EN DE CN BR ES RU
Image
Icon

Top Esports emerge victorious at Demacia Cup 2021

Top Esports are the 2021 Demacia Cup champions, after making some changes to their roster. Top Esports, after being... | 30. December 2021

Top Esports are the 2021 Demacia Cup champions, after making some changes to their roster. Top Esports, after being the 2020 LPL Summer Split champions and making it all the way to the semifinals of the World Championships, did not make it to a domestic final or any international tournament during 2021.

With this, changes to the roster were deemed necessary. After some changes to the top lane and jungle, some analysts still express their apprehensions over this roster. As they did not place high during the summer, they needed to go through the group stages, where only one team could proceed to the next stage of the tournament.

Road to the Final

They were in the same group as a rebuilding Team WE, a BLG that was thought of as a superteam, a streamer team called Huya All Star, and a JD Gaming that is currently finding their footing. In the end, Top Esports was able to emerge from the group with a 3-1 record, but as they were tied with Team WE, TES got through the group stage as they had an advantageous head to head record against them.

In the quarterfinals, TES was against an RNG that had made improvements to their mid and top lanes, though RNG did not start Shi “Ming” Sen-ming. In addition, Top Esports were still trying out different configurations for their top and jungle, with Huang “Wayward” Ren-Xing rotated with the Zhang “Zoom” Xing-Ran, while Wang “Xiaopeng” Peng and Gao “Tian” Tian-Lang also split some time between them. Top Esports took their quarterfinal rather easily with a 3-0 score line, with Zhuo “Knight” Ding and Xiaopeng sharing man of the match titles.

They then faced a rather younger Invictus Gaming, who took on some younger talent after their seasoned veterans have left the roster. Top Esports decided to start Zoom and Tian for this match, and they were able to take this match easily as well, taking a swift 3-0. With Zoom being very proficient on being a weak side player, Tian was given the freedom to play his more aggressive ganking style, enabling other laners present in the map. Yu “JackeyLove” Wen-bo and Knight shared man of the match titles this time.

The Final

For the finals, they were up against a FunPlus Phoenix that unexpectedly made it there. FPX, quite like Invictus Gaming, had let go of most of its veteran superstars, and signed relatively younger talent. By keeping Ping “Xiaolaohu” Xiao-hu, Yang “Beichuan” Ling, and Lin “Lwx” Wei-Xiang, and signing Fu “Hang” Ming-hang and Korean mid laner Kim “Gori” Tae-woo, fans and analysts were under the impression that this roster would take some time.

owever, Gori was such a good fit for the team and while he in himself was an excellent mid laner, he was also able to assist his team during the laning phase and was able to be an asset to the rest of the squad in team fights.

Things looked dicey in the beginning of the finals, with the first two games being taken by FPX. It looked like FPX would just win the series as TES seemed out of sorts. However, with proper adaptations in and out of the game, and focusing on Tian’s comfort, they were able to reverse sweep their way into the championship. Tian was also declared the MVP of the finals.

While Demacia Cup isn’t exactly an indicator of how a team would perform over the course of the season, as metas change and teams get better or worse over the season, but this does set some expectations over the whole year. As TES is now a back to back Demacia Cup champion, they are expected to be at least a top team in the 2022 season.