Blog of Legends
Fansided

League of Legends Worlds 2019 play-in Day 2 recap – stock up/stock down

By Josh Tyler

Riot Games
Riot Games /
facebooktwitterreddit

Whose stock is up or down after Day 2 of the 2019 League of Legends Worlds play-in stage?

After the second day of League of Legends action, the Worlds play-in stage has seen each team play two games apiece. What players, teams, picks, and strategies looked good and which looked bad on Day 2?

More from International Tournaments

Stock up

Flamengo

Everybody knows that the bird is the word! Flamengo shocked (almost) everyone by beating the presumed #2 in Group D, Royal Youth today. Yes, they lost to Damwon as expected, but they finished Day 2 in prime position to advance to the knockout stage.

Two players were particularly impressive in jungler Shrimp, who popped off on Lee Sin against Royal Youth, going 7/0/6 on Lee Sin. There was also BrTT who drew a respect Draven ban from Damwon in Game 1 but got his hands on it in Game 2 and promptly made Royal Youth regret that decision. He went 3/1/7 and ended the game with almost 1,000 gold more than the next-closest player in the game.

Pantheon

We finally got to see a game of the reworked Pantheon on Day 2 after it was perma-banned on Day 1. MEGA mid laner G4 picked up Pantheon in their match against Lowkey. Although his 5/7/10 scoreline doesn’t scream “oh my god Pantheon is OP,” G4 and MEGA showed the power of Pantheon’s semi-global ult and damage block. He remains 100% pick/ban at Worlds after Day 2.

Bloody games

If you wanted games full of action, Day 2 was tailor-made for you. Although there were a couple of low-tempo games, there were also three games with total deaths of 29, 33, and 40.

The only team involved in two of those games? That would be Damwon, showing that the LCK 3rd seed is here to buck the narrative that Korean teams only play slow and methodically.

Stock Down

Damwon Gaming

Its kind of odd that a team that ended the day 2-0, in a prime spot to advance to the knockout stage as the number one seed, would have their stock going down. But let’s be clear, Damwon did not look good in those two wins.

They struggled in the first game of the day, needing 34 minutes to take down Royal Youth and 30 minutes in their win over Flamengo. One big player to pick on is ADC Nuclear, who played two games on Kai’sa with decent KDAs. However, he ended both games trailing both his solo laners in terms of damage.

Royal Youth

Well, well, well. I got a lot of flak for ranking Royal Youth so low in my pre-Worlds power rankings. Yet here they sit 0-2 after Day 2, on the verge of being eliminated before the knockout round of play-ins.

Although I did correctly guess that their mid laner (Cyeol went 1/4/5 on Sylas against Damwon and 1/2/0 on Azir against Flamengo), I couldn’t have expected their previously-solid top laner Armut to implode. He went a combined 2/7/4 on Renekton. However, I think a lot of blame needs to be put on Royal Youth’s coaching staff for putting so much emphasis on this pick. They first-picked Renekton for Armut in both games despite the fact that he had only played one game on the Butcher of the Sands in the TCL Summer Split.

Next. Early candidates for the Dade Award. dark

The jungle meta

Today we saw the priority on Ekko jungle that was so high yesterday completely vanish, as he wasn’t picked or banned at all. However, we did see two “new” junglers come out more in the meta than they were on Day 1.

Taliyah was picked twice – by Canyon and Lloyd – and banned once. Though Damwon did win their game with Taliyah jungle the pick was not incredibly impactful.

We also saw Rek’Sai picked twice – by Lloyd and Shrimp – and banned once with similarly underwhelming results (she was also picked once on Day 1). However, Rek’Sai actually has one of the lowest KDAs among junglers at Worlds so far (1.7) ahead of only Ekko.

The League of Legends World Championship continues tomorrow at 7:00 EST / 13:00 CEST on Twitch.tv/Riotgames.

Home/League of Legends