One thing we need to acknowledge is that T1 handled the early game extremely well; whenever they lost an advantage in one lane, they would find a way to attack another lane to gain the upper hand. In the second game against Damwon Gaming, Faker chose LeBlanc but opted for Teleport instead of Ignite, while ShowMaker had Ignite, making it understandable that T1’s mid lane suffered a disadvantage. In fact, Faker almost got solo-killed during the laning phase.
At that point, T1 had to find a winning lane; the mid lane was not an option, and Canna’s Kennen in the top lane couldn’t dominate too strongly, so they chose to attack the bottom lane. The result was beyond expectation, with Ghost from Damwon Gaming being taken down twice in a row, and Teddy completely dominating in farm.
However, this led to the first reason for T1’s loss: after Teddy got ahead early, he did not complete Manamune quickly while playing Ezreal; instead, he built a Blade of the Ruined King. Perhaps Teddy wanted to use damage to dominate the lane, but his opponent was Varus, who could farm very safely if not ganked.
As mentioned in the analysis why Koreans are currently playing Ezreal poorly, Teddy’s mistake would cost T1 a lot of advantages in the mid-game, a time when they should have been stronger.
Ezreal really needs to complete Muramana early; without building Manamune quickly, you cannot reach this champion’s power threshold. And the consequences hit T1 hard; Teddy lacked damage in the mid-game (specifically when the third dragon spawned) and lost control of this objective to the opponents.
This itemization also rendered Ghost’s two deaths completely ineffective. Remember that he was playing lethality Varus; even if he died, the items from this playstyle would have an immediate effect rather than waiting for Ezreal’s item stacks. If Ezreal couldn’t reach Muramana’s power spike early, even with two deaths in the early game, when Ghost had 1-2 lethality items, he would still be stronger than Teddy.
Thus, with just the choice of summoner spells and building items incorrectly, all of T1’s early advantages vanished completely, and the game became balanced, reflecting the nature of LCK, where both teams farm and wait for objective fights. The slow pace of the game then led to the next reason for T1’s loss: Canna’s inexperience in critical situations.
The Kennen vs. Sylas matchup was handled quite well by Canna in terms of skills, as he didn’t die at all for the first 24 minutes. However, just one face check into Nuguri’s waiting position led to his immediate death. Although T1 got the dragon afterward, they lost two members and officially fell behind economically to DWG.
Losing too many advantages and falling behind in gold meant that T1 faced significant limitations regarding items, making their team’s damage and tankiness weaker compared to the game’s timeline. Even when they caught someone in the mid lane and decided to take Baron, Ellim was too low on health and had to Smite early to avoid dying. This allowed ShowMaker to steal the Baron and seal the game.
This can be said to be a loss characterized by mistakes from the entire T1 team rather than a specific individual. T1 continued to opt for overly safe play (LeBlanc with Teleport or Ezreal building Blade of the Ruined King after Tear of the Goddess), which inadvertently allowed all the advantages they built in the early game to be reclaimed by the opponents and even surpassed later. Faker still made attempts to create a breakthrough, but having just LeBlanc was insufficient to change the course of the game.