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For the fourth time in the last eight years, the League of Legends World Championship Finals will be an all-Korean affair. T1 assured that would be the case with their victory over JD Gaming last Saturday, but this won’t be the final that everyone was expecting. DRX overcame the odds to upset Gen. G, beating the top team in Korea for the first time this year in the process. As a Play-In team and the No. 4 seed from Korea, they are significant underdogs per the League of Legends betting odds against the three-time world champions in T1.
The 2022 League of Legends World Championship Finals will take place on Saturday, November 5, 2022, at 8 p.m. ET from the Chase Center in San Francisco, California. Tickets are sold out for this event and a raucous crowd is expected for the final.
2022 League of Legends Worlds Finals Betting Odds
DRX +275
T1 -400
It’s been incredible to watch DRX’s growth throughout the last two months. They weren’t expected to make Worlds in the first place as they had the sixth-most championship points in Korea after the Spring split and Summer Split. However, they overcame a 2-1 deficit to beat KT Rolster 3-2 in the Regional Finals and did the same thing against favorites Liiv SANDBOX to grab the LCK’s last spot at Worlds.
The key to DRX’s rise has been the play of mid laner Zeka. He proved that he was unrightly portrayed as a Sylas or Akali player only last week, as he was superb on Ahri in his one game on the champion. Zeka did what no one has done in two years by outperforming Chovy in the laning phase, and that gives DRX some real hope in this series.
Of course, the bigger story has been Deft as Koreans have been calling this Deft’s Last Dance. The 26-year-old has been a pro player for nearly a decade, and while he has been one of the game’s elite bottom laners, he has never made a World Championship. Deft is dealing 27.3% of his team’s damage at Worlds per tracking site Games of Legends, and he has an elite support alongside him in BeryL. This will be BeryL’s third straight trip to the Worlds Finals, and he is the first non-T1 player to accomplish that feat.
T1 will have a big advantage in the top lane as Zeus is the best top laner in the world. He is one of the few top laners that has had success on anything but weakside tanks at this tournament, and he has only played a true tank a handful of times. Zeus can hard win his lane against DRX’s Kingen, so don’t be surprised if he pulls out a Yone or Camille pick early.
The mid lane battle between Faker and Zeka will be one of the pivot points of this series. Faker is the greatest League of Legends player of all-time, and he has three World Championship titles to his name already. The Unkillable Demon King only has a 3.5 KDA at Worlds with a 53.3% kill percentage, so he hasn’t been at his best, but he has been the leader of this team for almost a decade.
Gumayusi and Keria have been excellent over the last few weeks. Gumayusi had trouble with consistency over the course of the year, but he has been at his best at Worlds with a 10.7 KDA. The only champion he struggled on was Aphelios, as he has looked sharp on everything else he has played at this tournament. Meanwhile, Keria is arguably the best support in the world and is carrying an 11.4 KDA at this point. He has shown the ability to play Nami, Renata, and Heimerdinger as well as more traditional supports, giving T1 a lot of flexibility in pick and ban.
This will be a very entertaining series, but T1 is the better team. As sacrilegious as it sounds, the biggest hope for a DRX victory is for Zeka to hard win his lane against Faker. It’s just too difficult for anyone else on DRX to carry, so a lot rides on Zeka this Saturday.
