SKT vs SSG - Perspective Recap
Warning: I'd stop here if you want to view the vods yourself
So I had my sleeping patterns shaped a bit off from recent daily activities and decided to somewhat thoroughly watch this morning's LCK first round playoff match; a true rematch of last year's Worlds Finals between Samsung Galaxy and SK Telecom T1. The back story behind everything was pretty concise and hype: two arguable best teams in the world competing in what was considered to be the best LCK playoffs to date. A team vying for vengeance after a Rift Rivals slump. Their opponents a team ever so close to the top and keeping ahead of their opposition at every possible turn. The outcome: well let's just say I fell rather unimpressed. For those who didn't watch, I warned you already. For those who did, I was not sold by the showing SSG made, conclusions mostly aside.
Game 1: We had what was pretty much a litmus test of sorts as we all know that playoff SKT is one of the most deadly forces that League eSports knows to this day. Realistically, nothing felt too wrong with the first ban draft; I even had benefit of the doubt for keeping Zac up. It was where priority following the first ban phase in relation to their opponents that had my head scratching, particularly on the SSG side of things. Nonetheless it was still the first game so few to no complaints could be made until in game. And that's where it all kind of broke down. Faker's Lucian gets a dominant lead on 3(?) solo kills against opponent Crown's Taliyah. The map in general shifts SKT's way completely as crucial objectives fall their way left and right with little to no resistance. Pretty much a squash really. I'd hope that it'd turn around in the following match.
Game 2: The errors of PB were fixed with Lucian and Zac bans, confirming that SSG would rather not let them stay on the comfortable "ain't broke, don't fix" method. But that somewhat did not apply for themselves minus Crown, already shaken up from the first game. This is the game that made me start to wonder: "What diversity does Crown actually have outside of the standard mid meta? Is he really considered a best mid laner if his pool is more than commonly niche picks at the time?" Odd question I know. Into the game, we have SSG off to a momentous start, able to seize and control objectives along with carry out team fights. This left SKT in a major bind with only two options: play to late or play to punish. And by god they did both of those like kings. SSG's mid-late game collapsed after a secure Baron into a semi base race at which point did not necessarily need to occur given circumstances. SKT was already on the counter stance rather than engage. And this is where my mind really doubted SSG. Their style became more of an "everyone thinks for themselves" manner resulting in poor movement patterns and crucial catches on Faker's Fizz. Tank lines only made it worse for the Samsung side as once a single carry went down - the only carry that seemingly ever went down first in Crown's Orianna - the second carry in Ruler's Tristana was unable to pick up any scraps. Lack of cohesion with the protect carry style and bad positioning gravely cost Samsung a good amount of times.
Game 3: I saw LCK going on break and the subs coming in. It was at this point I just lost hope in SSG's chances. But I remained on the benefit of the doubt in yet to be played subs...and Ambition. SSG's composition: a whole lot of the same with priority meta picks and somewhat Kennen. SKT: also the same but with much better momentum and control. Even though Faker, once again on Lucian, could not pop off like his first game demonstrated, the bot lane of SSG dug their own grave skyrocketing Bang's Kalista. The other side of the map featured a relentless Untara on Rumble into a steady matchup against CuVee's Kennen. SKT pretty much won on all sides of the map. As soon as it was over, I had to somewhat let my mind settle to a few things.
Conclusion: I decided not to release another post on personal Power Rankings due to the really volatile time to doing so with both EU and LPL still in split. But I did give my attempt to rate the LCK teams as they were the top nonetheless. My original order was LZ > KT > SKT > SSG > (LPL Team - prolly RNG) as the top 5. But before this match, I looked more into what I was wanting to really evaluate SSG over: their roster or their recent performance: shaky and able to be exploited at best. As a result, I dropped my expectations of them out of the Top 5 in the world completely below at least the #1 team in the LPL and LMS (at the time was/is regarded as RNG and FW respectively): sorry to NA but I need better out of TSM before I get that crazy. After this series though, I honestly do not feel convinced any longer by this hysteria notion that "LCK needs 4 seeds" or "Korea's too strong" etc etc; I'll just point you to this series or even the Wildcard match from a few days ago if I have to: if the region's top 5 can't put up a good game against one another, why are they all the top 5 in the world indefinitely that could just slot in and stomp wherever? Just some hypothetical and rhetorical analysis. This series sadly did not live up to much: SKT merely got a second warm up match into what could be a third warm up match and so on. As for SSG, if this is what we're getting out of them now, then I would rather them not represent for Worlds. I've seen enough weeks of their struggles in Summer Split that just creeps them lower and lower on my radar of a promising championship team. But hey, there was last year where the same damn thing happened and we saw where they wound up.
Anyway, that's just a write up and rant on how I felt about the series. What are your opinions following the match if any?
