What does it matter if Lee "Wolf" Jaewan plays Zyra?
Traditionally, winning mid lane has allowed teams to transition leads from mid after pushing the wave out into roams to side lanes. The advent of tanky supports, junglers and top laners has made the game much more about using the jungle-support two-on-two to control river around mid. Mid no longer wins side lanes; bottom wins mid.
As such, when grasping at SK Telecom T1's flaws and trying to pin down an easy explanation for its struggles post-Rift Rivals, the one thread commonly pulled by critics and analysts goes back to Wolf's picks. In SKT's nine losses before its turnaround against Ever8 Winners, Wolf played six ranged mage supports (such as Lulu, Zyra and Karma) while many of his opponents have ventured toward more of the flavor of the month tank engage picks such as Thresh, Blitzcrank or Rakan. In the Ever8 sweep, he played Alistar.
Whether or not one agrees with the general consensus that Wolf has brought his team down with his champion choices, it forces an examination of the role of supports in pro play. A combination of factors has made it most convenient to drive leads from the bottom lane to the rest of the map.
Patch 7.14 so far has led to a high presence of waveclear mid laners including Orianna, Taliyah and Syndra. Matchups between a lot of these champions can be extremely dependent on influence from the jungler after a certain number of levels because of the ease of wave clear. These champions can also affect the game in teamfights and keep mid pushed easily, but picks such as Orianna, Cassiopeia and Syndra don't have the same ease of roaming as assassin mid picks.
Rather than having the mid laner roam to side lanes with a push advantage, supports with a lot of crowd control have gone mid more often to set up ganks on mid. Tank picks have also influenced the trend, as teams with a tank in top lane and jungle might not have enough kill pressure early on, but if they manage a successful gank even without a kill, the top laner can get a push advantage and roam mid.
"Bot lane pressure is kind of what we learned from NA teams," Unicorns of Love jungler Andrei "Xerxe" Dragomir said after Rift Rivals, "because they were just pushing bottom and the jungle/support were resetting together. They would just go together if they go in the river."
Xerxe referred more to junglers and supports coordinating for vision control, but Unicorns of Love have used support to affect mid lane matchups for much of the split. Despite Fabian "Exileh" Schubert often falling behind his opponents in laning phase, AD carry Samuel "Samux" Fernandez Fort averages a modest 85 experience lead over his opponents. With any leads he and Zdravets "Hylissang" Iliev Galabov acquire in lane, Hylissang will often use push priority to roam mid and gank mid.
Since Rift Rivals, however, Unicorns and the rest of Europe have begun to fall more in line with using support back priority to coordinate with junglers and control the bottom-side river. Powerful supports with long-range engage combined with equally terrifying engage junglers make maintaining vision control around mid difficult.
"When we could actually contest our vision and stuff," Fnatic support Jesse "Jesiz" Le said of Hylissang's Rakan in Fnatic's only game loss to UoL this past week, "we were just playing a bit scared and giving up priority a lot of the times when we didn't have to."
Mid priority becomes extremely important because it allows the jungler to invade for more control and vision. With lower kill potential in top lane, junglers will look more and more to influence the bottom half of the map with supports simply securing vision and making sure their mid laners have more advantage.
As a result, the best way to win mid lane isn't necessarily by counterpicking mid lane champions. On red side, for example, a lot of "safe" blind mids have become popular after the second ban phase. One can ban specific mid lane counters in the second ban rotation, then pick a safe mid first, saving a counterpick for another lane. Getting a strong bottom lane or top lane matchup can have way more impact on whether or not a team gets control of mid lane in this way.
In the Samsung vs. KT Rolster match Tuesday, KT's bottom lane and jungle got a lead from snowballing around the first turret. After taking bottom lane in the first 10 minutes, KT swapped control to top side. Despite Heo "pawN" Wonseok giving up mid control to Teleport top early into the game, Samsung could not contest the strength of KT's Gragas and Rakan, which allowed pawN to push out mid lane comfortably and KT to keep top river control.
Thresh remains a favorite first pick or ban because of how easy he makes it to get a bottom lane advantage. Thresh's range and zoning potential with Death Sentence allows him to win a lot of matchups. With Thresh off the table, teams are more willing to first pick champions such as Braum or even bot lane matchups and rely on jungle pressure.
Champions such as Thresh and Blitzcrank pose a unique threat to mid lane. If bottom lane gets a push advantage, supports can roam mid and gank the opposing mid laner. Yet if the mid lane matchup features a champion like Corki who can evade a hook or even match a roam, the direct impact subsides. Supports are better off trying to snowball a bottom lane lead for an early turret or simply working with the jungler. The presence of Thresh, then, might also open up the mid lane meta for more niche choices such as Vladimir or Talon (if you're Unicorns of Love, of course).
Re-examining Wolf's champion choice with SKT's losses with this in mind, a lane such as Lulu and Kog'Maw against Kalista and Blitzcrank while Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok plays Karma poses the highest risk for SKT. Not only is SKT playing a losing two-on-two in the bottom lane that makes it harder for Wolf to influence the map with his jungler, but Faker will pick Karma primarily to have an aggressive push in the mid lane.
A lower-mobility mid lane pushed very far forward becomes susceptible to the influences of Blitzcrank, and when Longzhu's bottom lane got ahead early on, SKT's mid lane aggression got shut down. SKT relies a lot on playing mid lane aggressively, and this can pose a massive problem for it in a meta in which mid lane wins also rely on bottom lane and jungle success.
That doesn't doom Wolf or SKT. Alistar is an engage champion Wolf's been known for historically. With Braum rising in priority as a blind pick and more LCK teams looking to play with the Ancient Coin because of the buffed Quest gold earnings, one of Wolf's old standbys, Janna, might suit SKT well. Janna can get priority into certain lane matchups, and Wolf has even roamed mid in the past.
Janna still stands mostly as a niche for the time being, though, and if SKT cannot coordinate its mid lane, jungle and bottom lane picks well, it might give up more mid control in the future. In the current meta, bottom lane wins mid. For a team like SKT that has put only a small emphasis on winning bottom lane in the past, that's only part of the problem.