In their short time as a team (team founded in 2019) they have been to MSI, a World Championship, and one game away from another World Championship appearance. They and V3 are the most dominant teams in Japanese League of Legends and they have performed pretty well in international competitions. Unfortunately they are playing into both Cloud9 and the defending World Champions DWG KIA. I fully expect this team to be competitive and even take some games in this group but I think it is important to understand they will be harder to read in terms of making picks. While they have quite a large roster I am covering only the main players who have played the majority of the games they have played and who played in playoffs.   

 

Lane Breakdown

 

In this section I am going to go lane by lane (or position by position) and grade out each player and set some expectations for what we should see from them in the group stage! Obviously playing on stage in an actual tournament can give us some pretty special moments but I will outline what should be the most likely outcome.

 

Top Lane (Evi): This is probably the biggest liability for DFM. He averaged just over a 3 KDA in both Spring Regular Season and Spring Playoffs. Normally this isn’t too concerning but looking at his stats, he has practicality none speak of. He averaged a one-to-one rate on kills to deaths in the regular season (37 each) and averaged less than seven assists per match. Going 3-3-7 each game is super vanilla and not really someone you are looking to pick up. Outside of his Akali picks, he has played safe and passive champions that hold the side lane. It is a perfectly fine strategy and he should be ok with Khan and Fudge but he will not be able to gain an advantage and push DFM ahead. 

 

Jungle (Steal): As an outlier to the norm, DFM has a core member in the jungle. Steal is not as flashy as some other junglers in the group, but there should be some competition for Canyon and Blaber. He has a really simple champion pool defaulting to the Hecarim and Olaf picks more than any other champions and he wasn’t really challenged on those picks. He, much like Evi, doesn’t drop a ton of kills but instead is core to setting up Aria and Yutapon in the laning phase and starting the team fights in the late game. If you are strapped for cash, the benefit is he limits his death making him a safer investment. 

 

Mid Lane (Aria): The more I look at the champion pools for these minor regions the more excited I get. He plays the full range of champions but really finds his home with those mid lane controlling picks with Orianna and Seraphene. Watching his tape I loved seeing how he wasn’t frozen in the mid lane. He will roam out of his lane and get in the mix with the fights in other lanes and around objectives. He had 33 kills in the playoffs and another 55 in the regular season. I wouldn’t expect him to create his own opportunities but do expect him to make the most of the opportunities that Steal and Kazu make for him.  

 

Bot/AD Carry (Yutapon): Yutapon will have his work cut out for him in this group. There won’t be a single bot lane duo that will be easy for him. He had the liberty to pick on some of the weaker competition like he had in his home region. I think we will see him move away from his Kai’Sa pick that he used in the regular season and more of the Ezreal pick that he played in the playoffs when he faced more skilled competition. I would warn against getting sucked into this pick unless he is facing the weaker team in the group NOT DWG and C9. 

 

Support (Kazu): This is another big liability for DFM. In all of spring, he played four different champions. Some of this was from bans, but he consistently only had a KDA of around three. He will dive in and get blown up so consistently that it almost seems like he doesn’t understand that he doesn’t have to die in every fight. I like his aggressiveness but at times it is not appropriate for the game state. They slowly grind out wins so there is really no reason to be dying as often as he is on the tanky picks of Rell and Gragas. I would avoid this pick if at all possible. 

 

Cann’s Final Thoughts

If they clear 2 wins, I think that will be a big win for this team. I see them dropping two games to both C9 and DWG and INF could only be a split. I like that they play to an identity, but that identity is not usable in a global meta. I want to see them push their picks and how they play to learn from this experience. They are stuck in the lower region that they are in, but that means they need to learn as much as possible in this tournament to make it worth it for their travels. I will like to see how Steal holds his own against the aggression of Blaber and Canyon and see how many of these players could make the transition into a major region.  


Cann’s Record Prediction: 1-5
Cann’s Final Placement Prediction: Round Round Play