T1 and DragonX are Worlds 2022 finalists

The semifinals of Worlds 2022 were very exciting to watch but the results are a bit surprising.

T1 were expected to win their match against JD Gaming, but DragonX certainly weren’t. Their opponent, Gen.G Esports, had defeated them numerous times this year and were supposed to win the match with ease.

Instead, DRX bested them in three consecutive games after losing the first and will have the opportunity to play against T1 in the Grand Final.

T1 vs. JDG

T1 started the match poorly and a lot of their fans probably thought that they were going to choke again. At their previous two editions of Worlds, in 2019 and 2021, their run had ended in the semifinals. On top of that, JDG were known to be the strongest team in China.

However, T1 bounced back and won game two despite being unable to win big team fights. Their strategy was to split push and force JDG’s champions to split. This way, the subgroups that formed were much easier to defeat because they lacked some essential abilities required for them to win fights.

In the third and fourth games, everything went in T1’s favor. Game four, in particular, was a stomp. After just 25 minutes, Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok and his crew took down JDG’s nexus and celebrated their first qualification for a Worlds Grand Final in five years.

Gen.G vs. DRX

Gen.G started this semifinal just as they were expected. They won game one relatively easily, using a Tahm Kench strategy to which DRX had no answer. But in the three games that followed, partly because Gen.G lost the drafting battle and partly because DRX played incredibly well, Park “Ruler” Jae-hyuk’s team got crushed.

Each of these three games was hard-fought and Gen.G even had a significant advantage in some of them. But what ruined their chances were some small tactical errors that resulted in unnecessary deaths for their team.

Game two of the match, in particular, was extremely static and had just one kill in the first 20 minutes! By minute 38, the score was just 6-2 in DRX’s favor, but the South Korean team had amassed a 5000 gold lead. This proved to be sufficient in the battles that took place around Dragon.

In each of their lost games, Gen.G seemed to hope that the battle would end before the enemy lineup reached its full strength. Instead, each time, the battle reached an advanced phase, in which DRX’s champions proved to be much stronger.

Header: Riot Games