The Faker Variable

The season 2 World Championship is deemed by many as the starting point for the rapid growth in viewers for competitive League of Legends. The viewing numbers were continuing to grow for all of the major regions (China, Taiwan, Korea, Europe, and North America). Professional League of Legends players were beginning to gain status, fame, and wealth. At the crux of this, was Faker. He was considered the best player to ever play the game. At the Season 3 World Championship it was Faker’s team, SK Telecom T1 that took first place. Faker, and SKT, had made it seem like easy work to win nearly every match that they played.

After Season 3, SKT continued to appear strong until the second half of Season 4. They lost in the summer playoffs taking 4th place in their region thus failing to qualify for the World Championship. Many believed that Faker was no longer “untouchable”, that the skill gap that once existed between him and other players was diminishing.

The World Championship 2015 has come, and gone, and SKT stole the spotlight once again. Faker said very clearly that he sought revenge, and redemption. He desired to be the greatest of all time, and the only way to do that would be to win the Championship a second time. This was seen as a daunting task, before the tourney began, considering the appearance of stout competition from many regions. The end result wasn’t quite as close to what casters/analysts had assumed would be the outcome.

During the season 5 summer split in the LCK (Korean Championship League), SKT looked nigh unstoppable. We decided to dive into this data to see what weaknesses, and strengths, we could find for every player on SKT’s roster. What we found is most surprising.

What we can see from the Summoner’s Rift maps above, is that Faker on blue side, is nearly unstoppable. He is hard to gank in lane, and he is much more precise in controlling the lane and his dives. While on red side he has a higher susceptibility to being caught too far forward by the enemy jungler and dying. We saw this actually occur in the first SKT vs EDG match during the group stage. When Faker was playing Ryze, he got caught in mid lane, without his team, near the brush entering the lower river.

The Faker that everyone remembers from Season 3 isn’t as prevalent anymore. He is still a very mechanically sound player, and one of the best at his position. But, mechanics aren’t the entirety of what makes a player successful. Faker has great decision-making and positioning that helps compensate. His synergy with Bengi is also very strong. We can see that Bengi likes to gank for Faker and get him ahead. They also find more success in their ganks on blue side than red side.

The most scary detail in all of this data, is two fold. First, the Team Fight Kills versus Team Fight Deaths. This gives us a clear representation of his ability to maneuver around a teamfight, and win said teamfight. The second is his crisp laning phase. He knows when you are over extending in lane and will instantly punish. He is unrelenting, and so much so that if you give him an inch he’ll take an ell over the lane, bully you, gain a huge advantage you’re highly unlikely to ever get back, take his advantage and roam with it to give his other lanes an advantage, and also kill you, repeatedly. If this does, or does not, sound like a wondrous time then remember by whom you are being dominated by, a god walking amongst mere mortals.

Of all the players in competitive League of Legends that we have observed and collected data from, Faker is by far the cleanest and most consistent player that we have encountered. It is easy to understand, with this data, why he is arguably the #1 player in the history of League of Legends.