With a year that can only be described as Dominant, SK Telecom seeks to return to the Worlds stage after a year of absence to reclaim their throne as the best LoL team in the world. The start of spring looked a bit strange for SKT as they were struggling to adapt to the mixed roster, but once the dust settled and the players started to trust one another, SKT became an unstoppable monster.

Top - Jang “MaRin” Gyeong-Hwan

Easily one of the top 5 top laners participating in the LCK, MaRin stands as the captain and primary shot caller of this SKT Squad. A lot of the success SKT has revolves around MaRin and his teleports. While MaRin isn’t the best 1v1 top laner, the timings on his recalls and teleports have allowed him and SKT gain several teamfight advantages that many other teams could not match. On the surface it looks like MaRin plays exceptionally well and he’s the primary reason behind SKT’s success but in fact it’s the other way around, SKT sets MaRin up for success. In almost every situation, MaRin is given the resources by his team to become the teamfighting monster in the late game. Whether it’s the empty lanes in which minion waves are pushing it, jungle camps or solo turret gold in laneswaps, MaRin is donated the most gold out of all other top laners attending worlds. Most of it is due to how reliable as players his teammates are, who are capable of doing a lot of damage without many resources for themselves. However, aside from looking good, it’s also on MaRin to take advantage of the gold he gets, and his teamfighting prowess makes it possible for Faker to do what he wants almost entirely untouched.

Jungle - Bae “Bengi” Seong-ung

Without being one of the most mechanically effective junglers, bengi fits SKT’s playstyle almost perfectly to where you can overlook some of his deficiencies as a player. Bengi’s strengths rely on how he prioritizes his lanes and his timings. He wanders in between MaRin and Faker’s lanes, dropping wards whenever he can and occasionally ganking for MaRin. His judgement of where the enemy jungler can be at times has been really good this year, which probably comes from his experiences considering he’s been playing since early 2013 and almost entirely with Faker by his side (sometimes Eazyhoon during this year). During laneswaps, SKT was amongst the first teams to donate the entire first camp to their top laner to allow him to return to lane faster with an advantage over the enemy top laner. The meta is also seemingly moving into Bengi’s comfort, moving into more skirmish heavy junglers such as Lee Sin, Elise and Evelynn.

Mid - Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok

There is no doubt, Faker has been unleashed and he’s not going to stop any time soon. After being substituted in and out during the entire Spring season and being unable to play in that final that SKT won 3-0 against the KOO Tigers, Faker took it upon himself to return to the top of the food chain. A lot of the hype surrounding Faker is not just how many champions he is capable of playing, but the finesse he has every time he plays a champion. Faker has played a total of 12 different champions. From control mages like Viktor and Orianna to assassin's like Ahri. The advantage of having Faker in the mid lane is that you don’t need to feed him any resources other than a few wards. Faker is 11th in gold share percentage amongst mid laners out of all the teams participating in the LCK. Yet he averages highest gold advantage at 10 minutes and still manages to deal 32% of the team’s total damage to champions all while not given resources to succeed other than his own laning phase. Being self sufficient in the mid lane of SKT allows Bengi to focus his attention on top and help MaRin snowball his lane and get advantages from there. Simply put, Faker will stop at nothing to reclaim his throne as the best player in the world.

AD Carry - Bae “Bang” Jun-sik

If you ever needed an accurate representation of what a role playing ad carry would look like, look no further than Bang. Versatile and reliable yet not ignorable, the ad carry for skt is perfectly capable of carrying games when his team requires him to. The advantage of having a player such as Bang is that you know he'll not lose lane. He may not crush his opponents and gain huge leads, but he's always a threat even if his team places him as a low economy team player. Bang is a self sufficient AD carry; this allows Wolf to roam a long side bengi without the fear of having their marksmen destroyed in lane.

Support - Lee “Wolf” Jae-wan

To many, Wolf would look a contender for best support in korea whenever he is on his A game... However the inconsistency of this support player is really staggering and confusing. Somebody who is capable of looking like an absolute god of support, is also capable of looking like he's in his promos for bronze 3... IN THE SAME SERIES! Regardless, when on point, Wolf has demonstrated him and Bang are able to go toe to toe with the best bot lanes in KR and still remain relevant in every scenario.

Player to look out for: Faker

This sounds very obvious but it can’t be stressed enough. This has been the year of SK Telecom and the summer of Faker. From Orianna to Irelia to Master Yi, Faker has played anything that he’s wanted to and been successful on them. The culmination to the year of SKT would be winning the world championship for the second time. If anybody EVER had a doubt of this man being the absolute best player league of legends has ever seen, those doubts would vanish this year.

Conclusion:

SKT is such an interesting team in theory. Their play style around their top laner is very hard to shut down, especially during champion select. If you decide to focus your drafting phase around either top or Jungle, you’re opening yourself up to allow Faker to pick exactly whatever he wants. Especially after having such an incredible summer on Viktor which has reached almost perma ban status against SKT. --

Images courtesy of thethaodientu.vn, gg.that.vn, na.lolesports.com and thescoreesports.com

Stats on Faker courtesy of oracleselixir.com