The Mid-Season Invitational, the second-biggest League of Legends tournament of the year, is all about regional superiority. The champions of the 13 different professional leagues across the world converge on a singular spot -- this year in Brazil -- and battle to see which team is truly the king of kings.
After a competitive play-in stage, we've reached the second portion of the tournament: Four clubs face off in a series of best-of-five matches, with three advancing to the six-team group stage. With seven of the 13 kings still standing, here is how the hierarchy looks (at least according to us) going into the next round of the regal competition.
S-Tier -- The King: SK Telecom T1
SKT T1 is probably going to win this tournament. I could try and play devil's advocate with you and act like the playing field is even, but it's not. SKT T1 won last year's MSI, has taken the past two World Championships, and has taken four out of the past five South Korean domestic championships. It has the best coaching staff in the world. It has the best player in the world. The team is coming off one of its most successful individual seasons in team history back in its home country of South Korea, and the rest of the world, more so than usual, looks outmatched.
In a tournament in which the pairing between mid and jungle is going to be paramount, SKT brings the duo of Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok and Han "Peanut" Wang-ho to the table. Peanut, who found it hard adjusting to his new team early in the season, returned to form by the end of the regular season and starred in SKT's shellacking of rival KT Rolster in the league final. At their full potential, Faker and Peanut are the two best players mechanically in the world, and just that duo alone will be difficult enough to deal with for a majority of the teams, not even mentioning the rest of the All-Star cast.
If SKT doesn't win MSI, unless an injury occurs in the starting lineup, it has a good chance of going down as one of the biggest shocks in the game's history. I wouldn't count on it, though. SKT is ready to continue its international stranglehold.
A-Tier -- The Kingslayer: Flash Wolves
Of the teams heading into the tournament, Flash Wolves is the entry with the most confidence that it can dethrone SKT. If there is a recipe to beat SKT, FW is probably your best bet: cloaked in heavy international experience, and with countless wins over the South Korean elite. FW is a club that has made its name over the past few years with big wins over the Rox Tigers and SKT, even taking both group stage games last year versus the eventual winner, SKT.
This year, FW has established itself as a contender on the international stage -- and not only against South Korean teams. It won the IEM World Championship in Poland, where the field was stacked against it with the elite from Europe, and it sliced through the domestic competition, barely breaking a sweat when pitted up against rival AHQ Esports in the regular season and playoffs.
The team's biggest drawback last year, the AD carry position, has been rectified with the promotion of former junior player Lu "Betty" Yu-Hung, bringing much-needed stability and consistency to the bottom lane. No team is going to be favored or given much of a chance to take the crown away from SKT, but out of all the contenders, Taiwan's finest has the best chance to earn the nickname "Kingslayer."
B-Tier -- The Knights: G2 Esports, Team WE, Team SoloMid
It's easy to make a case that all four of the teams below SKT and above the play-in teams should be grouped together. Flash Wolves, on the basis of winning IEM over G2, steamrolling LMS and having a strong record against South Korea (SKT in particular), got the edge for me above the three clubs in this tier.
All three could make the final of MSI to face the inevitable defeat at the hands of Faker & Co., and all three could get the "G2-8 Esports" treatment of last year, with each team bombing out in the group stage and picking up victories only against the play-in region opposition.
For G2, going 2-8 this year is not an option. For the three-peat winners of the European LCS, this tournament is where the international headache for the organization began last year. The team showed up at Shanghai coming off a high from its first major victory in the EU LCS, and the losses that followed coupled with the team's public excuses made it an event that it is still etched in its collective memory.
This year for the undisputed top team in Europe, anything other than a top-four finish would be a gigantic disappointment. G2 has nowhere else to go on the domestic stage, and as Europe's reigning king, the region is still expecting the same amount of success that Fnatic once held on the international stage back when it was the leader of the European region. Mid laner Luka "PerkZ" Perković will be key if the Samurai want any chance of making it to a second straight international final following a second-place showing at the IEM World Championships.
The other LCS champion, Team SoloMid, has its own share of traumatic MSI memories. Before G2 Esports fell on its face in Shanghai, TSM combusted in Tallahassee, Florida, for the 2015 version of the event, becoming the worst performing non-wild-card champion. Since then, TSM has been searching for redemption on the international stage, and it'll want to wash out the bad taste of the failings in Florida and a group stage exit at last year's World Championships.
The team switches on and off at any given moment in terms of performance, the best example being the NA LCS spring finals against Cloud9. TSM had two straight-up blowouts to begin the series, dropped the next two, and then needed a bit of luck in the climactic set to make it to MSI. If jungler Dennis "Svenskeren" Johnsen can play well throughout the event with few hiccups, TSM should be in line to make the bracket stage.
The final team in our trio, Team WE, doesn't come in with the same fervor as other Chinese champions in the past. While those teams had been known to conjure up words like "aggression" and "mayhem" with eyes firmly on the laning phase, Team WE waves off that archetype. WE is a team that plays well together in the late game, and outside of its star jungler Xiang "Condi" Ren-Jie, it's hard to argue any of its remaining starters are in the top three at their positions among the MSI field. Royal Never Give Up and its traditional laning-phase dominance with swift attacks in the mid game, along with Edward Gaming's strong play, has gotten China some success on the international stage in previous years, but maybe WE's sturdy style is what the country needs to return to international prominence.
C-Tier -- The Pawns: SuperMassive, Gigabyte Marines
As usual, the play-in region teams are at the bottom. Turkey's Supermassive is no stranger to the tournament, however, having played in the group stage last year, when it put on an admirable performance. Turkey has become the defacto leader of the minnows of the world, constantly putting up strong performances in the qualifiers to make the main stage of international tournaments. Mustafa Kemal "Dumbledoge" Gökseloğlu will celebrate his third straight Mid-Season Invitational, putting him in rarified air with the likes of SKT's Faker, a player he "killed" during the first MSI in 2015.
Vietnam's Marines also want to make an impact at MSI. A bombastic team that loves to dive, fight and throw everything at the wall, the Marines fill the void that that the LPL team usually fits in the tournament. The player to watch for the Marines will be Đỗ "Levi" Duy Khánh, an offensive weapon in the jungle with his signature Lee Sin, and he's already proved to be a deadly force at the most recent All-Stars event in Barcelona. The Marines, even next to Supermassive, might be outgunned and considered the favorites to be the first team to drop out in the second stage. But one thing's for sure: If the Marines go down, that team's players are going to go out firing every bullet in their chambers.