2022 MSI Day 1: T1 vs Saigon Buffalo Esports
MSI kicked off with the hometown heroes taking on the Vietnamese 2nd seed in Game 1 of this perennially ill-advised tournament. While it was definitely a breath of fresh air to see the VCS and their balls-to-the-wall gameplay back out on the Rift, they were castrated quite swiftly once T1 got their ball rolling.
The first day of any international tournament is some of the most exciting in League, especially after Riot delivers one of their trademark bombshell patches leading up to the event. There seems to be a couple outliers in terms of meta and itemizations that I have stumbled across, but I’ll stick to the things I have seen in this game for now.
Ahri seems to be a mainstay mid lane pick, as she is scheduled to be nerfed in the upcoming patch of 12.10. T1 banning her on blue side seems less of a testament to Froggy’s aptitude on her (especially given how badly he played this game) and more of the strength of the pick in general.
The junglers were the biggest talking point of the draft – Vi for T1 and Wukong for Saigon Buffalo Esports. Wukong was less of a surprise given how he had been freshly buffed for MSI. I can see teams’ reasoning for picking him – he must be doing well in scrims given his buffs and snowballing through games. However, his early game is quite weak on stage, and without strong laners to usher him towards his ult spike, he was largely a nonfactor across not only this game, but also all of his other games today.
Vi was much more of an interesting pick; T1 paired the Vi with Faker’s Twisted Fate and used their now-trademark pick combo to accelerate the mid game. The mixed damage as well as the choc full of CC that this mid/jg duo provided was instrumental in gaining back the momentum after T1 shockingly lost bot lane due to some heroics from Shogun and Taki. Gumayusi is known for playing without respect for his opposition in a lot of his games, and I doubt he will take the Buffalos’ bot duo lightly after they simply posterized him and Keria.