League of Legends Worlds: Stock Watch following Day 8

The group stage for Worlds is over, but the quest for the League of Legends World Championship is far from over. We give our stock watch for the teams and players after Day 8 has concluded.

The 2019 League of Legends World Championship is now into the knockout stage as eight teams advanced to the quarterfinals and eight more were sent home empty-handed. After Day 8 of the Worlds main stage, the best teams and players are very clearly defined but there are plenty of performances from today’s action that were surprising. Here is our stock watch from the final day of groups at Worlds!

Stock up

Damwon Gaming

From play-in stage to the number one seed out of Group D, Damwon was extremely impressive today and throughout the group stage. They finished the group stage with a 5-1 record, their only blemish coming on Day 1 to Team Liquid.

Today, Damwon ran through all three games with little resistance, going 3-0 on the second round robin. One player who clearly stood above the rest was mid laner Heo “ShowMaker” Su. ShowMaker went deathless on the day, going 5/0/6 on Corki against Liquid, 6/0/6 on Akali against Invictus Gaming, and finally 3/0/6 on Yasuo mid in the win over AHQ.

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While Damwon looks strong going into quarterfinals, they had the unfortunate luck to draw G2 in the first round of the knockout stage. This should be an epic series, featuring ShowMaker vs. Caps in the mid lane!

Rookie

Speaking of mid laners who performed exceptionally, Invictus Gaming’s Song “Rookie” Eui-jin played out of his mind in the team’s two wins on the day. In particular, in that final game of the day against Team Liquid that would decide who would advance on to the quarterfinals, Rookie basically carried the early game for IG, solo killing Liquid’s mid Jensen before roaming top to kill Impact. From there, the game was basically over.

On the day, Rookie went a combined 9/7/18. While that’s not the most impressive scoreline ever, the fact that he managed to deliver in the clutch is what helped pull Invictus over the line into the knockout round.

Stock down

North America

There’s no sugar-coating it any longer. 2019 Worlds proved definitively that there are three superior regions in League of Legends – Europe, China, and Korea – and then there’s the rest. With Liquid’s loss today, losing a group that they should have been expected to win, North America’s record during the main stage of Worlds was a combined 5-13. If you include the play-in matches, where Clutch got to beat up on teams from the play-in regions, the overall Worlds record for the region was 11-15.

It’s certainly a disappointing time to be an NA fan, as the region has failed to send a team out of the group stage for the first time since 2015, where TSM, CLG, and C9 failed to make it out of groups with a combined 6-12 record. A lot will have to change in order to bring America back to being a competitive region again.

Jensen

We will surely break down all the reasons that Team Liquid failed, but one player I want to highlight in particular who played poorly was mid laner Nicolaj “Jensen” Jensen. The team gave him the counterpick in the mid lane after ShowMaker picked Qiyana and Jensen not only failed to take control of the lane, he got completely dominated. He ended the game 2/5/1 on Leblanc, which was the best scoreline of anyone on the team, but was ultimately meaningless to anyone watching.

Today was, unfortunately, a great showing of the limitations that I highlighted in my pre-Worlds mid lane ranking. Jensen (similar to Impact) is a player who will rarely win you the game on his own and more often than not will play to protect his stats than enable the team.