?Introduction
As a whole, North America has grown quite strong as a scene. Everyone had their doubts at the start of the LCS , but the region has evolved to a point of consistently close games, standings, and overall a reduction of mistakes. As a disclaimer, there's many important factors outside of a team's performance for the duration of a split that can influence their decisions and what team a player may decide to pledge his loyalty to.
Personal relationship with teammates, the stress levels of an environment, the practice regime, and many other factors could cause conflicts and disrupt a player's interest to play on a team. With that said, let's take a look at some of the questionable long-term swaps in the eyes of the public.
The Players
??Obviously Aphromoo is set apart by no longer being an LCS player. Many of his vlogs would point to him becoming absolutely bored with the support role as a prime catalyst for his decision to retire as a professional player. In his vlogs, he's shown a massive loss of interest in playing simply through supporting, even though as a previous healer in competitive World of Warcraft, he was lead to believe it was the role he felt he should fill and would enjoy the most.
Despite CLG's lack of expected performance in the spring split, Aphromoo was still in the most successful professional gaming position of his life even after having been a part of several teams. However, the team he left to garner this "mediocre" success is going strong without him and may be in the most prime shape they'll ever be in. So what would have happened if Aphromoo didn't make the shift to CLG?
First, let's preface this with the fact that Aphromoo has certainly "fallen off" as being viewed as a top 3 AD Carry of North America. In his prime, Aphromoo could give any bottom lane a run for their money, though if his stream is any indication, perhaps supporting for so long has diminished his ability as an AD carry currently. However, if he kept training, would Vulcun still be in the comfortable 3rd place spring split finish and 2nd place current position they hold in the summer split? I'm inclined to believe so.
Despite the fact that his old synergy with Muffinqt would not compliment his AD Carry abilities, Bloodwater has shown more than adequate skill with the support role to adapt and meld with Aphromoo. The one question is, however, how flexible is Zuna? We don't know, really. His top lane was okay, but nothing to write home about from what we saw in prior online events such as the TSM invitational, and AD Carry has always been his role of choice.
Adding onto that, Sycho Sid is an incredible top laner, possibly one of the most underrated ones in North America as well. Would Aphromoo still being on the team allow them to keep the current performance they've shown and then some? Probably. Zuna would have inevitably grown as a top laner at some point and Aphromoo would have been consistently improving after having already been one of the best carries in the world. Bloodwater is an incredibly flexible player capable of dimishing his carry's mistakes and helping compliment Aphromoo's aggressive nature. Who knows, maybe Cloud 9 and Vulcun would have comparable scores right now.
?No doubt Curse Gaming has been steadily rising as a competitor and trying to gain back their former glory they once attained with a remarkable performance early on in the spring split. The team is finally clicking and Cop is now adapting to a more active role on the team instead of the more middle-man or "engage, back, and cleanup" playstyle of Sneaky or Team Solomid's ex. AD carry player, Chaox.
Though we know it wasn't simply because Curse was a favorable choice or because Edward's skill was inadequate for his seat on Gambit Gaming, it's interesting to note that Gambit Gaming lost arguably the strongest support outside of Korea while Curse filled the spot with what might not have been the problem in the first place. It's a bit of a controversial topic and perhaps the evidence is anecdotal at best, but Curse was seemingly strongest with Elementz still on the team.
Was Curse a strong and stable choice to choose as a team to switch to? Sure, but would he have been better on Gambit Gaming, strictly speaking for the sake of performance? I think this is a definite yes. While Gambit Gaming occassionally suffers from off weeks (and usually when they are experimenting and building up strategy for the future), they never really fall deep into a slump even though they practice only 3 days a week and don't live in a gaming house.
Though we don't know exactly what caused Edward to leave the team, we do know that he had an issue with Genja and seems fairly loyal to Cop now, as well as accelerating his English very quickly. However, he did leave the team due to disputes with Gambit Gaming and now resides in one of the most drama filled teams in North America; a team notorious for arguing on stream (though it's been awhile) and getting into fights in fact. Though things have most likely improved, Gambit Gaming were together as the same roster for an incredibly long time. Would it really have been so hard for them to work things out?
We won't know, but what we do know is that Gambit Gaming are still performing phenomenally well even with a brand new support. I can only imagine that they would be even more powerful if Edward worked things out with his former comrades and continued heralding Russia with his previous team. Right now, it seems Fnatic and Evil Geniuses are the krytponite to the Russians and perhaps one more experienced, knowledgeable player would have shifted things in their favor.
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?Even before this guy was on Cloud 9, WildTurtle was the go-to substitute guy due to his flexibile nature and skillful handling of both the middle and the bottom lane. While Team Solomid is by no means doing bad and even placed 1st in the spring split, WildTurtle hopped from Cloud 9 to Team Solomid while TSM's fans hoppped the opposite direction.
Though WildTurtle has shown through his subbing on Legion, CLG Black, and Team Solomid (before it was made official) that he is a jack of all trades, he in no way showed that it limited his expertise at any of those roles and made memorable plays nearly each and every time. Lemonnation had once stated that he believes Sneaky is better than Doublelift because he can do more with less, but the community's never really seen him pull out anything flashy.
Just this last weekend, he did win MvP for fulfilling his role and pulling off some excellent engages with Ashe, but could you imagine Cloud 9 with additional aggression with WildTurtle as AD carry? Perhaps there's not enough gold on the map to distribute evenly for another character to play the "carry" role, which is why they provide an opportunity for the ranged damage dealer to be more utility driven. But as we said before, WildTurtle has proven to be one hell of a mid player as well.
We can only theorize if he might have filled the shoes of Sneaky better than Sneaky himself, but apparently it's been working pretty well for Cloud 9. Still, it's not like we've seen highlight reels for Sneaky yet and maybe the extra "oomph" added by WildTurtle would make the team undefeated as opposed to 18-2.
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?Nientonsoh is an interesting case as he's been improving at an incredible pace in a role completely unfamiliar to him. We saw at MLG how he completely dominated in CLG's game against TSM and put on perhaps the greatest spectacle in MLG's LoL history. It's been said on many popular streams that Nientonsoh has been stuck in many less than ideal situations and teams considering his enormous individual talent.
Nientonsoh was the first player to achieve over 1,000 league points sitting in the top spot of challenger and has continued to impress regardless of his team's performance. When Nien came in for team MRN, he showed impeccable Tristana play and has also shown he can play multiple roles on the highest level of North American LoL play. Is Nientonsoh stuck in the same rut again with a team dragging him down?
Not necessarily -- he's learning a new role and therefore has comparable performance to his team this time around. Still, his luck isn't all that good when you consider that he dropped from Cloud 9 to begin his LCS endeavors. In fact, most teams seem to end up on teams worse in the standings in a rush to switch from wherever they are to a secure LCS position. We can't really blame them as it seems to be the most logical move.
However, it's important to note that Nientonsoh actually played mid lane for Cloud 9 instead of AD, even when he was praised for being a top 4 AD carry in North America. While I don't think he could fill the shoes of Hai, it's amusing to theorize a Cloud 9 with both WildTurtle and Nientonsoh among them. At the very least, the hype for the team would be even more tremendous than the fanbase they've acquired since the start of the summer split.
Even if both WildTurtle and Nientonsoh were not simultaneously on the starting lineup, there's substitute spots for that very reason. After all, that's how Nientonsoh started on MRN even when he was more than strong enough to be on the starting lineup. The main point is that this "amateur team" rose to stardom and is now echelons above the other teams, so it's a shame for any player who decides to take any other course of action. Like they say though, hindsight is 20/20.
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Final Thoughts
It's easy to look far back and decide what's best for each individual player from our chairs at homes or even predict it when not under the pressure of contracts and the professional responsibilities endowed on most modern eSports squads. While we won't ever know why decisions were made by each player on each team on the personal level, it can be fun to theorize what would have happened if some of these players would have stayed on their more successful counterpart.
Let's keep in mind that what we often may theorize is best for a team and criticize them for being too stupid to take the actions we suggest, it is often beyond the realm of our knowledge because we simply don't know of things such as relationships, understanding the real issues internally, knowing contracts, and understand the players on an individual level.
With that said, no individual is perfect and it'd be foolish to think that at least some actions were mistakes, even if they know better than ourselves. Being on an LCS team or being heralded as a professional gamer for people to look up to is a privilege either way. Competitive gamers and their respective coaches and analyst generally know what's best for each team, but it's easy when under the immense pressure of LCS to simply make the wrong choices. Maybe things would have been different if everyone stayed on their teams of origin before making the switch, but there's no surefire way to tell.
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