League of Legends LCS: Grading the Moves from Free Agency Day 1

Cloud9 acquires Zven

As the game of musical ADCs continued last night, the consensus second-best LCS team added former TSM AD Jesper “Zven” Svenningsen to complete their bot lane.

Grade: A

Cloud9 bandies themselves as the team to take undervalued players and boost their stock and I don’t think there’s a player more undervalued in the LCS than Zven. In my mind, he was the clear number two bot laner in North America behind Doublelift until Cody Sun started to come on later in the year. Yet because of a few instances of poor mechanical misplays he’s gotten a reputation for being a choker and a large reason for TSM’s failures.

I disagree with that assessment fully and I think Zven is going to prove to be every bit the good AD that he was pre-TSM. With an upgrade in his support partner from Smoothie to Vulcan and now having an actual jungler, don’t be surprised to see Zven recover nicely from the Talent Suppression Machine.

Immortals acquire Xmithie

The last piece to fall into place in the LCS free agent frenzy came late in the night as Immortals made their first big splash move by adding former TL jungler Jake “Xmithie” Puchero.

Grade: A

Not much else to say for this. Xmithie is probably the best native NA jungler in history and, even though he’ll never be a player to be “the man” to lead and carry a team, he’s certainly been good enough for TL the last two years.

Immortals finds themselves in a pretty interesting position now that they have that jungle role locked up. They can afford to import in the mid lane if Crown is not returning, look to upgrade over Dhokla (which I would heavily advise) or import at the ADC role. Regardless, getting some stability in the jungle is a great move for what was a volatile team last year.