Faker gets caught, keeps getting caught when he returns

For an athlete, the term “habit” is often used only with a negative connotation. Unless the sport is focused solely on breaking individual records, bad habits may be less likely to suffer. But that’s not true in contact sports, where players need to get ahead of other players. For example, in baseball, organizations often hire analysts to keep an eye on opposing pitchers, figuring out their habits before pitching. They will take advantage of the smallest gestures to be able to predict the opponent’s throw, thereby reinforcing their moves.

Same goes for eSports. In fighting games, the side that can grasp the combos that the opponent uses most often will usually be the winner. In a real-time game, players who regularly take an action at a certain time are often easily countered. To prevent this from happening, many players have put a lot of effort into diversifying their playable characters and choosing them more dynamically.

Similarly, in League of Legends, it is certain that the team analysts will analyze the opponent’s jungler to predict their moves in the game. This information is extremely useful in anti-ganking and anti-ganking. And now, there is a famous player who is often mentioned by the community with his deadly “habits”.

In the spring of 2018, the image of Faker being arrested and killed while returning was not strange. If the death is due to an opponent ganking too well, or handling it too magically, there will never be criticism. However, most of Faker’s deaths are caused by him standing back in the open areas and not reacting quickly enough when caught. And this often leads to very bad consequences for the whole team. Let’s take a look at the 3rd game of SKT vs JAG in Round 1 – the match that marked SKT’s 5th consecutive loss of the season.

As the longest game ever recorded in professional League of Legends history, SKT had the advantage for most of the game. Although JAG was very successful in prolonging the match, they could do nothing but defend because they were too afraid of Kassadin’s power in Faker’s hands. After 93 minutes of play, Kassadin was ambushed by Kha’Zix in UmTi’s hand while he was returning and the match came to an end shortly after.

Although it was partly due to UmTi’s excellent judgment in that phase, Faker also made a mistake when he disappeared in such an indiscreet position. This mistake could have been the result of him playing too much, two games and the previous 90 minutes could have distracted him for a moment. However, Faker continued to make this mistake throughout SKT’s losing streak. Chances are these bugs were discovered and exploited by their opponents.

After the match against JAG, SKT continued to have a confrontation with KT. And in game 3, Faker chose Vladimir against Azir in the hands of Pawn. The game was still in favor of SKT as both their mid and bot lanes led in terms of minions, but after Faker was caught in the mid lane in the 18th minute, the game immediately reversed.

Faker disappeared to the edge of the wall above mid lane and was caught by Pawn and Score. It was a reckless move especially since KT had already gained vision control in the top half of the map. In addition, his Vladimir has only 50% health left.

Faker also continued to return dangerously during the match against AFs. In the first game, although SKT was at a slight disadvantage due to Untara being ganked in the top lane, Faker and Blank regained the advantage by killing both Kuro and TusiN in the mid lane. Then Faker was captured and died while disappearing near the enemy turret in mid lane. Kuro was the one who used teleport and got the critical kill, destroying the top mid laner giving the AFs an advantage.

And just last week, in the rematch against AFs, Faker’s Ekko took on Kuro’s Taliyah. Mid and their bot lane still had the minion advantage, but after just over 10 minutes, Faker was once again standing in the middle of the danger zone and offering his lane to Taliyah. The AFs controlled the goals well, took advantage and won the match.

In addition to being caught while returning too much, Faker also caused fans to ask a lot of questions about Galio’s ability to use Teleport and Superhero Reincarnation.

In the series of matches between SKT and MVP in Round 1, Faker used Super Hero to descend without paying attention to his surroundings. Fortunately, he successfully used the flash and escaped with only 100 health, but his teammate Nasus was not so lucky. Once again Faker used teleport on the opponent’s line of sight, and this time he paid with his life.

One of Faker’s usual habits is opening the shop when he returns, which slows down his reaction when he is attacked by an opponent. If you watch Faker’s stream a lot, it’s not hard to notice that he does it every time he returns, either entering the store or looking around the map while the return spell has a few seconds to complete.

The biggest problem is Faker’s reaction to being attacked and canceling the Return spell is quite slow. Not only on stream, his “eye-shopping” habit also spread to the professional arena.

SKT has won a total of 3 world championships, and even in tough times like last year, SKT still achieved certain successes in the World Championship. At the center of all that glory, Faker has always played an important role. But with what happened in this Spring, we can conclude that no one is perfect, neither is SKT and Faker is no exception.

League of Legends is a very fierce competitive arena, requiring perfection to be able to overcome difficult matches. Can Faker change and erase his bad habits to keep moving forward? MLB (American Baseball League) pitchers were able to overcome their habits, even taking advantage of them to distract opponents. Before SKT can once again climb to the top, Faker needs to fix his bad habit.

Source: Invenglobal