The DRX will not have succeeded in bringing down the leaders of the LCK. With this eighteenth consecutive victory, Faker and his partners announce themselves as the logical favorites of the playoffs. Back on this last meeting, and what it will take in the future to beat this record.
A not so easy game
Although T1 won 2-0, the game could have ended differently, especially in the second game. IThe premiere was truly T1’s signature, with a relatively slow PvP pacing as the LCK leaders gradually accumulated more resources than their opponents. Their perfect management of the macro allowed them to take an advantage of almost 2000 gold, while they were still tied in kills with their opponents. The DRX tried to break the lock, but nothing helped. If they managed to take a kill, the T1s would never let them recover any objectives, while they got ahead elsewhere on the map. The teamfights did not change the situation, and the third/fourth (third before the match, fourth at the end of it) of LCK lost logically. The MVP of this game was the Jayce of Zeus.
The second set was a little more chaotic, with 12 kills before 10 minutes of play, which is relatively unusual in South Korea. Despite the DRX’s desire to pack the match and put a little madness into it, the T1s once again demonstrated their mastery of fighting and macry. If their opponents took a kill, two of them died behind, and the T1s destroyed a few plates along the way, to consolidate their lead. The dragons also all fell under their blows, and at the end of the early game, Zeus and his teammates had taken 4 towers and 2 dragons, against only one tower for DRX. Once again, the game completely escaped the DRX despite several desperate attempts to come back to the score. The T1 close their perfect split in the most beautiful way, to the point that the question that comes to mind as the playoffs approach seems more to be: who can bring down T1, rather than who will win. For this last match, the MVP was given to Keria for his mastery of Nautilus.
An impossible record to beat?
By not losing a match, the T1s seem to have set a record that will be hard to match. However, we cannot say that everything was perfect, because Gumayusi’s teammates still lost 7 rounds during the season. A team achieving a perfect split with only 6 sets conceded (or less) could break this record. Similarly, the overall MVP will likely elude them given Canyon’s lead over other players in this area. It’s the other side of the coin to have such a homogeneous team, the MVPs have been well distributed but ultimately none of the players is in a good position to win this trophy.
The T1 record will therefore be very difficult to equal or beat, but it is not impossible. Even a perfect split with no rounds conceded could be beaten afterwards, by a team achieving the same performance but with more kills, fewer deaths, or simply with shorter games. It will still probably take some time before seeing a team dominating the competition in the Land of Fresh Mornings.
After the nerfs to Jinx, Zeri, and Aphelios in Patch 12.5b League of Legends, the meta has changed somewhat on the bot lane. Two champions were able to pull out of the game: Ashe and Samira.