League of Legends Worlds 2024: 100 Thieves, The Perfect Heist (5/20)

The League of Legends 2024 World Championship kicks off in Berlin on the 25th of September. A total of 20 teams will compete to succeed T1 at the top of the Riot Games MOBA world hierarchy. On this occasion, Sheep Esports brings you a daily feature on one of the teams taking part. This September 9th, the fifth episode of our series focuses on 100 Thieves, LCS third seed.

100 Thieves always find a way. The LCS team has completed the upset in their regional league, by defeating Cloud9 for a spot at Worlds Play-In. Even if the team did not deliver in the Championship Weekend, where they got crushed by the Summer champion, FlyQuest (0-3), the Thieves already went far beyond expectations. Indeed, 100T went for a complete restructuring after a disappointing year in 2023, where they reunited the two biggest legends from LoL Esports in NA: Yiliang "Doublelift" Peng and Søren "Bjergsen" Bjerg. If their last stand in Spring was not really conclusive, it didn't improve with Lim "Quid" Hyeon-seung replacing the Danish veteran, despite having big names from the scene at every position.

As the team ended the year far from qualifying for Worlds, they decided to completely switch their roster-building strategy, and prioritize young talents to move forward into 2024, alongside Quid. History shows they made the right choice by only keeping the Korean midlaner since he ended MVP of the Spring Split, his combination with Kim "River" Dong-woo was indeed remarkable and the Thieves ended the regular season tied for first place with FlyQuest. But the lack of experience from this young team got highlighted in BO5 series, as 100T struggled to even reach the fourth place. In the end, no regrets since this experience could've been the missing piece to achieve this latest Worlds qualification.

In addition to playing with three rookies, 100 Thieves decided to promote Frank "Tomo" Lam for the Summer Split to replace their former AD Carry Brandon "Meech" Choi. The American botlaner went from NACL in spring to Worlds, a couple months later, after their upset against C9's super team. But it was the only veteran in the team, River, that got the MVP of this series with a huge performance. Indeed, throughout the year, he was the reliable force this inexperienced team could count on to achieve success.

With his champion ocean and his strong chemistry with LCS' Spring MVP, the Korean was able to showcase different playstyles, from carries to tanks, as he even took the liberty of bringing out his Kayn during Group Stage. Overall, the Thieves love to draft good teamfight compositions, with a strong early pick to get priority in the toplane. Rayan "Sniper" Shoura, one of the youngest talents in LCS this year (17), especially likes the Renekton as he played it 9 times during these summer playoffs.

While the team relies a lot on Quid’s aggressiveness to either win lanes or find good roams and create an advantage, 100T are also very good at lane swapping and navigating through the early game with good skirmishes, even when they play scaling comps. But they will clearly go to Worlds under the underdog tag, as this will be the first international experience for every player except River.