All-Stars 2017 will be in Los Angeles with a different format

The fun All-Stars tournament this year is taking place in California from December 7-10 and it’ll have a completely different format.

Rather than duking it out for Team Fire or Team Ice, players will be just fighting for regional glory again with an increased emphasis on raw competition. As usual the rosters will be fan votes but this time there will be eight regions based off of their 2017 World Championship performance (with previous international event performance acting as a tiebreaker).

For those not in the know, the eight regional teams at this years All-Star Event will be:

• China (LPL)
• Europe (EU LCS)
• Korea (LCK)
• LMS (LMS)
• North America (NA LCS)
• Southeast Asia (GPL)
• Turkey (TCL)
• Brazil (CBLOL)

The All-Stars tournament itself will be broken up similarly to Worlds. There will be two groups during the Group Stages and teams will face off in a series of Round Robin best of one matches. The two highest seeds from each group will move on to the Semifinals, which will be played as a best of three series. The Semifinals winners will then move on to face off against each other in a best of five Finals match.

The 1v1 tournament is also getting a much needed trim. Rather than every single All-Star participating in the 1v1, each team will now send two representatives from their team into the gauntlet (chosen by the team’s coach). This will, of course, create a riveting 16 player bracket where only the best come to fight. Once the bracket has been narrowed down to the top four, the format will switch from the usual best of one to a best of three for the remainder of the tournament.

The voting system seems to be staying largely the same. Starting in November, fans will be able to cast their vote for their region’s best players. Each fan can vote for one player per position on the All-Stars team, but only players who played in at least 20 percent of Summer Split games are eligible. As usual, there is a two player maximum from the regional teams, so no, we won’t just be sending the entirety of TSM, you goobers. Finally, all of the pros in a given region will vote on a coach for their All-Stars team.

All-Stars this year will be held in the LCS Studio in Los Angeles.