The first League of Legends World Championship for SK Telecom T1 came in 2013, with a Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok-led lineup that had played together for approximately half of a year. After a disappointing 2014 where the organization didn’t send either of its teams to defend the title, SKT built a League of Legends dynasty in the years that followed, erasing their 2014 disappointment from the community’s collective consciousness: SKT had always been the best. From the 2015 LoL Champions Korea Spring Finals until their defeat at the hands of Samsung Galaxy in 2017 World Championship, SKT held the title of best team in the world.

In building their dynasty, SKT developed a substitution system that relied on the stability of the former SK Telecom T1 S bottom lane, AD carry Bae “Bang” Jun-sik and support Lee “Wolf” Jae-wan, along with their mid lane superstar, Faker. Although SKT’s most famous substitution is that of Lee “Easyhoon” Ji-hoon for Faker in 2015 spring — still cited as the substitution that launched a thousand other substitutions on ten-man lineups — SKT’s more standard swaps occurred in the jungle, and later the top lane position.

After Easyhoon’s departure during the 2015-16 offseason, the team used a plug-and-play method around Faker. Even if SKT struggled in a certain meta or limped to the finals only to be overwhelmed, like they were in late 2017 by Longzhu Gaming, there was always a sense that Faker could pull off some magical, near-impossible performance to win SKT another Summoners’ Cup. He dragged a team that looked lackluster at best to the 2017 World Championship Finals. Even then, with Samsung looking far superior going into the matchup, the feeling that Faker could win yet another title lingered until the final SKT nexus fell. This plug-and-play method had always been punishable, but the 2017 Worlds Finals marked the first time that a team had thoroughly punished weaknesses elsewhere in the SKT lineup. The SKT spell was truly broken.

With the loss still fresh, SKT’s roster moves in the 2017-18 offseason were placed under a microscope. Yet the team only picked up solo queue jungler Park “Blossom” Beom-chan and top laner Park “Thal” Kwon-hyuk, who had previously played in the European Challenger Series with Red Bulls. Neither were the big signings that SKT fans had hoped for. These pickups hinted that SKT would be using the same plug-and-play system with Faker at the center. SKT stumbled into playoffs and finished fourth overall, but it was well below organization expectations.

After unceremoniously dropping their first four games, SKT’s first game win of the 2018 LCK Summer came on Wednesday, June 20 with a lineup almost entirely made of substitutes: top laner Thal, jungler Blossom, mid laner Choi “Pirean” Jun-sik, AD carry Han “Leo” Gyeo-re, and support Lee “Effort” Sang-ho. Conspicuously absent was Faker, the young man who had brought SKT to so many domestic and international titles.

This isn’t the first time SKT have experimented with certain roster permutations early in a split. Only a few months have passed, yet Wolf’s short stint in the jungle role at the start of 2017 LCK Spring has largely been forgotten. Wolf started in his new role against the ROX Tigers and Jin Air Green Wings, but when it came time to face a top-tier team in KT Rolster, SKT chose starting jungler Kang “Blank” Sun-gu. SKT still lost that series, and Wolf never returned to the SKT jungle on the LCK stage. Later in 2017 LCK Spring, Blossom brought much-needed aggression to SKT with his rookie debut, but after a dismantling at the hands of Kingzone DragonX’s Han “Peanut” Wang-ho, Blossom was not seen again until the summer split.

These decisions also fell in line with SKT’s modus operandi of the past few years. When Kang “Blank” Sun-gu performed poorly in 2016 LCK Summer, SKT brought back veteran jungler Bae “Bengi” Seong-woong. In 2017, with Bengi retired, Blank became SKT’s substitute savior, stepping in for then-SKT jungler Peanut. SKT has rarely hesitated to swap out a player, often inviting criticism regarding how it could affect the confidence of the player being benched, especially a young player like Blossom. The only exception to this, since the days of Easyhoon, has been Faker.

In this context, the most surprising move made by SKT last night wasn’t that the organization started their entire B team, but that they stuck with the lineup even after a Game 2 loss rather than returning to Faker and company. This showed not only confidence in the lineup, but a continuing search for answers for an SKT that should know by now that they can only go so far with plugging in whatever talent they can find around Faker.

The volatility of the 8.11 metagame combined with the fact that it’s still early in the season means that this lineup decision by SKT wasn’t as risky as it may have initially looked. Comparisons to Cloud9 — the team that benched three starting players in Week 1 of the 2018 North American League of Legends Championship Series Summer due to motivation issues — are easily drawn. Yet, even with SKT’s willingness to rotate their roster, it’s near-impossible to imagine a player like Faker lacking in motivation.

On a recent stream, Bang spoke of difficulty wrapping his head around the recent patch, saying that it “Wasn’t the game he used to play” possibly giving some insight into SKT’s roster moves. Doing well on the recent patch requires a different thought process — thinking about a team’s available players more than the champions available in the roles they typically play — than what has been the standard for LoL since approximately Season 2. Since SKT have visibly struggled in their first four games, the answer is more likely that, much like starting Wolf in the jungle, SKT saw fairly low-risk opportunity to give some of their newer players an LCK start. Despite their success with the Master Yi/Taric gold funneling strategy, MVP are not expected to be at the top of the LCK table.

Benching Faker allows a glimpse at an SKT without him as fans and the LoL community at large posit whether an SKT without him is SKT at all. Something just doesn’t feel right when SKT plays without Faker in the booth. Nothing, save another player surpassing him, negates Faker’s legacy as the best to ever play the game, but with him in the lineup, the team will inevitably default to a specific style. Starting Pirean along with the rest of the SKT B team likely allowed Faker a small amount of rest after his participation in the 2018 Asian Games East Asia Qualifier, and gave SKT’s substitutes much-needed stage experience as a unit. It was a messy 1-2 loss to MVP, but still a fresh look from a team that has not taken to the new meta as well as certain other LCK teams. With two series losses, no game wins, and a series against middling-at-best MVP, SKT had little to lose. The resulting B team loss means that Faker will likely return to the SKT booth for SKT’s Friday matchup against Griffin, who are on a four-series win streak.