The League of Legends World Championship is getting into the most important stage of the season: the top 8 teams of the tournament will have to fight their way to the finals. The number one seeds T1, JDG, DRX and Gen.G were drawn with the second seeds Edward Gaming, DWG KIA, Rogue, and Royal Never Give Up into a single-elimination, king of the hill bracket, with all matches being best-of-five series.
JDG and T1 already secured their spot in the semifinals. Its down to two LCK teams to decide their 2nd representative in the semis.
Worlds 2022 – GENG vs DK Quarterfinals – Saturday 22nd October
Now that we went through the first two series, it’s time to turn our eyes to the Korean domestic battle: LCK Summer Champions Gen.G vs last year’s finalists DK. Who will prevail and who is moving forward? Let’s jump into our preview.
DWG KIA seek redemption on the Worlds stage
The Worlds 2020 Champions had quite a lot of ups and downs throughout this 2022 season but they were able to make it to this year’s world championship regardless. Despite being the LCK 3rd seed, DK had a really strong showing in Group B, going 5-1 in the group with dominating victories over G2 and Evil Geniuses, as well as going head-to-head with the LPL first seed JDG. They beat them once and had created a substantial lead in the tiebreaker, before losing in the teamfights.
All of these results have inevitably bumped up fans’ expectations: DK is among the top teams that can contend for the title. For the organization, this is an important goal since they are joining T1 and GEN.G among the elite esports teams of the scene. That being said, this also includes having more pressure from enthusiasts, so it’s going to be crucial that DK (and GenG as well) show up in their best form possible.
I personally think that DK got the right end of the stick with the LoL Worlds meta, since it put more emphasis on the mid-jungle duo, as well as giving more champion diversity up in the top lane. Nuguri is known for being a mechanical player and his pool of damage-oriented top laners like Irelia, Camille and Fiora will prove useful. That being said, the real protagonist of this lineup is Canyon: we already mentioned how he had taken a carry role earlier in the season and he keeps delivering performance after performance.
What was more surprising for DK, though, was their bot lane: deokdam and Kellin have made a huge step up compared to the summer split and were able to keep up with the bot lanes in their group. It might be a different story facing a godlike duo like Ruler and Lehends but their level of play will directly impact the outcome of the series.
Gen.G looked shaky in the openers
Speaking of Gen.G, they made a great bounce back with the second round robin. They were able to go 5-1 and also win the tiebreaker against RNG, who however were hit by covid. The level of play the Chinese team showcased wasn’t certainly their full potential but Gen.G played with great coordination and seemed in much better shape compared to the first week at Worlds.
The team has been playing more or less similar to how they did throughout the season, with Ruler and Chovy getting most of the resources. Nonetheless, Peanut also showcased some games on Graves and proved that he’s not just a utility player within Gen.G. Aside from that, the games Gen.G played have been quite standard: finding early advantage by punishing enemies’ mistakes and then looking to fight around every objective they want to contest, especially dragons. By putting a lot of pressure on the bot lane, Gen.G can capture multiple drakes and look for early souls before the 30-minute mark.
Overall, if we’re comparing the individual players, I think that Gen.G has the better players coming into this series. The only positions where I think that DK might have better members are in the top and jungle roles, but even there the differences are minimal. Doran has played as a weakside player for quite a while and he will likely respect Nuguri in the matchups, so it will be down to the two junglers finding the opportunities across the map. In the mid lane, I’m expecting it to be fairly balanced, with Chovy having slightly better laning skills compared to ShowMaker, who however is great with roams. Regarding the bot lane, we already mentioned how Ruler and Lehends should have the upper hand over DK’s bot lane duo.
Based on how the two teams have played so far, I’m expecting this series to be much closer than the games we saw in the LCK summer split. DK made major improvements but Gen.G should technically still be a tier above them. That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this series go to Game 5: keep an eye on the correct map score. If you’re looking to bet in this series, you can check out all the other bets down below, offered as usual by GG.BET:
- Map 1 Winner: GEN.G (1.61x)
- Race to 5 kills: GEN.G (1.67x)
- Map Duration: over 33.5 (2.29x)
- Map 1 Total Kills: over 24.5 (1.72x)
- Total Maps: over 3.5 (1.50x)
- Total Dragons slain: over 4.5 (1.77x)
- Correct Map Score: GEN 3-1 DK (3.22x)
- Match Total Kills: over 102.5 (1.96x)
- Total Towers: over 11.5 (1.66x)
