Image: Riot Games
The first Group C team to make it to the playoffs is Rogue.
Rogue will advance to the knockout stage of Worlds 2022, following GAM Esports' victory over Top Esports. This victory for GAM inadvertently allowed the LEC team to qualify for the playoffs, but the same couldn’t be said for GAM itself. After DRX won a game against Rogue, GAM has been eliminated from the playoffs.
It’s been a strange day, where teams qualify or get disqualified from the playoffs by means of consequence. The VCS champions GAM Esports kept the dream alive by mounting a huge comeback against Top Esports today, finally earning a much-needed win in the Group Stage. The team then needed to hope for other teams in the Group Stage to drop their games to qualify, but that didn’t happen. DRX won another game and thus became insurmountable in points, while Rogue has already qualified for the knockout stage.
For Rogue, the rest of today’s matches will merely serve to cement its position at the top of the Group C standings. Currently, it’s likely that its only competition is DRX, who has two more fights to score wins and try to rise up the standings. Given that Rogue had been undefeated throughout the Group Stage up until it was taken down by DRX today, the latter team does stand a chance.
GAM’s last game of Worlds 2022 saw the team go up against DRX, with one last chance to go out in a blaze of glory. By the midgame, the team was unfortunately quite behind the competition with half of DRX’s kills and almost 10k less gold. DRX was mopping up objectives and kills with ease, and despite GAM really needing a Baron on its side to gain the upper hand, stole the Baron away as well. With DRX on the offensive, GAM often couldn’t afford to stray far from its base lest the enemy lay down a siege.
DRX had nigh-total control of the map at this point however, with the ability to poke into the base from multiple lanes and forcing GAM to spread out. DRX took a clinical win here, taking down inhibitors until GAM was forced to engage - which proved to be the VCS team’s downfall. With this win, DRX has tied with Rogue in the Group C standings at 4-1. Both teams will take on Top Esports in the last two games of the day.
