Blog of Legends
Fansided

League of Legends LCS: Grading the 2020 team rosters

By Josh Tyler

Los Angeles, USA - July 21: --- during the 2019 League of Legends Championship Series Week 7 at the LCS Arena on July 21, 2019 in Los Angeles, California, USA. (Photo by Paul de Leon/Riot Games)
Los Angeles, USA - July 21: --- during the 2019 League of Legends Championship Series Week 7 at the LCS Arena on July 21, 2019 in Los Angeles, California, USA. (Photo by Paul de Leon/Riot Games) /
facebooktwitterreddit
Prev
2 of 6
Next
C9 Svenskeren and C9 Nisqy. League of Legends.
League of Legends. Courtesy of Riot Games. /

Cloud9

Top: Eric “Licorice” Ritchie
Jungle: Robert “Blaber” Huang
Mid: Yasin “Nisqy” Dinçer
ADC: Jasper “Zven” Svenningsen
Support: Philippe “Vulcan” Laflamme
Coach: Bok “Reapered” Han-gyu

One of the flagship League of Legends teams in North America, Cloud9 elected to go the “blow-it-all-up” route following a fairly successful 2019. Only Licorice and Nisqy return to the starting line-up, with Blaber finally getting the full-time starting job. C9 also did their typical thing of acquiring pieces in Zven and Vulcan that they believe were undervalued by their past team.

I happen to agree with their assessment, at least partially, as I rated Zven as a top-three ADC in both spring and summer. Blaber has also shown himself to be a strong jungler in his limited appearance, Licorice is the best native top laner in the LCS, and Nisqy is criminally underrated given his performance last year. While I’m not as high on Vulcan as many are, I think that he’ll definitely do well playing alongside Zven, just as he did when paired with Cody Sun. All of these pieces as a part of the best League of Legends org in NA, have a great chance to succeed.

Grade: A

Counter Logic Gaming

Top: Kim “Ruin” Hyeong-min
Jungle: Raymond “Wiggly” Griffin
Mid: Lee “Crown” Min-ho
ADC: Trevor “Stixxay” Hayes
Support: Andy “Smoothie” Ta
Coach: Weldon Green

CLG was a team on the cusp of making Worlds in 2019, playing like a top-three team during the Summer Split before cooling off during the playoffs and gauntlet. They entered the offseason with a solid foundation and a chance to make some big improvements to become competitive next year.

There were really only two major changes that the roster, in the mid lane and support roles and I think they missed the mark with those changes. Don’t get me wrong, I think Crown is a better player than PowerofEvil was for CLG last year and he’ll prove to be an upgrade, but I don’t think it will outweigh the downgrade that they made in the bot lane.

In my opinion, trading Biofrost for Smoothie was a massive mistake for CLG. Not only did they lose that strong support presence they also lost a player who really covered a lot of Stixxay’s deficiencies throughout the year. These two together are potentially a bottom-three duo for the bot late and that could be enough to sink a team that is otherwise solid.

Grade: C+

Home/Editorials