So in this year's edition of the IEM World Championship, the two top teams from the LPL will face off against none of the top four teams in LPL and none of the top four teams in LCK, along with the 2nd and 4th place teams from the NA LCS.

Power Rankings

1. SKT T1 - 5th in LCK probably still better than everyone else.
2. Royal Never Give Up - 2-0'd QG this week, but Looper could be a liability.
3. Qiao Gu Reapers - Best record in the LPL.
4. CLG - Beat Immortals and C9 this week, Stixxay has looked bad.
5. Fnatic - Huni/Reignover brought a lot more than Gamsu/Spirit are.
6. Ever - All they do is win, but they did just lose their mid laner.
7. TSM - They've got better pieces to work with than Origen at least.
8. Origen - Looked like garbage all split.

I think RNG and Ever will take the spots from Group A and SKT and QG will take the spots from Group B. 5th best chance to get out of Groups will be the CLG getting in through the Loser's bracket. Group B is much tougher.

I think it would be funny to put the best from each team versus the worst:

Duke/Spirit/Faker/Uzi/Mata vs sOAZ/Amazing/Tempt/Stixxay/Klaj

SKT is bringing Blank instead of Bengi fwiw.

i think TSM gets stomped hard.

Origen isn't much better, if better at all.

ZVEN gna embarrass LiftLift tho

Shame that the clear #1 in the World doesn't get to stomp people on a big stage.

Rox Tigers are a fair bit above everyone else right now, especially with SKT playing like trash. Also holy **** do they change their name a lot. I think that is the 5th name since they became a team last year.

I'm quite sure Soaz is better than hauntzer because lol NA toplaners

Well the tournament is already off to a great start...

IEM is a joke they are never on time

Thought first game was listed at 7 Eastern. At least that's when DraftKings contests lock

It was scheduled for 12:30 CET, DraftKings obviously knows IEM well enough to account for the inevitable delay.

it should have started 30 min ago according to their site

IEM is just astoundingly bad. The new ways they find to **** up every event is just incredible. This year we have TSM's audio from a scrim being broadcast on the Garena stream. How does such a thing even happen?

Ever gonna ship the whole damn thing.

China still overrated as all hell. RNG might actually have a shot, but QG's macro play is so bad. Korean teams will just run them around the map and avoid a 5v5.

Korean challenger team vs TSM

Let's see

lol why is the 2nd place Challenger team in an IEM? Guessing they won their spot somehow

They won IEM Cologne.

they won Kespa cup in korea and qualified for IEM Cologne and won that

Oh nice we got best of 3's to end the days. Its double elimination with the losers side of the bracket being best of 3's and winners side best of 1's. Seems weird but i quite like that set up

Why is he doing Gromp when TSM's whole team is top side?

Oh please TSM just recruit Nightblue and Qtpie for stream and leave the pro scene, this is so embarassing

loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

11 Kill Max items LiftLift getting 1v1'd by the 5 kill, 3 item Lucian

FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESM