It’s been a month of intense playoff League of Legends in the LPL, and it all came down to one final face-off between the defending World Champions in Invictus Gaming, and the surprisingly defiant JD Gaming.
After a very grand opening ceremony, the teams took the rift for the first time, and even though many folks came into Sunday’s finals thinking it would be a close series, it didn’t look it through Game 1.
Invictus Gaming truly looked like their Worlds dominating state after Game 1, where they took insane advantage of JD Gaming’s weak draft. The entire game from start to finish was Invictus Gaming’s to lose. With quick action, and building a very fast snowball rolling through into the 20-minute mark, Invictus was playing out of their mind right out of the gate.
In Game 2, JD Gaming made things seem as if we were heading towards a very long best-of-five, starting out real strong in the lane phase. They even managed to snag a couple of ganks and first-blood from Invictus Gaming. Unfortunately, IG is a team that has built a reputation for having a reckless nature, and one backed by an ability to maintain composure. Invictus Gaming didn’t have to wait too long before the tides had turned, and their dangerous poke-composition was able to push into the JDG Nexus in before we even hit the 20-minute mark.
Even though the team from JD Gaming had a wild run to the Grand Finals, and they house an extremely talented roster, and Invictus Gaming on the verge of winning is scariest. Up 2-0 in the series, Game 3 was almost lost before it started based solely on the advantage IG had with momentum. It also didn’t help that JD Gaming refused to ban away the champions that IG was using to pick them apart.
The first 7-minutes of Game 3 was filled with so much fire and fights. In fact, the first 13-minutes of the biggest game on the biggest stage in China’s League of Legends series was insane. By the 15-minute mark, there was a total combined kill count of 25. It was some of the most exciting League you’ll watch all year. If you're a fan of top-tier League of Legends play, this is a VOD you'll want to check out.
In the end, Imp and his JD Gaming squad would fall in a game that could have gone either way. Invictus Gaming has a whole lot of talent, but even more game-sense. Their experience on the World stage was a crucial advantage in this Grand Finals.
With the 3-0 sweep of JD Gaming in the LPL Spring Grand Finals, the 2018 World Champion Invictus Gaming punch their ticket to the 2019 Mid-Season Invitational in May.
Raise your trophy, IG! pic.twitter.com/2uEYgiSWfn
— LPL (@lplenglish) April 21, 2019
IG’s TheShy won the series MVP, but we truly believe that support player Baolan played out of their mind and won fights for his team on more occasions than not. On the flipside, JD Gaming has got a lot to be proud of with their thrilling adventure all the way through the LPL Playoffs, and their formidable performance in Game 3 of this series. It will be exciting to see what this JDG team does in the Summer.
Invictus Gaming now has a domestic title to add to their shelf right next to that World Championship as they set their sights on Cap's G2 Esports, Doublelift's Team Liquid, and Faker's SK Telecom heading into MSI 2019.
