Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok won’t be at First Stand, after the reigning world champions’ chance at the Golden Road was cut short by a five-game series against Hanwha Life Esports. Was Fearless Draft to blame?
Fearless Draft is the huge news hitting LoL Esports this year, the new format guarantees fans won’t see the same champion twice in a single series. I spoke to dozens of pro players and coaches about the possibility of Fearless Draft in 2024, gauging their opinion, and most seemed positive, a sentiment that seems to have continued. However, one thing that some pros expressed was a worry that it would, in particular, fundamentally change the way that five-game series’ drafts play, and it has. Are these changes responsible, at least partially, to Faker not making the year’s first international event?
Fearless changes the draft formula, does that hurt T1?
Obviously no one factor leads to a team like T1 falling early on into contention for First Stand, but watching the T1 series against HLE in the LCK Cup last week, something seemed off in champion select. T1 is at their absolute best at Worlds for a reason, time and time again we’ve seen the winning-est org in League of Legends conquer when they get the opportunity to take an individual patch and optimize it down to the minutia.
Come a Worlds finals, T1 always seems to have a razor-sharp focus on exactly the champions, compositions, and draft priorities they think serve them best. Look to Marc “Caedrel” Lamont’s analysis of T1’s draft in Worlds 2024 Finals. T1 was prioritizing pick comps, their draft centering around Vi priority, and threatening Zeus’ Rumble for Zeus to force the enemy’s hand with first-pick on an early ban. Faker focused on Neeko, Ahri, Sylas – Gumayusi on comfort picks.
There’s far too much going on in the full scope of T1’s draft to practically break down here, but the summation is this: T1, to me, look to be at their best when they have the time to sharpen exactly how they want to play the game, and draft, with a specific snapshot of League of Legends. The problem for this style of League of Legends draft in the early days of 2025 and the world of Fearless Draft is T1’s feared redundancy in draft, their ability to find the best tools and have the same pick, like Zeus’ Rumble, exerting pressure every champion select. The conundrum of “will the enemy spend a ban or first-pick on X champion, and let another key pick through” doesn’t hit quite as hard when that pick can only appear in one game in a series.
Does Fearless remove what made the GOATs so great?
Game five of Fearless Draft, there are 40 champions missing from the pool, almost a quarter of the game’s entire roster. Assuming each team has a similar read on the meta, the absolute best picks are mostly out of the way. Going into that final game against HLE, the amount of melee champions is dwindling and T1 is running out of top-tier front liners to glue their team fighting together. The redundant pressure of a single pick throughout a series, something like, historically, Faker’s LeBlanc, just doesn’t exist to the same capacity in Fearless. And, watching T1 play HLE this week, it feels to me like there’s a clear delta between the efficacies in the way T1 drafted before, and the way Fearless is forcing them to draft now.
A common criticism of 2025 T1’s performance so far has been the idea that they’re not adapting well enough to the evolving game. Now, listen, I’m not trying to say that T1 won’t potentially be monsters come MSI and eventually Worlds, we’ve seen “regular season T1” lure many talking heads into pontificating if the team has lost their spark through the years. The question isn’t as simple as “is T1 bad at Fearless Draft?”
My question is, in the interest of greater spectacle and variety, does Fearless risk losing some of the draft system prowess that League of Legends at the highest level has incentivized for over a decade? And, does that change bite what Faker, and T1, have been doing for so long? It’s a complicated answer, but I think it’s hard to say, after watching Fearless play out across the world, that Fearless isn’t missing something.
Ashley Kang of Korizon Esports took to Twitter to express that Riot should implement Fearless as the only format for competitive LoL, and plenty of fans vocally agreed. Caedrel was exulting Fearless Draft’s benefits from the rooftops. Players, viewers, and a wide range of voices in the space really like this format, and I do too.
Despite all my love for Fearless as a format, I’m unsure if 50 champions (between bans and Fearless bans) being missing from champion selection in a game five of the Worlds Grand Finals, or similar events, is how I want to see LoL Esports’ most hype moments play out. I can think of so many moments across League of Legends’ history where a champion reappearing in a series was a crucial part of what made a game interesting and engaging, and I don’t think we should lose that altogether. And certainly not so quickly.
Fearless being a success does not make old draft a failure
The aspect that makes discussions around Fearless so nuanced, to me, is that it’s been, by most impressions, a stellar success. In a game with a roster creeping up towards 200 every year, Fearless steps in to show a wide range of champions and keep every game unique for esports viewers and fans. And, as it has played out, it’s incredibly fun to watch. Players like Showmaker are turning matches on their heads with incredibly hype picks, and the games are fun, frenetic, and plain old good programming.
Despite all these boons, I can’t help but feel like the chaos of late-series Fearless doesn’t hold the same gravitas as traditional drafting. With Fearless, there is no Samsung over SKT regicide with Crown picking Malzahar three games in a row, no Faker’s Galio in game five of 2024. We miss these iconic moments, where the best players in the world push the most advantaged tools to the absolute limit over the course of a series, in the interest of never doubling up.
The way the game is played, at a high level, is fundamentally altered by Fearless. Whether or not the benefits outweigh what we lose can, at this point, only be determined once the major leagues go back to traditional draft for the rest of the year. Come November, and Worlds 2025’s Grand Finals concluding, we’ll have a much clearer picture of how Fearless fits into League of Legends’ future.
Is Faker missing First Stand, and teams underperforming, partially down to Fearless? Yes, I think so. Enfranchised players and rosters are adapting to this brave new world, and there’s sure to be some discomfort. I love Fearless in many ways, but I also love the sport we’ve had for one and half decades now. First Stand and the year beyond it seem to me to be a great crossroads for LoL Esports – do we stick with what we’ve had for 15 years or step into this new paradigm?
Whichever way the sport goes, I hope we can acknowledge what makes traditional drafting has meant to the sport, even if one day Fearless is going to take over.
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