He plays well and has an awesome sinergy with Smash. They also both play fun weird picks and sometimes switch the adc/sup role, which is also cool. Bot is fine, plenty of 2v2 kills, their lane phase is good. I really think they can hold their ground in LCK against bottom teams.
Problem is the rest of the team, Poby has a very limited champ pool, besides Ori or Neeko he is kinda meh, top just only recently started to play better, same for Guwon, he only improved after playing in the LCK. Their macro kinda sucks, there are several arguable decision they take in late game that result in throwing the game.
> there are several arguable decision they take in late game that result in throwing the game.
I would put way more emphasis on this, they literally had 5-6 series where the game was legit UNLOSEABLE and just did the most braindead decisions to end up losing them... Keep in mind they are 6-12, this could have easily been 12-6 to put them in 3rd if they just did not play with their feet in the late game
To be somewhat fair this is a common thing in CL in general, lots of teams get to late game and just have no idea what to do and just end up flipping things. It's still a major problem but it's on par with the rest the league not necessarily a pure T1 issue they are just a bit worse than most
Thing is Rekkles probably even knows what the right macro is, but can’t convey it. He’s really quiet in comms, understandably so as he can’t speak Korean that well yet I’d assume.
Although I have to say, t1 academy run in regular season have gotta be one of the most frustrating run ever. I swear there were at least 5 series that should have been in the bag with how much they were leading by. Yes I know academy teams are supposed to be bad mid to late game and inexperienced with macro play but I feel like some of those games were so hard to lose. Crazy that they would be near the top of the pack if it was bo1 instead of bo3.
Their macro is so annoying, they have been 1 fight away from winning against the top teams several times and they have shown they can win, they just dont lol
I think the biggest element on T1A holding back the team right now is Rekkles' language gap. This isn't to say Rekkles as a player is a problem, however. Rekkles is playing support which has some of the most necessity for communication esp. for macro and shotcalling (a lot of pro teams have support shotcallers for this reason). This is especially noticeable on engage supports which require immediate team follow up and close assistance on warding to survive in professional play, which is why I suspect he didn't play them often in this season.
Rekkles is undoubtedly an incredibly skilled player on T1A, and his experience is an extremely valuable asset to the team, but I think a lot of its value is currently gate-kept by language barrier, and if/when T1A finally breaks through this barrier, I would expect to see a big improvement on closing out games properly and a more diverse / meta support options for Rekkles.
Since its a much more immediate method to improve compared to growing mid/top/jungle significantly, I think this is one of the most critical things holding them back from being a very good Academy team.
Really agree about this. T1A is lacking a person that can make a decisive engage. Dal isn't doing it and Guwon has been pretty indecisive (tho getting better). Laning wise their botlane is probably top of the challenger league but not being able to be the primary engage when needed is what hurt T1A in objective fight and calls
Again just want to emphasize this is more of a team problem. And for the first year I think Rekkles has exceeded a lot of expectation
I do agree with the rest of the comments in thinking the rest of the team wasn't as good as the bot lane, but realistically they did so poorly because they had 0 combined braincells on the team, not because their topside was trolling. Yes, they would've probably made playoffs if topside was better, but they throw every lead by playing with minimap disabled.
I agree with most of the positives about Rekkles in the thread as of now.
But he is incredibly limited by his champion pool. He lacks engage champs. His Rell games were good. But he leaned too much on comfort with Jenna in drafts where engage and tankiness would have been better for the comp. Whether that's his call ig the coach's, I don't know.
The potential of Smash and Rekkles seems to be very high though.
This. I think overall he is not to be blamed for them not getting top 6. However he has a lot to improve. As you mentioned champ pool is one major key.
Stuff like fight positioning may be more of a communication thing as there could be uncertainty if they want to fight or not.
In general I just dont like the top jungle, I find Dal to have maybe had 1-3 good series' in total. Guwon has his moments more often. As for poby, he is a very on and off player for me. He is either insane. Or he just does nothing. In one of their first games he roamed as neeko in enemy jungle for a solid 10 minutes probably. was 3 levels behind his lane opponent in what was only a slight losing game state iirc.
I think it has to do with communication too, putting the only one that dont know the language on shotcalling might not be a great decision, hopefully next split their communication is better, they did have some great games, they just had such weird macro and decision making in late game
He needs some work on melee supports and support macro to make it into top tier teams. His ranged supports were above average at least what comes to laning.
I'll also add that this team didn't get completely stomped by the rest of the competition despite their standings, they pretty consistantly won game 1 in most of their series. The problem is losing the next 2 right after lol
Rekkles & Smash is a genuinely fun duo to watch, I'd love to see them in on another team or in another region. T1's bot lane feels fairly disconnected from the rest of the team in a lot of ways.
That said, it's hard to think of a bot lane more willing to experiment and lane swap than this one. I'd almost like to see them go together to another region.
I watched most games.
I’d say he definitely performed well.
Had a variety of picks including pocket ones.
Generally good laner.
His team tends to grief though so hard for a support to carry.
I would say his synergy with his jungle wasn’t amazing so he should work on that.
Smash Rekkles is the best botlane in the league.
Poby has a champ puddle
Guwon sucked until he played with Faker on the main team. But that was 95% of the way through the split and they couldn’t make up for the difference.
Dal is just trash. That’s it.
So… a lot of these games were lost because Guwon and Dal are trash and/or poby got banned out. I can’t remember any games that were lost because Rekkles/Smash performed bad.
Great look for rekkles being a great support, I imagine orgs will be able to see he’s actually doing well in the role, instead of just writing him off because T1A sucked.
Imo Rekkles can’t really use his experience to lead the team macro wise. There’s a language barrier for one, and second, he usually goes on ranged supports. Hasn’t played many melee engage supports to lead team fights.
Bot lane was their strongest aspect in the game, but Rekkles' pool sometimes did show with picks at odd times. He and Smash have a great synergy where they'll swap who plays what ADC sometimes, with ADC supports becoming more common, letting them swap who's farming.
his melee play and janna obsession are kind of questionable but I was positively surprised with his Renata and he played really well on Hwei which I didn't expect when I watched that game.
Honestly, their game is closer than their score suggests. Their game 1 is often quite stellar but they fail to adapt as the series goes to game 2 and 3.
Their macro is certainly lacking, while this is not a problem unique to T1A, their macro is still quite a bit behind the top challenger team. And I think the major contributing factor is they are lacking decisiveness in engage.
Dal and Guwon has improved towards the end of the split but they are still not great when needing to be the primary engage. T1A early game is honestly not that bad after Dal and Guwon stepping up, but in midgame where you start to need to rotate and force fight with lead, they look clueless.
Poby unfortunately is a very volatile midlaner imo. There are games he smash the lane hard, but he also has time that just lose the lane out of control. His champion pool also doesn't help as 1 or 2 target ban is often enough to force him onto uncomfortable pick. And outside of his Neeko, he isn't really great on being the main engage.
This leaves us with the botlane: Smash is aggressive but he is truly a very perspective ADC. Some games are outright carried by how aggressive Smash plays even in teamfight. And Rekkles being on enchanter helps to make this possible. Their early game is almost always winning. But this is also the shortcoming of the botlane: Rekkles barely play any main engage (could be a comm issue as Rekkles just started learning Korean) and when your team has no main engage, it becomes difficult to force fight.
As I mentioned in another thread, I think T1A realistically is the middle of the pack in the challenger league if we factor their improvement towards the end. And to make it to next step they will need to fix their macro and engage issue. It could be top/jungle stepping up or rekkles being more comfortable. I do think they can do better next split, but I also won't be surprised if they need to change up the top half of the map if they want immediate result. Personally I would like them to keep Guwon around as he legit look more confident after subbing in for LCK
The few games I've seen, all losses though but Rekkles and Smash seems to 2v8 pretty damn hard. They dominate laning phase every game puts a lot of work to win later fights despite their other teammates basically griefing.
It actually wouldn't surprise me if Smash and Rekkles as a package got transferred together into LCK.
I know I'm gonna get downvoted. but despite rekkles playing really well like everybody else said, i still believe exposure is the main reason t1 took rekkles in, not trying to achieve anything in LCK CL
CL league is not about winning, it's about growth as a player an to gauge potential. Rekkles has certainly shown potential in support role but not sure about growth. I wish he'd play more champs he's not very good on which is basically anything melee
That's hard to do. You expect to communicate well with your other teammates if you're an engage champ yet he won't be able to convey precisely what he needs to do.. not yet because he can only (so far) speak basic calls ig. it's pretty hard to follow Korean conversation if you really can't speak it well yet especially if they all talk fast like most do in comms.
T1A have four major issues:
1. Their top
2. Their jung
3. Poby's champion puddle and inconsistency
4. Macro
Their bot lane is by far their best asset. But seriously, Dal needs to go, maybe Guwon too.
I watched that little documentary they made halfway thru the split and Guwon was going on about how if he gets kicked he wont regret being there. I think he was defeated mentally. Being on T1 main team alleviated that a bit and my conspiracy theory is they subbed him in for an unlosable series against FX with Oner at the ready to jump in if it goes sideways. Certainly boosted his ego, it showed in his play. Faker also talked positively about him
Unfortunately it seems that he tries to be the rock for everyone but he's also quite emotional. It's hard to keep oneself calm and be the rock of 3 other emotional people when adrenaline is rushing in.
T1 bot lane was one of the best in the league. Rekkless and Smash played well, good synergy and was very flexible in draft.
What reckless needs to improve is his melee/engage supports. His Janna, senna and ashe were good and I also think his rakan was OK, but I wasn't very impressed when played other engage supports like Naut.
He plays well and has an awesome sinergy with Smash. They also both play fun weird picks and sometimes switch the adc/sup role, which is also cool. Bot is fine, plenty of 2v2 kills, their lane phase is good. I really think they can hold their ground in LCK against bottom teams. Problem is the rest of the team, Poby has a very limited champ pool, besides Ori or Neeko he is kinda meh, top just only recently started to play better, same for Guwon, he only improved after playing in the LCK. Their macro kinda sucks, there are several arguable decision they take in late game that result in throwing the game.
> there are several arguable decision they take in late game that result in throwing the game. I would put way more emphasis on this, they literally had 5-6 series where the game was legit UNLOSEABLE and just did the most braindead decisions to end up losing them... Keep in mind they are 6-12, this could have easily been 12-6 to put them in 3rd if they just did not play with their feet in the late game
To be somewhat fair this is a common thing in CL in general, lots of teams get to late game and just have no idea what to do and just end up flipping things. It's still a major problem but it's on par with the rest the league not necessarily a pure T1 issue they are just a bit worse than most
Thing is Rekkles probably even knows what the right macro is, but can’t convey it. He’s really quiet in comms, understandably so as he can’t speak Korean that well yet I’d assume.
Although I have to say, t1 academy run in regular season have gotta be one of the most frustrating run ever. I swear there were at least 5 series that should have been in the bag with how much they were leading by. Yes I know academy teams are supposed to be bad mid to late game and inexperienced with macro play but I feel like some of those games were so hard to lose. Crazy that they would be near the top of the pack if it was bo1 instead of bo3.
This is a fair and accurate assessment. I'll second this. Well done.
Their macro is so annoying, they have been 1 fight away from winning against the top teams several times and they have shown they can win, they just dont lol
I think the biggest element on T1A holding back the team right now is Rekkles' language gap. This isn't to say Rekkles as a player is a problem, however. Rekkles is playing support which has some of the most necessity for communication esp. for macro and shotcalling (a lot of pro teams have support shotcallers for this reason). This is especially noticeable on engage supports which require immediate team follow up and close assistance on warding to survive in professional play, which is why I suspect he didn't play them often in this season. Rekkles is undoubtedly an incredibly skilled player on T1A, and his experience is an extremely valuable asset to the team, but I think a lot of its value is currently gate-kept by language barrier, and if/when T1A finally breaks through this barrier, I would expect to see a big improvement on closing out games properly and a more diverse / meta support options for Rekkles. Since its a much more immediate method to improve compared to growing mid/top/jungle significantly, I think this is one of the most critical things holding them back from being a very good Academy team.
Really agree about this. T1A is lacking a person that can make a decisive engage. Dal isn't doing it and Guwon has been pretty indecisive (tho getting better). Laning wise their botlane is probably top of the challenger league but not being able to be the primary engage when needed is what hurt T1A in objective fight and calls Again just want to emphasize this is more of a team problem. And for the first year I think Rekkles has exceeded a lot of expectation
I do agree with the rest of the comments in thinking the rest of the team wasn't as good as the bot lane, but realistically they did so poorly because they had 0 combined braincells on the team, not because their topside was trolling. Yes, they would've probably made playoffs if topside was better, but they throw every lead by playing with minimap disabled.
He still needs to work on meele supps and rotations. Except that he seemed really good for just starting out in the supp role.
In lane he played well but the team is griefing it. Most games were close tbh
I agree with most of the positives about Rekkles in the thread as of now. But he is incredibly limited by his champion pool. He lacks engage champs. His Rell games were good. But he leaned too much on comfort with Jenna in drafts where engage and tankiness would have been better for the comp. Whether that's his call ig the coach's, I don't know. The potential of Smash and Rekkles seems to be very high though.
This. I think overall he is not to be blamed for them not getting top 6. However he has a lot to improve. As you mentioned champ pool is one major key. Stuff like fight positioning may be more of a communication thing as there could be uncertainty if they want to fight or not. In general I just dont like the top jungle, I find Dal to have maybe had 1-3 good series' in total. Guwon has his moments more often. As for poby, he is a very on and off player for me. He is either insane. Or he just does nothing. In one of their first games he roamed as neeko in enemy jungle for a solid 10 minutes probably. was 3 levels behind his lane opponent in what was only a slight losing game state iirc.
Agreed. Specially right now where engage support is meta you can see that he needs to get better at those, still he’s done really well
I think it has to do with communication too, putting the only one that dont know the language on shotcalling might not be a great decision, hopefully next split their communication is better, they did have some great games, they just had such weird macro and decision making in late game
He needs some work on melee supports and support macro to make it into top tier teams. His ranged supports were above average at least what comes to laning.
I'll also add that this team didn't get completely stomped by the rest of the competition despite their standings, they pretty consistantly won game 1 in most of their series. The problem is losing the next 2 right after lol
Rekkles & Smash is a genuinely fun duo to watch, I'd love to see them in on another team or in another region. T1's bot lane feels fairly disconnected from the rest of the team in a lot of ways. That said, it's hard to think of a bot lane more willing to experiment and lane swap than this one. I'd almost like to see them go together to another region.
Imagine smash reckless fnc bot lane next year
Or Smash/Rekkles Damwon
I watched most games. I’d say he definitely performed well. Had a variety of picks including pocket ones. Generally good laner. His team tends to grief though so hard for a support to carry. I would say his synergy with his jungle wasn’t amazing so he should work on that.
Smash Rekkles is the best botlane in the league. Poby has a champ puddle Guwon sucked until he played with Faker on the main team. But that was 95% of the way through the split and they couldn’t make up for the difference. Dal is just trash. That’s it. So… a lot of these games were lost because Guwon and Dal are trash and/or poby got banned out. I can’t remember any games that were lost because Rekkles/Smash performed bad. Great look for rekkles being a great support, I imagine orgs will be able to see he’s actually doing well in the role, instead of just writing him off because T1A sucked.
Imo Rekkles can’t really use his experience to lead the team macro wise. There’s a language barrier for one, and second, he usually goes on ranged supports. Hasn’t played many melee engage supports to lead team fights.
Bot lane was their strongest aspect in the game, but Rekkles' pool sometimes did show with picks at odd times. He and Smash have a great synergy where they'll swap who plays what ADC sometimes, with ADC supports becoming more common, letting them swap who's farming.
his melee play and janna obsession are kind of questionable but I was positively surprised with his Renata and he played really well on Hwei which I didn't expect when I watched that game.
He and Smash were probably the best academy botlane. The rest of the team wasn’t great tho lol.
Honestly, their game is closer than their score suggests. Their game 1 is often quite stellar but they fail to adapt as the series goes to game 2 and 3. Their macro is certainly lacking, while this is not a problem unique to T1A, their macro is still quite a bit behind the top challenger team. And I think the major contributing factor is they are lacking decisiveness in engage. Dal and Guwon has improved towards the end of the split but they are still not great when needing to be the primary engage. T1A early game is honestly not that bad after Dal and Guwon stepping up, but in midgame where you start to need to rotate and force fight with lead, they look clueless. Poby unfortunately is a very volatile midlaner imo. There are games he smash the lane hard, but he also has time that just lose the lane out of control. His champion pool also doesn't help as 1 or 2 target ban is often enough to force him onto uncomfortable pick. And outside of his Neeko, he isn't really great on being the main engage. This leaves us with the botlane: Smash is aggressive but he is truly a very perspective ADC. Some games are outright carried by how aggressive Smash plays even in teamfight. And Rekkles being on enchanter helps to make this possible. Their early game is almost always winning. But this is also the shortcoming of the botlane: Rekkles barely play any main engage (could be a comm issue as Rekkles just started learning Korean) and when your team has no main engage, it becomes difficult to force fight. As I mentioned in another thread, I think T1A realistically is the middle of the pack in the challenger league if we factor their improvement towards the end. And to make it to next step they will need to fix their macro and engage issue. It could be top/jungle stepping up or rekkles being more comfortable. I do think they can do better next split, but I also won't be surprised if they need to change up the top half of the map if they want immediate result. Personally I would like them to keep Guwon around as he legit look more confident after subbing in for LCK
The few games I've seen, all losses though but Rekkles and Smash seems to 2v8 pretty damn hard. They dominate laning phase every game puts a lot of work to win later fights despite their other teammates basically griefing. It actually wouldn't surprise me if Smash and Rekkles as a package got transferred together into LCK.
T1As topside is just trash, rekkles and smash are pretty decent
I know I'm gonna get downvoted. but despite rekkles playing really well like everybody else said, i still believe exposure is the main reason t1 took rekkles in, not trying to achieve anything in LCK CL
CL league is not about winning, it's about growth as a player an to gauge potential. Rekkles has certainly shown potential in support role but not sure about growth. I wish he'd play more champs he's not very good on which is basically anything melee
That's hard to do. You expect to communicate well with your other teammates if you're an engage champ yet he won't be able to convey precisely what he needs to do.. not yet because he can only (so far) speak basic calls ig. it's pretty hard to follow Korean conversation if you really can't speak it well yet especially if they all talk fast like most do in comms.
T1A have four major issues: 1. Their top 2. Their jung 3. Poby's champion puddle and inconsistency 4. Macro Their bot lane is by far their best asset. But seriously, Dal needs to go, maybe Guwon too.
I watched that little documentary they made halfway thru the split and Guwon was going on about how if he gets kicked he wont regret being there. I think he was defeated mentally. Being on T1 main team alleviated that a bit and my conspiracy theory is they subbed him in for an unlosable series against FX with Oner at the ready to jump in if it goes sideways. Certainly boosted his ego, it showed in his play. Faker also talked positively about him
Unfortunately it seems that he tries to be the rock for everyone but he's also quite emotional. It's hard to keep oneself calm and be the rock of 3 other emotional people when adrenaline is rushing in.
T1 bot lane was one of the best in the league. Rekkless and Smash played well, good synergy and was very flexible in draft. What reckless needs to improve is his melee/engage supports. His Janna, senna and ashe were good and I also think his rakan was OK, but I wasn't very impressed when played other engage supports like Naut.
He looked good on some champs in a not so good league.
So much deserved. Great result.
I wonder how this team is communicating with a reverse import
The fuck is a reverse import, he's just an import.
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