It’s almost time for the League of Legends Championship Series to start, and there couldn’t be more hype. North America had a crazy spring split, with the nearly undefeated Immortals losing in the playoffs to TSM, who then went on to lose to CLG. This weekend, 10 of the best teams in NA will start pummeling each other into the bottom of the Rift in a new best-of-three format.
Riot just announced all the official rosters on their website , subs included. Some teams, like Immortals and Echo Fox kept the exact same rosters, while others, like NRG, changed nearly everyone. Here’s what you have to know about all the new players on each team.
APEX: Brand New Roster
Apex won the 2016 LCS promotion tournament, earning them a spot in this year’s NA LCS. Their roster is star-studded, filled with some of the best players from around the world. Their top laner Cris is a Challenger Series veteran, failing last year to get into the LCS with Coast. This time around, he made it. He also subbed for NRG last split.
Shrimp, Keane, Apollo and Xpecial are all on Apex’s main roster. Xpecial has played for TSM and Team Liquid and,Keane played for Gravity Gaming but failed to secure an LCS spot last split. This time around, with help from ex-Dignitas ADC Apollo and NRG”s old jungle sub Shrimp, the man in the Gunnars has finally made it back, ready to prove himself as the best support in the LCS.
Even all of their stars are League of Legends All-Stars. The biggest name has to be Diamondprox, one of the best Junglers EU has ever seen. After spending a full year on Unicorns of Love, with mixed results, he decided that moving to NA was his best option. Other notable subs include Shiphtur from Dignitas and Konkwon from NRG. These guys are all misfits from other teams, trying to prove that they belong in the LCS once again. Keep an eye out on Apex, they won’t disappoint
CLOUD 9: Meteos returns, New Top Laner
Cloud 9 is one of the most important teams playing League of Legends . They dominated the scene when they first arrived in season two, but struggled last season after Hai and Lemonnation stepped down. Meteos even stepped down in the middle of the season, forcing Hai to move to the jungle. Eventually they would pick up career veteran Rush, and Hai would move to support.
This season, Hai is a sub and Meteos is back. Balls, C9’s impressive top laner has also moved to the sub position to be replaced by Impact. Former World Champion on SKT in season three, Impact has struggled to find a team that fits him. He’s jumped around from Team Impulse to NRG, never really securing any success in North America. His aggressive style always had a hard time meshing with his teammates. Hopefully on C9 Impact will finally shine and show us why he’s a world champion.
TEAM LIQUID: New Jungler
The team that’s destined to be forever fourth place, Team Liquid, has had a bit of a difficult off-season. Dardoch, who has shown great promise as a jungler, was benched for “insubordinate behavior.” They had to pull a jungler out of thin air, and ended up with Moon, NRG’s former jungler. Moon has struggled on the LCS stage, making poor plays that his team always failed to recover from.
Though, he did manage to steal a Baron last split from Team Liquid which was pretty amazing.
,
TEAM SOLOMID: New Support
TSM is the most prolific eSports team. Their pantheon of past players includes some of the best people to ever play on the LCS stage. At the end of season five, Dyrus, WildTurtle and Lustboy all left the team and TSM was forced to build from the ground up. Reginald drafted the best / most expensive players into a team that he was sure would show results. They struggled throughout the split, losing some games incredibly badly. At the playoffs, they redeemed themselves by beating out the mostly undefeated Immortals.
Reginald said TSM was always known for picking up smaller talent and fostering it until it’s developed. Biofrost is a relatively unknown name, playing on smaller Challenger Series teams like Astral Authority. After watching him on solo queue, Reginald decided that he would be a good fit for TSM. Hopefully, he can stand up to the pressures of an LCS stage and bring TSM to a first place finish.
Stay tuned for part two, where I go over NRG, and newcomers Pheonix1 and Team Envy.
