As a team intent on making the World Championship this year, Misfits was understandably disappointed with a fourth place finish in the European League of Legends Championship Series spring split.
So last May, Misfits wrote: "Every role is required to contribute to a team's communication system in order to succeed. We believe that poor communication was a big culprit in our losses. Despite his fantastic individual performance, KaKAO had trouble contributing to communication."
The name Lee "KaKAO" Byungkwon still commands respect. In 2014 his name rose next to the likes of Choi "DanDy" Inkyu, star jungler for Samsung White, and he's had tenures in three different leagues around the world. Misfits swapped him out all the same for a British jungler known as Nubar "Maxlore" Sarafian.
Maxlore had just spent the 2017 spring split on the non-playoff-qualifying Team ROCCAT.
Misfits was criticized for the change, but the team didn't significantly decline in form. In fact, it bested Unicorns of Love 3-0 in the first round of this summer's quarterfinals of the EU LCS playoffs. In every previous encounter, Misfits at least lost a game to Unicorns, and in the only best of five with KaKAO jungling, Misfits lost 1-3.
"Coming into this split, there were a lot of haters, and there probably still are because maybe KaKAO is a personality," Maxlore said. "Maybe people still think he's better than me. Maybe he's just a legend that -- 'Oh my god, why Maxlore?' -- but I think I'm playing pretty good, I'm playing at a top level."
Misfits Head Coach Hussain Moosvi said after the victory over Unicorns that the team has succeeded in growing after the roster move.
"With KaKAO, it was much more difficult to discuss the little details -- especially in vision -- that lead up to deciding map control," Hussain said. "More often than not, we had a playbook that we would try to replicate based on enemy movements, but our understanding of why things work and therefore being flexible in adapting was poor."
What shone through most in the UoL quarterfinal series was the way Maxlore worked with Misfits' laners early on. In Game 1 against UoL, for example, he used the fact that bot and mid lane had winning matchups to know his own red buff was safe from invasion. Then he quickly cleared raptors, contested the scuttle crab in river, and invaded for vision and a camp steal after Tristan "PowerOfEvil" Schrage pushed mid and warded the pixel brush near dragon.
Throughout the series, Maxlore used momentum on either strong leashes from his bottom lane of good matchups from his laners to accomplish multiple goals with each invade. In Game 2, for example, Maxlore made the adjustment to play around top instead of bottom. As Poppy, he secured the top scuttle crab, obtained vision of the enemy blue buff, and even though the enemy had top pixel brush warded, had enough pressure from top lane and mid that he could dive the enemy mid laner. He transitioned from there to working with Barney "Alphari" Morris to secure the opponent's blue buff.
In one play, Maxlore managed a successful gank, procured vision on the enemy jungler, and denied enemy camps. This ticks all the boxes for a proper and efficient invade, but he didn't start out the split maximizing this kind of efficiency, in part because he prioritized vision over getting himself ahead. Maxlore's philosophy is that if he has vision, his laners can play aggressively, and his personal level won't matter as long as they're ahead.
This core philosophy faltered previously in the regular season when Maxlore played against Unicorns of Love's Andrei "Xerxe" Dragomir. Xerxe simply moved around Maxlore's, farming efficiently and gaining an experience lead until he had a level advantage and could force skirmishes to get his team back into the game.
"It's harder to play this [vision] style against junglers that are really selfish," Maxlore admitted. "However, if their team is not as good as yours or, even on the same level, if you're going to get that vision and stuff first, then your laners can abuse it. In this series, my laners outclassed them, so it's completely fine for me to play like this."
By Maxlore's own admission, KaKAO, the jungler he replaced, played this selfish style. The contrast was obvious when Maxlore played for Team ROCCAT, and the two teams encountered each other in Spring of 2017.
In that series, Misfits support Lee "IgNar" Donggeun got a lead early playing Thresh against Team ROCCAT's bottom lane. He invaded to get vision on Maxlore's blue buff, and Misfits managed to get solo kills in the bottom lane 2v2. During the course of the first ten minutes of the game, Maxlore stopped counterjungling the enemy raptors mid camp to rush bottom and try to defend, and in another instance, he ineffectively showed up to try and mitigate the 2v2 snowball.
Meanwhile, KaKAO farmed his own camps and only showed up for a dive after Misfits' bottom lane had secured an impressive lead in the 2v2 on their own. His moves were efficient, but not always enabling, whereas Maxlore was altering his gameplay to try to help ROCCAT.
"In my opinion," Maxlore said, "I'm more adaptable than KaKAO. He had a more -- he would just farm a lot. A lot, a lot. He would always be higher in gold, [Creep Score Differential], everything, you know? And he wouldn't really know when to sacrifice himself for the team."
Though Team ROCCAT didn't make playoffs last spring, it had a significant turnaround that sent them on a six series win streak to close the season. Head Coach Fabian "GrabbZ" Lohmann credited ROCCAT's improvements in part to Maxlore's willingness to take part of the burden of the shotcalling role from Petter "Hjärnan" Freyschuss. He became the team's primary voice as the split lengthened, and ROCCAT started their win streak.
"At first, he was down," GrabbZ said, "because talking more than usual obviously has a toll on your performance, but the longer the season went, the more [Maxlore] embraced his role as leading shotcaller and got used to it. That's also why his departure hurt a lot more than to be expected, as he had evolved into a strategic pillar inside the team."
With improvements in communication, Maxlore and Team ROCCAT turned some of KaKAO's more selfish tendencies against him in the team's second encounter with Misfits. Not accounting for the common Graves jungle path at the time, KaKAO invaded ROCCAT's top side after Maxlore had backed and moved to clear his Krugs. Maxlore and ROCCAT top laner Ambrož "Phaxi" Hren collapsed on KaKAO to start the snowball that gave ROCCAT their 2-0 revenge over Misfits.
Maxlore's ability to use communication and vision to react quickly to the enemy jungler's movements appealed to a less organized Misfits, and the org signed its new British jungler in the break between Spring and Summer, but it still had bad habits and overhang to clean out. For example, rather than forcing top side and failing to transfer Alphari's leads, Misfits learned to play more around bottom lane and open up IgNar again. How the team played with the jungler also changed in that the laners developed to give Maxlore more freedom to farm and make decisive calls.
More importantly, however, Maxlore has had an impact on working with the team to practice things it struggles with. Historically, Misfits have been hesitant to start or pull Barons. It spent a great deal of time forcing wards on the red buff jungle behind Baron, but didn't start the objective -- perhaps because Misfits had it stolen so many times in the early split.
"So I kind of pushed forward and said 'Well, I think we should just start doing Barons more, just in general in scrims and start getting better at it,'" Maxlore said. "Because when it comes to high intense situations, if we don't practice it, and we do it on stage, it's going to be pretty hard. Because whenever we went to Baron before, the communication was terrible. Now we're a lot better at it."
"Going from spring into summer, the story of Misfits quite often was our laning prowess leading into map control," Hussain explained. "We were good at getting an early lead, but without one we struggled to keep up in map play with the likes of G2. Partially, this was because we were more selfish in lane than our counterparts and demanded more from our jungler. It was hard for Maxlore because, as a player, he's never been one that can easily say 'No' when someone demands attention in lane from him."
The trick was to find the happy medium from KaKAO's Misfits and the point from which Maxlore's Misfits started.
Hussain said that Maxlore's ability to speak English and contribute to higher level discussion didn't just aid in his development, but the development of the laners as well. When Misfits could control the lanes more, Maxlore had the option of keeping camps up while he got vision, spending more time in the opponent jungler to deny camps as well as ward, and the culmination was his ability to play a heavy counterjungling pick like Kayn, who Maxlore described as "jungle Kog'Maw" for his skill in late game teamfighting.
Misfits' decisive 3-0 over Unicorns isn't just a triumph for the team and its "one year plan" to make it to the World Championship; how thoroughly Misfits upended Unicorns is a testament to the team's improved growth rate with Maxlore in the jungle position. That was the goal of the roster change all along.
"I don't really get insulted if someone compares me to KaKAO," Maxlore said. "It's just an opinion, and at the end of the day, it's my confidence and opinion that counts the most, and as long as it doesn't waver, I'll play really good."
Whatever heights and whatever status KaKAO has reached, it's evolved to a level of almost mythic proportions in the minds of those who watched the 2014 Champions Korea season. For some, Maxlore may never make the cut. But for Misfits, it demonstrated a glimpse of the higher ceiling with their new jungler on stage against Unicorns in Quarterfinals. That glimpse cast a light through the shadow of KaKAO.