Worlds 2022 Outlook Series | LOUD (CBLOL) Preview

With Worlds 2022 about to begin, the Campeonato Brasileiro de League of Legend’s LOUD are one of the 24 teams from across the world that are making their way to the biggest event of the year. Every team entering the League of Legends World Championship have the same goal: to stand at the top uncontested and hoist the Season 12 Summoner’s Cup high.

SOMOS OFICIALMENTE CAMPEÕES DO CBLOL 👋

É ISSO MESMO QUE VOCÊ LEU, DEU TUDO CERTO FAMÍLIA 🙏

3-0 vs o time da ᵖᵃᶦⁿ e seremos Brasil no Mundial de League of Legends

VAMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

LOUD CAMPEÃ DO CBLOL pic.twitter.com/ze9SBXjdxm

— LOUD 🇧🇷 (@LOUDgg) September 3, 2022

In just the second year of the organization’s presence in the CBLOL, LOUD turned around a mediocre 2022 spring split and the beginning of Summer to emerge as not only the best team in the region but by far the hottest.

LOUD (CBLOL) Worlds 2022 starting roster breakdown

• Top: Leonardo “Robo” Souza | Signed in December 2021, formerly a member of paiN Gaming.
• Jungle: Park “Croc” Jong-hoon | Signed in May 2022, formerly a member of Netshoes Miners.
• Mid: Thiago “tinowns” Sartor | Signed in December 2021, formerly a member of paiN Gaming.
• Bot: Diego “Brance” Amaral | Signed in May 2022, promoted from LOUD Academy.
• Support: Denilson “Ceos” Oliveira Gonçalves | Signed in December 2022, formerly a member of kaBuM! e-Sports.

How they got here

After a somewhat decent inaugural 2021 campaign that saw LOUD make it to playoffs in back to back splits, upper management decided it wasn’t good enough; the roster shifted during the off-season leading into 2022. Three members of the 2021 roster made it to opening day of 2022, including Ceos, Igor “DudsTheBoy” Lima Homem and their top laner (turned jungler) Rodrigo “Tay” Panisa. The spring split actually caused the team to go backward. Despite putting up a winning record, LOUD were the odd team out in a four-way 10-8 record tiebreak; the other three 10-8 teams made playoffs, while LOUD missed out.

Between the spring and summer, more roster moves were made. LOUD had an ace in the hole on their academy team with standout bot laner Brance, who led the entire CBLOL Academy league in damage per minute. In the summer the made the call to bring him up to replace Dudstheboy. But that wasn’t all; with Tay’s failure to get adjusted to the jungle position, LOUD elected to acquire Croc from Netshoes Miners to fill in the need for a true jungler.

With now only one member on the starting roster from last year’s team, LOUD started off the 2022 summer split shaky. Through the middle of Week 6, LOUD found themselves with a losing record at 5-6 while barely keeping their spot as the last playoff team. But something clicked in the game immediately after. After their Week 6 win against KBM, LOUD didn’t drop a single game the rest of the season as they pulled off seven straight wins, including wins against the top two seeds FURIA and RED Canids. LOUD entered playoffs with a 12-6 record and the fourth seed.

In their first match in the upper bracket of the 2022 CBLOL summer playoffs, LOUD swiftly dispatched RED Canids 3-1 to set up a match against paiN Gaming in the upper bracket finals. But after a close five games, LOUD were finally defeated after their long win streak and sent to the lower bracket finals where the top-seeded FURIA were awaiting them. LOUD had their second awakening of the split, as they improved drastically once again to sweep the top-seeded FURIA in three games; and in the grand finals, they got revenge over paiN Gaming in another 3-0 sweep to punch their ticket to Worlds 2022.

Players to Watch

LOUD has two key players of interest. One is a rookie phenom, and the other is a wild veteran.

Starting with the rookie phenom, Brance made his CBLOL debut in the summer split and has taken over the league since. In his first split in the league, Brance led all bot laners in KDA with an incredible 8.7 and was second in Damage Per Minute according to Oracleselixer.com. But Brance’s real coming out party came in the playoffs. When his team needed him most, Brance delivered. He tied for the league lead in playoff player of the game awards with three including in Game 2 of the finals where he went 9/2/5 on Kalista in route to LOUD’s first championship win. Brance in the series had a statline of 24/5/19 in the biggest series of his very young career.

But when looking at who the one player that had a better KDA than Brance in the regular season and the player Brance was tied with in playoff player of the games, both of those were his mid-laner tinowns. tinowns has a fantastic storyline heading into Worlds 2022. As a player who is one of the most recognizable players in the Brazilian esports scene, tinowns has been playing competitive since 2013 and was the mid-laner for KBM at Worlds 2014, the Worlds where the infamous “Kabumed” meme originated from after KBM defeated Alliance on the final day of the group stage to prevent the European representative from making it out. But since then, tinowns hasn’t been back. Eight years in the making, tinowns is finally coming back to Worlds and he is also in peak form all these years later.

How LOUD can succeed at Worlds 2022

LOUD will be one of the 12 teams in the play-in stage at Worlds 2022. As one of the 12 teams, their group of six has already been decided and they actually have the easier group by far. Somehow, the team has dodged the two Play-in favorites in Royal Never Give Up and DRX while also dodging MAD Lions and 2022 Mid-Season Invitational representatives, Saigon Buffalo. But even with good group luck, they still have a long road ahead. For the team to make it out of groups they are still going to have to win at least one best of five against one of the major region representatives and will also have to defeat other tough wild card region contenders such as DetonatioN FocusMe and Beyond Gaming.

For LOUD to have a successful Worlds, it shouldn’t be about making it out of play-ins. Instead, it should be focusing on being competitive in every game and avoiding blowouts. If Brance can take another step into his already stellar young career, look out for LOUD to make some noise in the play-in stage as they cause an upset or two.