League: I really didn't tank!

Chapter 345 The group stage is finally set, and the World Championship begins!

Faker had certainly heard about ilex's reign at the top of the Korean StarCraft server for several months, but he had never actually watched any of ilex's StarCraft matches and didn't know what level ilex was at.

Of course, for Faker, the news that ilex had reached the top of the Korean StarCraft server would be a little shocking, but not much.

StarCraft is a national game in South Korea. Faker was exposed to it from a young age, so he has played the game a lot and is quite skilled at it.

Even without playing much, he could still achieve a score of four or five thousand points in interstellar space simply by relying on his talent.

He believes that if he studies diligently, he can also reach the top level.

Faker adjusted his glasses and chose to watch Chen Dongqing's live stream quietly.

But as he watched, Faker couldn't help but be shocked, and then he couldn't help but rub his eyes.

The screen switching speed is too fast. Many times, it's just a matter of switching over and pressing a shortcut key, and then switching back again, sometimes in less than half a second. It makes people dizzy.

Immediately afterwards, Faker witnessed Chen Dongqing's scattering of spearmen in the skirmish.

"Holy crap!" Faker couldn't help but exclaim in surprise, "What is this?"

"Huh? What's wrong, Sang-hyeok?" Bang, who was eating hot dry noodles next to him, turned his head and glanced at Faker's screen.

In the footage, the Terran forces have advanced and penetrated the Zerg base.

At this moment, the Terran player seemed to be possessed by a StarCraft god, with incredibly fast hand speed. He executed a three-pronged maneuver, skillfully clearing creep, scattering troops, and steadily advancing!

Just as the three forces converged and were about to launch a decisive attack on the enemy, the Zerg finally typed "GG" and surrendered.

Bang couldn't help but widen his eyes and ask, "Who is this person? Why are humans so powerful?"

Faker pointed to the camera in the bottom right corner of the screen.

In the camera's view, a handsome face is displaying a sunny smile.

In his shock, the hot dry noodles Bang was holding in his right hand slowly slipped and fell onto his lap.

"Damn it!" Bang stood up, hurriedly grabbed a tissue to wipe himself, then glared and said, "Ilex, is his StarCraft really that terrifying?"

And what's even more shocking is yet to come.

After finishing the StarCraft game, Chen Dongqing pressed ALT+TAB to switch clients and switched to the DOTA2 client.

At this moment, the DOTA2 client showed a ranked match time of eighteen minutes, which was the duration of the StarCraft match that had just started.

And coincidentally, at the very moment of switching, the DOTA2 ranked match also popped up a confirmation box!

Chen Dongqing clicked "confirm," then switched back to the League of Legends client and canceled the ranked match status.

Faker: ?

What does this mean?

How did this guy reach number one on the server?

SKT's two carries remained silent for a long time, then looked at each other, their eyes full of doubt.

After a long while, Bang finally spoke up, saying, "Actually, this might not be a bad thing for us."

"Huh?" Faker asked, puzzled. "What do you mean?"

Bang said, "There are only eight days left until the World Championship, but he's still streaming and even playing other games. He hasn't gotten himself into competitive form at all, has he?"

Faker thought this made sense.

While ranking up on three servers simultaneously is impressive, it's definitely not the kind of performance you'd expect in a world championship!

"Besides, we'll have to test QG's strength in scrims to find out," Bang laughed. "They're coming to Wuhan tomorrow, so get ready, Sang-hyeok."

"Hmm." Faker nodded, his expression serious.

Since losing to QG twice last year, he has always regarded this team as his imaginary enemy.

Come to think of it, they haven't played against QG for a year.

The next day, June 27th.

The three LPL teams departed from Shanghai and flew directly to Wuhan.

It has to be said that the home team's match experience is much better.

The flight only took a few hours, and they didn't have to deal with jet lag. Compared to European and American teams, they had a full two days more to prepare.

The plane landed quickly at Tianhe Airport. Chen Dongqing walked out of the airport through the corridor and immediately felt the power of Wuhan.

As one of the well-known "furnace cities," even though it's already late September, the heat is still incredibly intense.

Even while waiting for the bus, Chen Dongqing could feel a fine layer of sweat on his forehead.

Fortunately, it didn't take long before Riot's bus arrived and picked up the QG team.

After holding it in for a long time, Chen Dongqing finally turned on his phone and connected to the internet.

The plane they were on didn't have in-flight Wi-Fi, and he hadn't downloaded any videos on his phone, so he almost suffocated from boredom.

At this moment, the bus slowly came to a stop in front of the hotel.

The QG team moved in with their bags and quickly settled into the training room.

The training room this time was the same as before, converted from a conference room. Ten computers were arranged on three sides of the conference room, and a white screen was placed on the last side, which was used as a projector for projecting images from the central ceiling.

Standing by the window in the conference room, Chen Dongqing looked at the Yangtze River flowing slowly in the distance and couldn't help but sigh, "The scenery is quite beautiful."

"What are you looking at the scenery for? Come on over for the meeting!" Banbazi urged from the side, "You still have practice matches after the meeting!"

"Oh, here it comes." Chen Dongqing quickly turned around and watched Banbazi fiddling with his machine for a while before skillfully projecting the PPT saved on his USB drive.

The meeting was brief, focusing on updates regarding the current World Championship.

This update had actually come out earlier, but the meeting wasn't held on the same day because individual understanding is always limited. Banbazi didn't think he could fully interpret the version, so he wanted to collect some data first.

The data refers to the scrim data of QG and EDG, as well as the data from the play-in stage, which is now nearing its end.

Banbazi sat in front of his computer, holding a red laser pointer, and said, "You've all probably seen this update, but to help you remember it, I'll give you a brief overview first."

As they were talking, Banbazi clicked the mouse and turned the slide in the PPT.

Next came a variety of version updates, but there weren't many noteworthy ones.

This is understandable. The current version is a satisfactory product that Riot Games spent half a year creating. Of course, they wouldn't dare to suddenly release a major update that would ruin all that effort.

Most notably, the incense burner wasn't even nerfed this time; it's still at its peak.

With this incense burner, the core of the game will always be the bottom lane, and the top lane will never be able to rise up.

To cater to this tanky meta, Riot Games even released another tank champion, Ornn, just to make it easier for tank players to enjoy the game.

Furthermore, Riot Games felt that this wasn't enough. They wanted to make the top lane more pure, so they nerfed top lane champions like Gnar and Cassiopeia who could suppress tanks, emphasizing protecting tanks and allowing them to play comfortably.

Chen Dongqing couldn't help but sneer as he looked at these updates.

He clearly remembered that the incense burner equipment had been slightly nerfed before the World Championship.

Although the Ardent Censer was nerfed, it was still strong and created a World Championship version.

But at least the fists did something; they also felt the incense burner was too extravagant, so they had to impose some restrictions.

But now, the incense burner is left untouched; they've completely lost face!

Their faces are absolutely disgusting!

Fortunately, Riot Games played it safe and didn't include Ornn in this year's World Championship. Otherwise, they would probably be researching how to break through those mediocre Ornn top laners.

"Overall, there aren't many changes in patches 7.17 and 7.18," Banbazi said after quickly reviewing the update. "Although I pointed out some noteworthy changes before, apart from Ryze, these major changes don't seem to have had much impact on the game."

The noteworthy changes Banbazi mentioned refer to the buffs to Azir, Ivern, and Leona.

The Tsar's level 3 ultimate ability has a significant damage increase, enhancing his late-game carry potential, while Ivern's shield ability has increased damage.

The Leona build is even more terrifying, directly increasing passive damage and significantly reducing the cooldown of her Q skill in the early game.

These changes may not be as dramatic as the epic buffs to Nasus, but Banbazi believes they fit the tone of the current Ardent Censer expansion.

Ivern and Azir need no introduction; one provides a shield, and the other is a late-game carry who relies on basic attacks.

As for the Sun Maiden, although she lacks shields and healing, she specializes in attacking shields and healing, so she should also be incredibly effective.

So during this week, Banbazi spent a lot of time using these heroes for specialized training.

But judging from the data from the qualifying rounds, after practicing for so long, the effects of these changes have been rather mediocre.

The Tsar did play in the qualifying rounds, but his win rate was only about 50/50.

The Ivern fared even worse, with a win rate of only 33.3%.

As for the Japanese women, they didn't even appear on screen.

There is only one Ryze, and the effect after the AP scaling was increased is quite good, and his priority in the World Championship has been significantly improved.

These dismal statistics made Banbazi wonder if his team was working in the wrong direction.

Banbazi then pulled up the data on heroes with high win rates and pick rates in the qualifying rounds and said, "These heroes will be the core of our training over the next week, with everything focused on adapting to the current meta."

Upon closer inspection, Chen Dongqing realized that the heroes with high win rates and appearance rates were still the same few.

Top lane: Maokai and Gnar; Jungle: Jarvan IV and Sejuani; Mid lane: Galio; Bottom lane: Tristana and Varus; Support: Lulu and Janna.

What? You're asking where the skateboard shoes are?

To put it simply, Kalista only appeared once on the second day of the play-in stage, picked by the Latin American team LYN. This wildcard ADC, relying on the strength of Kalista and the peak Ardent Censer, directly got a pentakill!

After this match, the priority of skate shoes was raised to an extreme level, and they have not been removed from the red side's ban list since.

It's terrifying.

Based on Chen Dongqing's experience, it's highly likely that this skateboard shoe won't be released by other teams throughout the entire World Championship.

"What's there to be afraid of?" At this moment, Xiangguo casually remarked, "I told you, those noob teams in the play-in stage have terrible game understanding! What do they know about LOL? How could they influence QG's judgment? If we think they're strong, then they're strong!"

Banbazi shook his head and laughed, "Don't underestimate the other teams. Maybe the champion will be one of them?"

"Whatever, I believe in myself!" Xiangguo waved his hand dismissively, "I'll beat you up all you want!"

"Whether we can dominate or not, we'll only know when the scrims start," Banbazi laughed. "Alright, let's get ready for the scrims."

Only then did Chen Dongqing ask, "Which team is in the training match?"

Banbazi smiled slightly: "First we play KT, then SKT, five games each, then we'll have dinner."

Chen Dongqing raised an eyebrow: "LCK's first or second seed? Are they that easy to get a hold of?"

"Why would we need to arrange these matches?" Banbazi said proudly. "As soon as we got off the plane today, countless teams contacted us to arrange scrimmages. I just picked two of the strongest ones."

This is the value of being a defending champion; everyone wants to prove their team's strength by competing against QG.

Faced with such a formidable opponent, the QG team didn't hesitate and quickly entered training mode.

And it was during these few days that the qualifying rounds finally came to an end.

It has to be said that although both matches were held in Wuhan, the qualifying rounds received far less attention than the group stage.

But of course, there's nothing we can do about it.

The wildcard teams that make it into the qualifying rounds are all champions from their respective regions. To put it more dramatically, they are all geniuses who ascended to the upper realm after reaching the pinnacle in the lower realm.

Unfortunately, once these geniuses reached the upper realm, they were simply suppressed by third-rate contestants.

Even for the third seed from a major region, slaughtering these wildcard teams is as easy as killing chickens and dogs.

Even Samsung, whose pace is usually incredibly slow, managed to unleash a fluid offensive performance reminiscent of QG against these teams, with average match times not even exceeding thirty minutes.

Of course, this is not absolute.

For example, in the LMS region, where all the bloodlines of the Dou Di clan were contributed to the clan leader Flash Wolves, their third seed HKA was particularly bad, even though they were evenly matched with wildcard teams.

Ultimately, HKA barely made it into the play-in group stage as the second-place team, but then faced FNC directly in the knockout stage.

As expected, FNC easily won 3-0, securing their place in the play-in stage.

Meanwhile, C9 and SSG, two teams from major tournament regions, also lived up to expectations and easily advanced.

The last qualifying spot was secured by Turkish team FB, who narrowly defeated Brazil's second seed ONE 3-2 to advance to the round of 16.

The Turkish guys were incredibly excited when they won the game. The five of them hugged each other and jumped around, having a great time.

While LPL teams still consider reaching the Round of 16 a disgrace, some teams take pride in it.

This is the difference between wildcard and major tournament regions.

The draw ceremony began immediately after the qualifying rounds concluded.

This time, LGD legend Aya Hirano took to the stage, reached into the prize pool, and slowly stirred it.

This was a crucial moment; everyone in QG remained silent and watched quietly.

Since they already have TSM on their team, and according to the rules they can't have any North American teams, they're logically choosing between FNC, SSG, and FB.

As long as it's not SSG

As soon as she finished speaking, Hirano Aya slowly unfurled the banner in her hand.

Green background with white lettering—it's SSG!

The QG team rolled their eyes in unison.

What kind of situation is this?

Of course, they're actually doing alright.

Getting a three-star character might make them feel a bit unlucky, but it wouldn't make them feel that they're in any real danger.

Samsung, on the contrary, reacted more strongly.

Seeing their team being drawn first, the Samsung players couldn't help but let out a wail of despair!

QG, TSM, GAM.

These are all champions from their respective regions, and from the previous season!

Is it appropriate for them to send in a third seed?

Not long after, Hirano Aya drew the remaining three balls in turn, placing FNC in Group B, C9 in Group C, and FB in Group D.

With this, the sixteen teams that will qualify for the group stage have finally been determined.

Group A: QG, GAM, TSM, SSG

Group B: SKT, EDG, IMT, FNC

Group C: G2, AHQ, KT, C9

Group D: FW, MSF, FPX, FB

Sorry it's a little late today. Please post the typos first, I'll correct them later.

(End of this chapter)