With the recent League of Legends World Tournament wrapping up, the gaming community is still in shock. Today, AirPlay will be putting our analysis on and discussing the fate of SKT’s Bang.

Who is SKT Bang?

SKT stands for SK Telecom, a communications company from South Korea. While just being any sort of telecom should not really be a reason why the name is famous, it is their venture into the world of eSports that has made them into a gaming household name.

SK Group, a massive conglomerate in South Korea. They sponsored an eSports team in the League of Legends MOBA and effectively introduced the gaming scene to the best player in the world: SKT Faker. The team of SKT is known to be the best team with their previous three-peat back to back world championships and many other mid-seasonal tournaments. One of the members of SKT has the name handle of ‘Bang’.

His actual name is Bae Jun-sik. He was not always a member of SKT. He started out in other teams and eventually became part of SKT in 2014. He has always played the role of AD Carry.

What is an AD Carry?

In a MOBA or Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, two teams of 5 players each fight to destroy each other’s towers and cores. In League of Legends or LoL, there are a massive pool of heroes with their own abilities and specialties. Different heroes have different roles.

In each team, each player will have a role: Top, Mid, ADR, Support, and Jungler. AD stands for “attack damage” or the physical attacks that a hero can do without using a hero’s ability. If you are wondering what the ‘carry’ part of AD Carry stands for, this refers to the general design. The characters that are made to be AD Carries are those that have really low health points (HP) at the start of the fight.

As the game goes on, their ability gets so strong that they carry their team to absolute victory. The AD Carry of the team is supposed to be able to kill enemies and smash towers with efficiency. This is what is expected of them. This is what was expected of SKT Bang.

2017 Worlds Struggle

Just this month, the annual League of Legends World Championships was held in Beijing, China. The clear favorites were last year’s champion: SKT. Their first fight in the seeded category was against the team named Misfits.

Misfits were generally comprised of Western players and were not really a particular favorite in terms of performance. At the start of the game, commentators and audiences alike were all proclaiming an easy win for SKT. Most bets were even showing figures of 3 wins and 0 loses for SKT.

Even the gamers behind this website honestly thought that to be the end result. However, after a strong first game by SKT, it seemed that they were not able to capitalize on this and lost 2 games. This pushed the fight to a Game 4 with Misfits needing only one more win in order to proceed to the semi-finals. It was clear that there were several misplays from Bang. Instead of focusing on keeping the bottom lane occupied, the enemy bottom lane heroes at bay, and the bottom towers destroyed, Bang kept on switching from one lane to another.

This kept his co-bottom lane player and their bottom towers vulnerable to attack. This was something that Misfits had capitalized upon time and time again. When everything seemed to have been bleak, SKT Faker once again showed tense audiences everywhere as to why he was the “Un-killable Demon King”. It was due to Faker’s performance that SKT was able to bounce back and secure their spot for the semifinals.

From that point, it was kind of clear that SKT Bang was kind of off his game. The many followers of the team were very vocal about their displeasure at Bang’s performance. It would have been great if Bang had recovered from this in their semi-finals fight against Team RNG but it was more of the same. So it was becoming clear that even with Faker’s stellar performance, he was not getting the support that he needed.

While SKT won their semifinals and went on to the finals, it was no longer clear that they would be emerging as the winners. However, as SKT and Samsung Galaxy had fought head to head before with SKT as the final winner, fans of SKT still hoped that they would once again be the winners. In a surprising and wholly shocking twist, they did not. Instead, they suffered a massive 3 losses and 0 wins.

Blame on Bang

The audiences all over the world were quick to express that Bang had given away Game 2 and 3 with his surprisingly amateurish performance. Faker was not able to perform at his peak as he was busy trying to patch up the lapses in their team defense.

While there was discussion on how Bang was not the only under performing member that day, it was Bang that was on the receiving end of most of the criticism.

In Closing

Looking at all the facts, SKT Bang seriously needs to reevaluate the heroes that he picks along with what his actual role should be in the team. Basing it off the fights that SKT have had versus the Misfits and Samsung Galaxy, Bang seriously needs to be reacquainted with what he should be doing when the game is going.

There is only so much that Faker will be able to do by himself. From Faker’s crushed appearance after their excruciating loss against Samsung Galaxy, it was clear that the other members of his team needed to pull their weight.

In light of everything we have witnessed, we believe that ‘Bang’ is a veteran in the world of eSports and should be given another chance.  His experience and time in the field cannot be replicated. As such, it is critical that Bang be given retraining and it’s not just him. The rest of SKT needs to find their groove once again.