Without Demon King Faker, will SKT still be himself?

SK Telecom T1’s first League of Legends World Championship was in 2013, with a roster led by Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok and only playing together for about half a year. The year 2014 followed was a disappointing year for the Korean telecom giant as both SKT teams failed to qualify for Worlds. However, after that year, SKT built a League of Legends dynasty that lasted for many years to come, making people forget the disappointment of 2014. SKT has always been the strongest team. From winning the 2015 LCK Spring Split to losing at the hands of Samsung Galaxy at Worlds 2017, SKT has always been called the strongest team in the world.

Over the course of their reign, SKT developed a subs that worked on the stability of bot lane duo ADC Bae “Bang” Jun-sik and Support Lee “Wolf” Jae-wan, next to superstar mid laner Faker. Substituting Mid for Faker in Spring 2015, Lee “Easyhoon” Ji-hoon, is SKT’s most famous sub, who has set the stage for many 10-man rosters to take advantage of other subs. However, the bold SKT substitutions are usually in the Jungle position, and later in the Top lane.

After Easyhoon left, the team used a rotating roster that played around Faker. Ever since SKT struggled with a certain meta or tried to make it to the Finals and were defeated (like the loss against Longzhu in Summer 2017), we always had the feeling that Faker would have some big hits. go to the field”, compete in ecstasy to help SKT once again stand on top of the world. He carried an unsettled SKT all the way to the 2017 World Championship Finals. Even then, when Samsung seemed to have the upper hand, the feeling that Faker could still win another Worlds title was still there. existed, and it lasted until SKT’s Town Hall blew up for the third time. The roster rotation mechanism has always had its weak points, but Worlds 2017 marked the first time a team successfully punished those players. that weak point. SKT’s miracles really don’t work anymore.

After that defeat, everyone’s attention was focused on SKT’s personnel changes towards the end of the 2017-18 season. However, the team only recruited one jungler from solo queue, Park “Blossom” Beom-chan and top laner Park “Thal” Kwon-hyuk, who previously played in the European Challenger Series for the Red Bulls. They are not the blockbuster signings that SKT fans are waiting for. These additions suggest that SKT will continue to use the rotation system around Faker. SKT made it to the playoffs and finished in 4th place overall, but that was still far below the organization’s expectations.

After losing the opening 4 games in a row, SKT’s first win in the 2018 LCK Summer Split came this Wednesday (June 20) with an almost-all reserve lineup: Top laner Thal, Jungler Blossom, Mid laner Choi “Pirean” Jun-sik, ADC Han “Leo” Gyeo-re and Support Lee “Effort” Sang-ho. Notable is the absence of Faker, the guy who brought SKT a series of domestic and international titles.

This isn’t the first time SKT has experimented with different lineups at the start of the season. Just a few months ago, Wolf had a brief stint as a Jungler. Wolf played this position in 2 games against ROX Tigers and Jin Air Green Wings, but when it came to a tougher opponent than KT Rolster, SKT chose Kang “Blank” Sun-gu. But SKT still lost that game and since then we haven’t seen Wolf jungle in the LCK. In the later stages of the 2017 LCK Spring Split, rookie Blossom brought SKT to a standstill with his debut, but after being destroyed at the hands of Kingzone DragonX’s Han “Peanut” Wang-ho, Blossom couldn’t make it. main player until the Summer Split.

Those decisions have always been in line with SKT’s past few years. When Blank did not perform well in the 2016 LCK Summer, SKT brought back Bae “Bengi” Seong-woong. In 2017, after Bengi retired, Blank became a savior from the SKT bench, often taking the place of Peanut. SKT isn’t shy about making changes, despite frequent criticism that doing so will affect the confidence of the substituted player, especially with a young player like Blossom. The only exception to this principle of substitution, since the days of Easyhoon, is Faker.

Therefore, the most surprising thing about SKT’s loss yesterday was not the fact that the organization gave the entire reserve team the main attack, but the fact that they still kept this roster after losing Game 2 without changing. Faker and the other pillars in. This shows the coaching staff’s confidence in this roster, not only that, but it also shows that they realize that such a constant rotation is no longer effective and SKT needs to find a new solution.

The chaos of the 8.11 meta plus the fact that this is only the beginning of the season means that this decision of SKT is not really as worrying as many people think. There have been many comparisons with Cloud9 – the North American team has put 3 main members on the bench because of problems with competition. However, even with SKT’s roster changes, it’s hard to imagine a player like Faker lacking motivation.

During a recent stream, Bang talked about the difficulty of adapting to the new meta, saying, “This is not a game I’ve ever played”. This could be one of the reasons for SKT’s roster changes. To play well in this new patch requires a different way of thinking than before – thinking about the players the team owns rather than about the number of champions for each player’s role – which has become the norm. of League of Legends since Season 2. Since SKT performed poorly in the first 4 games, just like sending Wolf to the jungle, SKT considered that it wouldn’t be too risky to let new players debut in the LCK. . Although they were successful with the Master Yi/Taric strategy, it should be remembered that MVP is not an overrated team in the LCK rankings.

Putting Faker on the bench gives SKT fans in particular and the League of Legends community in general the opportunity to evaluate whether SKT without Faker is really SKT anymore. There’s a bad feeling when SKT plays without Faker in the game room. There will be no denying that Faker is the greatest player the world has ever seen, unless someone surpasses his achievements. But with Faker in the squad, the whole team will default to a familiar typical gameplay. Having Pirean start with the reserve lineup will allow Faker to rest a bit after participating in the 2018 Asian Games qualifiers, and also give SKT’s substitutes valuable match experience. The 1-2 loss to MVP is also not a very positive result, but at least shows a new face of a team that has not adapted to the new meta as well as other LCK teams. With 2 blank defeats (0-4), entering the match against the mid-range team MVP, SKT has almost nothing to lose. The reserve team’s loss means Faker is very likely to return to action this Friday against Griffin, a team that is on the rise with a four-match winning streak.

According to VPEsports