League of Legends 2019 Worlds: Group A lane by lane preview

Bot lane

HKA: Wong “Unified” Chun Kit/Ling “Kaiwing” Kai Wing
G2: Luka “Perkz” Perković/Mihael “Mikyx” Mehle
Griffin: Park “Viper” Do-hyeon/Son “Lehends” Si-woo
C9: Zachary “Sneaky” Scuderi/Tristan “Zeyzal” Stidam

Coming into Worlds, the G2 duo of Perkz/Mikyx has one distinct advantage: Perkz’s professional experience at mid lane. This massively opens up his champion pool to play things like the Syndra that’s risen in popularity and even stuff like Kayle or Veigar ADC. Better yet, in the LEC playoffs Perkz really started to show some solid play on Xayah and Kai’Sa, making him an even more deadly bot laner, along with one of the best supports in the world.

Unified and Kaiwing looked okay in play-in stage, but Unified’s over-reliance on the Ezreal pick could prove to be his undoing going against much stiffer competition. Kaiwing exacerbates the problem by not really showing a lot of skill on the meta supports other than perhaps some Rakan.

Griffin’s bot lane duo of Viper and Lehends got a lot of criticism for Griffin’s underperformance during the 2019 season, but in my opinion that criticism was directed in the wrong place. Viper is one of the best ADCs in the World, has been disgusting on his primary picks of Ezreal and Kai’Sa, but has also shown the ability to play mages like Sona and Viktor (making him likely able to pick up the Syndra). Now, Lehends does have a limited champion pool (his most-played are Tahm Kench, Yuumi, Lux, and Volibear) but in general I would expect this lane to be a bright spot for Griffin.

Last but…maybe least, we have C9’s duo of Sneaky and Zeyzal, who will be praying for the C9 Worlds buff to come online. Sneaky has been okay on Ezreal and Kai’Sa, but on Xayah he’s actually terrible. Zeyzal, meanwhile, has basically relied on Braum and Alistar throughout the summer, with only a couple of games on Thresh.

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

• Pure power ranking: Viper/Lehends > Perkz/Mikyx >> Unified/Kaiwing > Sneaky/Zeyzal
• If on Xayah/Rakan: Viper/Lehends > Perkz/Mikyx >> Unified/Kaiwing > Sneaky/Zeyzal
• If on Kai’Sa/Nautilus: Viper/Lehends > Perkz/Mikyx >> Unified/Kaiwing > Sneaky/Zeyzal
• If on Syndra/Thresh: Perkz/Mikyx >> Viper/Lehends >> Unified/Kaiwing > Sneaky/Zeyzal

I would expect the highest priority picks to be Kai’Sa/Nautilus.