MSI 2021 – Which teams will make it out of the Rumble Stage?

Six out of eleven teams from the group stage remain, but only four will reach the knockout stage from the rumble stage.

We already had an upset with Pentanet.GG qualifying at the cost of the Unicorns of Love, but overall we see expectations being met. Looking ahead we have quite the rumble stage on our hands. With Royal Never Give Up yet to be defeated and the defending world champions DAMWON GAMING KIA showing some weaknesses.

The favorites

It goes without saying that we have two clear favorites at this stage. In the group stage we saw Royal Never Give Up not letting any game get out of hand. They always have their eyes on the prize, playing to win every game. They even had the shortest game of the event thus far, winning in under 20 minutes against the Unicorns of Love and the shortest average game time of 25 minutes and one second.

RNG play clean and methodically and will most certainly try to play the same way in the Rumble stage. However, we must take into consideration that they only played two opponents in the group stage, had less diverse practice than others and had arguably the easiest group of the three. Coming into the next stage, it might take some time to ramp up and reach the same level as the other teams. Nevertheless, it is Royal Never Give Up we are talking about and they are capable of greatness, as we saw in the LPL.

They are joined by DAMWON GAMING KIA (DK). DK is the current defending world champion, but they have dropped a game in the group stage. They opened the tournament with a Jhin and Leona botlane, paying homage to their Worlds-skins while also taking down Cloud9 in the process.

Even though it still looked like they found back control in that game with a sub-optimal draft, they appeared to be more laid-back at the start of the tournament. This gave us some G2 Esports vibes, a team that often had “happy games”. Games where they did not look like they tried their hardest. Now that we have reached the rumble stage, we look at DK to step it up. Not only in-game, but also outside of it. Channeling their winning mentality and translating it into clean games to fully represent what the LCK stands for.

The challengers

It would not be the Mid-Seasonal Invitation if upsets can not happen. Cloud9 has Perkz, the defending MSI champion in the midlane. Cloud9 looked very shaky at the start of the event, even dropping a game against the Japanese representative DetonatioN FocusMe on the second day of groups. They looked a bit lost with even Hanabi from PSG Talon calling Cloud9 out as a team that would not make it to the rumble stage (or if they did, they would be the weakest).

However, Cloud9 regrouped on the day of their group’s conclusion and won all three games, even one against DAMWON GAMING KIA (DK). Showing they are still in contention of the title and will not go down gentle into the night. Perkz even played Yone to convince us again of how strong he is as a player. Cloud9 is one of the teams to challenge the favorites.

The other team is MAD Lions, although analysts have their doubts. They topped their group while only dropping one game, but they made it look awfully close in some of their wins. We talked about “happy games” earlier and it feels like MAD Lions have completely adopted this G2 Esports mentality that might more fittingly be called the Euphoria-mentality.

Nevertheless, Armut has really stepped it up this tournament showing that toplaners can have a highly active role in this meta. With picks like Lee Sin, Jayce and Wukong he showed us what he can do in his lane and for his team. Although, we see improvement of all the players on this roster, we are hoping they will be a tad more focused facing opponents like Royal Never Give Up and DAMWON GAMING KIA.

The underdogs

We already mentioned the teams of the four strongest regions, also called the major regions. Still, we have two particularly good teams from developing leagues still in the tournament. Both Pentanet.GG and PSG Talon have made an incredibly name for themselves. This is the first time we see a team from the Oceanic league make it this far, but it is not the first time for PSG Talon.

They are the true underdogs and will have to keep bringing new things to the table to have some upset wins going for them. It is not impossible, as it has been done in the past. Pentanet.GG will have to play around Pabu’s champion ocean while PSG Talon have multiple strong laners on their roster to challenge laners from the other teams.

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