T1 Gumayusi explains how the MSI 2024 meta held him back
Lee Aiksoon/Riot GamesI sat with Gumayusi following T1’s narrow loss that eliminated them from MSI 2024. He was still in good spirits despite the loss, though he seemed a bit dejected about how much control he had over the set’s result.
ADC is a fickle role, one that’s very hard to balance. If it’s too good, the entire game revolves around it. If it’s not good enough, the meta will usually default to ADCs with high utility and/or range. The latter is true on patch 14.8 according to Gumayusi and T1’s read on the meta.
Gumayusi described the best way for him to carry as taking one for the team so he could give the rest of his T1 an advantage. Not exactly ideal for a role with carry in its name.
Gumayusi is playing AD “carry” on T1
In their first set against BLG at MSI 2024 that they lost 1-3, Faker got targeted in nearly every draft. Seeing a ton of mid bans against T1 is normal at this point as people try to target Faker’s champ pool, along with some Senna bans targeted toward Gumayusi.
According to Guma, getting solid bot and mid lane champs locked in was their priority. Considering how often Faker got hit with target bans and how few ADC champs Gumayusi played at the tournament, this makes sense.
“Looking at our matches before, [BLG] used a tactic to kind of shut down our mid lane. So, we worked on having a better mid/bottom draft,” he explained.
T1’s star bot laner did get one game in this series where he really got to shine, the Draven match.
“Something that caught me off guard was that we picked Ashe, and they picked Varus/Kalista into it. We knew how to deal with it.”
Deal with it he did. Guma clearly still has that carry gene in him with some incredible spacing and fearless gameplay on a champ like Draven. However, he played Senna/Varus/Kalista for the rest of MSI 2024. That one Draven game was the only match he played for the entire tournament that wasn’t on one of those three champs, and that’s because the other three were either picked or banned.
I asked whether or not he regrets not trying to draft around him being a hard carry considering how well the Draven game went, and he felt as if he and the rest of the team made the right decision. It was just T1’s read on the meta.
“I just don’t think the ADC position right now has those sort of high-risk, hyper-carry champions in the meta,” Guma explained. He’d go on to describe how he feels he can best carry in his role:
“In our last game, when we gave Senna, who is a top tier bot laner, to the opponent and we took Taliyah, who is also a strong pick? Those kind of little draft disadvantages that I take for the team is how I’m trying to carry as an ADC right now.”
It’s worth noting that other teams at MSI like G2 used lane swaps to try and get late-game ADCs like Kog’Maw and Jinx into the stage where they shine safely. It seems everyone’s read on the MSI 2024 meta is a bit different.
Another part of the story is whether or not blue side advantage exists. It’s a hot topic, and Guma was willing to weigh in on it.
“Blue side is at a small advantage,” he claimed. “In terms of the game sides on stage, I feel like the red side feels better? It might be mental, it might not be. But, in terms of how we decide who gets blue in the first place? I don’t know if a coin flip is the right way because it depends so much on luck. If someone asked me how to fix this, though, I wouldn’t be too sure.”
Considering every game in the series was won on blue side and it went 3-2 in BLG’s favor, it’s hard to say what would have happened if side selection was swapped around. But, if things swung the other way and T1 won 3-2, who’s to say that’s fair for BLG? It’s a tricky problem to solve.
Regardless, T1’s performance at the tournament was still strong. The team is likely to stick together through Summer and, at the very least, the rest of the year.
Colin Young-Wolff/Riot GamesHowever, Gumayusi has some concerns about Summer Split, primarily in the form of relentless DDoS attacks that hit T1 HQ all through Spring.
He claimed that the lack of practice in Spring didn’t affect their MSI 2024 showing, but he’s worried Summer could be a problem. According to him, the main cause of the issue isn’t even resolved yet.
“I do worry about going back. As far as I know, the DDoS issue in Korea hasn’t been resolved yet. We might be affected in both practice and streaming, and the DDoS issues should be solved as soon as possible.”
All that said, Gumayusi seemed to be doing alright. He wasn’t taking the loss too hard, and he’s already looking to Summer. That’s all you really can do after such a close loss like that, one where small decisions made big differences. Not to mention ADC is overall much stronger on the current patch than it is on the MSI one.
There’s a chance T1’s entire team dynamic and drafting strategy changes in Summer if it makes more sense to put Guma in the driver’s seat, and he won’t stop until he’s back on top.
“When I debuted as a pro, winning Worlds once was never my goal. It was to be the best in the world. Until I achieve that, I’m not going to stop.”