-
Dplus Kia
Self explanatory, they have the most experience both player wise and coach wise but even in terms of firepower on paper, they are the clear favourites. They have a huge org with history and have the resources to contend for ascension. However, they have been plagued by losing to teams they have been favoured against in 2022 but hopefully with the slight roster changes this is no longer the case.
Pros: raw firepower
executes and utility setups
Cons: lack of direction with gameplan
little team identity
poor midrounding -
Nongshim
Another LCK team but with a combination of experienced players and rookies. Handpicked by Pine the initial roster lineup had caused confusion amongst korean fans, with seasoned free agents not being signed up, I have high expectations for this roster. With their only experience as a team being a showmatch vs Dplus, they surprised me with a lot of interesting strategies. However the inexperience of the team could be easily seen with a lot of rookie mistakes, poor decision making and failure to adapt to the tempo of the game early on. Even so, I expect the team to only go up and as they gain experience I believe they can contend with Dplus for a spot in the ascension tournament. -
CNJ
From here it's pretty hard to choose. To many peoples surprise I will pick CNJ. Despite coming dead last in split 2 of kr vct 2022 and losing their star player in moothie, they heavily impressed me in the offseason by taking a map off Team Secret and being close to beating 2022 FAV both maps. although they didn't look great in terms of coordination, I like to think of it as their first game with the new roster and even so, they did great thanks to their aim. I would only assume they have gotten so much better with time as they've had a lot of time compared to other teams. However, their performance in the offseason was during the chamber meta, with their new player 'pay' being absolutely demonic on this agent. with the meta shifting we could see cnj going back down to their 2022 results but we will see. -
WGS
WGS is essentially a veteran team with seasoned players from the Maru Gaming core. This same core competed in the ESL tournament and beat teams such as Crazy Raccoon which are the favourites for JP challengers. No doubt this core alone should make this team formidable but their loss of Jeong Hi who was instrumental as an igl will greatly affect this team imo. I can't see them being as good as 2022 maru/oga because of this, though I would like to be surprised. -
Maru
Finally we get to see beyn play officially!! Aside from that initially I was hyped when the roster was announced but now with a little thinking besides hann and maybe beyn they have mediocre players. though their names are all recognisable by korean fans, I just can't see how the majority of this team can compare to some of the others. Not to mention, like most korean teams, the lack of a certified igl will greatly hurt this team, which doesn't even have thag much firepower to begin with. -
Shadow Corp
Deadass a coin flip between rio and sc for me. the reason I put them above rio is due to the fact that they are rookies and have so much potential to grow throughout this tournament. they started off as OQ and caught my eye when they came 3rd in the ESL tournament. from there they have only continued to improve by beating ONS in a big high school tourney who came 2nd in ESL and now even qualifying for vct. I only expect this team to improve the fastest of all teams and i hope they can upset a couple big teams here. -
RIO
LFG we got some vets back! ngl when I first saw the roster I was quite disappointed as the majority of this roster was in my eyes washed up players who I had written off. with most of them not even playing official games in 2022 I was surprised by their dominance in qualifiers. I hope they continue to surprise me. -
OP.GG
who? omegalul