SK Gaming Sucks Right Now and Here’s Why

SK Gaming is one of European League of Legends’ mainstay organizations. Their history in the scene dates back to 2010, before the Season 1 World Championship.

Over the years the different iterations of the team have flirted with greatness. They’ve had 2 World Championship showings, and were once known as the rivals of Europe’s favorite side, Fnatic.

In more recent years, with the return of their original support, Christoph “nRated” Seitz, the team has been known for more team-oriented play versus building around a carry superstar or two. This is a stark change to the era of Carlos “ocelote” Rodríguez Santiago and Kevin “kev1n” Rubiszewski, who were powerful solo laners in their time.

The classic SK Gaming lineup: CandyPanda, Nyph, Hyrqbot, ocelote and kev1n.

That all changed when Konstantinos “FORG1VEN” Tzortziou became their AD Carry before the start of the 2015 Season.

FORG1VEN was in a class of his own—a top tier ADC talent that dominated lane and exerted pressure on the entire map simply by existing. With him, SK Gaming ruled at the top of Europe’s standings for most of the 2015 Spring Split.

Using their honed strategy of the 1-3-1 split push, they would quickly take down enemy objectives to amass a nigh insurmountable mid game gold lead. It was all working flawlessly until playoffs.

SK failed miserably compared to the regular split, only managing a 4th place finish by the end. The worst part? Internal strife caused FORG1VEN to leave the organization for Gambit Gaming.

So how has life been for SK ever since? To put it bluntly, horrible. SK were the creme of the crop a few short months ago, and now… a horrendous 0 wins to 6 losses in 3 weeks of the Summer Split.

But how did this happen? How did SK go from hero to zero within a single year? Is it just because of FORG1VEN? Because as we’ve highlighted before, Gambit aren’t faring so well either, although they did manage to pick up back-to-back wins last week.

FORG1VEN now plays for Gambit Gaming

To get to the bottom of this mystery, let’s look at SK Gaming’s players, and how their older performances stack up to their current run of form after their brush with Europe’s best AD Carry “by far”.

Simon “fredy122” Payne

THEN: While not the most flashy player, Payne gained the moniker of “steady fredy” for his ability to never lose lane, always stay relevant in CS and just show up when his team needed him.

His favorite champions of Renekton and Aatrox were unrelenting dive threats, and accentuated Fredy’s role of diving into enemy lines for his team to clean up. Last split saw him use more mage initiate champions like Morgana and Lissandra, though those, along with most of his other picks, have fallen out of the meta.

NOW: Robbed of his lane bullies and devoid of a superstar carry teammate worthy to suicide dive for, fredy’s involvement in SK’s games has been next to invisible. His current KDA stands at 0.84, not even breaking even with his deaths.

Even resorting to old picks like Dr. Mundo and Shyvana hasn’t done anything, and it doesn’t help that he hasn’t been getting the support that he used to. Speaking of…

Dennis “Svenskeren” Johnsen

THEN: Svenskeren has often been regarded as one of the most mechanically proficient carry junglers in EU. He’s right up there with Marcin “Jankos” Jankowski of ROCCAT in terms of killer instinct in the jungle, peaking at 2nd overall points among all LCS junglers last split.

He provided excellent pressure for his solo laners using aggressive champions such as Jarvan IV and most especially Lee Sin, which seemed like a bright spot for the floundering team in the Spring playoffs some months ago.

NOW: The meta seems to have left Sven behind, and he hasn’t found a champion to be effective on yet. His Lee Sin and Nidalee picks have been ineffective, and he hasn’t even had the time to go back to Jarvan. Forget about his Elise as well.

He seems lost in this meta, trying 6 different junglers which all resulted in losses. If Sven doesn’t start getting comfortable and impacting his lanes, SK’s problems can only worsen.

Hampus “Fox” Myhre

THEN: Fox joined the main SK lineup the same time as FORG1VEN, and his Challenger Series experience is a little irrelevant here. While we can only draw from one split, Fox was one of the promising mid laners out of challenger along with Tristan “PowerOfEvil” Schrage and Fabian “Febiven” Diepstraten.

Fox put up impressive numbers in SK’s 15-3 run in spring. He ended just short of the impressive scorelines of Febiven and Team Solo Mid’s Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg, who were both on 1st place teams.

NOW: SK’s sly Swede had his biggest weakness exposed in the tank meta: He only seems comfortable on assassin mid laners. Now that Zed and Ahri are nerfed and rendered ineffective, and with Leblanc a contested pick, Fox’s champion pool looks dried up.

He’s pulled out more in-the-meta picks like Azir and Viktor, but so far they haven’t been good enough showcases of his abilities. Whether this makes Fox completely outmoded or if practice can turn his performances around, only time will tell.

Adrian “CandyPanda” Wübbelmann

THEN: This veteran ADC has served SK for many years. His versatility has seen him adapt well enough through a variety of metas, playing what his team needs to win. He was never a flashy player however, and that was the main draw of replacing him with FORG1VEN.

In the summer of 2014, he placed 5th among European ADCs, heavily favoring Lucian and Kog’Maw in the draft.

NOW: Despite what many assumed would be ring rust, Candy’s actually performing admirably considering how badly his team is doing. He’s adapted to the meta and picked up Kalista and Sivir, but without powerful solo laners to carry the team, his supportive style falls flat.

When he was last on the team, SK had the luxury of tighter objective control and rotational play owing to the fact that they were one of the first teams in their region to build up a good support staff. They had a strategic edge.

Now that every team has coaches and analysts however, SK’s carry-less style in this post-FORG1VEN world isn’t doing them any favors.

Christoph “nRated” Seitz

THEN: nRated has been touted as a mastermind and architect. His keen eye for strategy has landed him on many top teams aside from SK, including Fnatic and Lemondogs.

He’s been credited for SK’s minimalist warding style that allowed them to dominate last spring, and though he hasn’t always been the most lane dominant support, his weaknesses were mostly irrelevant when laning with FORG1VEN.

NOW: Reuniting with CandyPanda means that SK’s capability to win 2v2s straight out has diminished versus last split. Even the Kalista + Alistar combo hasn’t been too effective in their matches so far.

As it stands, nRated’s previous boon of allowing his team a strategic advantage doesn’t exist in the age of coaches. He could try to spice things up with his old pocket picks, which included anything from Galio to Kayle, but at this point, his skill level may not even be enough to ensure results on top of the surprise factor.

Is It FORG1VEN?

What we can glean from this examination is that while FORG1VEN surely impacted SK and changed the way they play the game from more objective focused to AD Carry centric, SK can no longer operate that way.

Nor can they operate the way they used to before the FORG1VEN period, as their innate advantages during those splits have now disappeared. Yes, SK is suffering with the loss of FORG1VEN but it’s much more than that.

See the inner turmoil in Svenskeren’s eyes.

The meta doesn’t favor them right now. Most of their players have outdated champion pools. They lack a team identity. And the scariest thing is that’s not something a team can just pick up out of the blue.

It is worthy to note however that in the most recent week of the EU LCS, SK did pick up back to back wins. However, these wins were at the expense of other struggling teams.

SK are at the bottom of the European LCS right now—a spot they currently share with 3 other teams. If they can continue their upward trend, they can hope to make it to playoffs, but for now  it looks like that’s where they’ll stay until they can find a new identity.

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