Off of the Rift

Are we on Cloud 9 yet?

The first thing we have to look at is one of the most shocking off-season moves. The departure of Zachary “Sneaky” Scuderi on the starting roster.

Easily C9’s most popular player and biggest branding asset has been put on the back burner for C9’s new adc Jesper “Zven” Svenningsen who has previously played for European teams such as; Origen and G2, as well as TSM in North America. Alongside the longtime ADC leaving Cloud 9 also let Evil Geniuses, who recently acquired an LCS spot, Dennis “Svenskeren” Johnsen last split’s MVP go in a buyout. Former support Tristan “Zeyzal” Stidam, Academy mid Greyson “Goldenglue” Glimer, and Academy top Colin “Kumo” Zhao all left C9 this off-season.

Looking at their returning players they have North American top Eric “Licorice” Ritchie, who joined C9 at the beginning of the 2018 season and now is highly considered the best NA top laner. He is joined next to Robert “Blaber” Huang who spent most of his time playing in academy last season with a few games moving up to the LCS stage instead of Svenskeren. Finally, their import mid laner Yasin “Nisqy” Dinçer will return after a good year on C9.

The top side of the map are all returning player who should already have established coordination to start the spring split. Blaber will bring aggressive play style to match Nisqy’s wide champion pool to push the early game advantage into Cloud 9’s favor. However, the real question marks on this team is their new bot lane. Along with Zven, Cloud 9 has acquired Philippe “Vulcan” Laflamme as their starting support.

Zven arguably had a worse year than former ADC Sneaky and hasn’t looked at his best form since coming to NA for the 2018 season. C9 hopes that they can turn some TSM misfortune into treasure, as they did in the past with Svenskeren. Vulcan just came off his rookie split, and all things considered he looked calm and collected throughout the back end of the season. Although, Vulcan and Clutch Gaming/Dignitas went 0-6 at Worlds they were in the hardest group and no one excepted them to make it out. The experience alone should help Vulcan improve for this upcoming season.

I do have a couple of concerns for this roster for the upcoming split based on what we are seeing on the current Preseason patch. Bot lane is very important to get dragon control, which in all honesty, dragon soul’s almost always win you the game. C9 got a new bot lane, where they have no synergy or coordination as of right now. Zven has only looked unstoppable when he played with Mithy in EU. Can he bring back his former All-LCS team talent? Or will it be another year of playing Ezreal but now with no Kleptomancy.

Prediction: 11 W – 7 L Regular Season

This roster should make playoffs without a doubt, but what seed will they get? I could see them sweeping the bottom tier teams, and there are some bad rosters this upcoming split. Will they consistently beat the top teams? That’s what I am unsure about. Even the casters at Worlds said when Blaber played that if C9 didn’t have a huge lead at 15 minutes, then its a loss. He will have more time to improve his mid to late game as the sole starting jungler. All we can do it wait and see if these roster moves can help them win another LCS title after 5 long years of many 2nd place finishes and disappointment domestically.

The Dynasty- Team Liquid

The returning League Championship Series Champs look to retain their status of titans in NA while adding import Jungler Mads “Broxah” Brock-Pedersen. Broxah previously played on Fnatic to replace veteran Jake “Xmithie” Puchero who played on Team Liquid for the last 4 splits. After winning 4 LCS titles in a row, now trying Team Solo Mid’s record, can they keep the regional dominance up?

While I think that mechanically Broxah is an upgrade over Xmithie, Team Liquid might not be that much better overall. This team is jam-packed with talent including; best domestic ADC in Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng and two previous World Champions in Jung “Impact” Eon-yeong and Jo “CoreJJ” Yong-in. Xmithie was a perfect fit as a low resource, high impact jungler who knew how to play the map at any stage of the game.

My first thoughts are why change a winning formula? Over 4 splits in 2018 and 2019, Team Liquid went 51 W – 21 L. This includes 4 LCS Titles, 2 Worlds Appearances, and became a MSI Finalist. But with two disappointing Worlds in a row. It makes sense to change it up.

Team Liquid is still the best in the LCS and shouldn’t have any problem ending top of the standings next split. There will be things that Xmithie did that will be missed, but with the veteran status and overall skill of these players the slack can be picked up.

You know what is exciting? Broxah’s faster pace aggressive style of jungling. Favoring champions such as Lee Sin, Elise and Gragas who can have an impact early on in the game to gain an advantage for the rest of his team. With the new Preseason changes so far implemented in the game it should favor playing towards mid and bot with the importance of gathering dragons early.

While this roster shouldn’t have any problem competing in NA the hope is that they can make a wave at international events after a disappointing Worlds Performance once again. Broxah was highly regarded as one of the best junglers in EU next to Jankos and now will have a new team to prove himself on after some rumors of conflict from the players on Fnatic at the back end of the season. They can easily raise two trophies this year, but can they be the ones to lift the Summoner’s Cup?

Prediction: 13 W – 5 L Regular Season

Team Liquid will still end 1^st place in the regular season of Spring Split having only one roster change and the undisputed best roster. Broxah should be able to enable his laners to play a more aggressive early game style that we are seeing on the Preseason patch. With a heavy importance on Dragons early in the game, we might see a classic camp Doublelift’s lane and let him carry strategy while Impact plays weak-side and somehow still gets a “top die.”

What is Off of the Rift?

Hello everyone, my name is Carson Reinhart and I am just your average League of Legends Fan.

I have been watching and playing LoL since Season 3 and for how many hours I have put into League I felt it was necessary that I started to do something with it. I find myself loving the more analytical or macro part of professional play. I was Diamond 2 this past season and play in high diamond amateur leagues trying to improve those skills. I recently graduated from college with a degree in Digital Communication Arts and a minor in Writing, which is why I am doing this.

What will my posts include?

My thoughts on the LCS, roster moves, play, etc.
Might expand to LEC as well
Something where people can comment and have healthy discussion on Pro League

I am just doing this as a hobby as of right now, but would love to turn that into more content on here or for another website or something similar.

Hope you enjoy!