In the rematch between the two teams in the sixth week of LCK Summer 2023, Dplus KIA (DK) had a stroke of luck as T1 currently lacks their strongest lineup. Faker was absent and was replaced by Poby – a young player who has shown improvement but still lacks experience compared to ShowMaker. Moreover, Faker is also the captain and leader of T1 in this match, making the loss even more significant. This was the foundation that helped DK secure their first victory against T1 since the 2021 World Championship semifinals.
However, it is clear that in this match, T1 put in an incredible effort and caused DK quite a bit of trouble. In fact, if Poby hadn’t made a mistake in game 1 and DK hadn’t established such a large control and advantage that could not be overturned in game 2, it could have been the DK players who ended up “holding the grudge”. Even the fans of this team could not be satisfied with how hard their team had to fight to win against T1 “without Faker”.
However, some viewers have remarked that T1 actually lost right from the ban-pick phase in game 2. This is because Lee Sin is a champion that is not suitable for this team at the moment. Given that Azir and Rakan were already available, and Zeus chose Ornn for himself, T1 was overly confident in picking Lee Sin, which caused their damage output to be significantly lacking. Notably, DK completely countered T1’s resource allocation strategy for Poby and Gumayusi with Renekton, Sejuani, and Yone. These picks allowed DK to be strong and have consistent damage throughout the match.
The choice of Lee Sin becomes even more puzzling given that in patch 13.12, this champion is not strong at all. In fact, T1 even had a “mirror” in the match itself with Canyon’s ineffective Lee Sin in game 1. Yet, this team still chose Oner this champion, effectively self-sabotaging a significant source of power at this time.
DK deserved to win, but it cannot be denied that T1 fought incredibly hard. Only their mistakes prevented them from achieving the desired result.