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Inven Source
A opinion post on Inven
Offering a fresh perspective on Season 3 World Champion SKT T1 Bengi’s “downfall”, if you will
Also includes an interesting viewpoint on playing mid priority
Hope you folks enjoy!
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SKT as seen from Bengi's perspective
Public opinion seems to mostly agree that Bengi is now washed up
However, if I were to be put in Bengi’s shoes, I would somewhat understand his position.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say that he hasn’t been under performing,
But I would argue that Bengi himself is not to blame for his so-called shortcomings, but rather the SKT coaches and management.
Watching his Nunu play during SKT’s series against the GE Tigers only made my observations so much more apparent.
I will now go through my justifications for thinking so.
1) Bengi’s first death
Bengi first death occurs between 10~20 minutes in gametime.
If he manages to survive during this period, SKT wins outright, without question.
However, if he dies, SKT loses the game.
This is not something I bring up just to point out Bengi’s incompetence.
So let’s explore: why does he die?
A. He goes to ward midlane. To ensure Faker has a safe laning phase.
B. He goes to remove enemy wards from midlane. To induce a more passive playstyle from the enemy midlaner.
C. Starting from mid, he gains vision control of possible paths the enemy support and jungle might take.
D. Once he ensures that mid is completely safe, he goes to botlane or toplane to gank.
Problem is, while doing steps A to D, Bengi always gets picked off by the enemy midlaner, jungler, support, or a combination of the above.
This has a symbolic meaning.
It means that the opponent can afford to devote time and resources to try and pick off Bengi.
This is why Bengi’s first death is so important.
Unfortunately, the enemy jungler just skips steps A to D and proceeds to wreck toplane and botlane.
Do people remember how Bengi shone during preseason?
At the time, his play would be focused around getting MaRin ahead at toplane.
He skipped steps A to D.
So at times, teams would set up tents around Faker, but SKT managed to turn things around, and they won games.
As long as SKT clings to a mid priority strategy, Bengi has no choice but to play like he has until now
Always under pressure.
Then why don’t SKT just play another style?
2) Both their blessing and their curse - SKT’s laning phase
SKT’s strength is their strong laning phase.
Think about it. You’re the jungler.
Our top Gnar is all over the enemy Maokai, pushing in the lane like crazy.
Our mid is Faker, winning trades while at the same time, pushing in the lane.
The Bang + Wolf/Piccaboo bot duo have the capability to go even with even Imp/Mata at their peak in terms of laning phase (only), so they too are winning trades while pushing lane.
Now, all three lanes are pushing their lanes in. As their jungler, what will your next move be?
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From a jungler’s perspective, this is just the worst situation ever.
Not only are all three lanes are pushing, but you have limited vision.
You don’t even have a lane that you can try to dive.
The enemy jungler has so many choices in choosing where to gank, but on the other hand, I have nowhere to go.
Mid-tier players would just pick a lane and hope for a countergank.
This purely relies on luck.
However, once you get to a higher level, rather than rely on chance to pull off a countergank, one would try to mark the enemy jungler.
All you have to do is prevent them from being able to gank.
Therefore Bengi tries to gain vision control and mark the enemy jungler,
While the enemy jungler anticipates what Bengi will try to do, and picks him off with his teammates by waiting for him / setting up a trap.
How does the enemy know what Bengi will do?
Unless you’re dumb, once you watch about 10 SKT games, it’s pretty obvious what they try to do each game.
Ultimately, it doesn’t help that their laning phases are so strong.
The former Samsung White was great at this.
Their individual laning phases were incredibly good, and they were strong [in every aspect].
However, by timing when they would each roam or group, they would trade at specific periods of the game.
Even though they could win trades, they would wait it out and consider the map as a whole, rather than as individual lanes.
Of course just playing like Samsung White can’t be a real solution,
But if SKT continues to play this soloqueue style, Bengi gets put under pressure, and the games get progressively harder.
3) Confidence drop
The enemy jungler always anticipates Bengi’s next move, his game plan, and picks him off constantly. Bengi undoubtedly will lose confidence
If you had watched the recent Solo King Tournament, one could see that Bengi does not necessarily have issues with his mechanics.
It’s just that his conditions are as such, and so he suffers psychological tension and stress.
4) A potential solution
Frankly speaking, Faker should be able to play safely with Xerath.
It serves as a premise to whether SKT will be able to pull off clean rotations on a team-wide scale.
It was really saddening to watch Bengi play during the last game of the series against the GE Tigers.
Even through tanking Xerath shots, pounded by the jungler, pounded by the support
He tried his best to try and gain vision control around midlane
But it was all for nothing… it made my heart ache.
Even while tanking so much damage, there were many instances where he took out pink wards and recalled on low health,
I felt immense pity for him, wondering how long he has to keep doing these antics.
He put in so much effort trying to gain vision control around mid together with Piccaboo,
But all that came of it was a 50~60 CS difference from the enemy midlaner.
All the enemy midlaner had to do was farm under tower.
If SKT had put in all those resources into ganking toplane or botlane, they surely would have gotten at least 2 kills out of it.
Concluding
Bengi is a professional player after all. Pro players play according to team strategy.
Bengi’s fails have more to do with the team’s strategies and rotations, rather than his individual abilities as a player.
Akin to what people say - “Hate the sin, not the sinner.”
Let’s not hate the player.
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Relevant top Inven reply:
After reading this post, what Impact said on OGN’s True LoL Show comes to mind… When Nal_rA asked Impact which midlaner he preferred - Faker or Easyhoon? Impact said that he preferred Easyhoon. Nal_rA was obviously taken by surprise, and asked why - so Impact replied that Easyhoon plays a very safe laning style, and that he prefers a safer style, although it may be up to personal preference. It seems to tie in with what is said above
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Hey folks, I x-posted this from my original post on reddit, sorry for that
I only lurk here, but in the future if any interesting posts come up I'll make sure to post them on TL first!
Shoutouts to Chexx 
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Korea (South)11232 Posts
:p
So shouldnt SKT put Bengi on a strong early game / high mobility jungler who can duel or 1vs2 pretty good or can escape easily?
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They should get Scip, he doesn't care about ganking or map vision. It's like a wet dream for him, farm all day.
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Interesting article. While a lot what the author says is true, I think a lot of SKT's problems stem from their team fighting rather than Bengi's poor early game. Even with Bengi getting picked off, SKT still manages to get out of the laning phase relatively intact, but they fall apart most of the time during objective contests (turret or dragon). SKT comes out ahead if they can get a strong, decisive engage, usually from a Bengi-Faker or a Marin-Faker opener, but they seem to flounder in extended team trades. MaRin gets antsy and makes a sloppy engage or someone inevitably gets caught (usually Bengi due to his role on the team).
If they can clean up their team fighting or the way they approach these objective contests, I think SKT can really push forward in the rankings and reclaim their throne.
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On February 16 2015 22:59 loSleb wrote:
They should get Scip, he doesn't care about ganking or map vision. It's like a wet dream for him, farm all day.
I'd pay good money to watch Scip AFKfarm in OGN/LCS.
Really nice article though.
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Now, all three lanes are pushing their lanes in. As their jungler, what will your next move be?
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From a jungler’s perspective, this is just the worst situation ever.
Great post and all but this is just bs.
Don't really agree with it but skt's pick/ban does seem very weak.Playing nunu makes sense if all of your 3 lanes are wnning and you just keep the enemy jungler down but he isn't able to do it.
On February 16 2015 23:03 KoreanEidelweiss wrote:
Interesting article. While a lot what the author says is true, I think a lot of SKT's problems stem from their team fighting rather than Bengi's poor early game. Even with Bengi getting picked off, SKT still manages to get out of the laning phase relatively intact, but they fall apart most of the time during objective contests (turret or dragon). SKT comes out ahead if they can get a strong, decisive engage, usually from a Bengi-Faker or a Marin-Faker opener, but they seem to flounder in extended team trades. MaRin gets antsy and makes a sloppy engage or someone inevitably gets caught (usually Bengi due to his role on the team).
If they can clean up their team fighting or the way they approach these objective contests, I think SKT can really push forward in the rankings and reclaim their throne.
Agree with this a lot more.The last ge tigers game was everyone taking turns suiciding.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
blaming a strong laning phase for jungler uselessness is a first one. bengi fanboy article.
bengi used to do fine when all lanes are pushed
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Isn't shoving every lane and putting jungler in enemy jungle pretty much the core of SK Gaming's strategy? Makes Svenskeren look really good, weird that it wouldn't work for SKT.
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This is a cute article, until you remember that bengi has picked Lee Sin like 100 times and sucked in all of them. Move along just another korean netizen with a biased view with little substance.
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United Kingdom50293 Posts
Bengi is a minor issue compared to how poor SKT's drafting and teamplay is. I honestly doubt that SKT would be doing much better if they had spirit for example instead of bengi. SKT tends to tunnel vision on certain things like blind picking xerath without consideration of enemy picks (The prime example being when GBM and chaser punished the blind xerath incredibly hard with J4/Ahri which was left open) or double AD into mundo but they've got greater issues in initiating teamfights especially because as mentioned above marin gets antsy and forces a teamfight at a suboptimal time. The GE tigers series especially G3 illustrated how stubborn their drafting and how troubled their initiations are.
That being said with regards to the actual article no bengi is not blameless and no it is not just a team strategy thing. If all three lanes are shoving and winning you go secure vision and you shouldn't be getting killed as your lanes are stronger and can react faster. Perhaps there are merits to the point that bengi works so much towards faker he's predictable but when I see junglers like beast and svenskeren put into similar situations with regards to lane positions (especially beast whose bot lane has to carefully monitored to prevent krystal from getting killed through over-aggression) and still not feed and have a strong impact on the game I don't buy it.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
when you actually watch the games bengi doesn't even camp mid. he does help marin quite a bit
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Bengi's Lee Sin is not a Korean Lee Sin
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Australia18228 Posts
Kind of agree with it, one of SKT's problem is that Faker is kind of stubborn/arrogant and doesn't ward.
At the same time, Bengi dying trying to ward is causing SKT more problems than the lack of vision so he should really stop walking into stupidly and wait until it's safe even if your teammates don't come. Watch plays a similar style, but he doesn't die at horrible times/places like Bengi does.
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At first I'm kind of inclined to agree... but then I remember SKT vs CJ game 2. CJ literally 3v1ed Faker the entire game, while Bengi just kind of didn't do anything. Or in Jin Air vs SKT game 1 where Bengi literally let Jin Air back into the game by getting repeatedly picked off from lack of vision. But then he has great games like in the preseason and in game 2 against the Tigers (although that admittedly was helped a lot by Faker getting Leblanc).
Also, with all of SKT's lanes winning, how on earth does Bengi find himself in dangerous situations where he gets picked in the first place? It's not like the jungler is solo 1v1ing him Kakao style, he is getting picked by laners too. Sure, blame the lanes for not giving Bengi the warning that he might be in extreme danger, but there is a problem when you repeatedly put yourself in a bad situation to die. It's not always in the laning phase that he dies either, he dies sometimes crucially in the midgame while dropping wards in dumb locations. He doesn't just do this with weak duelists too, he's done this with Lee Sin repeatedly. If we fault Doublelift for face-checking, why can't we do the same to Bengi?
The problem is that Bengi has a clear drop off in skill some games where he just goes invisible. You can blame the team's strategy all you want, but Bengi has games where he just feeds and plays terribly. Some might be due to tilt, like Jin Air vs SKT game 2, but that doesn't change the fact that Bengi simply isn't the player who won Season 3 Worlds anymore. Najin is getting Peanut (hopefully) to replace Watch's lackluster jungling, why can't SKT do the same? I feel like a lot of this post is kind of just dont be mean to poor bengi, making up a lot of excuses for admittedly poor play.
However I do agree that SKT's whole pick/ban and ingame strategy is super cocky. Those first pick Xeraths still confuse me to no end.
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Baa?21248 Posts
Thanks for the translation 
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EPT
