All of the teams in the League of Legends World Championship have finished their group stages, leaving only the final knock-out bracket to be played.

Samsung Blue (Korea) led Group C with a final score of 5-1, and Najin White Shield (Korea) finished at the top of Group D with a final score of 5-2.

Following SSB in Group C was OMG (China) at 3-3, LMQ (China) at 2-4 and Fnatic (Europe) at 2-4. NJWS was followed by Cloud9 (North America) at 4-3, Alliance (Europe) at 3-3 and KaBuM e-Sports (Brazil) at 1-5.

Fans like League of Legends at College Park secretary Reza Mahmud were taken aback by the past weekend’s games, with all their surprising outcomes.

“Groups C and D were unbelievable whirlwinds of turnarounds and upsets, so I really loved watching it all go down,” Mahmud said.

One of the biggest surprises of the weekend was the match between Fnatic and OMG, in which Fnatic’s Rekkles, xPeke and Cyanide were only an autoattack away from destroying the enemy nexus and getting a chance to make it past the group stages. Unfortunately, their tantalizingly close attempt failed, and they lost the game. Both Rekkles and xPeke were incredibly emotional after the match, showing a side to the game that people don’t often see.

Surprisingly, no European team made it past group stages. With NA representatives Cloud9 and Team SoloMid pressing on, people were shocked that the brackets were devoid of European contenders.

“I also found it interesting that there was a pretty consistent inconsistency among the European teams,” Mahmud said. “They would either play absolutely out of their minds or be the only team to take down SSB or get a perfect game against NJWS, and then just completely drop the ball in draft phase or map control, like Alliance against KaBuM.”

As the group stages end, one question remains: Who are the most-used champions in the game, and why has Riot Games done nothing to balance them?

Champions like Tristana, Lucian, Yasuo, Ryze, Lee Sin, Lulu and Kha’Zix (to name only a few) have dominated the competitive scene, being picked or banned throughout most games.

While Riot has released nerfs on these champions over time (remember when Kha’Zix didn’t get nerfed 20 times into the ground?) nothing really seems to keep them down. After all, balance is hard to create. The second LeBlanc lost her ability to silence other champions, she went from one of the most banned champions to a champion who never sees the light of day.

While some champions, such as Tristana and Maokai, have live nerfs that tone them down a bit in the current patch, Worlds is being played on 4.14 — several patches behind us — so new changes won’t be affecting the gameplay. Though it might get boring watching the same 20 champions get picked when there’s a roster of more than 100, we’ll have to keep watching the professionals’ mastered mechanics and plays.

Quarterfinals start Friday with Samsung White versus Team SoloMid and will be available to stream live via twitch.tv.

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