MADRID -- SK Telecom T1 were on their third pick on red side against Splyce in Game 1 of Sunday's League of Legends World Championship quarterfinals. Viewers and analysts expected a bottom lane champion pick for Park "Teddy" Jin-seong, perhaps his signature Ezreal or even an odd, non-standard champion such as the Kayle he played in the group stage.
Seconds later, SKT mid laner Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok locked in Draven for Teddy.
The crowd roared, partially in confusion. Before Sunday, Teddy had played a total of two Draven games in his professional career: once this past spring during a win in League Champions Korea, and once in the 2018 summer split while on the Jin Air Green Wings in a loss. Draven is picked for his tendency to dominate lanes and kill his opponents in a two-on-two setting.
Alongside Thresh and Elise, SKT's game plan was clear: dominate the early game. After the match, Teddy said simply that Draven plays well into Kai'Sa and that's why they picked him, but it spoke of a larger departure from the playstyle that SKT had shown for most of the year.
SK Telecom T1, soon to be simply T1 after this year, are the gold standard for League of Legends organizations. They have been to four world championship finals, won three world championship titles and after today are two series wins away from a fourth. And they've made all but one of those championships on the back of a slow, methodical approach to the game.
When Faker joined SKT in 2013, the team became known for its strong, mechanically talented laners who were empowered by early ganks from junger Bae "Bengi" Seong-woong. SKT transformed into a slower-scaling teamfighting squad when the sister teams of SK Telecom T1 S and SK Telecom T1 K were combined. The transition brought together the more passive bot lane of S (Bae "Bang" Jun-sik and Lee "Wolf" Jae-wan) with the jungle/mid combination of Bengi and Faker and a strong top laner in Jang "MaRin" Gyeong-hwan.
This continued through several iterations of SKT from 2015-17, all of which were known for a slower, five-on-five teamfighting style.
Due to SKT's overwhelming domestic and international success across these three years, this way of playing became the default "South Korean style," especially in Western analysis and lexicon. South Korean teams were known for being slow, patient, macro-focused and stalling through the mid-game until their opponents made mistakes. This was a hallmark of SKT in the post-sister team era, and their influence was so great that it became synonymous with South Korea as an entire League of Legends region.
When the Afreeca Freecs, KT Rolster and then-reigning world champions Gen.G all fell at quarterfinals or earlier in the 2018 world championship, the dominion that South Korea had held over League of Legends crumbled. The "South Korean style" was pronounced dead, but SKT were still seen as an odd beacon of hope, as if the only way that South Korea would win internationally would be for SKT, and Faker specifically, to attend as the regional representative.
This perception has continued to this day -- especially with the other two South Korean qualifiers, Damwon Gaming and Griffin, eliminated from the tournament -- but like South Korea as a region, even SKT are no longer seen as invincible. SKT fell 3-2 to G2 Esports at this year's Mid-Season Invitational, and this loss has stuck with them for the latter half of the competitive year.
"G2, from their unique playstyle, we also gained a more flexible playstyle," Faker said following his team's quarterfinal victory against Splyce. "As for problems or our weaknesses, I think we got rid of most of them but we're human so we always have some problems coming up."
While the members of SKT and coach Kim "kkOma" Jeong-gyun didn't outright say it, it's likely that G2's victory influenced SKT's approach to the game this year, especially once they arrived at worlds. In SKT's first group stage game against Fnatic, Teddy picked Kayle bot lane, and Faker took Tristana mid. In their next game against Royal Never Give Up, Faker picked Twisted Fate for more of a split-push look. SKT didn't execute these compositions cleanly, but they were visibly changing up their approach in favor of becoming a more versatile team.
Against Splyce in the quarterfinals, SKT went for some of the strongest early-game picks available, allowing jungler Kim "Clid" Tae-min to control the map early.
"I wouldn't say we got surprised, but we definitely thought that we can fight them in the early game," Splyce jungler Andrei "Xerxe" Dragomir said of SKT's performance. "But I guess we didn't, obviously. I feel like the first two drafts were a bit harder because they had the early-game jungler and pushing mid or bot, so that was pretty hard to play for us."
While SKT still have some in-game execution issues, they're improving at running these types of compositions that seem, upon first glance, to be well out of what would be considered SKT's playstyle. They also still have the best player in League of Legends history in Faker, who won his 100th international game during the Splyce series Sunday.
The hopes of South Korea are once again on SKT's shoulders. As different as this team is from past iterations of SKT, the goal is still the same.
"I actually always have the same thought in mind every year with every new squad," kkOma said. "I think that also this year, this roster can win worlds."