In all tournaments, teams certainly prioritize efficiency to achieve the ultimate victory. Among them, LCK was once seen as a cautious competitive region, emphasizing effectiveness, discipline, and top-tier strategy. There was a time when all LCK teams played with a late-game approach, using champions strong in the late game, leading to extremely long matches but with very few exciting team fights as both teams focused on farming and concluded the match only after 1 or 2 final game situations.
Recently, a topic has caused many gamers, especially LCK fans, to reminisce with the question: “Which match in LCK is considered the most boring?” According to the original poster, they had even dozed off while watching LCK matches. This person also stated that they are a fan of the LCK tournament and emphasized requesting netizens not to suggest any exciting matches.
A question that seemed a bit “troll” has attracted a lot of attention from the League of Legends community, especially fans of the LCK tournament. Surprisingly, T1 is the team that owns 2 matches considered the “most boring” in League of Legends history. The first mentioned is Game 1 of the first round match between T1 and Nongshim RedForce during the Summer 2021 season. This was regarded as the longest match in LCK Summer 2021, with the duration from the start of the game to the destruction of NS’s Nexus exceeding 70 minutes.
The second match was even more “legendary,” being the match between Jin Air Green Wings and SKT T1. Perhaps those who have followed LCK for a long time are familiar with this match as the duration of the game extended to over 90 minutes. The match was considered tense, but its lengthy duration left the audience incredibly fatigued. From this match, any teams that played a late-game style causing extended match times were labeled as “JAG clones.”
Notably, in addition to T1 being present in both matches, another common point is the presence of AD Carry Teddy. Fans of T1 are likely familiar with Teddy’s playstyle – farming a lot to carry the team in the late game. In the match between JAG – SKT T1, by the 93rd minute, Teddy had farmed up to 1420 minion kills, while the total number of kills from both teams combined was only 24.
Currently, the playstyle of LCK teams has changed significantly. They are more proactive in team fights, with fewer teams playing around AD Carries and trying to drag the game to late-game. This is a necessary shift, especially as the meta changes daily. Not to mention, forcing the audience to watch a match that lasts nearly a hundred minutes with very few fights and kills is incredibly tiring.