We have countless reasons to be wary of “superteams.”

Littered on the competitive League of Legends cutting room floor are so-called superteams — 2015 Oh My God, 2016 Longzhu Gaming, and 2016 Team SoloMid, among others — that failed to reach the lofty goals set by their organizations and fans alike. It’s far more likely that a superteam will flop rather than flourish, regardless of the talent on paper.

Now, that dreaded specter of failure looms over 2017 KT Rolster — the superteam du jour.

This season’s KT Rolster five are, separately, among the most decorated players in League of Legends history. Adding up their titles — just championship titles, not finals appearances — yields two OnGameNet Champions titles, one LoL Champions Korea title, two World Championships, five LoL Pro League titles, two Mid-Season Invitational titles, one KeSPA Cup title, and one IEM World Championship victory. Their roster has been touted as one of the strongest ever assembled, compared favorably with the Samsung Galaxy White team that won the 2014 World Championship (which had current KT mid laner Heo “PawN” Won-seok and support Cho “Mata” Se-hyeong in its lineup.)

When KT looked shaky at the beginning of 2017 LCK Spring, the general consensus was that they would improve with time. Naturally, despite their talent on paper, it would be a while before the team would fully gel. Until then, they would rely on the raw power of their roster to overwhelm opponents.

And until they met MVP in Week 5, it worked. KT’s 2-0 loss to MVP was supposed to be the team’s wake-up call. Coach Lee Ji-hoon cited MVP’s victory as an important loss for his team before taking on erstwhile esports rival, SK Telecom T1.

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KT Rolster facing SK Telecom T1 (OnGameNet/Twitch)

Against SKT, KT showed off their greatest strengths and most exploitable weaknesses. Their first series was one of the strongest best-of-threes that the LCK has seen since its inaugural season in spring 2015. SKT eventually took the series 2-1, but KT was visibly on the cusp of greatness.

Facing SKT a second time that same week, KT looked arguably weaker, trying out different champions against SKT in an attempt to topple their rival. Fully aware that they were not strong enough to best SKT head-on, they turned to creative compositions that they were unfortunately unable to execute.

Execution, not drafting or talent, has been KT’s biggest weakness this split.

A League of Legends roster is a delicate balancing act. Whether an organization has gathered a superteam, like KT, or simply stuck with the same assembly of players in hope of reaching their maximum ceiling, like MVP, a myriad of factors go into a team’s success. This can range from how loud the voices are on the team, personalities in and out of game, expected gold distribution, general resource distribution (including jungle proximity)…the list stretches on. All of this can get in the way of execution, especially with three strong voices on a team like KT in top laner Song “Smeb” Kyung-ho, jungler Go “Score” Dong-bin, and Mata.

Although it would be easy to simply default to Mata’s experience and renowned micromanagement of his teammates, this won’t work on KT, a group of veteran players all with their own proclivities thanks to years of experience. It’s difficult to imagine Mata taking AD carry Kim “Deft” Hyuk-kyu aside and going over the finer points of last-hitting as he did for Royal Never Give Up AD carry Wang “wuxx” Cheng last spring.





In addition to the in-game learned behaviors of these five veterans, KT now has to find a unifying voice, something the team has visibly lacked on the Rift. It’s easy to criticize one player performing poorly — PawN has emerged as the primary target of community ire — but with so many veteran cogs in the machine, pinning blame on only one player is unfair.

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