07
June
news
2016 MSI Knockout Stage: SKT Faker vs RNG Mata
Over the course of two days back in
2013, two of the greatest League of Legends players of all-time would begin
their careers in South Korea. Cho "Mata" Se-hyeong, a rookie support
for the team MVP Ozone, debuted in the support role, having a victory in his
first game with a 1/0/17 score on Sona against KT Rolster. The following day,
hype met reality as the highly anticipated amateur mid laner, Lee
"Faker" Sang-hyeok, made his mark on the professional scene by solo
killing domestic all-star Kang "Ambition" Chan-yong and defeating
tournament favorites, CJ Entus Blaze, in his pro-gaming opener.
The first player to ever knock Faker out of a tournament was Mata during their
rookie tournament in Champions Spring 2013. SKT were eliminated by MVP Ozone in
the semi-finals (3-1). Mata and Ozone went on to win the competition.
The first player to ever knock Mata out of a tournament was Faker. The mid
laner had his revenge for the loss in his rookie season by dethroning Ozone in
the next season's semi-final. For the first time, Mata felt the sting of
elimination, and SKT went on to grab the championship.
From the days of rookies to their years of being world champions to the
present, one is the hope of the Chinese region he once waged war against, and the
other is the loyal crown jewel to the all-powerful South Korean arsenal of
squadrons. Wherever they go, or whoever they play against, the two careers will
forever be intertwined.
Friday, May 13, Mata and Faker will
meet in a best-of-five series in the semi-finals of the 2016 MSI. Mata, the
leader of Royal Never Give Up, the Chinese champions who've come together over
the course of the tournament to grab the first seed in the group stages. Faker,
since the day he debuted, is still the centerpiece of SK Telecom T1, leading
the team towards the one title that eludes him in his overflowing trophy case:
the MSI title.
Mata's road to this point has been a lengthy and arduous one. Since winning the
2014 MVP award and Summoner's Cup with Samsung White (formerly MVP Ozone), his
path as a pro has taken him to China, the country he personally dissected in
the Summoner's Cup Finals in 2014. Starting as a player from Vici Gaming and
enjoying little success in 2015, Mata has found his home on the very same
organization he defeated for his world title, Royal. He has partnered up again
with his old top laner from his domestic playing days, Jang "Looper"
Hyeong-seok, and rallied three home-grown Chinese players to buy into his
ideology for the game.
To the RNG players, Mata, not Faker, is the best player in the game's history.
His talents and game-calling abilities have taken a disjointed, inconsistent
team from the regular season of China's LPL spring split and turned it into a
team capable of playing into the late-game with the world's best. Where Mata
goes, the rest of Royal follow.
The once feared demonic maestro of the South Korean scene has turned into a
saviour of sorts for a stagnant Chinese scene. Since last year's victory at MSI
with Edward Gaming, the country's apparent rise has turned into derailed
expectations. Royal and Mata's dual resurgence in an international setting has
finally brought back pride to the longstanding second strongest region in the
game. After an 8-2 group stage, Mata is only two victories away from adding the
MSI championship to his Korean title, Chinese title, and Summoner's Cup.
The golden boy of League, Faker,
arguably can do no wrong. But the second day of MSI might've seemed like it was
his first time playing professionally, losing back-to-back games against Mata's
RNG and Taiwan's Flash Wolves. His play against Royal was embarrassing,
repeatedly getting killed off in lane, and hampering his team's chances of
getting back into the game by getting picked off in the latter stages. The loss
versus Flash Wolves was a simple blowout, with the greatest of all-time and his
team getting run off the map by Taiwan's enigmatic champions.
I saw frustration out of Faker. Discomfort on his face. Anguish as his team
failed to play the map correctly, giving up uncontested objectives. Even when
SKT started to win again following its four-game losing streak, there was no
real happy outburst from Faker or his teammates. Although he went 2-0 on his
birthday, breaking the string of defeats, it didn't change the look on his face
when the opponent's Nexus was destroyed.
Faker doesn't expect to lose. Humble as he is interviews to opposing teams, SKT
ace is the type of player who doesn't believe, if he plays his best, that he'll
ever lose to an opponent or opposing team. It's not being cocky or
overconfident, it's who Faker is. It's how and why he has won two world titles,
five domestic titles, and a huge amount of other tournaments. Moral victories
and participation trophies are nice for a fair amount of times. Not Faker. The
only true victory is being the last man standing after an event has concluded.
The semi-final between RNG and SKT
it’s not just a battle between two teams, it’s a battle between two players who
have earned titles such as genius, God, legend and icon. Mata and Faker have
profound respect for each other, neither celebrating or boasting when beating
the other in the group stage. But both believe they will win the Mid-Season
Invitational. The two teams they've built around them will transition from the
single battleground of the group stage to the intellectually-driven
best-of-five format, where adaptation and flexibility is key.
The winner of the semi-final match-up between these two teams will be the one
who comes together first. RNG has been given kudos for its formation behind
Mata and his leadership, but the players still lack the finesse in the
late-game that would take it from a very good team to an international
champion. Through the first five day of competition, RNG games have primarily
boiled down to a final late-game team fight to determine the victor. Royal's
two losses to CLG and T1 came down to the Chinese combatants not being able to
smoothly close out the game.
You can attribute that to some of the team's composition choices, Zed and
Nidalee late-game against CLG's team-fighting composition was always going to
be a struggle, but there are holes still visible in RNG's communication. We saw
it almost perfectly converge on CLG with a 1-3-1 split-plush and win the game,
yet, over-eagerness cost RNG a game where it was up 17k gold. No matter the
composition, at one point in time, it had the tools and items necessary to win
the game -- if only it showed patience.
The major difference between the Samsung White led by Mata and the current RNG
team is complete trust in one another and a lack of patience. White could be
overly aggressive in its play, but the team knew its limits and always had an
assured calming influence in its leader, Mata. RNG, while showing great
improvements over an entire split, still is lacking in that department, with
wuxx sometimes playing too far forward or out of position. Remember, Royal is a
Korean-Chinese hybrid team, meaning becoming perfectly in sync is even more of
a challenge.
SKT, however, has a full South Korean
roster and isn't on the same page. Faker shook off the rust after his day two
performance and played well in the two games SKT lost on the third day, but it
has been the other players on the team who've shown a disconnect. The player
with the most pressure on his shoulders, rookie jungler Kang "Blank"
Sun-gu, has been talked about heavily throughout the event. If he does well,
then SKT has been up to the standards you'd expect from a world champion. When
he's bad, though, all the wheels fall off SKT, the team plays like it has never
played together before.
Along with Blank, AD carry Bae "Bang" Jun-sik has been playing the
role of magician, constantly disappearing and reappearing depending on the
game. Bang has been playing the ace carry role for a large part of the season,
and it worked in the second half of the spring split. Now, when a lot of games
depend on how well Blank does in the jungle and how Bang does as a full-on
carry, they're the two players SKT can't have being caught out of position. The
SKT AD carry, in my opinion, is the best positioning, movement-focused AD. But
besides a few good games, he's been a disappointment. For SKT to win this
tournament, the team can't only rely on Faker. It'll be up to Bang to prove why
SKT has shown so much confidence in him these last five months to promote him
from utility carry to the team's number one option.
It was the Mid-Season Invitational last year that transformed SKT’s title team.
As a strong domestic team that narrowly made it through the playoffs in the
spring, it wasn't until China's Edward Gaming beat it in the finals of MSI
where the real talents of the 2015 version of SKT started to take shape. When
Worlds came around, SKT took what it learned at MSI and turned it into a
one-sided victory at the international stage's biggest event.
Either Mata or Faker will fall on
Friday, whether it's in a close contest or a blowout. Whoever loses, it'll only
be the start of that player and team's road to the World Championships this
autumn. Winning this semi-final and the tournament doesn't mean anything if the
teams don't continue to grow as the year progresses. The trials and
tribulations of the summer leading into the fall, and this semi-final match-up
will only give us an idea who currently holds the lead over the other.
However, neither of them are thinking about the future product. The trials
they'll need to conquer as the warmth of summer bathes over aren't in their
minds. All that matters is the victory on Friday to get their team into the
finals and a chance at the trophy neither of them possesses.