edg won msi against skt convincingly
we got to iem finals, which admittedly was a lower tier tournament but still, they beat koo there
it's not even an off year, it's an off tournament. obviously the most important tournament of them all but still, china as a region benefitted a lot from the korean exodus, but like na/eu they're behind in infrastructure which i'm guessing they'll work to build since they for sure have the money to do so
i think equating regions in general has been dumb, there are problems to every region (even korea), just obviously some have more than others
i think korea massively benefits from being the most mature region, while the rest are kind of scrapping together what they can and often getting results mostly from raw skill (tpa, royal) or theorycrafting (moscow 5, fnatic) but it's hard to beat korea that's been doing this for like 15 years.
tbh, it's fun to have the koreans as like the undefeatable gods because when they bleed like in msi it's so fucking satisfying
i hope china comes back with a vengeance next year, i think they have insane talent in so many teams, they just need to learn how to use it and maybe make their region format a little less dumb (like having each team play like 40 bo2 per split is very silly).
i want to see taiwan do better too, ahq and flash wolves were really fun to watch and i hope they come back stronger next year
na and eu are weird, i think the bo1 format actually does hurt them a fair bit, but i think coaching staff needs to be improved most of all. drafting is super important, mental fortitude is super important, they can't just be failing at those two every single time. specially eu that actually has a lot of talent. na is kind of whatever
