League of Legends Worlds 2024: Dplus KIA, an Ogre seeking redemption (12/20)

The League of Legends 2024 World Championship kicks off in Berlin on the 25th of September. A total of 20 teams will compete to succeed T1 at the top of the Riot Games MOBA world hierarchy. On this occasion, Sheep Esports brings you a daily feature on one of the teams taking part. This September 16th, the twelfth episode of our series focuses on Dplus KIA, LCK third seed.

Once again, Dplus KIA, more commonly known as "Damwon", will take part in the greatest tournament of the year. The organization has never missed a single Worlds since its arrival in the Korean main league in 2019. Aside from T1, they are the only other organization coming in the tournament that has already won Worlds at least once. Indeed, Dplus KIA's legendary run in 2020 still resonates in everybody's mind as they were the ultra favorite back then with an impressive dominant roster that seemed unbeatable featuring toplaner Jang "Nuguri" Ha-gwon and support Cho "BeryL" Geon-hee.

The next year, despite Nuguri's departure replaced by Kim "Khan" Dong-ha, they reached the MSI and Worlds finals again, but ended up losing both 2-3 versus two Chinese organizations: Royals Never Give Up and EDward Gaming. Since then, the roster has disbanded and only the historic mid/jungle duo would stay in 2022 and 2023, but they never came to be as dominant as they were before both in LCK and internationally. They consistently ended up being behind T1 and Gen.G, struggling to get 3rd or 4th in the league's standings and got eliminated early on at Worlds both years by other Korean teams. Last year, they were the only team from LCK to not get past the Swiss stage as they lost twice to KT Rolster.

As of 2024, only one player from the organization's golden era remains: Heo "ShowMaker" Su. He has been a part of the organization since the very beginning in 2017 and has known every highs and lows since then. His team mate Kim "Canyon" Geon-bu left during the last offseason to Gen.G and so the team had to rebuild entirely around Showmaker and his support Kim "Kellin" Hyeong-gyu who joined in 2022. They signed Hwang "Kingen" Seong-hoon and Kim "Aiming" Ha-ram, former players of HLE and KT Rolster. Additionally, Choi "Lucid" Yong-hyeok from their Challenger roster has been promoted to the main team.

This year, Dplus KIA remained a strong contender, consistently ranking among the top four teams but never breaking into the top three. Despite an overall inconsistent performance, they managed to secure a ticket to this year's Worlds as 3rd seed by overcoming T1 in the Regional Finals.

ShowMaker is set to make his sixth consecutive appearance at Worlds, continuing with the same organization. The spotlight is also on rookie Lucid, who has big shoes to fill after Canyon’s departure. The 19-year-old player was directly promoted from the Academy, having built a great reputation for being highly mechanical and one of the main reasons Dplus KIA Challengers won in Spring 2023. However, this year, he has been facing some struggles. He mainly played setup champions like Sejuani, Lillia, and Maokai in Summer, which didn't really allow him to showcase his talent with flashy plays. With AD skirmishers coming back in Worlds patch, there's a high chance Lucid will be given a chance to get out of his tank duty.

On the botlane, it is to be mentioned Kellin got replaced by Jeong "Moham" Jae-hun during Summer split. While no specific reason has been provided, it is assumed the team had become too reliant on Aiming's level of performance and they looked for a way to spice things up on the botlane. Indeed, the controversial ADC - still embroiled in the controversy surrounding his relationship with an underaged fan back in 2019 - has been a key to many successes of the team this year. Almost all metas suit him and he can shine on scaling champions like Zeri, high-damage dealer like Miss Fortune as well as on pocket picks such as Ziggs.

Overall, this roster has not been very consistent throughout the year, but has learned to play in very chaotic games. They are used to long games and can abuse their opponents mistakes as they showed against T1 in their very last series. Coming as underdogs, they are aiming to come back to Quarters after last year's disappointment, to make their year a success.

You'll find below the 5-man roster of DPlus KIA: