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League of Legends Worlds 2019: Group B preview – how do the teams stack up lane by lane?

By Josh Tyler

2017 World Championship Group Stage at Wuhan Sports Center Gymnasium in Wuhan, Hubei, China on 6 October 2017. (Riot Games)
2017 World Championship Group Stage at Wuhan Sports Center Gymnasium in Wuhan, Hubei, China on 6 October 2017. (Riot Games) /
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Norskeren, Splyce, LEC, League of Legends.
League of Legends. Photo courtesy of Riot Games. /

Bot lane

FPX: Lin “Lwx” Wei-Xiang/Liu “Crisp” Qing-Song
GAM: Nguyễn “Zin” Tuấn Thọ/Ngô “Hieu3” Minh Hiếu
J-Team: Chen “Lilv” Chin-Han/Lin “Koala” Chih-Chiang
Splyce: Kasper “Kobbe” Kobberup/Tore “Norskeren” Hoel Eilertsen

The bot lane is a huge point of power for group favorites FPX, who have perhaps the best bot duo at Worlds in Lwx and Crisp. Now Lwx hasn’t played a lot of Xayah, but he is quite proficient on Kai’Sa and Caitlyn, who can both be power picks. Similarly, Crisp has played mostly Nautilus but no games on Rakan this summer. Whether they will adapt or just be forced onto less optimal picks could be a major factor in how far FunPlus Phoenix goes.

Kobbe and Norskeren, an incredibly underrated duo, should be trailing them in this group. Kobbe’s champion pool lines up incredibly well with the bot lane meta at Worlds (almost all Kai’Sa and Xayah) as does Norskeren’s (fairly wide, but plenty of Rakan, Nautilus, and Thresh).

While J-Team’s duo of Lilv and Koala aren’t incredibly impressive, the two do have the ability to play Xayah and Rakan at a high level. Lilv can also play a fair amount of Kai’Sa, but beyond that Koala has largely been relegated to Tahm Kench/Yuumi duty.

As for the remaining duo, there is little to be inspired by. GAM’s duo of Zin and Hieu3 (or Slay, should they chose to sub him in) is one of the lowest-ranked duos and none of the three have any significant number of games on the priority picks in VCS summer. The only positive is that with five games on Vladimir during the summer, maybe Zin can translate that to playing Syndra.

Next. Ranking all 24 teams at Worlds 2019. dark

So, by picks how would I rate all of these bot lanes?

  • Pure power ranking: Lwx/Crisp > Kobbe/Norskeren >> Lilv/Koala >> Zin/Hieu3
  • If on Xayah/Rakan: Kobbe/Norskeren > Lwx/Crisp > Lilv/Koala >> Zin/Hieu3
  • If on Kai’Sa/Nautilus: Lwx/Crisp > Kobbe/Norskeren >> Lilv/Koala >> Zin/Hieu3
  • If on Syndra/Thresh: Zin/Hieu3 > Lwx/Crisp > Lilv/Koala > Kobbe/Norskeren

I would expect the highest priority picks to be Xayah/Rakan.

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