Back-to-back defending League of Legends world champion SK Telecom T1 is broken, and everyone wants to know why.
Since losing to China's 2017 spring champion Team WE on the final day of Rift Rivals in Taiwan (which Team South Korea eventually lost in a major upset), SKT T1 hasn't won a game in its home country. A country that it has held domain over for a good majority of five years.
Including the Rift Rivals loss, SKT T1 is 0-9 in its past nine outings. Europe's worst team, Ninjas in Pyjamas, has won a map more recently. North America's favorite whipping boy, Team Liquid, is 2-7 in its past nine-game span. At the moment, not even TL could pay to get a win on the board for the reigning world champion, who gave little to no resistance in its last match against surging Longzhu Gaming.
Is the sky falling? Is it time to panic? Can SKT even still make Worlds?
Why SKT T1 will be just fine, people
Fionn's super in-depth list of why SKT will be fine:
Because it's SKT T1
It has some guy named Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok in the middle lane
We don't need to list any more reasons. While this 0-9 stretch is distressing and it's one of the worst runs Faker and coach Kim "kkOma" Jung-gyun have endured together, acting like it is the end of the world would be too much of a hot take, even for me.
This is the same club that only a month ago ran away with the Mid-Season Invitational, the second-biggest tournament of the year. Remember, it was considered some sort of great international achievement for G2 Esports when it took a single game off of SKT in a best-of-five and made it a relatively competitive series.
This is the organization with the best coach, best player and best infrastructure of any team in the world. Yes, it's impossible to wave off four straight series losses, especially with how flat the team has looked as each match has gone by, but an upcoming patch change could be the restart that the team desperately needs. Whether that restart will be a jackpot or a bust still remains to be seen, but the team really can't look any worse than it did against Longzhu on its last match day.
It's easy to pin the team's woes on the sour attention it received returning from Taiwan. Team South Korea confidently predicted a swift 3-0 sweep over Team China in the finals and failed to deliver, though that would be taking away credit where it's deserved for a lot of SKT's losses. SKT isn't playing at its best, but champions aren't sharpened by their simple runs to the title. They're tested and overcome adversity.
Let's not forget that SKT T1 didn't go into last Worlds as the favorite; the team dropped a reverse-sweep to its rival KT Rolster in the semifinals of LCK summer and came into the international event as a second- or third-favorite at best. All eyes were on the flashy ROX Tigers to finally usurp it. We all know how that played out. New York City, SKT with its back against the wall down 2-1 to the Tigers, and as it always does, the greatest team of all time pulled it out in one of the best League series ever produced in front of a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden.
So relax, SKT fans. And don't get too quick on that trigger finger, people banking on the SKT dynasty finally ending. As long as SKT is alive, regardless of where it ends up in the stacked LCK summer playoff bracket, it will be the favorite until someone can actually put down the king. Even then, with a win in the spring and probably more circuit points to come, a Worlds spot is all but guaranteed barring another stretch of lifeless losses.
And in my experience, betting against SKT is never a good idea.
SKT is in trouble
No, really though, this is bad. SKT has not had a stretch this bad since it failed to qualify for the 2014 World Championships. And just like then, the team is breaking down. Even Faker's play is not what we'd expect.
In 2015, SKT could get away with this. The league, while almost assuredly the strongest league in the world, was not as stacked as it is now. The club was the only one to keep most of its star players, and it was only a matter of time until the team figured out how to play together and laughed its way to the Summoner's Cup with a 15-1 overall record at Worlds. Even in 2016, when the league bolstered its strength, SKT could still float by with a string of losses here and there; a best-of-three loss to Afreeca wasn't going to kill SKT.
SKT can't coast in 2017. These are shark-infested waters in the LCK, and this is arguably the season with the most well-built teams in the country's history, with maybe only summer of 2015 also in the conversation -- when you had the two Samsungs (Blue & White), NaJin White Shield, SK Telecom T1 and CJ Entus Blaze all capable of being world winners on the day. This season, LCK has a top six of Samsung Galaxy, Longzhu Gaming, KT Rolster, SK Telecom T1, Afreeca Freecs and even Jin Air Green Wings hanging around after its 2-0 win over SKT during the 0-9 streak.
Everyone expected SKT, KT and Samsung, but the rise of Afreeca and Longzhu, two teams that gambled on their lineups, is what makes this split so frightening for SKT. In its current state, SKT could wind up in the opening round of the playoffs, the wild-card stage, where it would almost assuredly play the Freecs in a single best-of-three (not best-of-five) to see who moves on to the quarterfinals. The Freecs are the only club in history with a positive record against SKT, and with how the five members have grown over the course of the year, led by one of SKT's legends in Choi "iloveoov" Yun Sung, even a full-strength SKT shouldn't scare them.
Along with the depth in the LCK, the team's play itself, from drafting to on Summoner's Rift, has been, honestly, not the greatest, even from the start of the year. So many times this year, as it has in the past, SKT has fallen behind and come back through the "SKT Zone," where it continues to fall back until the other team makes a mistake it capitalizes on. Now that teams aren't making those same mistakes, it's leading to one-sided wins for SKT's opponents.
Throughout the year, whenever starting jungler Han "Peanut" Wang-ho has stumbled, kkOma has been quick to turn to the bench and play Kang "Blank" Sun-gu. Did Peanut play poorly? Down 1-0? Here comes Blank. After playing the Blank trap card for the entire year, resulting in Blank's having a 20-0 record at one point, the substitutions haven't been working as of late. The constant switching of top and jungle comes off as somewhat random at this point; what combination can break the losing streak? Right now, it seems like none of them can, and with the bottom lane putting out little to no pressure and often giving up early kills, there are no more subs that kkOma can bring in to try out something new.
"So many times this year, as it has in the past, SKT has fallen behind and come back through the "SKT Zone," where it continues to fall back until the other team makes a mistake it capitalizes on. Now that teams aren't making those same mistakes, it's leading to one-sided wins for SKT's opponents."
For the past three years, the head of the team has been Faker, and the backbone has been the bottom lane of Bae "Bang" Jun-sik and Lee "Wolf" Jae-wan. Faker has had constant understudies subbing in, while the bottom lane has been entrusted to play every single game. Bang and Wolf in the bottom lane has always, at worst, gone even with opponents. Bang could be a flexible weapon -- either used as a utility piece to the carries of the team or as the carry himself.
While all eyes are on Peanut's obvious struggles in the jungle, the bottom's lane shakiness is what is most troubling for the team; if the backbone of the team is broken, the rest of the team will have trouble functioning. Faker will have to play differently. The jungler and top laner, whoever they may be, will have to play differently. And without substitutes to change up the lineup or give Bang or Wolf time to rest and regroup, the team must trudge forward, hoping that its spine remains intact in the final weeks of the season.
The worrying trend isn't the 0-9. The worrying trend is that Bang has publicly been distressed over criticism in the community and Wolf has regressed to where he was back in 2015, when he lagged behind the rest of his all-star teammates. Without a functioning Bang and Wolf, SKT, at least this version, cannot win the World Championships, not even to mention this summer's LCK.
The answer is yes, SKT can still make Worlds and probably will do so. But if the new patch (a tank jungler patch, the kryptonite of Peanut) doesn't do much to help SKT, maybe, with how rich with talented teams South Korea is this season, it'd be better if the back-to-back world champion isn't given an opportunity to three-peat this October.
Don't tell Faker I said that.