LONG BEFORE I would get to cast any of these teams, one tournament in particular stands out to me — IPL 5. I stared in awe at the talent of the players and soaked everything in. I remember being glued to my computer monitor, game after game, watching what felt like another edition of the World Championship. If you’ve been around the scene for a long enough time, you’ve probably never forgotten just how epic IPL 5 was.
For many, IPL 5 was a truly unique event and is remembered by many as one of the greatest, if not the greatest League of Legends tournament ever held. The old school greats of the game duked it out in one of the most exhilarating events ever held. World Elite’s victory was so memorable to their region that their logo was made into a free icon in the Chinese League client.
WE became household names, you might even know most of them, even though most of those players have since retired. You’ve probably heard of Misaya, the first god of Twisted Fate who invented a Destiny/Gate initiation so stunning the play is named after him. Or Clearlove, the only bastion of that original team still left playing professionally, grinding out more trophies than any other domestic LPL player in history.
But the crown jewel of this squad, the player so good that even with the modern game’s level of talent and rising rookies, he looks incredible. The one who played the longest in the red and white from the golden age of World Elite, is without a doubt, ADC Weixiao. Your mileage may vary, but to me, Weixiao is the grandfather of Chinese ADC and was his team’s true maestro.
His Ezreal was as unkillable as it was intelligent. He was one of the first players to globally trim minion waves with Trueshot Barrage and start slow pushes at a time where people barely understood macro the way teams do today. I was so in awe of him as a player that one of my first bigger moments of exposure as a play-by-play caster was one of his astonishing plays that was even immortalized as a Lego set.
Weixiao could do it all. Play up aggressively with his support, control the flow and high level strategy of a game, and play just about any ADC that was in-vogue at the time. But most breathtakingly, he danced through teamfights.
Weaving in and out between enemies on all sides, ducking in and out of encounters, and all the while attack-moving every optimal target he could. Weixiao is long considered one of the greatest League of Legends players of all time and his career is significantly shorter than those attributed a similar accolade.
His eventual retirement from professional League of Legends left an imprint on a region so large that he ushered in not one but two different prodigies to replace the gap he left in the scene.
Enter Uzi and NaMei, the first players to pick up the scraps left by their god.
NaMei, once known by the handle “Devil,” was the premier team-fighting ADC in China. He eventually joined a couple of Weixiao’s old teammates on EDward Gaming after a promising first LPL win on Positive Energy and became a three-time LPL champion.
At a time where the LPL was ruled by fire, fighting, and an unbridled streak of aggression, EDG would fend off every opponent and beat them in the late game. While the team was capable of winning early when the opportunity arose, their ability to seemingly never concede a team fight no matter how dire the situation was led to their rule over the LPL for almost two years.
Even with all the bot lane talent in the league at the time, NaMei was simply unbeatable on home soil in a late game teamfight.
To any of you who watched his poor performances at the World Championships, you would be forgiven for thinking he was just another name on a good team instead of what I remember him as: the player that was on the path to becoming the next Weixiao, the next best ADC of all time.
Uzi was very much a wild dog in his early days as a player. Ferocious, merciless, and heavily instinctual both in and out of game, and like many great players he was not without the talent to back it up. From two consecutive Worlds finals appearances on Royal before he joined the 2015 OMG super team that was designed to out-carry and outplay every team in the LPL that season, he failed miserably. But along the way he learned to be a little less selfish.
In 2016 he joined Qiao Gu Reapers and watched his old team win the playoffs. But he tried to be more accommodating to his team and play less solely for himself. Then in the latter half of the year he re-joined Royal only to get swept by EDG, led by Deft — a new powerhouse ADC from Korea who took over the league and did what Uzi could not do before: win an international title for China in League of Legends.
Staying on Royal in 2017, he would lose to WE in Spring for the second year in a row and then again to EDG by getting reverse swept at his then closest shot at a title. He lost to some rookie named iBoy who at the time hadn’t even played the full season in the LPL.
But still Uzi persevered. He could still destroy lanes with Caitlyn. His Vayne and Lucian were still among the best in the world. But he started playing Ashe and Ezreal — champions that a younger Uzi never seemed to consider. He was more willing to be a team player, to have utility, to let his other teammates carry. To even be a good teammate that trusted the people around him.
LPL shoutcaster Indiana “Froskurinn” Black says it best though, Uzi’s biggest problem has hilariously always been Uzi: “His curse was a mental blocker. And in a game that doesn’t often let us peek behind the curtain at the mental side of things, this ‘Final Form’ is a monument not to his skill as a player, but to his team and himself. And that’s why he’s so scary right now: not because he can do things with champions that no one thought was possible, but because he has the confidence to do it now.”
2018 has been a great year for Uzi, though, and let’s first explore all the things he has become in a journey that has taken almost five years to come to fruition. After all, we’re talking about legacy here. The reason is because Uzi’s individual skill is so great that attempting to describe it accurately leads to statements that sound hyperbolic anyway — that’s how dominant Uzi has become.
No one has dominated an individual lane matchup like Uzi has, whose Caitlyn is almost universally banned because of how punishing he is on the champion. His Vayne, although played more in his earlier career is still mesmerizing to watch not just his mechanical talent, but his willingness to put himself in the most ridiculous situations and not only survive but thrive. Uzi has also consistently made mobile AD champions look otherworldly. His “ice-skating” Lucian single-handedly carried his team to their second World Championship appearance.
Fast forward to now in 2018 and Uzi has not only just won his first title this year, he’s won everything that’s placed in front of him. LPL Spring, MSI 2018, Rift Rivals, Asia Games; he’s even easily the favourite to win the All-Star 1v1 tournament again. After five years of never winning, he’s now one tournament away from achieving the only thing that prevented people from calling him the best player in the world.
But not only will he need to beat the world’s best in order to capture the title, he’ll need to outlast his two hottest competitors from his home region as well. Much like Weixiao being so strong that he inspired two players of incredible strength, Uzi has inspired the next wave of young and upcoming bot laners in China. The only difference between him and Weixiao is that Uzi is still around to defend his title, but that journey has already not been easy.
EDward Gaming’s iBoy has already bested Uzi when it mattered most, and Invictus Gaming’s JackeyLove was apparently such a scrim monster before he was even old enough to join IG that Uzi flat out refused to play against him because he got so beat up that the hit to his mentality was not worth the practice. To think that there’s someone Uzi, the most lane dominant player to perhaps ever play, might be afraid of — even if only in practice — speaks volumes to what he has done to inspire and create the next generation of mechanically skilled and unrelenting marksmen.
Where NaMei was inspired by the slower, graceful style of Weixiao, Uzi’s incidental proteges are perhaps even more enraged than Uzi’s youngest incarnation. Between iBoy’s almost group-saving antics, pushing far forward in fights on Xayah at Worlds 2017 to JackeyLove’s signature Draven, the next track of ADs playing in China are traversing the path set by Uzi all this time ago and running full speed towards this year’s Worlds, where all three players will be representing their region.
While the lineage of powerhouse Chinese ADCs can be traced all the way back to the golden age of World Elite and their carry Weixiao, Uzi has inherited the role as not only the best bot laner China has ever produced, but enters this championship as the best player in the world at his position and now the best to ever play the role.
Shoutcaster and Commentary Scientist @ Riot Games. Australian. Coffee worshipper. All one word, no capital 'T'.