Doran was breaking. Game 5 of the Worlds Finals. The biggest stage in League of Legends. And T1's toplaner was making mistakes he never makes.
Faker saw it happening. And what he did next is a masterclass in why mechanics alone don't win championships.
The Moment Everyone Missed
We've all been there. That ranked game where your hands aren't listening. Where you flash into a wall. Where your brain knows the play but your fingers send different commands.
Now imagine that happening with millions watching. Your team's legacy on the line. The pressure to not be "the guy who threw Worlds."
That was Doran in Game 5.
In a recent interview, Faker revealed what was going through his head: "I felt like Doran became nervous because I saw him make mistakes he hadn't before. Rather than criticize the situation, I thought about how we could do better in the next play."
No flame. No pings. No "top diff" energy from the greatest player to ever touch the game.
The GOAT Mentality
Here's what separates Faker from literally everyone else.
Most players — and I mean 99% of us — would have one of two reactions when a teammate starts inting:
Option A: Flame them. Spam ping. Type "?" in all chat. Make sure everyone knows it's not YOUR fault.
Option B: Mental boom alongside them. If top's gonna int, why am I even trying?
Faker chose Option C: Actually help his teammate recover.
"I felt it was important to help him settle and ease his mind and feel comfortable," he explained.
This isn't just being nice. This is understanding that tilted players make more mistakes. That mental recovery is a team effort. That the enemy team WANTS your toplaner to spiral.
What You Can Actually Steal From This
Look, you're not Faker. Neither am I. But the mental game principles are the same whether you're playing for the Summoner's Cup or trying to escape Gold.
Recognize the tilt before it spreads. When your ADC misses a cannon and types "lag," that's your cue. They're already making excuses. One more death and they're gone. That's your window to hit them with a "we got this" or "nice flash" on their next decent play.
Criticism is worthless mid-game. Telling your jungler they should've ganked earlier doesn't unfeed the enemy Darius. It just ensures they won't gank at all now. Faker understood that analyzing mistakes is for the post-game. In the moment, you focus on the next play.
Comfort beats commands. "Just play safe" is useless advice. "I'm coming top after this wave, let's get a kill" gives your tilted teammate something to look forward to. Hope is stronger than instructions.
The Solo Queue Reality Check
Here's the uncomfortable truth: you can't always save your teammates' mental.
Sometimes the Yasuo is 0/7 and already typing an essay about how everyone else is hardstuck. Sometimes the duo bot is in their own Discord call and will never listen to pings. Sometimes the game is just lost and no amount of Faker energy will change that.
The difference is you can control YOUR mental. You can be the player who makes comebacks possible instead of the one spam-ff'ing at 15.
And real talk — if your teammates' mental is consistently the problem, if you're stuck in games where everyone's tilted before dragon spawns, maybe the issue is the coinflip nature of solo queue itself. There's a reason high-elo players duo with people they trust. If you're tired of gambling on randoms and want to actually enjoy your climb, our LoL boosting exists exactly for this. Skip the mental warfare, get the rank, keep your sanity.
The Bigger Picture
This Worlds Finals moment reveals something we don't talk about enough in esports: soft skills matter.
Faker's mechanical peak was arguably years ago. There are players with faster hands, nastier solo kills, flashier highlights. But nobody manages a team's mental state like him. Nobody shows up in Game 5s like him. Nobody turns a tilting toplaner into a championship-winning toplaner mid-series like him.
That's not something you can practice in aim trainers. That's thousands of high-pressure games teaching you that your teammate's mental is your problem too.
The T1 Dynasty Continues
T1's Worlds win wasn't just about Faker's Azir or Gumayusi's positioning. It was about a team that refused to let pressure break them.
When Doran was struggling, no one threw him under the bus. The whole squad understood that mental booming your own teammate in a Finals is essentially handing the trophy to the other team.
Compare that to the countless "superteams" that implode under pressure. All the mechanical skill in the world means nothing when players are too busy blaming each other to play the game.
Final Take
Faker could've flamed Doran. Nobody would've blamed him. The guy was making uncharacteristic mistakes in the most important game of the year.
Instead, he chose to be a teammate.
That decision — made in real-time, under maximum pressure, with a world championship on the line — is why Faker is the undisputed GOAT. Mechanics fade. Reaction time slows. But understanding that your teammate's mental state is something you can actually influence? That's timeless.
Next time your support is having a rough game, remember: Faker wouldn't ping them. Faker would find a way to get them back in it.
Whether you can actually pull that off in your own games... well, that's the difference between watching esports and living it.