Analyzing SKT's amazing pick and ban strategy

Counter Picking

Going far back into LCK summer week 7, MaRin has mostly played Rumble, Gnar, and Maokai thus far. Red side has historically banned Kalista to avoid giving her away to blue side teams. All the rest of the bans are fairly justified for the meta, then. After the picks and bans SKT is left choosing between Alistar or Sivir and chose to take Alistar but give Sbenu Sivir. As told by the casters, SKT is a team that seems to revolve around Sivir a lot less, Bang having played Corki 8 times out of 20 games up to this point and only playing Sivir twice. The second rotation picks for Sbenu being Maokai and Azir after SKT takes Ekko and Corki. At this point as spectators we can see that this is a strong telegraph of a bait. In regards to picks Sbenu has already taken their marksman, so there is no pressure to pick Corki in SKT’s second rotation. As mentioned by the casters, Ekko is not popular among the LCK players but SKT is giving the room for the two solo laners to counter pick Sbenu’s lanes. Sbenu is strongly encouraged to take Azir and Maokai in their second rotation, opening up for MaRin to take Fizz rather than his signature Rumble.

Montecristo mentions in the pick and bans that MaRin will most likely pick Rumble and be perfectly fine as Rumble is his most played champion of the season. This is the first instance in which we see MaRin play Fizz top to counter Maokai and something we will see for the rest of the season.   

Here MaRin shows his knowledge of the matchup by getting a solo kill onto Maokai. SKT’s already insane early game thanks to a 3-0 invade is further accelerated. The Fizz pick really shows up in this game as MaRin is able to put a lot of pressure in the top lane even winning a 2v1. 

While taking Teleport and Ignite isn’t uncommon as we see it in previous seasons with Hecarim, this was the first time we see it on Fizz. Able to appropriately take over the lane and pressure Maokai, SKT was clearly ready for the Maokai pick and had a very good strategy going into the game as they prepared for Sbenu’s jungle invade.

Another game in which SKT was clearly prepared for the prevailing champion picks is in week 8 against Anarchy. While Anarchy has been a team on the bottom half of the league SKT shows their impressive strategies with picks and bans. Prepared for the Runeglaive Ezreal, SKT picks Ryze who can use Ezreal’s farming phase to scale up himself. SKT’s strategy effectively removes Ryze’s weakness while also confusing ANC from completely reading what SKT’s lanes will be. In SKT’s second rotation they also take Corki rather than picking their top laner in preparation of a counter pick. ANC is led to take Maokai to which SKT can take Fizz to counter. ANC’s composition looks to poke out enemy HP bars before engaging with their heavy front line with Sivir’s ultimate. SKT has picked a strong disengage with Gragas and Janna with the good pressure from Ryze and Fizz.

SKT dominates the early game during the double jungle period in which they kill ANC ikssu at ANC’s own red buff. Adapting the strategy of double jungling, SKT brings their heavy CC level 2 to take over the game through roaming. SKT’s roaming was at an opportune time as wards had expired and supports were naturally missing from the map to give their marksman solo experience.

SKT’s most recent example of their counter picking prowess. While Renekton is understood to be a counter to Darius the way SKT goes about making sure that EDG is unable to adapt to the Renekton pick and provide Darius with any sort of counter advantage is impressive. SKT very clearly gives Kalista away in this game while banning on red side. As I’ve said before very few teams are willing to give up Kalista as a first pick unless they have a strategy to deal with it and as it is pointed out by the casters Ryze has the ability to lock down Kalista and stop any sort of crazy kiting she might attempt.

SKT places a delayed ward at their own blue buff which is able to see EDG invade to take it. It appears that SKT is familiar with EDG’s strategy and starts at their own red buff to quickly take top tower. It is uncertain whether SKT predicted the early dragon from EDG or if EDG makes a poor choice by keeping Darius around to take dragon as it is said by the casters, the top wave is now shoving back towards SKT resulting in an experience and gold deficit for EDG Amazingj.

Adapting against counters

Image courtest of esportspedia

Since SKT’s game debuting Fizz as a counter pick to Maokai they have continually opted into the match-up should their enemies pick Maokai. In the games in which MaRin got Maokai they did not ban Fizz either in anticipation that their enemies would not be willing to play Fizz or already adopted a plan should MaRin have to play Maokai against Fizz. When MaRin was denied Maokai SKT was always ready with Rumble or Gnar, something MaRin could always fall back to and was at low risk when playing Maokai.

Top Fizz was never really something SKT had to be legitimately scared of as few top laners adopted it. KT did pick Fizz against SKT in the LCK playoffs finals but gave room for SKT to dodge the counter pick when KT first picked Fizz. The first pick Fizz being an obvious overstep by KT to assume MaRin would pick Maokai or that Fizz would be able to lane against whatever else SKT picked, an assumption that would prove false as MaRin’s Malphite bullied KT Ssumday.

We see an example of SKT’s prediction that their enemies will not adopt their counter pick when SKT plays EDG in their second match against one another. Unsurprisingly SKT is willing to give up Kalista in favor of Elise and likely predicting EDG will take Kalista. SKT prefers to take Darius in this game and does so with their second rotation. SKT seems to have done their research as Amazingj has not played Renekton for some time. SKT scouts that EDG’s jungle is starting at their bottom side and we can see SKT Bengi already moving toward EDG’s red buff before Clearlove shows himself in the bottom lane. Elise then heads towards the top lane as Darius had already pushed the wave to make a dive. This is quite clearly a strategy that SKT set up should EDG’s top laner not double jungle.

SKT not banning Kalista in their second game against H2K pressures them to take her as their first pick. As we have seen, SKT has developed strategies for Kalista in their first game against EDG. H2K first picks Thresh and SKT takes Darius and Kalista in their first rotation, two very high priority picks. As we have seen a brief sample of SKT’s strategy not to pick top laners too early in order to give MaRin the counter pick. This is a bit telling because we know SKT has the counter pick on Darius but choose to first pick Darius themselves. A redditor makes a good observation as to how SKT’s Darius pick was able to succeed. The rest of SKT’s picks are solid choices as Kalista and Alista are good against nearly any match-up and by saving their mid lane pick for last they are able to take an advantageous match up.

 

Conclusion

While it is no secret that SKT is the strongest team both coming into Worlds 2015 and in terms of their performance at Worlds their strategy regarding picks and bans is levels above other teams. SKT has shown that they have strategies planned out for numerous outcomes of the game regarding lane swaps and jungle starts. SKT remains one of the few teams able to playout picks and bans to such a high degree and it is also suggested that SKT understands their opponents very well. SKT are the favorites of the tournament but through my observation of other teams I would say that the KOO Tigers have a good chance at matching SKT in terms of their pick and ban strategy. I believe that KT deserves the same respect if they have improved their pick and ban phase since their last encounter with SKT as the first pick Fizz left some doubts about their strategy. Other teams have not shown as much mastery of strategies and picks and bans as well as these LCK teams but I think there is still room for surprises.