Last week, T1 reclaimed the top spot in the LCK Spring 2024 standings after two victories against Dplus KIA and FearX. With Gen.G stumbling against KT Rolster, the title race this Spring seems to be a “two-horse” contest between Gen.G and T1. The reigning LCK champions then demonstrated their strength by easily defeating Hanwha Life Esports. Meanwhile, T1 turned their opponent FearX into the next “victim” for their unusual tactical experiments, especially in the Support position with Keria.
Notably, on the same day, Keria achieved two significant milestones in the history of League of Legends and the LCK region. First, the champion Ezreal – one of the “vintage” champions of League of Legends, made his debut as a Support in the LCK for the first time in nearly 11 years. The last time this champion was used in such an unconventional position was by PoohManDu (also a former member of SKT T1). In that match, PoohManDu and SKT T1 lost, with the opponent being Mata using Anivia.
Additionally, a second milestone is that Neeko also returned to the Support position after 945 days (nearly 3 years) since her first appearance on August 17, 2021, during the LCK Summer of that year. The last time Neeko was used as Support was by Jun of DRX, who won against Fredit BRION with Delight using Rakan.
However, while Neeko is an “odd” choice, it is still understandable due to her wide crowd control skills, good burst damage, and high mobility, Ezreal is completely unsuitable for the Support role. It can be said that Keria was extremely confident to pull off this “champion test”. Ezreal does not possess much besides mobility from Teleport, and ranged poke capability but has absolutely no crowd control skills. Therefore, it is unlikely anyone has the ability (or courage) to play Ezreal as Support in a professional match, especially in the LCK.
But despite T1’s very unusual ban-pick phase, FearX was still not strong enough to cause any surprises, even in a single match. Moreover, it seems Keria just wanted to experiment and will not bring Ezreal to the professional arena in the Support role again.