Gaming
Lee 'Faker' Sang-hyeok and his team are finally back at the biggest League of Legends stage of them all and here’s how we think they'll perform.
After a very turbulent year, T1 have made it back to the Worlds stage. The LCK Summer Split was a very rocky ride for the Korean all-star team. They didn’t start off well, but after some coaching staff changes, they pushed through and made it all the way through the LCK finals to secure their Worlds ticket.
Now that T1 have qualified, it’s time to look ahead and try to understand what their Worlds 2021 run might look like. With Lee 'Faker' Sang-hyeok in the midlane, how does the team stack up against their opponents in their group? And what teams will they face further on in the tournament?
Here are the challenges and hurdles that T1 have to overcome to be Worlds winners once again.
Group B
T1 were quite lucky with the group draw. Group B isn’t the easiest group because of the Chinese EDward Gaming, but it’s also the group with the LCS first seed – 100 Thieves. If Beyond Gaming makes it through the play-in stage – by process of elimination – there's a high chance they'll be placed in group B. While the team shouldn’t be seen as a walkover victory, on paper they're considerably weaker than the rest of the three teams in the group.
T1 will also have to face EDG in the battle for first place in group B. EDG won the LPL and looked extremely strong in their games against FPX in the LPL finals. A match that many thought FPX would win, EDG managed to turn it around and win the first LPL seed for themselves. The Chinese first seeds are seen as one of the favourites to win Worlds this year. Things are still looking good for T1, though, as LPL teams and EDG especially have been known to underperform during Worlds; it wouldn’t be the first time that EDG was a tournament favourite yet failed to make it past the group stage.
Faker
Faker’s year hasn’t been easy. Frequent roster shuffles and substitutions made it difficult to build any real synergy between any of the team members. But during their playoffs run Faker showed great improvement over the regular season, carrying his team in multiple games on their way to the LCK Summer Finals. In the gauntlet, things were a little more difficult for the T1 midlaner, but we never lost hope.
Due to the amount of last-minute patching, it’s difficult to say what the Worlds mid lane meta will look like. Luckily for Faker fans, he can play almost every champion in the mid lane, so there's no need to worry. We’re still very much looking forward to Faker’s Azir shuffling his way to another victory.
The substitutes
As a team, T1 aren’t strangers to substituting players in the middle of an international series. During MSI 2015 even Faker was subbed out for Lee 'Easyhoon' Ji-hoon. Currently, T1 has a 10 man roster – a substitute for every single player. The substitutes that we’ve seen swapped the most are Lee ‘Gumayusi’ Min-hyeong and Park 'Teddy' Jin-seong as botlaners. In the jungle, Moon ‘Oner’ Hyeon-joon and Moon ‘Cuzz’ Woo-chan have been fighting over a permanent spot.
In the bot lane, it’s tricky to predict who will be played most. Teddy is a monster on Ezreal and is often hailed as the best Ezreal player in the world. If Ezreal is meta during Worlds, there's a big chance that Teddy will be brought on stage to play him. Gumayusi is a little more consistent during high-stakes matches, so we think that T1 will opt for him in the majority of the games.
In the jungle, Cuzz hasn’t performed as well as Oner – especially on the more aggressive champions like Viego. T1’s current playstyle is extremely aggressive and decisive, which is facilitated by Oner’s aggressive playmaking champions in the jungle. The chance that Cuzz will see more stage time than Oner is very small.
T1’s evolving playstyle has been a pleasure to watch in the LCK – the next step for the team will be showing their decisive and aggressive play on the Worlds stage. Their first games will take place after the play-in stage concludes. But if you’d like to see what kind of teams T1 will be playing against, you should definitely watch the play-in stage, starting on October 4.
