This year’s Rift Rivals has come to a conclusion. Europe has taken the crown and bragging rights as the better region. This year’s tournament was played on patch 8.13 and the games and champion variety could have not been any crazier. With the downfall of the marksman class, every team has been training to pick up bruisers or mages in the bottom lane. Champion picks like Swain, Heimerdinger, and Vladimir ruled the bot position with supports that allowed them to progress to their two item spikes with ease. Top lane found a refreshing newcomer in Aatrox, not the old auto attack Aatrox, but the new reworked version. With high amounts of damage and survivability, Aatrox can contest with the dominant tanks and duelists of the top lane.

However, the interesting story has been teams testing whether laning or the new funnel strategy was the best. The funnel strategy allows your jungler to take the jungle camps and the mid lane farm while the mid laner is a support tank champion. G2 from Europe was the most advanced at performing this strategy as they consistently pulled it off with Perks and Jankos. Fnatic showed mastery of the bruiser meta as star player and captain Rekkles did not play at all since marksman were out of favor. sOaz and Bwipo carried from top and bottom as Caps outshined many midlaners from NA. Team Liquid showed signs of brilliance as their teamfighting in the late game was unrivaled, however they could not get there often enough since the meta was too fast. Europe has claimed the title and rightfully so. The next international competition will be Worlds 2018 and we will see if North America can perform better or if Europe keeps the crown as the better region.