Make it an even dozen. G2 Esports have won their 12th LEC championship, claiming victory in today’s LEC Season Finals over their longtime rivals Fnatic. The series went the way of G2 in a gentleman’s 3-1 sweep, and in turn, they’ve claimed the top seed out of EMEA heading into Worlds—the fifth such time they’ll enter the tournament as the LEC’s number one overall team.
G2’s 3-1 victory today was remarkably one-sided, even with the loss in the middle of the series. G2’s average win time in this series was a frighteningly fast 24 minutes, and across their three victories, they claimed 77 total kills—while earning over a kill per minute in each of their three wins.
For G2, the topside combination of BrokenBlade and Yike completely owned the map in all three games, with the duo serving as a collective force on the frontline throughout the series.
In all of today’s games, the pair was menacing for G2 in teamfights, but it was in games one, three, and four—when they paired K’sante with Rell—that they were able to wreak havoc on Fnatic, pestering them with consistent engagements and follow-up damage. Most impressively, Yike ended up with a scoreline of 6/8/59, good enough for a series-wide KDA of 8.1 and a kill participation of 73.8 percent.
With this championship win, G2 will enter Worlds 2023 as the top seed out of the LEC. They won’t have to play through the play-in stage of the tournament, as they’ve advanced directly into the newly-formed “Swiss Stage” of Worlds. Unlike previous seasons, though, claiming the top seed out of your region does not guarantee you to miss matchups with other major region champions in the Worlds main event. The Swiss Stage will pit teams with even records against each other, meaning all of the first-round matchups will be randomly drawn.
MAD Lions (third place) and Fnatic (runners-up) also claimed spots in the Worlds Swiss Stage. The only LEC team that will play in the tournament’s initial phase will be Team BDS (fourth place), who will face off against Golden Guardians in the Worlds Qualifying Series on Oct. 9. The winner of that win-or-go-home best-of-five will be slotted into the final berth in the Worlds play-in stage, which begins the following day, Oct. 10.
