LoL Mid-Season Invitational 2022 Preview

Things are slowly starting to heat up in the League of Legends Esports arena. Before Worlds 2022, we are here with an interim tournament where the best teams of the world come together. The 2022 Mid-Season Invitational, in short, MSI 2022 tournament is about to start in Busan, South Korea. Spring season winners of Riot’s 11 leagues located in different regions of the world come together for the MSI 2022 championship.

Regional champion teams will compete to determine the best LoL team in the world’s spring season. We can say that MSI 2022 is important in terms of following the current performances of teams such as T1, G2 and RNG. Additionally, teams will compete for a total prize pool of $250,000.

The team that succeeds in beating their opponents and becoming the first will receive a $75,000 prize. Likewise, the 2nd, 3rd and 4th teams will be given cash prizes. In short, we can say that a high competition awaits us. Now, let’s take a quick look at the details of the tournament’s calendar and format.

MSI 2022 Tournament Format

As we mentioned at the beginning of our article, a total of 11 teams can take part in MSI 2022. Riot organizes seasonal tournaments for 11 regions such as North America, Europe, Latin America, Brazil, Oceania, Korea, Turkey, Russia, Vietnam, China, Japan and Southeast Asia. Teams that win the spring season finals in their region can qualify for MSI.

Now, let’s take a brief look at the tournament format between 11 teams.

Group Stage – May 10th – 15th, 2022

• First of all, the teams are divided into 3 groups as A, B and C.
• While there are 4 teams in each group in total, there are only 3 teams in Group C.
• Teams in groups A and B will play the matches in the Double Round-Robin format.
• Group C will be able to compete with the Quadruple Round-Robin format.
• The two best teams in the groups will qualify for the next stage.
• The bottom two teams will bid farewell to the tournament.
• All matches will be played as Bo1.

Rumble Stage – May 20th – 24th, 2022

• The 6 teams that qualify in the groups qualify for the Rumble Stage.
• After this point, the 4 teams that can win will rise to the Knockout Stage.
• The remaining 2 teams bid farewell to the tournament. In addition, all matches in the Rumble Stage will be played as Bo1.

Knockout Stage – May 27th – 29th, 2022

• The team that succeeds in being the first in the Rumble Stage gains a great advantage. Accordingly, they will have the right to choose to face the third or fourth placed teams. The remaining two teams are facing each other and we are progressing step by step towards the final.
• Single-Elimination bracket
• Finally, we would like to add that all matches in the Knockout Stage will be played as Bo5.

Which Teams Are Fighting at MSI?

Since we talked about the format and MSI 2022 in general, we can say that it’s time for the teams. First of all, since the groups of the teams are certain, we will make a list accordingly.

Group A

Group B

Group C

TOP 3 Teams to Watch in Mid-Season Invitational 2022

If you have had the opportunity to watch LoL Esports tournaments even once, you need to understand that anything is possible on this stage. The most favorite team may lose to the weakest team of the tournament or we may encounter different results. In fact, this is exactly what makes LoL Esports exciting. However, the performances the the teams are top-notch and playing styles of some teams in the league very different. This is exactly why we would like to share with you three teams that we expect to mark MSI 2022.

Our choices will be based entirely on previous performances and statistics. We will make objective choices by evaluating the performances of the teams in the spring season and the personal performances of the players. If you’re ready, let’s continue.

1. T1

T1 is almost unstoppable under the leadership of Faker. They have not lost a match for weeks, they beat every opponent that comes their way and continue on their way. T1 suffered its most recent defeat at the 2021 World Championship Semifinals. Since then, they have not lost a single match. For a total of 12 weeks, this includes the LCK Spring 2022 Finals match, and they managed to win.

Moreover, all of the matches they won are 2-0 or 3-0. In other words, they do not give their opponents a chance, and they succeed in defeating them all by establishing psychological superiority. When we take a look at all these statistics, can you say that T1 is not the favorite of MSI 2022? No way, and that’s why many people will be betting on T1.

T1 Roster

• Zeus – Top
• Oner – Jungle
• Faker – Mid
• Gumayusi – Bot
• Keria – Support
• Asper – Support

2. Royal Never Give Up

Now we bring you the winner of MSI 2021, Royal Never Give Up. China-based Esports organization RNG is one of the teams that has managed to dominate the LPL with EDG for a long time. Moreover, we would like to convey to you that RNG also won MSI in 2018. In short, a dangerous team with many successes and strong enough to rival T1. Although they are not exactly undefeated like T1, they also lost only 3 games in 13 weeks. And there is a total of 5 match winning streaks.

RNG Roster

• Bin – Top
• Wei – Jungle
• Xiaohu – Mid
• GALA – Bot
• Ming – Support

3. G2 Esports

Although the glory days of G2 Esports seem distant, we can say that there is still hope for MSI 2022. Having Jankos and Caps, G2 have beaten teams like T1 and RNG before. However, these were results for 2019 and earlier. Yet G2 has always come across as a dangerous team. We expect Caps’ outstanding Mid lane performance to give the other teams a hard time in the tournament.

As a matter of fact, we would like to add more surprise teams here. However, as you know, the superiority of Chinese and Korean teams is constantly felt in LoL Esports. There is only one team that has dealt with this in time and won. If we have to give a chance to a European or American team in this tournament, it will definitely be G2 Esports.

G2 Roster

• BrokenBlade – Top
• Jankos – Jungle
• caPs – Mid
• Flakked – Bot
• Targamas – Support