LPL: BLG stand alone above China's League of Legends

The League of Legends Pro League (LPL) is a league based in China that sees teams of 5 players and a coaching staff face off to crown a winner each split, twice a year, and in the end Zhuo "knight" Ding wins the trophy. Specifically this 2024 season, it's Bilibili Gaming who took the title in both splits, claiming JD Gaming's legacy in terms of domestic domination.

Two stomps and one close game, that's all BLG left for the fans to watch as Weibo Gaming were severly outclassed in the grand final. During the 3 games, WBG attempted to make a difference in the botlane in the trail of Wang "Light" Guang-Yu's excellent performance during the whole playoffs. But with the exception of game 3, they never quite could shake Zhao "Elk" Jia-Hao who always managed to keep a sufficient farming and never give a decisive lead to WBG. The Ziggs pick game 1 for Light was indeed a major failure after Liu "Crisp" Qing-Song was solokilled leading WBG's botlane to get stuck under its turret. The Varus pick in game 2, despite securing a strong cs lead, never managed to kill Elk at any point despite him staying a lot on the lane and Weibo's jungler Lee "Tarzan" Seung-yong camping the botlane.

Game 3 was different, Luo "ON" Wen-Jun's Bard heavily struggled to play the lane against Crisp's Alistar. But it still did not prevent Elk from power-farming. The key to BLG's success was their ability to maximize their gold generation through a sidelanes macro game that was clinical, and game 3 was the only one where WBG were able to temporarily counter it. They however couldn't snowball their early lead efficiently, despite a very successful herald skirmish at 15 minutes. The 20-30 minutes didn't see WBG's gold lead progress that much, and even after a catch on Yan "Wei" Yang-Wei at 29 minutes, BLG came on top in every teamfight, peaking with an Elk pentakill on Jhin.

BLG's backline was what set the domination the most. On Smolder, Knight was able to have his full scaling at 23 minutes in game 1, partly thanks to his lane dominance over Li "Xiaohu" Yuan-Hao's Zeri. This first game also saw WBG win a crucial skirmish at 15 minutes (a skirmish that actually happened during the 3 games at herald), and in spite of a topside dominance, BLG's harassing backline and superior macro made the only fight they won enough to close out the game with 9 kills.

Chen "Bin" Ze-Bin was able to replace Elk in the backline in game 2 since his ADC was ultra focused by WBG. Beating Chen "Breathe" Chen's Renekton very hard in lane after one initial early kill, he stepped up tremendously in game 2 to show to WBG that stopping the botside was far from enough to stop BLG. The reason game 3 was so close is that the botside struggled while Wei's Maokai couldn't perform on the map due to Knight's Smolder struggling a bit in lane. But the backline still outperformed in the teamfights.

After finishing second in the MSI, losing against Gen.G in the Final, BLG didn't lose sight of the main trophy of the season : World Championship. With such a dominating split (two BO3 defeats and only one leg lost playoffs) and the addition of Wei, which worked wonders so far, BLG have placed themselves among the main favorites for Worlds' trophy, and wait for Gen.G to show a performance as good as theirs.

Knight also has managed to cement himself as an even bigger legend of the LPL : six finals in a row, 5 titles (including the last 4) with three different teams and an excellent performance today that clearly put Xiaohu a step below him. The MSI 2023 Winner is on the best career spree of the last two years, and only needs a World Championship title to be able to sit next to League's midlane legends like Scout or Rookie, although in order to reach Faker, he will need a couple more Worlds title.