rounded, second best mid laner. Zeka has got really good factors around him. I think he'll be a big standout at Worlds. Fourth best mid laner at the tournament.
I think the two that I want to put in here, there's three that I want to put in here to be honest. I want to put Cream, ShowMaker and Caps. I think are the next three that need to go in here. Who goes where?
I don't know. I'll give a special shout out to BDD in this list. Special shout out to BDD.
Now, a lot of people might be surprised about why ShowMaker's here. And I think maybe I'm the only analyst in the world who is slightly ShowMaker biased right now. I think a lot of people think ShowMaker is bad.
And I agree. Actually, I think ShowMaker is bad. And I'm sold on this idea, in my opinion, that ShowMaker has had a terrible year. He could never adapt to the AD meta.
Never. His only AD champ was Tristana. Everything else was disgusting.
He had to resort to trash champs and try and find his way to get, like, balance in the regular season. and got carried by his side lanes. But I'm just like so fueled with hope from the last best of five that I'm delusionally convinced Showmaker will be an incredible mid laner in this world. I really am just convinced.
So personal biased, if I was personally biased here, I would put the list, I would put Showmaker on this list if I was personally biased. If I was analytically based, I would not put Showmaker on this list, okay? I would not.
So it's similar to like the jungle list where I wouldn't put Tia in here. I would probably put owner. It's similar to the top lane list where I probably wouldn't put Doran here.
I put King in. I think the same thing applies here where I see a world where Showmaker is just gonna... I would put him at fifth because I'm not sure. But Showmaker is gonna be like a huge mid laner in this tournament.
So I think objectively, I won't put him there. I'm gonna put Caps and Cream in here. Cream is growing really well.
I think you can kind of like compare Cream in a way to like... kind of zika's growth as a player where they're just becoming more expertise in their field and they're becoming stronger players like i remember cream of old like two years ago was just a fucking meleague player playing a fucking akali and ari and just that's it he's grown into this player who like in an ad meta you wouldn't really expect someone like a baby zeka to shine who became probably one of the best for standouts in the world and one of the big reasons why top esports had like a a carry threat a lot of it stemmed from a player like cream and i think cream deserves to be on this list But I will put Caps above him. This is not EU biased. I think Caps, for me, is just that one Western player. He's that guy.
Like, he's the MVP of the year. Caps is a player who, frustratingly to watch, because I've played against him as well. So once I've played against him and I see it, and I'm sure other mid laners have this as well, players above him perhaps as well, but Caps is a player who doesn't play the game the way you expect it to play out. He plays the game... and adjusts to the variables better than any mid laner I've ever watched.
And I think that's the one reason why I think Caps kind of stands out to me. It's not that like, if I put Caps against Chovy, 10 out of 10 games, Chovy will probably gap mid lane a lot of those times. But there are some times where Caps just sees, I don't know what he sees. He sees angles in lanes where he takes a fight where you get sucked in as the opposing mid laner to fight him into it, thinking it's good. And somehow it turns out bad.
And I don't know, and I'll never be able to describe this flair to you. I hope one day you can see it for yourself or have the privilege to play against him. But I remember playing against him, and I still see it sometimes, where he just has that flair. And I think that that flair is really powerful against strong mid laners.
And I think not only is he individually talented, and not only was he a huge side lane factor in the finals against Fnatic and the reason that they won a lot of their games in playoffs, and not only is he super flexible and can play loads of champs, and he always kind of... baits you into this false sense of trading. and then just slams you back or outplays you somehow.
And I rate that very highly. So for me, Caps number four. I'll give a special shout out to BDD.
I think that the mid laner at this tournament is actually quite strong. I think you've got players like Scout who are really good. I think you've got players like Quidd and Quad who actually from the LCS are really good.
I think Appa has shown a lot of growth, and I'm convinced that Showmaker will be a crazy player at this tournament. Xiaohu struggled a bit this year, I think. I won't get into the whole Xiaohu debacle and go through every player.
but I haven't been a big fan of Xiaohu this year. Yeah, we can talk about Faker. I mean, I've talked about Faker a lot. I'm not going to go over it again. Faker's had a pretty rough year.
You know, I think the thing about Faker, last thing I'll say, because a lot of people are spamming Faker and I'll just address it real quick. I don't know what it is, but his lane phase right now is just not good. Okay, his lane phase isn't good and that's the reality of it. His team fighting has also not been good. He's been getting caught in fights or playing fights way too aggressively to the point where he gets caught and they lose the game.
However, I think, looking forwards, the meta of Syndra Orianna will be very, very, very good for Faker, okay? If the meta is going the way it is, if Orianna's meta, and Faker's meta, and LeBlanc's meta, and Ahri's meta, which it probably will be, even though Faker's not on this top 5 list, there's probably a world where T1 look insanely strong, make top 4, and Faker plays his mages and looks very reliable. I'm not saying that he's an Azir 1 trick, I'm saying that Azir was the only mage...
that was viable in the meta right now. And that's why Faker was taken off Azir. And so my argument is, if it goes to a mage meta, they can't just ban Azir.
There's Orianna, Syndra, and then he has a way bigger pool to be more reliable on. I think I'm not doing my job as an analyst by putting Faker in his top five list because he struggled on the meta and his lane phase hasn't been strong. But because Faker is one of the better mage players in the world, if the meta goes the way it is... Faker will be okay, I think.
I think Faker will be absolutely fine. Enough yapping. All right, AD carry.
AD carry is an interesting one. Because a lot of the times, AD carry is the one role where people go, well, the team's winning. So of course the AD carry looks good. That's what everyone says. But for me, I'm going to put Viper as the best AD in the world.
I think Viper struggled a bit at the end of summer. I've been through it. I think Viper's got some of the qualities that you need at a world championship if you want to win the world championship. Now, I will give you this argument in a very simple form.
If you were in a World Finals, who would you want, Pais or Viper? Pais played better in the regular season. I get it. Aiming probably played better in the regular season.
I get it. But if I had a player who needed to step up at an international best-of-five in the Finals, I would want a player like Viper. And that's why I favor Viper over a player like Pais, who has had an insanely good regular season. Similarly... another player who's had an incredibly good regular season and it's insanely good is aiming who statistically and if you watch their games the only reason dk is even remotely contesting the top three is because they have aiming on their team like even if you go back in time and watch their if you go back in time and watch their series their hle series the first one in regular season the second one rather the only reason why like dk got fucking smashed.
Then, the only reason they won the second game was because aiming completely carried the game by himself. And in the third game, aiming almost did it again to completely carry the game by himself again to then win the game. So domestically, aiming has been insane.
Insanely good. Elk, flawless. Absolutely flawless player.
One of the best ADs in the world, easily. And also a player that you would definitely want to have at an international with the calibre of this player. Like... BLG to me is just a flawless team.
I don't really feel like they have any inconsistency other than someone that we'll get to later. And then someone who is criminally underrated and is a player who's been insanely good for the last God knows how long is Light, in my opinion. Light is also someone who's... I mean, I was watching, I was water-viewing Weibo games off-stream and I've never seen a player more hard-stuck in my absolute life. If he is given any room to play, Light controls the game.
The way he, like his MF, even in the games versus LNG, the way he moves from mid to side was fantastic. His teamfight positioning, basically flawless. There's nothing he can do really wrong in a lot of the games. And the final player that I think is insanely talented and is a big flex factor for their bot lane is Guma, right? I mean, I think the three, the two pillars for me, for T1 as to why they're winning games, is Gumiushi and Zeus, okay?
I feel like Guma took a lot of the weight off. When Zeus was having games where either 1. He didn't get resources in draft Or two, I don't know, he's just getting targeted in the game, or he falls behind, or Zeus does a Zeus thing where he fucking runs it. Actually, because Faker was struggling so much, a lot of that slack was picked up by Guma.
The problem with Guma is the way that they... I think the thing that people will get kind of like not upset with T1, but they will target at Guma and Yoshi, is the way that T1 drafted around their team because of the struggles they had in mid, for example, and in jungle. kuma was not really set up for success in any of these drafts i mean there was games where he's rocking up to team fights with 15 skill shots flying at him he has no front line everyone's fucking useless and he's just instantly dead on the blink of every fight and you watch it and you're just kind of frustrated you know i do think that his when he started to learn ziggs he was not the best ziggs so i will criticize him a lot for his ziggs gameplay for sure but i think that he also is a player didn't have much to work with but i definitely think light did more than than he did And then I think there's a player like Gala.
I mean, there's Gala and JackyLove, right? These are like people... Probably, I would imagine that a lot of people have these players on their lists somewhere. This is probably like the players that you have. I mean, you have Gala, who is also a good player on LNG.
I don't think there's many flaws with Gala as a player. He's really good, really talented. His positioning is really good. I don't think there's anything like egregiously wrong with Gala.
I think the pieces around him are very inconsistent and LNG are just... I don't know if it's a mental... I don't know if it's a mental block.
I was speaking to Dom about this. And I mean, we did it on stream a little bit as well. I don't know if it's a mental block, but as a team and as a cohesion, LNG just turn into this int train when they're falling behind or if they're losing games or if they're in a series, they just instantly like clock out quite quickly.
The only thing that I would comment about Gala, now I could be wrong in this analysis, is I think if Gala is in an even to winning game state, he's one of the best in the world. But I think there's two things that I attribute to Gala. Number one, I... I haven't seen him as of recent when they're in a losing game state or an even losing game state where Gala just like tries something crazy, you know, and just goes out of his way to just try and like win the game for them. You know, I just haven't seen that one thing that I think it's not an insanely valuable thing to have.
I think it's a random trait to have if your team's losing. But I definitely think some AD carries kind of grab the game by the scruff of the neck and it's like, fuck it, I'm going here. Like they're lane-stopping or they're doing this. And Jakulov, I also think Jakulov...
I always make this Jackylove meme that Jackylove's gonna flash forwards. I actually don't think Jackylove has this notion around him too much of Jackylove flash forwards anymore. Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe I've seen it like once or twice this year.
But I haven't seen this Jackylove flash forward int. But I definitely think he has still got inconsistencies. The way I would rate this list personally is I would have Viper number one, Elk number two.
In third place, I would have a player like Light. I'm looking at this again. It's like if I was an international, who would I want on my team?
This is the way I would rate. the top three i would put pace in four i think pace is insanely good don't get me wrong he don't get me wrong pace is insanely good very good player gen g has very few flaws but i just don't think pace is the kind of player like if you look at pace's positioning the fundamental flaws that pace was making in that finals are slightly inexcusable like the the way he was approaching teamfights was just fundamentally wrong Don't get me wrong. Don't mistake me.
Like his regular season stats were through the roof. His... Okay, maybe CS is maybe a bit weird here because of Seraphine or some shit. I don't know what it is. His regular season stats were through the roof.
He was breaking records, I think. I don't even know what records, but I think he was breaking records. When Genji's even or ahead, Pace just looks like a great player. But I just think when you're in a late game fight or Genji's behind, Pace just looks like he's just not the caliber of player of anyone above him in this list, in my opinion.
And then for me on five, it's a tough one between the four. I think you're crazy not to have aiming in five. I think you're crazy not to have him there. I don't, obviously there's a lot of people might say something about, you know, the outside of game stuff and I'm tired of having to deal with people flaming me for saying a player is good and then bringing out these fucking factors.
I'm just here to tell you if they're good or bad at League of Legends, okay? That's my job and that's all I fucking care about. I'm not here to defend anyone for anything, okay?
I'm literally telling you who's good and who's bad. That's my job. And I think you're fucking crazy not to say that this guy is not a world-class player. He gets a lot of resources from Damwon, but there's very few players who can get those resources and absolutely steamroll their way through some of the best teams in the league. And aiming is a player who can do that.
He has very few flaws. If you don't play towards him, I don't actually know what this player looks like this year on a team like Damwon. If it becomes a top-centric meta, what does aiming look like?
Not sure, but it's not going to be a super heavy top-centric meta. regardless of that argument uh he plays everything he's flexible and i just think that he doesn't really have many problems with him he's been through two supports this year his lane phases look strong he's still a player to play around and yeah i think if you just look at his numbers and his raw data as well if you want to be a stats nd he's probably through the roof in numbers as well i mean he's definitely going on my top five list one two three four five of supports this is really hard because i think anyone would agree that these three are big standouts or these four are the big standouts in my opinion these four are the big standouts you have a player like on who is stupid sometimes and gets caught a lot similarly to like someone like mickey i would say i mean they call him the chinese hila sang for a reason you have delight who next to delight who's one of the best engaged sports in the world you have lehens who is the backbone of gen g's macro you And then you have Mako, who's probably like the most, one of the most experienced players of the tournament. And despite him being like later in his career, this guy is still winning all pros and is still top tier when it comes to mechanics and what the team needs from him. So I think all of these four players share similar qualities, but they all definitely have their standout moments. I think some are more stable than others.
Like I would argue that On is definitely the least stable of the four. Look at this guy in chat. This is the narrative around the light.
Look, I'm going to show you. Rakan! Rakan!
He's the Rakan guy! He's the engaged support. Isn't he the Rakan guy?
That's basically how people view the light. That's literally it. Yeah, he's a good Rakan.
He's probably one of the better Rakans in the world. But it's not a thing now. Okay, maybe last year it was a thing.
And I get that. But that guy is a guy who watched Worlds 2023, went to sleep, woke up, and it's Worlds 2024. And he's like, oh yeah, that guy! he's still i'm not here to flame you i'm just using an example yeah he's still an incredibly good engaged support so who's number five who's number five is the question anyway let's go through this top five for me uh i think delight is the best sport in the world i think if i was at a tournament like worlds this year i would if i could choose from those four players i would choose delight i think delight is equally as important in these wins from hammer life as players like Viper and Zeka and all those players that clutch a lot of these games. Delight's someone who's kind of overshadowed.
Even on Gen.G, he was overshadowed. Like, even at last year's finals, I think he got robbed of MVP as well. And sometimes you don't really pay attention to the things Delight does.
Delight learned a lot, and you can see Delight's growth. And I don't like going into VOD reviews, but I'm going to do it quickly. I'm going to go over a few quick things that I think you can see, like the quick snappiness that Delight learns things.
Delight was a player who like wasn't super familiar with lane swap iterations and played up against players like Lehends who had crazy good lane swap iterations. I don't remember the exact games but Delight adopted Lehends'lane swap iterations that he was doing against other teams with laning by himself in certain lanes and then instantly started playing himself where he's like solo laning bot and he's solo laning bot in top lane tps. I don't know if it was in the T1 series or if it's the Gen.G series I'm sure you can find it somewhere if you watch the early game of Hamalife and how Delight plays the swaps. He's super smart about it.
And I also think his macro has gotten really good as an individual. So I think he's taken qualities from Lehends. And he's actually learned a lot from him.
For me, in second place... Fuck, who would I put second? The problem is, the support is such a difficult role. Because you don't really see what they're really made of at times. Unless they do something flashy.
You know, like they make a four-man knock-up. Or they pick a counterpick. For me, I will put on second. And I think... On, it's funny because I was doing a lot of VOD reviews with On, about On with MickeyX.
If you haven't seen that video, I sat with Mickey. We went over On's entire finals performance, if you're ever curious of watching his pro view. There was a few things I noticed that On has.
He has this unique style where he kind of almost cheats the game in a way. The best way for me to describe it is he's a very greedy player. But he's very unique with that greed. Like, for example, the best way... It's something that I wanted to pay attention for for On.
Something that he does that's different to other supports is normally when supports swap for grubs and ADs are like catching or something, supports hover here and then the calls are three man dives or mid plays, right? Things like this are very common things. You see it. It's very normal.
But On cheats tempo a lot. And I think this gets BLG a lot of leads. What he'll do is he'll like hover mid, push out a wave, for example.
I've got him on the wrong side here. Sorry. Hover mid, push out a wave, for example.
And then he will like hover top, go towards bot, be around mid, run bot like he's running bot, and then enemy jungler will think he can take Herald, then he'll go grubs, and then he'll be like up back towards here to push him off. And then, you know, they're trying to set up a bot dive, for example, and his jungler's on grubs. He will kind of like fake that he's going top and then run bot and cover.
And you'll see this if you watch this series specifically. You'll see him cheat tempo a lot. And this actually can be very bad to do if you don't have perfect information.
Okay, if you don't have perfect information and support fake covers to one side, your jungler can get pushed off of objectives that you split for, right? I think the best way to show you the thing that me and Mickey noticed the most about On... Look, here's a very good example of fake pressuring, right?
He's just running at them. Like he's running at them. Like this is where the inconsistency comes in from On. He has no one behind him.
And when I say fake pressure, he fake pressures on the map, but he also fake pressures in the game. In this state, he is running at a Ziggs-Xyra as if he's going to combo them or trying to freeze a wave when no one's behind him. And obviously, Weibo Gaming are kind of like calling his bluff a bit here. And he ends up having to W away. But if this wasn't a Ziggs champ with an easy W to press, look how scared they are to hit the tower.
He kind of has this Hylissang-y... Mickey X vibe, and maybe I can find the example that I was specifically talking about that we were going over. I think it's somewhere to do with here, you know? It's like here, for example.
His jungler's on grubs, they don't have perfect information, and on base is here, and cheats a base to go towards mid, and kind of stands in mid. He's being very greedy here. What he's essentially doing is, if enemy jungle goes to grubs, he's giving up grubs. If enemy jungle goes for the stack wave bot dive that we just saw there, his AD carry's dead.
But because both plays are in limbo, and either possibility's happening, he's staying in the middle, and he's gonna get mid push, right? A lot of supports here would either be covering their Kai'Sa or they would be doing the grubs. But Onn kind of does a bit of both, you know? And I understand the idea of him pulling his mid, but this is a very commonality you'll see throughout the finals. And I like that style from Onn.
But that's basically a good way to describe why he dies a lot. Because what ends up happening in game states like that, I don't have a pen, but he either runs towards the bot side and dies by himself, or he fake pressures mid when he has no one behind him and dies. or he lets his jungler do these grubs by the way himself by himself he rocks up late and dies and this is kind of how he cheats tempo to die i'm going to put meiko astert meiko fantastic split insanely insanely veteran player like super solid great on basically anything you need him for him uh what else can i say about about meiko i mean he's world class i think people kind of overlook meiko a lot and don't really think of him as one of the greatest players of all time in his role i think he easily is one of the great sports of all time And I don't think there's any problems in his gameplay at all.
Yeah, great player. Fantastic. Lehends, to me, is also an insanely good player.
Don't get me wrong, the problem with this list is people have to go into 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I think any iteration of this is really fine. It's up to you, seriously. It just depends what you viewed and what you think supports this tournament are very close together.
Lehends, the best... The reason I put Lehends in fourth is because I don't see extreme qualities out of Lehends than these other players. Other than the fact that people tell me that Lehends is the driving force behind Gen.G's macro. And people can say, well, he's insanely good at champs like Blitzcrank.
The reason he's playing Blitzcrank is because his jungler is playing Maokai. And they're playing a combo of Blitz, Maokai. And that's it.
It's great on sieges. And Lehends'Blitzcrank is good, don't get me wrong. But it pairs for a reason. And the reason I'm putting him in fourth is because people tell me something that is... What's the argument?
They say Lehends is their shotcaller. That's it. And I get that he's their shotcaller, but what evidence do I have to go off?
You're just telling me that. And that's all I've heard. If I actually had their scrims and voice comms and I could watch their games from the inside and I could see all of it, then Lehends could easily be up here. But that's his biggest quality, is that he's their shotcaller.
But this is coming from a saucer's trusty bro, and there's nothing else around him that you can quantify to make him better than the players above him other than an unquantifiable factor. So I just like... He's reliable.
He's great. He's good on his champs. Is he above the players above him? I wouldn't say so.
I hope you understand where I'm coming from. Anyway, I think these four supports are all insanely good. You can put them in any order you want.
Number five is the funny one, because last year I put Mikyx at five, and a lot of people memed me, you know, Mikyx over Keria, la-la-la-la-la-la. And I do actually think that support number five is hard here. I actually think that there's a few iterations you can do.
Most notably, I think these are the three that you can probably argue as the fifth best support of the tournament. I think all three are good arguments. Moham's not on this list, of course.
I guess they put Kellen. CoreJJ, world class. CoreJJ, world class. Mikyx is kind of like the second most important piece of G2 behind Caps with how much he does for the team.
And then Keria, who is like... I've talked about Keria a lot and I've said it before. Keria is not better. than these four supports in an Alistar realm matter. He isn't.
You can't outshine people in that matter. I think you... This isn't really Carrier's bread and butter. Carrier is a player where if you give him resources, he will squeeze those resources harder than everyone above him.
Basically, I'm saying if Carrier was here, if you gave Carrier resources in draft, Carrier could easily be there. In a meta where it comes to support, making it so the team can get a lead... He's there. But the game isn't like that these days. It isn't.
That Carrier was incredible was because of 2012 meta. where you could first pick champs like Karma and play ranged champs. The reason T1 was good at Worlds was because of 23 meta, where you could play champs like Ashe support, then Bard, then Renata. Did I say 2012?
I mean 2022. And Lulu. 2014, though, is a different game. 2024. Why do I keep saying 12, 13, 14? Fuck, man. But the game is just not like that anymore.
And I don't see the meta changing much going into the tournament. So I'm a little bit worried for Carrier going into the tournament. Because engaged supports are a struggle.
I really don't know how to put it on number 5. Because Mikyx is an insane player and is an insane quality for G2. Carrier is an insane quality for T1. And the problem is, I wonder if they're just going to rock up to the tournament and play these Caitlyn lanes and just do it anyway.
And CoreJJ, I just think CoreJJ is just an insanely smart player. He is so smart. He's one of the smartest supports in the world.
You can maybe argue like his mechanics or lane are maybe a little bit lacking, but he is just one of the smallest players in the world. But I'm gonna have to put MickeyX in fifth. I have to. I have to. I have to.
I have to do it. I have to do it. I have to do it. I think the two best Western players this tournament, in my opinion, are Caps and Mickey. And I think the amount...
The meta is great for Mickey. The amount of work you see Mickey do for the map for a team like G2 is... It's... If you just... zoom in on what he's doing.
He's dying a lot, okay? The two series where he did really bad, I will admit, is one of the BDS series and one of the FNX series. One of the FNX series was the Summer Finals one, where he got 2v2 killed and ran it.
And, you know, that inconsistency of lane phase might show up in this international short. The lane phase isn't the best. But you can see the damage a player like Miky can do at a tournament like MSI. You can really see the fucking damage a player like Miky can do. I think that was a good tournament to see how much impact he can have.
And I do think mid support are very crucial roles. And I think the pillars of G2 and mid support are the reason this team is always rated highly coming into the internationals. So yes, once again, it's happened.
I am a big advocate for a player like Keria. I am. And like I said, I really am convinced if it was a Renata meta, if there was a Lulu meta, if it was a Bard meta, if it was... Ashe support, Caitlyn support, Kalista support, Varus support, Jhin support.
Listed off any champion with a ranged attack that Keria has played, he would run this tournament. He would single-handedly run this tournament. But it's not.
The meta right now is pick Alistar, be useless, and flash in. And to have that playstyle is difficult. And Keria has it.
But he doesn't have it as good as these players, I think. It's my take. And I think that's going to be a pain for T1.
And this is the frustration thing about T1. It's interesting. Because you watch a lot of their games and there will be an odd game where they play something like Caitlyn Lux and they look insanely strong in Smash. And you ask yourself, why don't you do this more often?
Because the meta just doesn't allow it and I think they don't want to get sucked into it. They don't want to get sucked into the meta. But the same thing happened last year. I put Miky5 and then T1 won Worlds and Carrier was having the Worlds.
an insanely good worlds insanely one of the best worlds of his life i mean that jdg series you remember the renata flash over the wall his renata against jdg was flawless so maybe the same thing happens again but i think that that should tell you the story right these are expectations from my analytical point of view from teams to players and if they surpass the bar highly or if they disappoint the bar highly that's just part of their journey right so in my opinion this is what it looks like going into worlds for a top five player list if you disagree with anything feel free to talk about it in the comments If you... I think there's definitely a lot of players where you can mix and match. I think you can mix and match a lot of players. There's a lot of... The most important thing I would say is there is a lot of good players in this tournament.
And this tournament will be extremely fun to watch.