Top Esports have had an incredible comeback in 2022. Coming out of the regular season in 5th place, they’ve managed to bring everything together and cement themselves as one of China’s best teams. Huang “Wayward” Ren-Xiang, a rookie top laner who was the third top laner to be brought onto the roster in this split alone, has managed to excel in the role and make a name for himself in record time. And he just made one of the best mechanical outplays of the year.

V5’s attempt to shut Wayward down with a tower dive failed spectacularly. Despite getting taken within an inch of his life, Wayward managed to stun both Huang “Karsa” Hao-Hsuan and Lee “Rich” Jae-won with his E, healed himself up by spamming Q on the caster minions, and proceeded to smash V5 in a 1v2 outplay.

Wayward went on to have a carry performance in Top Esports’ final game against V5 with a slashline of 8/2/5 by the end. Meanwhile, opposing top laner Rich wound up with a tragic KDA of 1/10/2. Rich got shut down so hard that he was very close to dying every other minute of this brief and one-sided 24-minute match. Wayward also ran away with the MVP accolade for the game. 

V5 came out of the regular season in first place but ended their playoffs run in third. Everyone on TES had a strong performance in this match, particularly LPL mid lane legend Zhuo “knight” Ding, who dominated Song “Rookie” Eui-jin, a player heralded as one of the best mid laners in the world. If Top Esports can keep up their consistently high level of play showcased through the playoffs, T1 might have some competition at MSI this year.