The League of Legends World Championship (Worlds) group stages are well underway.
Marc ‘Caedrel’ Lamont, pro LEC Jungler for UK organisation Excel Esports and casting talent for Worlds 2020, provides his five League of Legends players to watch out for at this year’s event.
1. Yu ‘JackeyLove’ Wen-Bo – TES ADC
Jackylove led Top Esports to fourth place in the LPL regular session and they won the LPL summer play-offs with a 3-2 victory over JD Gaming.
He’s a former world champion with Invictus Gaming in 2018 and therefore knows what it takes to win at this level. I think he was very underrated at Invictus Gaming, the sole laners got so much praise but Jackeylove always played extremely well too.
Now at Top Esports, he seems to be popping off again and his stats are crazy good at the moment – I’d argue he’s one of the top three in his role in the world right now. He’s also very flexible and is definitely someone to watch at Worlds this year.
2. Rasmus ‘Caps’ Borregaard Winther – G2 mid-laner
He’s a back-to-back World’s finalist which you can’t take away from him and I think he’s carried G2 Esports for most of the play-offs. I think a lot of the G2 Esports players were very consistent but Caps just dominated every time he played.
He’s also slowly becoming more consistent with his high level performances in the past couple of years so he’s definitely one of the players to keep an eye on at Worlds, as are G2 Esports generally.
He can also play literally any champion he wants to and when it comes to his champion pool, he’s probably the most flexible mid-laner in Europe at the moment. I don’t see many other mid-laners in his group posing him too much of a challenge either.
3. Jang ‘Nuguri’ Ha-gwon – DAMWON top-laner
He was the best performing top-laner in the LCK League this season. He plays Jayce, Renekton and Camille – all the carry tops – really well and his statistics this season are crazy good.
He’s been excelling for DAMWON massively since the summer and they’ve been very good ever since. He just seems to be stomping every lane phrase and has loads of solo kills too.
I think he’s going to be one of the curveball players in the top lane and will likely beat every other player in the lane phase. He reminds me of TheShy from 2018 when Invictus Gaming became the first Chinese team to win a World Championship.
I think he should be fine against both Rogue and JD Gaming, he’s definitely the best top-laner in that group. He could potentially even be the best top-laner in the whole tournament alongside G2’s Wunder.
4. Zhuo ‘knight’ Ding – TES mid-laner
Everyone seems to be talking about knight and justifiably, he’s so good. He’s quite similar to Caps – he completely dominates his lane, runs around and carries his team. He’s also very reliable.
It’s his first time at Worlds which is very exciting and I think he’s going to blow up. I don’t think the occasion will have much of an effect on him either. Most of LPL is played on stage so he’s used to the environment and the Covid situation means there won’t be a crowd so I think he should be okay.
5. Seo ‘Kanavi’ Jin-hyeok – JD jungler
There are a lot of whispers that he’s the best jungler in the world right now and he’s been carrying his team so much throughout the regular split. I think he had a little bit of a shaky final but the carry jungle meta is his meta.
He’s been playing carry jungle since the start of the split so he’s definitely going to feel comfortable, whereas most junglers are struggling with the carry jungle adaptation.
I think he’s probably the best jungler in his group and even the best jungler in the whole tournament in my opinion.
You can follow Caedrel and Excel Esports on Twitter here
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
