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LCS and Challenger off-season changes thus far

Alex is the name··14 votes·4,069 views

LCS

Dignitas

  • Head coach Rico steps down assumed former head coach of Dignitas EU BrokenShard will become permanent head coach of the Dignitas NA team.

Team Liquid

  • Xpecial steps down as starting support Smoothie of former Team Dragon Knights joins as starting support
  • Peter Zhang steps down as Team Liquid's head coach

Team 8 now Immortals

  • Current Roster

PorpoisePops Jg GoldenGlue Mid Nien Adc

Dodo8 moves from support to team manager and CalliTrollz steps down from top

Team Solo Mid

  • Dyrus, Santorin, Lust boy all stepping down from their stating roles, TSM is holding tryouts for Top, Jg, and Support. The team will now have two open foreign roster spots to fill if they so desire.

  • As of 10/16/15 TSM head coach Locodoco via twitter announces he will step down as head coach but will still be staying with the team. TSM has added a search for a new head coach and other coaches to the formation of their new team.

Gambit Gaming

  • Forg1ven moved from starting roster to sub and open discussions for his transfer to a new team, no indication if the team will be sticking with P1noy or looking for a new starting adc.

Natus Vincere

  • Well know eSports organisation have announced their entry into competitive LoL and may look to purchase the newly promoted EU LCS Dignitas EU as the Dignitas organisation now has a team in both EU and NA LCS and will have to sell one.

**Renegades **

  • Maplestreet announces his stepping down from starting adc role on the team but hopes to find a new team to play for. Renegades to hold open tryouts for adc role and have stated they will have a "worldwide" search for their new adc, with only Alex Ich as the teams foreign player RNG could look to other regions for a new adc.

Unicorns of Love

  • Held tryouts for adc role in November no news on roster change or Vardags leaving the team.

Challenger

Team Dragon Knights now Team Arena Online

  • Current Roster

Seraph Top Kez Jg Ninja Mid

Emperor may return as adc but Smoothie has left as starting support to replace Xpecial on Team Liquid. If Emperor does return to play adc the team will need to find a North American support player as both Ninja and Emperor would take up the teams two foreign roster spots.

Cloud 9 Challenger team (no name as of yet)

  • Current Roster

Meteos Jg KEITHMCBRIEF adc

C9 has announced they will be sporting an NA challenger team with Meteos as captain of the team and a recently signed (10/19/15) KEITHMCBRIEF at adc.

Enemy Esports now partnered with Fusion renamed to just Enemy

  • No roster changes as of yet Young Buck former Copenhagen Wolves top laner is the new head coach for the team and it seems the team will be making a go at 2016 NA challenger tournament.

Copenhagen Wolves

  • je suis kaas and Lenny both leave the team

-Current Roster

Soren Mid Freeze Adc

unknown yet if the team will try for 2016 EU challenger series or disband (my guess is disband)

Reason Gaming

EU challenger team disbands after failing to qualify for LCS

Possible Roster Changes (my speculation only)

TSM

  • TSM may look to re-acquire Gleeb at support role or possibly Sheep from Cloud 9 Tempest and have both top and jg positions open to foreign players. Could also possibly look at Meteos from Cloud 9 to play at jungle though C9 is building a challenger team around Meteos but he has said he would be interested in joining a new LCS team.

RNG

  • May look to pick up former Complexity adc RobertxLee who has said on stream he would consider coming back to competitive play on either a decent LCS team or promising challenger team or Forg1ven or Freeze from EU since they showed a heavy adc focus gameplay during the challenger series tournament.

Team Arena Online

  • If Emperor does rejoin as the teams adc it would give them four Korean speaking members (with seraph and kez knowing English) the team may look to pick up Gleeb at support who has LCS experience and has played with a Korean speaking team during his short time on Winter Fox.

Unicorns Of Love

  • May look at acquiring Forg1ven from Gambit Gaming to fill starting adc role in place of Vardags, or possibly Jebus or Freeze.

That's all, feel free to tell me anything I may have left out or your own thoughts on possible off-season roster changes.

30 Comments

Linthe4 votes

Excellent recap. Thanks for posting.

TSM is in a world of hurt.

Mech0p3 votes

Why did maplestreet step down from RNG??? He was a huge reason that they made it to the LCS and if not for him we may have seen another team on the stage

Croanin2 votes

{quoted}

Why did maplestreet step down from RNG??? He was a huge reason that they made it to the LCS and if not for him we may have seen another team on the stage

I'm baffled about this as well. The guy might be the best ADC in NA and he actually seems to be on a team that isn't total garbage. What's the joke?

Mech0p1 votes

Well I found the reason here it is if you want to check it out https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/3nuxpt/maplestreet_stepping_down_from_renegades/cvrft5b

Mech0p1 votes

I found the reason... Here it is If you wanna check it out https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/3nuxpt/maplestreet_stepping_down_from_renegades/cvrft5b

Linthe1 votes

{quoted}

Why did maplestreet step down from RNG??? He was a huge reason that they made it to the LCS and if not for him we may have seen another team on the stage

He posted a sort of vague explanation on reddit. It sounded like (strategic?) differences in the direction the team was heading and more that he was alone in being on the other side of the differences.

Ale non è male1 votes

It was more like Monte had yet in mind to go after one of the top tier ADC that were likely going to be available from EU given how Forg1ven and Frreze situations evolved, and he would have stayed there if there was no better option for RNG, I guess maple didn't want to burn bridges

Linthe2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Ale non è male,realm=EUW,application-id=9hBQwnEU,discussion-id=2gtfY3WE,comment-id=000400010000,timestamp=2015-10-20T14:40:04.152+0000)

It was more like Monte had yet in mind to go after one of the top tier ADC that were likely going to be available from EU given how Forg1ven and Frreze situations evolved, and he would have stayed there if there was no better option for RNG, I guess maple didn't want to burn bridges

If they think ADC was a bigger concern than say... TOP LANE... then I really dont know what to tell them.

Edit: I hadn't actually realized Monte was an owner.. Thanks for pointing that out. :)

Ale non è male1 votes

Well, RF doesn't represent't a concern in NA top laner environment ;D

Earl Eulrich1 votes

depends wether their goal is to just do somewhat fine in the NALCS or if they aspire to follow OGs path...

Ale non è male1 votes

Uhm, there has been a lot of criticism on NA scene about how they don't bring up their own new up and coming talent instead of washed up low LCS/high CS players, so I don't get why we should downplay them when they are actually bringin up young talent Before getting to RNG, RF had never played on a team that had serious chances to get to LCS, and since he joined Renegades they have so far not missed a beat We don't know yet what his potential really is, so we should wait and see what he'll become

I'd be more worried about Crumbzz when looking for global competitiveness of RNG, the guy has been a pro in LCS for ages and he has never been world class level (unlike Alex Ich that was a top mid laner back in M5/Gambit time, even though it has been long time ago)

Earl Eulrich1 votes

well, RF had a really sloppy challenger season with a rather limited Champion-pool. Not saying he can´t improve, but he has to step up huge if they want to make an impact.

Ale non è male1 votes

Still, it wasn't clearly THAT bad We have seen quite a lot of former pro players creating Challenger teams both in NA and EU to get back in LCS like Alez Ich did that failed in their intent because of not good enough teammates to back-up their play (es. Steelback Challenger team that had a pair of players really bad) Renegades making the cut quite easily on CS series means that not only that their "stars" (Alex and Crumbzz) still belong to pro league level of competition, but also their newbie mates like RF or Remilla are good enough to not lose vs these CS gatekeepers despite being on their first split of serious competition...not saying they'll surely going to have rookie performances comparable to Niels in the future, but I think we'll have to give them time to see if/how much they improve and what level they can reach

Tbh I would have been curious to see also how maple that has relatively few LCS playing time under his belt could have performed on LCS to eventually keep an international spot open to make further moves if necessary for their org

Alex is the name1 votes

Maple has been in the LCS twice now on Velocity and Team 8 and both times he under performed to the point that he was replaced by Nien of all people on Team 8. When Jebus didn't work out for RNG maplestreet was the easiest solution at the time but I don't think he was ever going to be permanent despite his good showing during the Challenger Series playoffs.

Ale non è male2 votes

Velocity was really bad though, and even if he was the best player of that roster he couldn't really learn much by being roflstomped game by game, and T8 did better in spring than in summer and wasn't really good either

Also, these between these two stints a lot of times passed... I think maple still hasn't had the possibility to settle on an org with decent ambitions for a pair of consecutive splits and show if he worth or not to the big stage.

Linthe1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Slim Shaddies,realm=NA,application-id=9hBQwnEU,discussion-id=2gtfY3WE,comment-id=0004000100000000000000000000000000000000,timestamp=2015-10-21T18:53:21.845+0000)

Maple has been in the LCS twice now on Velocity and Team 8 and both times he under performed to the point that he was replaced by Nien of all people on Team 8. When Jebus didn't work out for RNG maplestreet was the easiest solution at the time but I don't think he was ever going to be permanent despite his good showing during the Challenger Series playoffs.

The problem is that you have to replace him with SOMEONE. He has proved at least that he is an "LCS level player".

I am no way convinced that RF is. Time will tell, of course.

Ale non è male2 votes

Cloud9 Challenger

  • Keith officially joins the new Challenger team captained by Meteos

No official news yet about what C9 will do with the players of their previous Challenger team, namely C9 Tempest

P.S. CW is a pretty big esports organization, and they previously had a Challanger team in EU, they are likely going to play in 2016 EU CS

Alex is the name1 votes

Thanks, Meteos said a roster update was comeing soon though I'm surprised they went with Keith over LOD tbh, if Flaresz has shown us anything its that being rank 1 challenger soloq doesn't mean you will perform in the LCS.

As for CW their current roster is basically nothing, they have an under performing mid in Soren and a good adc in Freeze but that's it. On top of that its not like Europe is brimming with talent atm either, most EU LCS teams have struggled a lot to find players to fill roles and perform well like Elements with replacing Wicked. Heck before their relegation CW tried to bring in two rookies who performed terribly and were then released, it is of course possible for CW to put a roster together for the challenger series but I have a hard time believing that Freeze will stay on the team considering there are probably LCS teams looking to pick him up.

Ale non è male2 votes

I guess LOD could still stay and switch back to mid lane, no? After all, he has played both as ADC and mid laner before joining C9 Tempest I guess we have not had news yet because C9 main team still has to decide how to replace likely 3 of their players (Lemmon, Hai and probably Balls), and so has to decide if it is worth to keep alive two Challenger teams (both actual Tempest and the new Meteos one), or if they are going to use some of their C9 tempest players either for main team or challenger one and so disband it

If they decide, for example, that could be worth to give a chance to Solo as top laner or Hard as placeholder jungler before a Meteos return for C9 main team, they could likely recycle LOD in the new main team and thus disband Tempest as it would not have sense anymore to rebuild a team around 1 guy + Sheepy

P.S. Fun note, 3 of 5 guys that were on the "minor" Cloud9 Europe Challanger team in 2014, went to 2015 World (Odoamne, Febiven, Hjarnan)

Slappybiscuit1 votes

Well its good to see C9 absent from this list and Lemonnation and Hai staying on the team and not retiring. They had me going for a bit.

Any word on Slooshi8?

Alex is the name1 votes

It looks like Immortals will be sticking with GoldenGlue so I assume they wont be resigning Slooshi8 unless its as a sub.

As for C9 they only recently finished playing at worlds so there is plenty of time still for retirements or roster changes to be announced.

Kal Vas Flam1 votes

Appreciate you making this list. I am not a die hard esports fan, which makes lists like this sooo much easier for me to keep track of things.

YCitizenSnipsY1 votes

What about C9, last I heard both LemonNation and Hai are stepping down. That's pretty big since they will now be down 3 of their original players.

Alex is the name1 votes

No official announcement has been made about LemonNation or Hai leaving C9 as of yet.

OttoVBismarck1 votes

You mentioned that TSM had 2 foreign roster slots open, which is incorrect. Moving into S6, Bjerg is still not naturalized, so there's 1 remaining slot. Lustboy was grandfathered in from when the rule was instituted.

I'm not super on top of Renegades' ADC situation. Maple's gone, but do we know what's going on with freeze? (etc.)

TSM has their work cut out for them. They're going to have a rough time at IEM san jose regardless, but do you guys think they'll be able to put together a permanent roster for it, or do they just fill with subs, Bjerg and Turtle? (context: TSM is playing at IEM san jose in 30 days, and there's only two players on their team.)

Anyway, good collection of info. If this board did sticky's, this would be a good candidate. +1

Ale non è male3 votes

Nope, Bjergsen was yet playing on NA team before the resident rule got enforced, so he was grandfathered when they eliminated the ENR transition category before summer split - and he as former ENR in theory has eventually the choice to change his resident status before S6, but he won't do it - And by the way, even if he wasn't grandfathered - and that's incorrect - he has played for 2 streight years on a NA team, so in any case he could have become resident now and opened up a foreign roster spot for S6

OttoVBismarck1 votes

You're absoloutly correct. I made the mistake of parroting something I read. Thank you and +1

Alex is the name1 votes

was going to correct you on Bjerg but Ale non E Male beat me to it lol. As for IEM San Jose it really doesn't matter if TSM gets their full new roster for the event, its very likely they will use sub for the event (possibly even NA players who's teams aren't going to the event) the whole point of the event is just to be something to fill the in time over the long off season so TSM really has no reason to try and rush together a permanent roster just for an event that basically means nothing and even if TSM does get their full roster in time for the even its not as if the new team would have high expectations to perform and win the event anyway.

Also thank you for the compliment.

Alex is the name1 votes

EDIT: TSM Locodoco Head coach steps down as of twitter announcement on 10/16/15 but says he will still be staying with the team.

The Lexer1 votes

Thanks for the post!

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