Let's start with North America's 3rd seed in Cloud9. As the 3rd seed, they are drawn into the Play-In Stage. Their group consists of themselves, KaBuM! e-Sports (from Brazil) and DetonatioN FocusMe (from Japan). Cloud9 has been attending Worlds since Season 3 in 2013 and this will be their 6th consecutive year. They are bringing a more inexperienced line-up this year with Licorice in the top lane, Blaber in the jungle, Goldenglue potentially in mid lane, and Zeyzal as support. Jensen and Sneaky are the two veterans that are leading the team with Head Coach Repeared pulling the strings from behind the scenes. Cloud9 and the other top seeds (EDward Gaming, G2 Esports, and G-Rex) should advance through the play-in stages.
Based on the Groups Draw, EDG and G2 can either go into Group A or C, while GRX must go into Group D, which leaves Cloud9 to go into Group B. Cloud9. Group B would then include LPL's Royal Never Give Up, LCK's Gen-G, EULCS' Vitality, and NALCS' Cloud9. This has been the year of Uzi, who finally won his 1st LPL title in the Spring, then he followed that up with an International title at MSI, another at Rift Rivals with his LPL teammates, and finally a 2nd LPL title in the Summer. They are the clear cut favourites for this group and Worlds as a whole. After winning the World Championships last year, Gen-G dropped to middle of the pack in the LCK with teams such as kT Rolster, Afreeca Freecs, KingZone DragonX, Griffin, and SK Telecom above them at one point in time. They had to run the Guantlet against SKT, Griffin, and finally Kingzone to make it to Worlds. You can never count this team out and they have a chance to create a dynasty with a 3rd World Championship for the "Samsung" organization. It looks like Vitality and Cloud9 battle it out for 3rd and have a big uphill battle to advance from this group.
The next North American hope was the 2nd seeded 100 Thieves. They may not be the hottest team coming into Worlds, but they made it based on their consistent play between both splits. They finished 2nd in Spring and 4th in Summer and qualified for Worlds based on Championship Points. 100 Thieves were drawn into Group D with EULCS' Fnatic and LPL's IG. Fnatic is probably the weakest of the Pool 1 seeds and IG is LPL's 2nd seed. The only other weaker Pool 2 seeds would have been VCS' Phong Vu Buffalo and LMS' MAD. In addition, this also guarantees a weaker Pool 3 seed as Group D already has a NALCS, EULCS, and LPL representative and they avoided all 3 LCK teams. IG will be hands down favourites as the LPL has been flexing themselves as the strongest region this year, then you have Fnatic would have been consistently on top of the EULCS, but barely beat out Team Liquid in a tiebreaker at MSI. 100 Thieves will be predicted to finish 3rd in this group, but they still have a great chance to advance if they outperform Fnatic.
And last but not least, we have North America's shining star and dominant 1st seed in Team Liquid. They have a star studded line up that was built around Summer Split MVP Doublelift with veterans littered across the map. They have won back to back splits in the NALCS and are leaps and bounds ahead of the other teams in their region, but that doesn't matter when it comes to Worlds. The best of the best are converging onto Korea to show off their skills and nothing can be taken for granted. Team Liquid were drawn into Group C with LCK Champions kT Rolster and LMS' 2nd seed MAD. The 4th team from the Pool 3 seeds will most likely be LPL's EDG or EULCS' G2, which are no slumps in their own rights. Everyone will be picking kT to finish 1st in the grouped, while Team Liquid should feel confident in 2nd as long as they perform. MSI was a good wake up call for them as they started Week 1 with Olleh subbing himself out for a game, but they bounced back in Week 2, taking games off everyone even eventual champions RNG. This should give them the confidence that they can hang with anyone at Worlds and hopefully this translates into results.
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