Misfits Gaming continued to define their own meta today against Schalke 04 by spitting in the face of non-marksmen bot lanes and once again crushing the opposition.
The NA LCS has slowly started to shy away from all of the non-marksmen bot lanes, but they’re still very common in its European counterpart. That is, except for Misfits bot lane carry Steven “Hans Sama” Liv, who continues to take marksmen week after week while completely outclassing his lane opponents. Today against S04 was no exception. He was a monster.
There’s a lot of talk this split about G2 Esports passing Fnatic as maybe the best team in the region, and then Fnatic’s fans are rallying behind their team as they came back with a 2-0 weekend last week. Misfits, though, deserve some real credit, because honestly, they look like the best team out there right now.
The thing that sets them apart from, say, G2, is that G2 has relied heavily on the gold funneling strategy to get EU legend Luka “Perkz” Perković ahead in the mid lane. This has reliably put him in positions to carry the team on his shoulders, but gold funneling probably won’t be around forever. If the funnel meta ends, or if G2 has a bad draft and can’t get one of the meta funnel champions for Perkz, their position is much weaker overall than Misfits.
Misfits have been defining their own meta and picking comps that work specifically for them, akin to their strategies at Worlds last year, when they broke out Fervor of Battle Leona in a round against SK Telecom T1 and stomped with it. If the funnel meta does end, G2 will have spent the better part of the first few weeks focusing all of their efforts on Perkz carrying, which means the team’s other carries aren’t getting much experience. This is, of course, speculation, but that could really hurt them in the long run.
Misfits open day two of EU LCS’ third week tomorrow against H2k at 10am CT.
