The finals of the League of Legends 2022 Mid Season Invitational have officially come to a close. It was an exciting series where both T1 and RNG showcased their unique talents, but the latter came out on top and claimed the trophy at the end of the day.
Nevertheless, it was definitely not a quick and easy process for Royal Never Give Up, as T1 put up a fight to take the series to five games. However, it was none other than Wei maneuvering Lee Sin that made a huge difference in the final game of the day, as RNG decided to go all in with the pick. In fact, Wei’s performance was exceptional not just in the finals but throughout the entire tournament granting him the MVP title of the 2022 Mid Season Invitational.
T1 tried their best but ultimately fell short as RNG was simply more prepared strategy wise. The Korean representatives definitely had issues within the draft and approach to the game, at the end RNG managed to exploit the lack of proactivity in the best possible way.
RNG as a team, have been dubbed as the “Spring Emperors”. The team comes alive season after season around the corner of the Mid Season Invitational, putting every team to a test and ultimately grabbing the coveted trophy.
This instance was no different as RNG now has successfully won three MSI titles putting them under their belt, which is definitely a sign of domination at least within this tournament. However, impressively the records do not end here, as this last title win also meant that RNG successfully defended their MSI title win from 2021 becoming back to back champions. Ultimately, no one would question that RNG deserved this win after everything the team has been going through this past month.
As one of the controversial points, RNG was unable to travel to Busan due to travel restrictions within China. Thus, the team had to stay in a gaming house and play remotely. Outside of that, everyone within RNG had to go through a grueling all day regime to make sure that their performance did not drop across this entire month. Including a 16 hour practice shift, as after late night scrimming they had to wake up early in order to receive medical testing due to the current government laws.
RNG showed determination and team spirit, which was clearly visible in the finals as well with their teamwork focused gameplay. The match did go the distance with all five games, but RNG knew that in order to beat T1, they had to take the early game away from their rivals. T1’s constant strategy was to pressure out the enemy team by leaving all early game drakes for heralds, as such putting extra value in map pressure above scaling.
RNG matched that play style via draft and in-game rotations, unfortunately T1 had no answer for it, and the power duo of Wei and Xiaohu was too much for them. Despite Wei’s brilliance, ultimately it was a team effort, and no team other than RNG really deserved to become the League of Legends MSI Champions.
