Over the past three weeks, twenty teams from eight different regions of the world have been battling it out on Summoner’s Rift. There have been dozens of games played at the highest level and even more great plays within those games to boot. However, only one of these teams can be the League of Legends World Champs and many teams have already been eliminated, so let’s discuss what teams remain, which ones have the best chance of winning, and the meta that has emerged on the Rift so far in the tournament.
The Championship is approaching the quarterfinals, meaning only eight of the original 20 teams remain. In this phase of the tournament, all teams will play best of fives (Bo5) and losing one of these bo5 series will eliminate that team from the championship. The eight teams that have made it to the Quarterfinals (from first to qualify to last) are:
- Gen.G
- LNG
- TOP
- T1
- HLE
- WBG
- BLG
- FLY
For more information on the teams and their full names, feel free to review my previous article about Worlds 2024. Unsurprisingly, the first seven teams to qualify for the quarterfinals were all LPL of LCK teams, which has happened at nearly all the world championships for the last 13 years. But in a controversial stroke of luck, a North American team (FLY) made it into quarters too. The controversial part about it was they had a very lucky path, only winning against minor regions teams and other North American teams that they already beat domestically. While it is great that North America has a representative in the quarterfinals, it is downplayed by the luck that they had getting there and are assumed that they will be handily defeated in their first Bo5 series.
Moving on the likely winners of the entire tournament, HLE and BLG are the number one seeds from the LCK and LPL respectively, making them the tournament favorites. That being said, Gen.G has looked the most dominate over the course of the World Championship and T1 are the 2023 World Champions, which makes them tournament favorites in their own right. Anything can happen though, so fans will have to see how the quarterfinals bracket plays out (see the picture above for bracket) to really make any firm predictions on what teams are actually the favorites to win.
Lastly, the World Championship meta is more interesting than in years past. The fan favorite character, Yone, is currently the best mid-lane choice right now. The newest characters in the game, Aurora and Smolder, are close second to Yone in the mid lane. This means there is a lot of fighting and action across the map for the entire game. Other good mid-lane choices are Orianna combined with Nocturne jungle to make an ultimate teamfight wombo-combo; and Ahri with a Vi jungle to create a different single target wombo-combo.
The jungle is pretty generic this year, with the already mentioned Nocturne and Vi along with tank characters like Sejuani and Skarner. Top lane is also not looking much different from past years too, characters like Rumble, Gnar, K’Sante, and Jax, with a splash of interesting characters coming into the mix like Yasuo. The bot lane roles, ADC and support, are quite interesting compared to the other roles though. A lot of champions that can go into those roles have been played. For ADC, characters like Ezreal, Lucian, Kalista, Kai’Sa, Ashe, Xayah, Ziggs, and even Twitch have been shown off in the ADC position. Support also has a plethora of options, such as Rell, Nautilus, Alistar, Rakan, Senna, Renata Glasc, Tahm Kench, and others with similar teamfight engage capabilities.
All in all, a pretty exciting World Championship so far, especially with a North American team making it this far, and many more exciting moments to come in the quarterfinals and beyond!
