League of Legends LCS: how each team can improve in the offseason

CLG Wiggily, PowerofEvil, and Stixxay. League of Legends. — League of Legends. Courtesy of Riot Games.

CLG

The move: drop Stixxay, acquire Sneaky/Deftly

This move definitely will not happen, considering that Trevor “Stixxay” Hayes just re-signed to stay with CLG. The team seems likely to lose PowerofEvil in the mid lane, meaning that their goal in the offseason will likely be to chase an import to replace PoE. This makes sense as to what CLG will do, but that’s not what they should do, or rather, should have done.

To me, it makes no sense for CLG to keep Stixxay around rather than looking to upgrade. He’s been with the team for three years and in that time has never shown the ability to be more than an average ADC. In Summer 2019, he ranked ahead of only Jason “WildTurtle” Tran in damage output and was a below-average laner.

Although Sneaky has underperformed in his most recent outings and Deftly is still a largely unknown, I feel that CLG should still make the aggressive move and try to upgrade at an important position.

Golden Guardians

The move: drop FBI/Olleh, acquire Patrik

I’m bending my rule slightly by allowing GGS to sign an import where there needs to be more than just a 1-for-1 swap to make it work, but the truth is that Golden Guardians really need to make a lot of changes to make their untenable situation in the bot lane work. I think most people would agree that their solo lanes are strong and even their jungler Contractz is at least serviceable.

However, the fact that they swapped out Deftly for Ian Victor “FBI” Huang, forcing themselves to bench Kim “Olleh” Joo-sung for Huhi created a disjointed set-up for the squad. I think they need to completely scrap the bot lane set-up they have now and start over.

As I’ve mentioned above, there is plenty of native NA talent that should be available at the support position so instead, I’d focus on using that import slot to acquire a good, young, ADC. GGS thought that they had that with FBI last year, but he was pretty bad in his performance. I’d put him in the Academy system to develop while adding another good import that you could easily shuffle back and forth.

With all the talk of ADCs entering and leaving the LEC this year, there’s a lot of uncertainty for a young, promising, yet unproven, player like Patrik “Patrik” Jírů. He was very good in the spring with Origen but underwhelming in the summer split and it’s possible that he will be broken up from support Mithy for reasons outside his control.

This creates a great opportunity for a team like GGS who have an opening on a team that isn’t going to ask a lot out of their bot lane other than to be stable. Pair him with someone like BIG and I think they could be at least decent.