"We play standard."
Teams in European League of Legends have thrown this phrase around casually to describe a variety of approaches to the game. That, and "Korea does it like this." Even when it isn't true, it becomes a justification.
The reason "standard" is so difficult to pin down is that it changes with patches and, contrary to the name, it has nuances for every team in League of Legends based upon its interpretation of the meta. Being able to play standard is a simple matter of flexibility and stretching comfort zones. A fear of accepting losses to improve has kept teams like Fnatic, H2K Gaming and Unicorns of Love from reaching the EU LCS final and made way for Misfits' unexpected rise. The 2017 EU LCS Summer final will boast the two most flexible teams in Europe, and both of them developed through sometimes costly experimentation.
"The goal was we'll take a few losses during the split," Misfits coach Hussain Moosvi said, "and we'll struggle a bit, but if we don't have the flexibility, it will be like what happened with Unicorns and Fnatic. If you don't have the flexibility, then you really do struggle when it comes to best-of-fives."
Both G2 and Misfits had low points throughout the regular season. They took losses that dropped their standing below the position expected from their Spring Split placements. Misfits barely squeaked into playoffs, and G2 didn't secure a semifinal bye for the first time since they joined the EU LCS.
The "standard" label has a different definition for every team because teams don't agree on an objective best way to play, but that means that flexibility is also inherent to a standard requirement for playing high-level League. Flexibility and a grasp of many popular meta picks is the closest thing to standard that spectators can define.
"Standard" and "how Korea plays" have both been used as shorthand to describe an abstract ideal method of playing. It suggests that top-level Korean teams will always play the optimal champions the optimal way and make the correct decisions in a uniform fashion.
Any regular viewer of top-level play in League Champions Korea, however, will tell you that that's an oversimplification at best. At worst, it's blustering.
"I think most top teams in most regions have a style that they're really good at," Moosvi said after defeating Fnatic in the EU LCS semifinal. "It's more so, from there, how far you can branch out."
Style has become the nemesis of EU LCS fans in the wake of Rift Rivals, when the Europeans watched North America claim victory. Being stuck in a style, critics said, left the teams with exploitable points, and Fnatic and Unicorns of Love were certainly stylists.
"We were all very aware of the weaknesses of our play style early in the split," coach Dylan Falco said of the team's "Animal Style" following Rift Rivals. "It was just a calculated risk."
Before Rift Rivals, Fnatic relied a lot on snowballing and collapsing on side lanes. In its series against Splyce the week before the arrival of North America's teams, Fnatic had some miscues that it knew needed to be fixed. The team began playing more toward collapsing mid and hesitated to push creeps in side lanes past the river.
Unicorns of Love had its own style as well, though the team was more hesitant to acknowledge it.
"I really am not a big fan of styles," Unicorns of Love coach Fabian "Sheepy" Mallant said in the week leading up to Rift Rivals. "I don't see us having a style, but I think [other teams] will see us as having a style, you know?"
Even then, however, the team admitted to having certain comforts from which the players hesitate to stray, especially after unsettling losses.
"When we lose," top laner Kiss "Vizicsacsi" Tamás said, "we have this tendency to resort to older styles where we might catch the enemy off-guard and not try to go for the perfect play."
When Fnatic played around Kennen AD carry or Unicorns of Love drafted late-scaling teamfight compositions, they faced criticism for these elements of their style. Fans looked for any signs of a change.
As soon as Fnatic's Martin "Rekkles" Larsson started playing Ashe and Varus, and when Unicorns of Love blew through Splyce in the regular season with Leblanc as the central snowballing mid lane pick, the European community breathed a sigh of relief. What was missed, however, were the very telling signs of a persisting problem.
When Fnatic support Jesse "Jesiz" Le discussed Fnatic's approach to change, he focused primarily on the AD carry picks. The team decided to play to some undefined perception of the meta. Overall, however, it clung to a notion of the Fnatic style.
"We didn't want to go too far away from our identity," Jesiz said. "We wanted to have that as like an extra style, but we needed to be able to play meta every single week."
"Meta" here most likely refers to popular champion picks, as if putting Rekkles on Ashe or Varus could also solve some of Fnatic's overall issues in game flow. Fnatic continued to have the same problems in maintaining mid and jungle pressure with Mads "Broxah" Brock-Pedersen on less popular picks, and the team struggled to engage without Paul "sOAZ" Boyer playing preferred tank all-in champions like Gnar and Jarvan IV.
Sheepy and mid laner Fabian "Exileh" Schubert had an even more worrying answer to the concept of change. After the Splyce series, the most decisive win of the regular season for the Unicorns, Sheepy shot down the idea that the team had concentrated on improving early game weaknesses.
"Champions that are early game are sometimes comfort for us," Sheepy said. "Comfort champions, and then they are early game. Not the other way."
In other situations, Exileh said that Unicorns simply dropped picks completely when they got discouraged. As a player who seemed capable of picking only Leblanc, Talon, Vladimir or Kassadin at the time of EU LCS playoffs, his sentiment didn't instill confidence in Unicorns of Love's approach.
The team was shoehorned into emphasizing teamfights, even when UoL lost the early game. That really showed in the Summer Split quarterfinal against Misfits when Unicorns of Love frequently drafted multiple losing lanes, even on red side, when it should have had more of an option to counter-pick.
Misfits, the team that would prove to be the downfall of both Fnatic and the UoL, targeted some of the issues that both teams seemed opposed to working out. The underdogs exploited Fnatic's inability to group and engage without sOAZ and the team's uncoordinated mid and jungle duo. Against Unicorns, Misfits banned Leblanc and overpowered scaling drafts with jungle pressure early on.
No one seemed to see Misfits coming, but the forced "Discount G2" narrative finally has some truth to it.
"It was a thing before because since spring split, they have tried to play the macro," similar to G2's style, mid laner Luka "Perkz" Perkovic explained. "They were always trying to play Korean style. ... So they were trying to play Korean picks, Korean style, just play good League of Legends."
While a true "Korean style" doesn't exist, Moosvi would at least agree that his team strove for standard or "good League of Legends" and that G2 stands out as an example he admires.
"There are teams like G2, for example," Moosvi said, "that are really, really good at changing up how they want to play. Maybe they struggle more playing top side to bot side, but it's not like they can't play top side."
The teams both proved there is no standard play -- only a standard of play.
Misfits and G2 Esports don't have the same style, but both teams do have styles in the same sense as Fnatic and Unicorns of Love. What the first two achieved, however, was a willingness to accept setbacks and force themselves out of a comfort zone to stretch a style into something more expansive.
The best-of-five in Paris on Sunday is the best test of how far they can truly stretch.