Faker played Darius bottom lane in a professional game

From his love of the newly reworked Irelia to his infamous Riven, SK telecom T1 mid laner Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok has never been shy about his affinity for melee bruiser champions. But Lee took that to a whole new level on Wednesday morning when he played Darius bot lane in SKT’s second match of the LCK season.

SKT went down to their opponent, Afreeca Freecs, early in the series, getting crushed in game one with Faker on Yasuo mid. With the meta as strange as it is, SK telecom clearly decided to switch some things up by sending Faker to the bottom lane as Darius with a Shen support. Even in the context of strange bottom lanes, this is pretty weird. Sure, his opponent in the lane was Yasuo, but at least that Yasuo was played by Aiming, a real professional ADC player.

While seeing one of the world’s all-time great mid laners head down bot for a game is pretty entertaining, it does raise a few questions and concerns about the meta that Riot is attempting to enforce. After all, if you have a top lane or mid lane substitute who can play champions like Mordekaiser, Yasuo, Darius, Lulu — all champions that got played in this morning’s matches — why even use an ADC player in your starting lineup?

The good news for ADCs is that for all the smoke being blown, marksmen aren’t exactly out of the meta entirely. Gen G. played exclusively traditional ADC champions and managed an upset win against KINGZONE DragonX while KT Rolster and Jin Air also played a few more traditional bottom lane characters.

As for Lee and his SK telecom teammates, it turns out a transition to the bottom lane wasn’t enough to help them overcome Afreeca, who managed to stomp them once again in game two. But hey, the second game lasted 10 more minutes than the first, so I guess that’s progress? Good job, Faker.