Faker

He, he's, I guess, the best player.

His name is Faker, and all Koreans will know who Faker is.

You just have to say Faker, and their eyes will light up.

He's like the Messi of, of e-sports in Korea.

But because I think this is a rather new culture and new technology, uh, a lot of people kind of debate, like, is it really a sport? It's called e-sports, right? But it's almost to me like NASCAR or Formula 1.

At least 10 players better all time in no order.

include Faker, Rookie, Chovy, Knight, Deft, Ruler, Canyon, Zeus, Keen and Scout.

The problem with rating Keria is that he probably is the GOAT support, but he isn't consistently the best support enough to rank him above the best carry players.

Fans notice when he is so much better than all the other supports at Worlds and in some LCK splits, But in many LCK playoffs and MSI tournaments, he's been outperformed individually in his role by players like Delight and On.

Like, Essentially, I think support only can even do the things Kerry is doing when they're unlocked by having other good players, like having carries, having a good player in their lane, having people who can shot call, etc.

So, like, here's an obvious angle I'll give you.

A lot of people probably don't know this, but because Faker's won fuck all MVPs ever in the LCK, right? Kerry has won twice, if you don't know.

He won one in the spring of 2022 and he won one in spring 2023.

Sure, they won.

It was impressive, right? And this is, by the way, this is also where people make the mistake because this is actually what they're unintentionally doing is shitting on Faker's legacy.

Because the whole thing about Worlds and what has been so impressive about T1 at Worlds is that Faker has come up massive time and time again at Worlds.

If the discrepancy between their normal performance and world's performance, and especially Faker's average performance and his world's performance, this is what builds Faker's legend.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that when you talk about clutch, clutch has always been a thing that is difficult to define as an analyst.

which is just not true

you know it what's what's the logic here that they only care about worlds and so they're just like sandbagging the entire rest of the year you think faker's like happy he doesn't have more lck titles or msi titles you think that that makes him thrilled you think he's like well you know what i'm just gonna take a break now so i can win worlds i don't think that's how his mind works that's not how any like champion's mind works

And then it's like Peter's saying, it's almost like people just, there's almost like an aura effect where suddenly they become clutch and they become, so I'll give you the obvious example, which is, especially if you saw the recent news about how they're going to change the like luxury tax situation and the salary cap in LCK.

It's actually implied that like, T1 for example is going to have a very hard time just retaining the talents they've got never mind making like a super team and stacking more names because you're going to have to pay a lot of luxury tax if you do it so I actually do want to see when people go to other teams is someone like Keria actually clutch if he doesn't play with Faker maybe it just turns out he's the best support but he's just by the way here's another thing to say to add to the conversation it is not a binary switch that says you are clutch or you are a choker but Like, I actually do think, to progress the conversation, the most overblown Chalker is actually Chovy, in my opinion.

Because what I think is, I mean, essentially, think about how we set this up.

What we did there is we started with, like, Ruler, Dracula.

This was back when he had fucking good old peanuts.

And, you know, there was a, And Doran, there's a bunch of players back then who actually might themselves be put into that category.

Also, by the way, hasn't it sort of shown that actually Doran is a little bit of a Worlds choker? That even with Faker, he's the only one that the aura effect didn't affect.

He actually was still choking while playing with T1 and Faker and winning Worlds.

But yeah, I don't think Owner and Carrier have been on form this year.

And for as much as, you know, we talk about how the core of Owner, Faker, Carrier have been so damn good for T1 over the years, consistently, regionally, they've not been able to reach the 10 out of 10 against the likes of, well, HLE this year or Gen.G previously, and it depends on the rosters you're talking about, but they've been quite consistently, like, third best on average over the last few years, I think, regionally.

that hasn't stopped them turning up for Worlds.

So if you're asking me in the wider picture, okay, looking at the year for now and how does that affect our opinion of them going to Worlds, there's still every chance that they unlock their skirmish brains and their level one plans and they do something crazy at the World Championship.

But I think that when we get, well, you know, as much as we might talk about that stuff later, I think that Canyon and Dura really did step up in their own series too.

But if I look at T1, that's actually the first place I look.

And, you know, I'm not, quote, unquote, sparing blame from players like Faker, who I don't think has also stepped up to the plate.

I don't think he's been competing with, you know, Chovy, Zeka, you name it, for, you know, best mid in the region.

He's playing in the LCK.

He's always playing against Faker, Zeka, BDD, Showmaker.

When he goes to Worlds, he's playing against Rookie.

He's playing against the best.

For his career, Chovy averages plus 10.6 CSD at 15, plus 346 gold at 15, and plus 319 XP at 15.

I looked at the other greats in the LCK.

Faker, Showmaker, BDD, and Zeka.

The current greats.

Keep going.

Is there any more? Is there any more stuff? Because obviously Faker is never going to not play for tier 1.

And I would never want to force Faker out of tier 1.

That isn't actually interesting to me.

But I would also have it, you know what I mean? You've got the playoffs, the LCK.

right? And it's

a partnership for one year between MCoy and T1.

But Faker never left T1 technically, right?

It's essentially 2024 T1.

It's like Zeus, Owner, I think it's Owner, Jungle, and then like Faker, Guma, and Karrie.

Yeah, Guma and Karrie.

So it's basically 2024 T1.

You got Scary Jerry, who got put back down into Tier 2, unfortunately, with not a great run in the LCS.

And then you got Zyko, an old favorite from Maryville University who also played with Scary Jerry.

Yep, so Aojun's going to play against Faker and or Zekka because they have two mid laners for Team Korea.

Zekka is on the backup.