Correspondingly, SKT gave all of their second-round bans to top lane, banning out the powerful preseason top laners Ornn and Fiora.
KSV locked in Xayah for their fourth pick—Ruler's championship Xayah!
CuVee was clearly prepared to counter SKT's newly fielded Chinese import rookie, Xu Junyan, to the bitter end.
The choice returned to SKT. Honestly, this was rather awkward. Roaring Emperor and CT had been right: if SKT did not pick their mid laner early, KSV would definitely target it to the end.
In the current version, if mid lane could not carry, winning was not easy at all. So what major-core mages were left?
Syndra? Or Orianna, Kassadin?
None of those were especially suitable. The best choice would still have been to pick Zoe or Corki earlier at third pick.
Yet after hesitating for quite a while, SKT pulled out a champion nobody had expected for their fourth pick: Darius!
"Whoa~~~! Darius?!"
"Has this champion finally appeared at the beginning of this season? He really hasn't been absent from this chaotic era of every kind of champion!"
Roaring Emperor and CT both gasped softly. Of course, they were only surprised, not utterly shocked.
After all, the rune overhaul this year meant that the start of the season was full of all sorts of champions. Everyone was experimenting and feeling things out.
Compared to this, BBQ's Crazy had even brought out top-lane Nasus a few days ago, while MVP's ADD and KZ's Khan had each played top-lane Illaoi. Their champions were no less "ridiculous" than the Darius Xu Junyan had just revealed.
What shocked everyone most was SKT's fifth pick. Their final champion was actually locked in as Karma!
What did that mean? It was obvious!
In this comeback match, Faker wanted to fully support their Chinese import top laner