So C9 announced their full roster now officially. In the top lane is impact with Ray as their sub (those two will play for the role). In the jungle Contractz is the new guy replacing Meteos. If you followed C9C you will know him. Meanwhile the rest of the roster is unchanged with the Sneaky, Jensen, and Smoothie trio. So I wanna hear from all my C9 fans and other esports enthusiasts about what you think about this roster.
Not really a C9 fan, but I can probably elaborate as to what is going on.
Looking at the rest of NA, big changes have happened pretty much everywhere barring CLG (who is one of those teams that I think may regret it later). Teams have invested heavily in korean/EU imports (both if you count ryu) and thus team synergy is going to be rather interesting. Instead of copying what most of the region has done, C9 instead decided to promote from within and nab contractz off their sister team before selling the spot/other 4 "unneeded" contracts (balls/hai/altec/lemon) for $2.5 million, essentally keeping the useful bits while also making $2m for a half split of work. While some people (mostly fans of meteos) may heavily criticize the move, what C9 did was complete and utter brilliance and is probably the purest example of how these "sister teams" in challenger should work for the LCS teams. Much like MLB/NHL, C9 used the minor leagues to try out a potential roster move. Instead of putting contractz onto the team immediately, they instead chose to pair him with 3 veteran c9 players familiar with the system (plus altec) to gauge his strength. If it worked, they could add him to the roster with no real "risk" to the main team, if it failed then they could move on from it and not be any worse off.
Ultimately, C9 adding contractz benefits everyone and noone simultaneously. While it means that NA is going to get tougher (as contractz is not only better right now as a player than meteos but has more potential), it also shows how valuable challenger spots can be to bigger teams. Instead of risking their own LCS spot to try out new players, teams can just send them to challenger where the risk there is very minimal.
Not really surprised about Meteos stepping down, last split and worlds kinda showed that he isn't the Season 3 12.7 KDA god that he used to be. Ray actually surprised me, I didn't think they'd make Impact fight for his spot after his playoff performance and especially when he has mentioned that the reason he left SKT was because he didn't want to split time with Marin.
A little bit sad that Meteos is a sub but looking at the team overall all it's makes sense. It's similar to how TL did things with Dom and Dardoch but instead of just a 1 last game from Dom and just leaving high and dry and giving the reigns to Dardoch to just learn on his own for Cloud 9 they WILL have a top NA player of all time in Meteos helping a player and really showing him the ropes in the LCS.
For the Impact/Ray topic. Ray plays very aggressive but he plays for the team but mostly builds damage items and really be a hard top laner to shutdown if ahead similar to Impact not skill wise but just raw ability. It makes sense because if Impact is having a bad 1-2 games or series etc they can switch to Ray and the play styles are very similar so the whole team doesn't need to change a lot in the switch not to mention we really don't know how long some of these Korean players are going to stay in NA so having a roster that can switch a drop of a dime is really smart.
