Another piece of good news for T1 in the 2025 season
As we know, Riot has been determined to eradicate the annoying lane-swapping playstyle that has been repeated since the MSI 2024 phase. Although they have crowned champions with this meta, the lane-swapping meta has still posed challenges for this team as well as others that lost their advantage right from the draft phase. Notably, recently, there’s been more news favorable to T1: Riot is likely to continue the Fearless Draft for the remainder of the 2025 season.
Thus, it can be understood that in the remaining phase of the season, there will be no more lane-swapping meta, and the champion pool of teams will have to expand. Coincidentally, these are T1’s strengths. Specifically, in 2022, when T1 had one of the longest undefeated streaks in history, they played with a “win lane win game” style. One of the key factors that helped T1 execute this playstyle was the wide champion pool of the bot lane duo Gumayusi – Keria.
With Gumayusi, on average, every season this player uses about 10 or more champions. Keria himself also has a wide champion pool, but will primarily revolve around engage champions. If the playstyle does not require lane-swapping, T1 could even return to the ADC Support playstyle that led to their historic undefeated streak and is also considered “the strongest T1 lineup in recent years” – according to Faker.
But with the “crown in hand”, will T1 “rise”?
In reality, if in a normal context, there would be no debate. However, at the LCK Cup 2025, T1 has introduced a new rookie named Smash. And the team’s General Manager, Becker, has confirmed that T1 will start the rest of the season with a 6-man roster. From here, the concerns of T1 fans have started to escalate.
This is because laning is not Smash’s strength, and even in team fights, Smash has yet to demonstrate good positioning skills. The greatest strength of this young ADC may be… securing kills, but only under the condition that the veterans have set everything up.
If T1 really uses Smash, fans have every right to worry as the stats from the LCK Cup 2025 are completely against this player. And perhaps, even the fans cannot imagine the reigning World Championship champions facing the possibility of leaving empty-handed if the personnel decisions do not yield results.