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Winner of LEC can get in their group LPL2, LPL3 or LCK2 from pool 2

Loser of LEC finals can get in their group LPL1, LCK1 or LCS1 from pool 1

Both teams can get same teams from poll 3 and 4

Top LCK and LPL teams are close in strength so for example if they get JDG or TES they are pretty much equally screwed while getting winner of LCS makes things much easier

So 33.3% chance loser of LEC finals gets NA winner in their group and make it easier group and 66.6% chance for both teams to have really strong groups (worth noting that in those 66.6% winner of LEC have very very slight advantage due to getting lower seeds from KR and CN but I don't think it's that much of difference between them)

Having Worlds teams split in 4 pools finally is step in right direction for sure, now lets hope they balance pools properly in future Worlds because it's nuts to have LCS1 above LPL2 but it's still much better then what we had previous Worlds when LPL2 was in same pool with wildcard Vietnam or LMS teams

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about 4 years ago - /u/Timbolt - Direct link

Originally posted by Mostdakka

While its somewhat true for LEC it doesnt really matter. Getting out of the groups isnt an achievement(except maybe for MAD since they are rookies). For G2 or FNC goal is to win it all and in that case it really doesnt matter who they play against. Last year FNC had really hard groupd and were fine, this year will be no diffrent if they play well.

The sentiment of "if you want to win the whole thing it does not matter who you face" always comes up and while I understand where it comes from, I also think it heavily underestimates the impact of luck in any tournament win in sports. Of course some involve less and some more luck (SKT in their prime did not really need luck), but dodging the heavy hitters so they can throw themselves out of the tournament matters a lot when the competition is close.

Edit: This has become more important recently since there are more competitive teams in Groups (LCK/LEC/LPL). Previously, if an LCK team had a bad day/week in Groups it was fine since a bad LCK team still usually beat anything but an LPL team. Now an unfortunate 1st or 2nd round robin (either due to own underperformance or other teams' overperformance) can easily cost you a QF spot (see RNG, they would have made it with an easier group and who knows what damage they could have done in Knockouts last Worlds).

about 4 years ago - /u/Timbolt - Direct link

Originally posted by DerpSenpai

Dodging the heavy hitters means your path to finals is also harder though

Not if they are throwing each other out of the tournament first.