BUSAN, SOUTH KOREA – MAY 24: Joseph Joon “jojopyun” Pyun of Evil Geniuses (L) and Victor “Flakked” Lirola Tortosa of G2 Esports greet onstage after their match at the League of Legends – Mid-Season Invitational Rumble Stage on May 24, 2022 in Busan, South Korea. (Photo by Lee Aiksoon/Riot Games)
G2 snap their five game losing streak by beating Evil Geniuses for the sixth straight time this MSI, avoiding first seed RNG in the process.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
BUSAN, SOUTH KOREA – MAY 24: Teams Evil Geniuses and G2 Esport greet onstage after their match at the League of Legends – Mid-Season Invitational Rumble Stage on May 24, 2022 in Busan, South Korea. (Photo by Lee Aiksoon/Riot Games)
No matter how bad G2 were getting tossed around by every other team in the latter half of Rumble Stage, it seems that you can always rely on Vulcan and Evil Geniuses to gift them a free win, just when they need it!
The Evil Geniuses support was having a splendid game for himself before he got caught on vision. To be fair, G2 were extremely decisive in their punishment, blowing the EG support’s Flash before pile driving him through the ground.
It stopped another splendid early game from EG and the North American representatives stopped making proactive plays after that, allowing for BrokenBlade’s Jax and Caps’ Gwen to scale into their items. I suspect Caps was especially thankful for Vulcan’s int, since he was getting run over by Impact’s Kennen off the lane swap to try and get Jax into Tryndamere matchup. BrokenBlade was down CS and lost Flash in that matchup, which goes to show just how far ahead EG were before Vulcan’s fateful throw.
Vulcan has had a history of these throws, going all the way back to his C9 days. It’s his only blemish on an otherwise incredible repertoire of skills. His decisive, accurate engages are the primary reason why his teams are able to find advantageous skirmishes or convert on a gold lead to finish off the game, but he has a penchant for getting caught out while warding in the most inopportune of times.
BUSAN, SOUTH KOREA – MAY 24: Philippe “Vulcan” Laflamme of Evil Geniuses competes at the League of Legends – Mid-Season Invitational Rumble Stage on May 24, 2022 in Busan, South Korea. (Photo by Lee Aiksoon/Riot Games)
Both G2 and EG will have a few days to reset from their Bracket Stage performance and prepare for Knockout Stage. Both western teams head into the final stages of MSI 2022 as the obvious underdogs; I suspect they will be scrimming each other quite a bit throughout the next few days to cook up something that can contend with their Asian opponents.
