As the year winds down, it’s important to evaluate of where LoL’s very best teams stand in relation to each other while our minds are still fresh, in order to paint a hopefully accurate illustration of history for posterity. This year is particularly interesting because of the variety of winners across LoL’s most difficult tournaments, and depending on your interpretation of both a team’s placing and which ones you value over others, this list could go many different ways. Before 2017 is out, let’s take stock of which teams were the best league of legends had to offer over the course of the last 12 months.
1. SKT T1
Top — Huni/Untara
Jungle — Peanut/Blank
Mid — Faker
ADC — Bang
Support — Wolf
Achievements:
2017 LCK Spring — 1st
2017 MSI — 1st
2017 LCK Summer — 2nd
2017 World Championship — 2nd
Though 2017 ended with their dynasty being toppled, Faker’s men stood as the best line-up in the world for most of the year. With the addition of a new top laner in western superstar Heo ‘Huni’ Seung-hoon and a new starting jungler in ex-Rox Tiger Han “Peanut” Wang-ho, the organization had taken a gamble on aggressive young talent to supplement their core, two-time world champion trio of Faker, Bang, and Wolf. For a while, the gamble payed off in spades.
SKT dominated LCK spring with a 16–2 regular season record and demolished an uncoordinated KT Rolster 3–0 in the finals of the toughest league in the world. Their tear continued when they went to the second biggest international tournament of the year, MSI, where they won again in dominating fashion, dropping only 3 games at the event. Their summer season was looking similarly strong, holding an 9–1 record halfway through the split before the squad went off to Rift Rivals, Riot’s newest international tournament. After dropping an important game to China’s Team WE in the relay B05 final, SKT returned to Korea in a slump, they lost 9 straight games making it their biggest losing streak ever since Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok joined the team in 2013. The LCK Spring champions were inundated with problems; their elite bot lane all of a sudden couldn’t generate pressure, they were forced to play sub top laner Park “Untara” Ui-jin for most of the season with Huni struggling to be on the same page as the team, and even Faker himself was taking too many early game risks and giving the enemy team early gold leads for free. Now for the first time SKT had to start the summer playoffs at the bottom of the gauntlet. Despite the fragile state of the team, they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and were able to make a run to the finals, including a reverse sweep over summer powerhouse KT Rolster. At the world championship SKT’s problems were still present, yet they again were able to limp their way into the finals with narrow 3–2 wins in the bracket stage over Misfits Gaming and Royal Never Give Up, mostly due to Faker’s Herculean tournament performance.
Even if Faker’s heroics weren’t enough to stand up to Samsung Galaxy in the finals, 2017 was still the year of SKT. They were the best team in the world for the majority of season 7 and even in their slump they still made deep runs into the world’s hardest tournaments. SK Telecom T1 was the best team of 2017.
2. KT Rolster
Top — Smeb
Jungle — Score
Mid — Pawn
ADC — Deft
Support — Mata
Achievements:
2017 LCK Spring — 2nd
2017 LCK Summer — 3rd
2017 KeSPA Cup — 1st
Ambitions couldn’t have been higher for the KT organization in 2017, after their failure to make worlds in 2016 they got rid of 4 of their 5 players and set out to build a super-team around their franchise player Go “Score” Dong-bin, who’d been lauded as the best jungler in the world at the time. The goal was to defeat the world’s strongest team, SKT, and even though they failed miserably at that goal, their play versus the rest of the field of competition was spectacular.
KT was red hot as they approached the end of the first round robin of LCK Spring, holding a record of 7–1. That would end when they were narrowly defeated 2–1 by SKT twice in the same week, sending them into a slump which included an embarrassing 2–1 loss to 10th place team Kongdoo Monster. Regardless of their relatively poor second half of spring as well as numerous teamwork and shotcalling issues, the team was able to pick it up towards the end with a 3rd place regular season finish and a convincing 3–0 victory over Samsung Galaxy in the semifinals of playoffs, establishing themselves as the second best Korean team in their inaugural split. Their summer regular season was even more convincing, with top lane star Song “Smeb” Kyung-ho back in form and the team beginning to mesh reasonably well, they battled for first place all season and finished with the same 14–4 record as Longzhu Gaming and lost the 1st place tiebreaker due only to some extra game losses. Though in semifinals they lost 3–2 to SKT in a tragic reverse sweep, one could easily speculate that had they made finals, they would’ve beaten Longzhu and won LCK, as they had been one of the few teams to stand up to them in the regular season and it was a good matchup for them stylistically. Crushed by their playoff defeat, they rolled over and died in the regional gauntlet against SSG 3–0 and yet again missed out on worlds, however KT’s year would end with a small bright spot when they took their first tournament victory by winning the KeSPA Cup, Korea’s end of the year domestic tournament.
The super-team was not able to test their mettle at the world championship, but they were consistently a top 2 team in by far the strongest region in the world all year, making them LoL’s second best team of 2017.
3. Samsung Galaxy
Top — Cuvee
Jungle — Ambition/Haru
Mid — Crown
ADC — Ruler
Support — CoreJJ
Achievements:
2017 LCK Spring — 3rd
2017 LCK Summer — 4th
2017 LCK Regional Gauntlet — 1st
2017 World Championship — 1st
Besides the addition of young jungle talent Kang “Haru” Min-seung, SSG was one of the few teams to keep an unchanged roster going into season 7 and looked to continue investing in the squad that brought them to the season 6 world final.
In LCK spring they stood as the only team that could contend with the two Telecom giants in the standings. Led by star mid laner and split MVP Minho “Crown” Lee, the team was able to finish the regular split in second place with a 14–4 record. They faultered in playoffs, as the line-up tends to, ending the season as the 3rd place team in LoL’s best league. Summer season saw a dip in performance from Crown, but the rest of the team was firing on all cylinders. They were able to battle for supremacy with the other members of Korea’s “big four” teams in KT, LZ, and SKT, ending the split in third place with a 13–5 record. They were handily defeated 3–0 in playoffs by a rejuvenated SKT, but with the regional gauntlet around the corner they were about to go on a staggering run of dominance. Samsung’s first matchup in the worlds qualifier was the Afreeca Freecs, a team that can look better than SKT in one game then look like a North American team in the very next game. SSG started sub jungler Haru for the first 2 games and lost both of them, the team looked lost without the leadership of Kang “Ambition” Chan-yong and unable to set up baron properly, negating one of their biggest strengths. Ambition was brought in to much success as the team reverse swept AFS and continued their momentum by thrashing KT Rolster 3–0 in their final matchup. After a somewhat shaky group stage at worlds, their run of form continued and they plowed through LZ, WE, and SKT to win the world championship and stamped themselves as the best team in the world.
From the time Ambition came in versus AFS in the gauntlet to the end of worlds, SSG went 15–1 in B05 games which included 3–0 sweeps against the four best Korean teams, after them. SSG was by far the best team in the world in that period, but their inability to perform in LCK playoffs throughout the year weighs them down to being the 3rd best team of 2017.
4. Longzhu Gaming
Top — Khan
Jungle — Cuzz
Mid — Bdd
ADC — PraY
Support — Gorilla
Achievements:
2017 LCK Summer — 1st
2017 World Championship — 5th-8th
It’s seems impossible to imagine that the LCK Summer champions would ever land 4th on a list like this, but this year stands as a rare exception with how close the top four Korean teams were this year.
LZ immediately established themselves as a force to be reckoned with their new summer line-up based not only on the raw skill of their young solo lane talent, including joint MVP of the split Gwak “Bdd” Bo-seong, but also the knowledge of how to play the macro game from their veteran bot lane, Kim “PraY” Jong-in and Kang “GorillA” Beom-hyeon. The team fought for top position in the standings all split and finished ahead of everyone by the end, securing themselves a spot in the finals of their first split together. Longzhu’s finals performance was spectacular on all fronts, they dropped only one game versus SK Telecom and became one of the only two non-SKT teams in the LCK era to win a Korean title, the other of course being the ROX Tigers, a team PraY and Gorilla also played an integral role on. Their worlds run was looking promising after going 6–0 in the group stage, however they immediately ran into SSG in the bracket stage who would win 3–0 and go on to win the tournament. While drawing SSG in the bracket stage was bad luck, Longzhu themselves did under-perform relative to their usual level.
Gorilla’s team burned bright for one split and took home a Korean title, the most difficult achievement to earn in LoL, but the team’s absence in spring and inability to perform internationally levels them out at a respectable 4th place on this list.
5. Team WE
Top — 957
Jungle — Condi
Mid — Xiye
ADC — Mystic
Support — Ben/Zero
Achievements:
2017 LPL Spring — 1st
2017 MSI — 3rd-4th
2017 LPL Summer — 4th
2017 LPL Regional Gauntlet — 1st
2017 World Championship — 3rd-4th
While 2017 was Korea’s strongest year in a while, it’s still not at the level it was back in 2014 for example where their 5th best team at any given time was probably better than all non-Korean teams. So, for the final spot on this list one must look to the second best region of China and decide which one of their teams had the best season. I landed on Team WE.
The team had a fairly dominant spring, finishing first in their group in the regular season and easily dispensing of OMG and RNG in playoffs, dropping only 1 game between the two B05’s on their way to the organization’s first LPL title. The team looked poised to make a run to finals at MSI having placed 2nd in the group stage portion of the tournament and taking a game from SKT off the back of a stellar Lucian performance from mid laner Su “xiye” Han-Wei. Unfortunately, their lack of international experience showed in a 3–1 loss to Europe’s G2 Esports in the bracket stage. Summer season saw more parity among the top tier LPL teams and WE finished 2nd in their group, only placing slightly behind EDG due to more game losses. In playoffs, they narrowly lost 3–2 to RNG in the semifinals and would go on to lose the 3rd place match against IG, again 3–2. This particular LPL playoffs was odd in that the semifinals, finals, and 3rd place B05’s all went to 5 games, every team was clearly quite close in skill and one win against RNG could’ve meant 2nd place instead of 4th for WE. Fortunately for them, they got revenge with a win against IG in the regional gauntlet, once again 3–2, and WE qualified for worlds for the first time since 2012. Analysts speculated that despite WE coming into the world championship as the 3rd LPL seed, they were the best Chinese team attending the event. If you look at the team’s level of play throughout the tournament, the assessment doesn’t look all that unreasonable. They decisively won their group and were able to defeat North America’s best performing team Cloud 9 3–2 in the quarterfinals, and ultimately fell to the mighty Samsung Galaxy in the semifinals 3–1, making them the only team to take a game off the Korean squad in the bracket stage.
The only other non-Korean team most would nominate for 5th spot on this list would be Royal Never Give Up, who also made top 4 at the world championship. The reason I favour Team WE is because while they may be inferior in terms of individual skill (not by as much as people say), WE is undoubtedly a more versatile and adaptable team. In a game as ever-changing and stylistically diverse as LoL, I value the aforementioned traits of WE higher than the aggression and mechanical skill of RNG, so they edge out the title of 5th best team of 2017.
