Man, a lot of roster changes were announced today for teams in the League of Legends competitive scene. I haven't been following it as closely as I have in the past, but I still try to tune in when I can. The North American LoL Championship Series just concluded its first split for this year only a week or so ago. Once again, Cloud 9 and Team Solo Mid came out on top in the #1 and #2 positions, with Counter Logic Gaming finishing in a strong third. CLG has showed immense improvement this year and for the first time in quite some time I can confidently call them a top-tier North American team. The rest of the competition is noticeably a step below.
Curse and Dignitas nabbed 4th and 5th positions respectively. To me, they make up the middle tier of teams in North America. Curse in particular has gone through a series of roster swaps in order to fix their underlying problems, always making sure to build around their star player Voyboy, who is one of the only veteran League of Legends players still playing competitively. He started his career as a top laner but for the past couple of splits he's been playing mid lane, with Quas assuming the top lane role. Although his mechanics and playmaking skills were initially quite hyped, Quas has not performed up to those expectations--which is not to say he isn't a perfectly solid laner. Voyboy is still experiencing issues adjusting to the mid lane role and it's hard to say whether or not he'll ever be competitive with the increasingly talented mid laners of North America like Bjergsen, Shiphtur, Hai, and Link.
Dignitas is no stranger to roster swaps either. Their underperforming toplaner Kiwikid was swapped to support, replacing Patoy who had recently stepped down. Cruzerthebruzer was brought on, but he too had very inconsistent results. Dignitas experimented with replacing mid laner Scarra with Goldenglue, who in my opinion performed quite well--but eventually they decided to reverse that change and have Scarra play for the team during the LCS playoffs. Throughout all of these roster changes, it has been AD carry player imaqtpie--whose clownish persona has spawned a whole sea of memes and regularly draws 20k viewers on his Twitch.tv stream--who has been the team's consistent core. Kiwikid, although not a stellar support player in his own right, possesses a great deal of synergy with imaqtpie as well.
During the LCS promotion tournament, Team Coast, and XDG were eliminated, stripping the players on those teams of their salaries and eligibility to appear in the next split of the LCS (which begins in three weeks). Rumors of those players' futures circulated wildly on reddit after the games were over. XDG's Benny retired from competitive play, while mandatorycloud expressed his desire to continue playing competitively in some capacity. The future of XDG's other players is uncertain. Team Coast's star mid laner Shiphtur was initially despondent after the devastating loss, remarking on his Twitter that he "didn't deserve to be in the LCS."
In the past few days (but especially today) a lot of news about roster changes has come to light. First of all, Team Solo Mid's The Odd One has stepped down from the jungle position in favor of Amazing, the European jungler formerly of Copenhagen Wolves. Highly regarded as mechanically skilled, his acquisition can only strengthen TSM, but it's sad to see such a veteran of the scene stepping down from competitive play. The status of support player Alex Chu (Xpecial) is also in doubt, as he was benched from the team several days ago. It is unknown whether or not he will remain on the team.
No roster changes are imminent for Cloud 9 that we know of (and for good reason--this is their second split in a row in which they secured first place) but mid laner Hai suffered a collapsed lung recently, prevented him from attending the All Stars game in Paris. Counter Logic Gaming's Link is attending in his place after an agreement between both teams.
CLG is experiencing a big roster change as well. Top laner Nien stepped down from the team of his own volition, citing negative pressure from the community and dissatisfaction with his own play. He felt it would be best for the team if they secured a stronger player for the position. Rumors indicate that coach MonteCristo has initiated a deal to bring Seraph to their gaming house to try out. Seraph is a little-known Korean player who once was a substitute for Najin White Shield. This is not the first time a Korean player has come to North America, but it is the first instance (of my knowledge) that a Korean player has been in consideration for a position on a team already guaranteed an LCS spot. It should be very interesting to see how that works out.
If all that weren't enough, then it was also revealed today that Dignitas would be replacing both Cruzerthebruzer and team founder Scarra with former Coast members ZionSpartan and Shiphtur. These two players have long been considered by far the best players on their team. However, Coast's issues laid not in any lack of mechanical skill, but poor shotcalling and game sense. It's difficult to say whether or not Dignitas will be any better in this regard, but I'm extremely interested to see what comes of it.
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