The final of MSI 2022 ends with the victory of the RNG (LPL) at the silver scrapes (The last game of a series). The T1s managed to reassemble twice but it wasn’t enough.
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The RNGs are the first competitive team to win the Mid-Season Invitationals three times. Victory comes after 5 games against T1 favorites and hosts. What they had shown yesterday, the LCK players, was enough only on two occasions to bridge the gap with the LPL team before collapsing, literally, under their blows to the silver scrapes, that is the last game of a series (which in this case it was a Bo5 – best of 5), both for some mistakes in the draft phase, and for the lack of concentration that came after four high-intensity games.
The first to take the lead are the “virtual guests” (RNG) with a victory over a poke comp of T1 who have staked everything on early without being able to create the gap needed to make the strategy work. Everything revolved around an Azir (of Faker) who should have smashed the teamfights with his R: this could not have been thanks to the picks of the opponents.
The second game sees T1 win. Finally they return to draft in a way more suited to a final and despite a slightly more peaceful start than the previous game, at a certain point the game ignites and, while Faker makes the bets, Gumayusi is ready to capitalize on them. A choral performance that sees the Koreans recover and close the second heat 15 to 5.
The RNGs take the lead again: this time the two teams are really balanced in the draft phase, just slightly in favor of the Chinese given Braum’s pick in R5 quite annoying for Ahri and (above all) Aphelios. Despite the scores, the game is won in Jungle where Wei manages to conquer 3 dragons plus Baron Nashor. For LPL players this is 10.6k gold lead at the end of the game, with 24 kills vs 8.
The fourth game sees T1 return for the second time in a draw, denying the RNG the first match point. The Koreans win with about 10k of gold leads without even taking advantage of all those kills that the Chinese had collected to mark the gap. To shine the most was certainly the support of T1, Keria, who with her Tahm Kench saved desperate situations and corrected the mistakes of her teammates allowing them to snowball.
The silver scrapes are not up to par with the four games played before. The T1s seem mentally “exhausted” and even in the game they will not be as proactive as they have accustomed us to seeing them. They make many mistakes starting from a questionable draft (still Oner on Wukong to keep a ban, Jayce against Gwen as in the first game and Jhin / Yuumi in botlane) to then give a very avoidable first blood, making them go wild when behind… etc. In short, not really a game up to the T1 we know. In conclusion, the Chinese team had an 11.8k lead of gold, 4 dragons, 1 baron and 15 kills against only 3 of the Korean team.
Curiosities and goals
3rd MSI for RNGs (first in League of Legends history) by winning it in 2018, 2021 and 2022. Ming and Xiahou are the only two players (and first) who raise the 3rd MSI with the same team.
Coach Kenzhu (RNG) wins his 4th trophy in less than 12 months. (LPL Summer 2021, World Championship 2021, LPL Spring 2022, MSI2022). In this final the team starting from the Blue Side won all 5 times. Wei, Gala, Xiaohu and Ming (in that order) are the 4 best players for KDA of the entire competition and are all 4 RNG players.
The only (official) pentakill of the tournament came at the hands of Gala (RNG Adc). The Royals also featured in the shortest game of the tournament (20:33 minutes against the RED Canids) and the longest one (43:45 minutes against EG). And how did you live this MSI 2022? Did you have fun?