LPL's strongest dark horse has fallen. TES caused a winners' bracket massacre, easily eliminating WE and being the first to advance to MSI.

Hello everyone, LPL viewers and League of Legends summoners, this is World Game Hub.

Today, the LPL saw the highly anticipated winners' bracket match between TES and WE. Fans expecting a thrilling contest were disappointed, as WE underperformed and were easily swept 3-0 by TES.

This means TES will become the first team from the LPL region to qualify for MSI.

TES handled it with ease, gaining advantages in the laning phase.

In the crucial third game, TES picked a lane-dominant composition with Twisted Fate for sidelane ganks, while WE chose a composition with strong mid-game burst to enforce their brawling playstyle. Both teams had clear tactical setups: TES aimed to avoid fights, farm, and scale into the late game, while WE needed to pick fights.

In the early stage, TES gained huge advantages in both top and bottom lanes. First blood occurred bot lane when Crème hit level 6 and dove the tower to secure a kill. The top lane gap continued to widen, but Cube counterattacked and forced Zuian's Flash.

The subsequent dragon teamfight became a turning point. WE started the dragon, and TES came to contest. WE's Xin Zhao engaged on Wukong but it didn't work well, and TES counterattacked with a 1-for-2 trade. After that, WE's situation became quite passive, and TES began to farm and extend their lead.

WE failed to find favorable fighting opportunities and let TES snowball. Despite the disadvantage, Cube got a solo kill top lane, giving WE fans a glimmer of hope. However, soon after, WE's jungler initiated a fight prematurely and got caught, dying. Fengyue landed a great ultimate to hold two enemies, and TES killed another. Shortly after, Twisted Fate went top to gank and killed Cube.

Playoff massacre, WE's playstyle was too extreme.

After Cube's death, WE completely collapsed. TES did make some mistakes—Zuian was solo killed, and Tian's overaggressive engages gave kills to WE—but it didn't affect the overall situation. TES simply avoided fights and focused on laning, while WE, after losing the first two games, clearly didn't know how to play anymore.

In the end, TES finished the game in less than 30 minutes, with the gameplay almost identical to that of the second game.

Summarizing both teams' performances, WE became the familiar bottom-ranked team of the Summit Group, while TES seemed to have gotten a free pass. In the winners' bracket final, TES used the most countering strategy against WE, leveraging their player advantages to focus on laning, farming, and avoiding fights, which made winning easy.

In contrast, WE's brawling playstyle was obviously too extreme. Many times, WE chose to give up lane resources to group up and fight, and if they failed, the team fell into a huge disadvantage.

In fact, this stylistic difference reminded veteran viewers of the old CN vs. KR matchups, where any rash mistake by the LPL side would be heavily punished by LCK teams. WE clearly failed to show the strength required for a winners' bracket final, turning the match into a playoff massacre.

Entering the World Championship again, can TES redeem themselves?

It can be said that Riot's new version changes led to a large number of upsets in the LPL playoffs. Under these circumstances, teams are striving to adapt to the new patch, especially with the mid lane champion pool undergoing major shifts. After today's match, fans are left with a big question: how did BLG and AL lose to WE?

Editor

As for BLG, they failed to properly utilize their lineup advantages and instead chose to constantly engage WE in a chaotic brawl-style gameplay, which played right into WE's hands.

AL's loss was also surprising, as AL is not a particularly reckless team. The most likely reason is that they didn't keep up with the meta understanding. Now that TES has provided the winning formula, WE's upcoming matches will be very tough—whether against AL or BLG, their chances of winning will be greatly reduced.

As for TES, after a poor performance in the first split plagued by internal match-fixing, the return of JKL and the addition of Tian in the second split brought a complete transformation to the team. In past World Championships, TES underperformed and were even mocked as a 'spinning top' team. Now that they have qualified again, hopefully they can seize the opportunity and strive to avenge their previous failures with good results.