Analysis and Opinion

LCS 2022 Power Rankings and Offseason Report Cards

Preamble? WHO NEEDS IT?!

In case you’re curious, here are my preseason rankings from pre-2021, and here’s how I ranked the teams going into summer 2021.

But the past is in the past. Scroll down, or cheat using the Quick Access links, to learn what I think of the 10 LCS teams heading into the 2022 season!

Quick Access

Definitions and Methods
Rank 10
Rank 9
Rank 8
Rank 7
Rank 6
Rank 5
Rank 4
Rank 3
Rank 2
Rank 1
Summary

Definitions and Methods

My rankings reflect my expectations for the end of the 2022 summer split. I am projecting how well these teams will perform by the end of the 2022 season, not their “current” or initial performance level.

I’m also providing a competitive ceiling for each team, which projects the highest rank I could realistically see them achieving by the end of the year.

My offseason grades capture my assessment of how well a team conducted their offseason, based on the assets and opportunities available to them and the phase the team is in. Assets could include players currently under contract, approximate budget, and so on. By phase I mean a team’s current position on the gradient between starting a new development process from scratch through to flipping the switch into “win now” mode. I’m looking for orgs to be self-aware about whether they can compete to go to Worlds this year, and if not, how they are working towards being in that position in future seasons, by developing their talent and brand and giving themselves as many options and as much flexibility as possible for the future.

The Rankings

Let’s do it!

10. Dignitas

FakeGod / [REDACTED]
River / [REDACTED]
Blue / [REDACTED]
Neo / [REDACTED]
Biofrost / [REDACTED]

CEILING: 7
OFFSEASON GRADE: C+

Dignitas weren’t quite in need of a CLG-level reboot this offseason. They had some useful assets in the organization in players like Neo, FakeGod, and Soligo who have shown they can compete in the LCS (even if they aren’t upper-half talents at this point). They had also discovered Will, a Grade A prospect in the jungle who they signed to their Academy team to fill the void left behind when they removed Dardoch from the LCS team and promoted Akaadian. Will was the most valuable asset in their organization, but he has chosen to take at least the spring split off to focus on his high school studies, and I can’t really blame DIG for his choice to do what he feels is best for him.

Even with the loss of Will, DIG had some material to work with, and they committed to Neo and FakeGod for continuity into 2022. I’m on board with that. I’m less certain about the players they brought in around them.

Bringing Biofrost back into the LCS is an interesting move. The context here is that the domestic support pool is relatively shallow, compared to the players available in jungle, bot, and mid. But I’m not sure the pool was shallow enough to imply that a player who has been entirely absent from the competitive scene for a year—and whose most recent pro showing was (I’m going to get flamed for this) kinda meh—is a better option than someone like Smoothie or Diamond. Biofrost does have a lot of experience and probably still commands a larger fanbase than either of those players, so maybe he’ll turn out to be the better choice, but to me it feels like a grass-is-greener option that bears greater risk.

River and Blue join the team as mid-level imports. Neither player is a star, but they aren’t entirely out of left field. Blue spent a full year in the LEC and two years in Turkey between the TCL and Turkey’s Academy league, and River has been to Worlds twice with PSG Talon. They’re decent enough players, and should be able to hold their own, but I don’t think either has the quality to really move the needle for this roster as a whole and make them good enough to have a meaningful effect on the summer playoffs.

So I’m left wondering why DIG would use up both import slots on these players when they could be taking a bit more risk on domestic players who would give them greater long-term potential and flexibility. River has been playing professionally since summer 2018 and is a fairly well known quantity, in a position where domestic talent is relatively easy to find. Blue has more than two full years as a pro, as well, and has showed a reasonable but unexceptional ceiling. One year from now, even if River and Blue both perform near the upper levels of their potential, I don’t see how they put Dignitas in a better position to climb the LCS ladder for 2023 and beyond.

What DIG need, in the long-term, is to take steps towards assembling a core of domestic players that are good enough to get them to Worlds, and then using their import slots to push them over the top. FakeGod and Neo might be able to grow into those players, and Biofrost has been that player before but I’m unconvinced that he can reach his past heights again. So where are the jungler and mid who give them more chances to roll high on potential and improve their domestic core for 2023? What’s the long-term plan here?

Academy is one place that potential could come from, and to their credit, DIG have assembled an Academy featuring some decent prospects. [REDACTED] was one of the better mid laners in the amateur circuit in 2021, and [REDACTED] showed decent potential. I don’t have strong opinions about [REDACTED] and [REDACTED]. [REDACTED] was solid in Academy and returns to try to take another step forward. It’s certainly an intentional effort to develop some prospects (at low cost), which I like, but I’m not sure this lineup features enough established talent to keep pace with the rest of Academy, to be honest, and if that’s the case, then the young players might start the year on the back foot and struggle to catch up enough to develop effectively. (Winning and losing are both useful experiences in development, to oversimplify things dramatically. And I don’t think this DIG Academy team is going to do much winning.)

All in all, Dignitas could have done much worse. I like that they have retained FakeGod and Neo, and that they are using Academy to develop young domestic players. But I wish they would have re-promoted Soligo and brought in a prospect jungler like Nxi or competed with CLG for Contractz. (I know Kenvi wasn’t available because he told 100 Thieves he only wanted to move to a top-5 team.)

DIG’s hope now will be that the roster they’ve built overperforms public expectations and climbs into the top 6. If they can do that, maybe they’ll improve their public image enough to attract an upgraded level of young talent next offseason and move the org a solid step forward.

9. FlyQuest

Kumo / Philip
Josedeodo / Yuuji
Toucouille / Spirax
Johnsun / Tomo
aphromoo / Diamond

CEILING: 7
OFFSEASON GRADE: C

FlyQuest stumbled across the finish line at the end of 2021, experimenting with some different roster configurations to evaluate their remaining assets after trading away Licorice (who was, in my opinion, their best player). It was a reasonable way to gain some valuable information out of the last few weeks of the season, once the team realized a surprise playoff run wasn’t in the cards for them.

From my admittedly limited vantage point, the decisions they’ve made based on the intelligence they gathered have been less reasonable. Naturally the team is working with a different, and richer, dataset than I am, because they were working directly with all of their players in scrims and coaching, hearing their voice comms, interacting with their personalities, and so on, but I can only judge based on the information available to me.

Let’s start on the positive side. I like the aphromoo signing. Good supports are hard to find, and aphromoo still has some game left in him. Ideally you’ll back aphromoo up with a prospect, and Diamond still fits that label to some extent, though he’s not the freshest face anymore. On balance, FlyQuest’s support position looks pretty good for their current phase.

Bot lane is similar. Johnsun is worth keeping, especially reunited with aphromoo, with whom he worked pretty well in 2020. And Tomo is also worth keeping for another year to see how much more he can grow. It’s even possible that Tomo and Diamond could push to move up into the LCS during the year, so FLY have given themselves some options here to see what the best choice will be with these four players in the 2022/23 offseason.

On the rest of the map, FlyQuest could have positioned themselves better. They had Kumo, Philip, Josedoedo, Nxi, Palafox, and Triple at the end of 2021: five domestic players, two of whom were true prospects in Philip and Nxi and two of whom were still relatively early in their development with Kumo and Palafox. Nxi looked like a grade A prospect, and while Palafox hadn’t put together the best year, I don’t believe it was time to give up on him yet. Top lane was the biggest area of need for the org, with neither Kumo nor Philip showing a level of potential that has me very excited about them in the long-term, aside from the few alluring weeks from Kumo in late Summer that precipitated the Licorice trade.

From this position, as a team that can’t really expect to contend in 2022, FlyQuest should have looked to build more momentum on that domestic talent pool they were building. Instead, they imported Toucouille, kept Josedeodo (the one import from that group of six) while releasing Nxi, and made no changes in their top lane. (Top lane is a very difficult position to find good players in right now, in fairness. Maybe FLY tried to find other options but weren’t happy with what was available.)

I’m not criticizing Toucouille or Josedeodo here as players. I think Toucouille will be fine in the LCS, a bottom-half mid laner but potentially a slight upgrade on Palafox. Josedeodo is fine, too. But if I’m in FlyQuest’s position, I’m not looking for half-decent imports; I’m looking for domestic prospects who can put my org in a stronger position one, two, and three years in the future. So with that in mind, Josedeodo and Toucouille only seem like reasonable choices if they are here to fill a one- or two-year gap while the org is building up some prospects in Academy behind them.

So obviously Nxi is the elephant in the room here. In his LCS opportunities, he looked very capable, and his growth throughout the year in Academy was impressive (from my outsider’s perspective). Clearly FlyQuest’s internal opinions of him did not align with that assessment. From talking to them (I have an interview with their GM and head coach coming out tomorrow), it sounds like there were unmet expectations around Nxi’s effort level and team culture fit. I can’t speak to that directly, of course, but the issues must have been fairly significant.

FLY decided to bring in Yuuji, a Mongolian player (and thus an import) who is effectively straight out of solo queue, though he has a brief collegiate stint on his résumé with Bethany Lutheran. I don’t have enough footage available to form a real opinion of Yuuji, but jungle has been the deepest talent pool in NA over the last few years. For FLY to see enough from him in their tryouts to sign him over Nxi or some of the other options, they must have a high degree of confidence in his potential. I just can’t join in with that confidence until I see him play.

I do have a bit more basis for sharing an opinion on Spirax. He popped up on my radar now and then during the 2021 Summer split, as someone worth taking a closer look at, but he never impressed me enough to rank him among the very best mid lane prospects. There were other options like 5fire, DarkWings, Doxa, and so on that I would have fairly comfortably slotted in above Spirax.

In time, maybe Yuuji and Spirax will win me over, but as of today, it’s difficult to suspend my disbelief.

As an org that is at least a year or two out from climbing into contention, if I could have Nxi and Palafox in the LCS with 5fire and let’s say an amateur jungler like eXyu in Academy, versus having two mid-to-low-end imports in LCS along with Yuuji and Spirax in Academy, I would take the former in a heartbeat. Short of personalities and team environment being a major issue, I would go for the more talented and proven prospects and put the onus on the coaching staff to smooth out any bumpiness. That’s easier for me to say than it is for the team to actually do, of course, but hey, I’m a pundit.

Stepping back for a high-level overview, I don’t believe FlyQuest noticeably upgraded their LCS roster, and I don’t believe they advanced their talent pipeline, either. But maybe Toucouille will be better than I’m expecting and will prove to be a three-year player who helps the org take strides forward. And maybe Yuuji will turn out to be a Grade A prospect. After all, I didn’t know anything about Will six months ago, and I didn’t think Ablazeolive was going to blossom as much as he did in 2021, so I’ve been shown to be ignorant and/or flat out wrong in the past. (…Hey, I’m a pundit.)

I’m always hoping and cheering for teams in this position to prove me wrong, but from where I’m sitting, I don’t believe FlyQuest drafted themselves any real win conditions in 2022.

8. Counter Logic Gaming

Jenkins / Dhokla
Contractz / RoseThorn
Palafox / Triple
Luger / Prismal
Poome / Breezyyy

CEILING: 5
OFFSEASON GRADE: B+

CLG had a very difficult project to undertake this offseason, battling against an incredibly negative 2021 narrative that painted them not merely as a disappointment, but as actively detrimental to the league. Fans have turned on this team. Hard.

They needed to completely reboot, to send a message to their fans not only that they’re on the road back, but that they’re making their comeback in the “correct” way, with a process that will produce long-term results. A this-year roster aiming for a climb back into mid-table respectability wasn’t going to cut it. (That’s what the 2021 roster was supposed to be, with all of its veterans, and look how that turned out.)

The reboot started with Greg Kim being hired as the new Head of CLG; continued with Jonathon McDaniel joining as the new General Manager, after spending time with Cloud9 and Golden Guardians; and finished up with a completely new roster of relatively young, inexperienced players (though technically no rookies).

The competitive goals for this roster should be modest. If they can win a best-of-five in summer, that would feel pretty good. A 5th/6th finish is in reach. But the team result isn’t really the point. The real measures of success for CLG will be:

a) How many of this year’s players will show enough growth and quality to form the core of a strong(er) 2023 roster?

b) How much fan sentiment can the org win back? How well can CLG convince the fan community to view them as re-entering the conversation as one the league’s more respectable franchises?

CLG have made the right moves to put themselves on track for both of these goals. The org is already in a better position than it was a year ago, and I expect their position by the end of 2022 to be much stronger, with greater bargaining power and positioning to make one or two big moves and push themselves into the top 5.

Aside from adding one more true prospect to their solid, if uninspiring, Academy squad, I couldn’t have asked for much more.

CLG is on the up-and-up, and I hope the fans recognize it and support them.

7. Immortals

Revenge / Concept
Xerxe / Chad
PowerOfEvil / Pretty
WildTurtle / Arrow
Destiny / Joey

CEILING: 5
OFFSEASON GRADE: C+

There are good players on this team. Xerxe is a strong jungler. PowerOfEvil is a good mid laner when he can play his meta and scale into team fights. Revenge, WildTurtle, and Destiny are all fine, nothing too exciting but no real red flags in my mind.

But this team is not good enough to contest for a Worlds spot, and Revenge is the only player in the lineup who is likely to bring meaningful untapped potential, so where is this project meant to be headed, exactly? There is a lack of long-term vision involved in the team’s assembly.

Immortals’ saving grace, in terms of their offseason grade, is the Academy team they’ve put together. They’re fielding two rookies in Concept and Chad, the latter of which is fresh off winning Proving Grounds as the substitute for Kenvi, who was jetted over to Europe to play solo queue during Worlds. Concept has been praised pretty widely as a prospect in the last couple of months, and Chad definitely showed during Proving Grounds that he’s ready for this step.

Surrounding those two quality prospects, IMT have brought together three veterans in Pretty, Arrow, and Joey, with Arrow serving the bonus function of being effectively another coach. (He spent the summer split as a player-coach with Wildcard Gaming and helped the team develop and compete quite well.) Joey is a capable Academy-level support, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if Pretty had been promoted to the LCS starter spot this year, personally. (I have to think he would’ve been cheaper than PowerOfEvil, and in my opinion he could perform at almost as high a level.) So there should be a good setup for IMT Academy to compete for the top of the standings, while Concept and Chad get as much experience and learning time as possible.

If it wasn’t for this well-assembled Academy roster, I would have been even more unhappy with IMT’s offseason. One of my core principles regarding roster construction is that I want to understand how a team expects to end the coming year in a better position than they entered it. That could come from fielding players who you expect to improve and grow into long-term, foundational pieces of your future roster. It might mean that you hope to have won a trophy or gone to Worlds, which is objectively good for your org by boosting your reputation and gaining fans. Or maybe it’s just a matter of playing the dark horse role and giving your fans a playoff run to remember.

At the LCS level, I don’t see how the acquisitions of PowerOfEvil and WildTurtle are supposed to put IMT in a better position a year from now. They are decent players. They have long legacies. A measurable number of fans will probably cheer for them. But when October 2022 rolls around, how will they have helped the Immortals organization take a step forward? What new potential will they help the org unlock? Will the fans who came to cheer for PoE and Turtle continue to cheer for IMT once those players are gone?

Neither of these veteran players is on an upward trajectory in their career. Neither of them is enough of a star that I can consider this iteration of IMT as a candidate to go to Worlds, or even as a playoffs-disrupting dark horse, and I can’t personally see a combination of circumstances where PowerOfEvil or WildTurtle could help IMT go to Worlds in 2023 or 2024. And IMT don’t have prospects in the mid or bot lane rolls who are being groomed to replace them, either.

Bluntly speaking, signing PowerOfEvil and WildTurtle this offseason feels like signing Broxah and WildTurtle last season. They aren’t bad players. I don’t dislike them. I just don’t think they move the needle in the right direction for the phase IMT are currently working through.

Maybe Revenge will have a breakout year. It would be huge for the Immortals org if he does, because he could be a core part of their branding and stability going forward. If Revenge advances, if Xerxe plays as well as he did in 2021, and if PowerOfEvil and WildTurtle exceed my expectations, a repeat of IMT’s 5th/6th finish in Summer 2021 is doable. But the top end of the league has leveled up more than IMT have, and despite a solid Academy setup in isolation, the overall thrust of IMT’s offseason doesn’t give me confidence that they’re creating sustainable momentum that can carry them into the upper echelons of the LCS over the next couple of years.

6. Golden Guardians

Licorice / Tony Top
Pridestalkr / Iconic
Ablazeolive / ry0ma
Lost / Violet
Olleh / Chime

CEILING: 5
OFFSEASON GRADE: B-

On the surface, the direction the Golden Guardians have taken this offseason seems a bit curious. The Pridestalkr and Olleh signings have a very different vibe compared to the org’s 2021 talent-development narrative, as if they’re trying to turn the corner from developers to contenders but doing it before they’d given themselves enough time to mature.

From a broader perspective, though, these pick-ups actually fit tidily into the approach GG have pioneered over the past few years of looking in relatively unconventional places to find hidden gems, like they did with FBI and Closer by importing them from small regions, and with huhi by supporting his role swap and subsequent resurgence. And remember that this approach, once it was combined with the 100 Thieves bankroll and Ssumday’s green card, produced an LCS championship (for a different org sadface). So maybe I should give GG the benefit of the doubt.

If you’ve followed my content much before, you’ll know I have high opinions of Licorice and Ablazeolive coming out of 2021. Licorice was playing far better than most people gave him credit for, and Ablazeolive was my personal pick for rookie of the year. With those two players and the acquisition of Lost (another player who I believe was underrated in 2021), GG have formed an entirely respectable domestic core. It might not be an obvious pick to go to Worlds, but with a bit more growth from Ablazeolive and Lost, a recapturing of form by Licorice, and good additions at jungle/support, they could be relevant as a dark horse team.

Enter Pridestalkr and Olleh.

A glance through Pridestalkr’s 2021 match history and champion pool numbers reveals a bit of a Xin Zhao / Zed two-trick, and it doesn’t seem reasonable to expect that Zed will frequently be part of the jungle meta. That’s a problem. He does play other champions, of course. His Lee Sin is pretty good; he put in seven games each on Rumble, Lillia, and Graves; and he’s willing to play Trundle, which is a good sign. But expect Xin Zhao to be banned against him constantly, if it’s anywhere close to being part of the meta.

Statistically, Pridestalkr completely stomps early-game matchups with big gold and XP leads, averaging +864 GXD10 across all competitions in 2021. (He played in the German league and EU Masters this year.) He mostly achieves that via farming, picking up +9.9 CSD10 in the summer regular season and +16.0 CSD10 in the summer playoffs, for example, but I’ve also seen him hard-camp a lane in the early game and brute force multiple dives, so let’s not put him in a box too quickly.

Beyond the numbers, though, when I watch Pridestalkr there’s something about his movement around the map that seems “off” at times, like he’s not necessarily planning his jungle clears to match the flow of his lanes. It’s hard to say whether that’s due to something he was doing, whether his teammates were failing to manage their lanes appropriately relative to his clears, or whether the disconnect was purely in my own perception. (After all, I’m just a pundit.) From the games I watched, though, it looked like Czekolad was often responsible for cleaning up those issues and controlling the games. Coaching will play a key role in addressing any bad habits Pridestalkr might be carrying in this area, and I have faith in Inero.

I have no idea what to expect from Olleh. He’s been out of the pro scene for a year and a half. I can’t fairly set high expectations for his return, but I can hope to be pleasantly surprised.

If Pridestalkr turns out to be the next Closer (which I personally doubt), and if Olleh’s return produces a better player than Chime or a domestic alternative like Diamond or Smoothie, then maybe the Golden Guardians can climb a little higher in my estimation. With a substantial stumble from one of the expected top-5 teams, maybe a 5th-place climb is even possible. But I’m more inclined to place this team in the 6 to 8 range, with a decent floor due to the strength of their solo lanes (and my high opinion of Lost), but a low ceiling unless one of their carries unexpectedly advances from “solid and reliable” and becomes an FBI-level star.

Over at GG Academy, the org has demoted and retained Iconic and Chime, added Tony Top for a new top lane prospect to replace the now-retired Niles, brought over 21-year-old bot laner Violet from Oceania, and anchored it all with ry0ma. This should be a competitive Academy roster, at minimum. Tony Top is the only player I’m particularly interested in as a prospect, though.

If GG weren’t willing to stick with Iconic and Chime in LCS for 2022, what are the chances they’ll become LCS options for GG again in the future? Maybe they’ll play themselves into consideration for a move to another org? Violet is an Oceanic bot laner and those have been in vogue for a while now, but he seems more likely to be a Raes than an FBI, from what I’ve seen and heard. I like ry0ma a lot as an Academy-winning piece and a fringe LCS player who can fill in if something goes wrong with your starter, but I don’t think Ablazeolive needs that.

So it’s really all about Tony Top at GGA… but GG invested in acquiring Licorice late in the 2021 season and sent signals that he’s a long-term piece for them. Tony will have a better chance to usurp Licorice’s spot than Impact’s, I suppose, but I’d still be surprised to see Licorice lose grip of his starting role. So unfortunately, to me the GG Academy roster comes across as a bit of an afterthought, and that’s a shame.

The Golden Guardians should be a middle-of-the-pack LCS team, with some very solid assets, but I’m not convinced that they made the best moves to meaningfully advance themselves this offseason.

5. Cloud9

Summit / Darshan
Blaber / Malice
Fudge / Copy
Berserker / Zven / k1ng
Isles / Winsome

CEILING: 1
OFFSEASON GRADE: B

Cloud9 are swinging for the fences, and I respect it. If you’re going to move your team in a certain direction, you should commit, and I don’t think C9 could commit to a direction any harder than this.

Summit and Berserker both look like great acquisitions, individually, and I’m very excited for them. I did a Run It episode on why I’m excited about Summit, so check that out if you want more thoughts.

I’ve also been watching footage of Berserker, and I’m impressed with his mechanics, his positioning, his range management and spacing, and his effectiveness with defensive cooldowns. He strikes me, so far, as a relatively conservative player who will clean up fights very well, so hopefully Blaber and his support — whether it’s Winsome or Isles — will bring in enough aggression and playmaking to provide the setup he needs to carry in a comfortable style.

On the less positive side, I don’t understand why Cloud9 moved Vulcan, and why they committed to that move so early in the offseason. Vulcan is the best domestic support in the league in my opinion, so letting him go is a pretty drastic change. Maybe Vulcan asked to move on to another project. Maybe there were some behind-the-scenes factors that caused C9 to think their ceiling could be higher with a different player. Maybe C9 think Vulcan is beginning to decline and wanted to “sell high” on an asset, like they’ve done before with players like Svenskeren and Licorice. I don’t know the combination of reasons, but I don’t think it was possible for C9 to upgrade on Vulcan at support without going very big on the import market. Unlike the sale of Svenskeren to promote Blaber, or the sale of Licorice to promote Fudge, I think it’s very unlikely Isles or Winsome will prove to be a surprise upgrade, or an equivalence for that matter. But there are not-me people who would’ve said the same about those two previous moves, so perhaps I’ll be wrong.

I’m also going to go on the record with doubts about Fudge’s role swap. I’ve been conducting the Fudge hype train since early 2020, so don’t get me wrong here; I’m a fan and a supporter. But the area Fudge struggled the most, in my opinion, was the coordination of his wave management with emerging action in the river and with the needs of his jungler. In mid lane, it’s your job to affect both sides of the river and coordinate with your jungler on every phase of his pathing. I’m concerned that the desyncs we saw between Fudge and Blaber will be exacerbated by Fudge’s move into mid lane. Maybe the shorter lane will make this less of an issue, though, and maybe the change in coaching staff will also lead to different outcomes. It’s entirely possible that I’m just being pessimistic.

If everything comes together, Cloud9 could be the best team in the LCS. I truly believe that. I’ve been very impressed with Summit in my VOD review; Berserker is very talented; and you know how highly I’ve praised Blaber and Fudge in the past. I have a lot more confidence in Isles than I do in Winsome at this point, but C9 only need one of them to click well with the rest of the team. Altogether, there’s an absolute ton of raw skill for C9 to work with, so if their game plans and team comms can come together well, the sky’s the limit.

The trouble is that there are so many “ifs” involved in achieving liftoff. Fudge’s role-swap has to work. Summit and Berserker need to acclimate well to life in Los Angeles. Language barriers need to be overcome. Winsome needs to prove that he’s an LCS-quality player, or Isles needs to develop synergy with Berserker despite differences in language and culture. LS’s game philosophies need to translate well into practical play, and the team needs to prove that it’s capable of enacting his game plans cleanly.

Cloud9 need to come out on the right side of all of these question marks. If they low-roll on more than one or two of these factors, the entire project could fall apart. If the worst happens, their core talent should still make them a playoff team, but I think their floor could be as low as 6th.

On balance, I see a 2nd to 4th placement as the most likely range for Cloud9, but their range of possible outcomes is wider than any other team in the league.

A postscript on Academy: C9A only bears discussing in the context of providing possible replacements for underperforming LCS starters. (I’m including the Isles/Winsome situation as part of that use case.) If Fudge really stumbles, Copy could step up as a backup. But I don’t think Copy is a strong enough Mid laner at this point to get a team to Worlds. Malice can’t sub for Blaber unless either Summit or Berserker is swapped out for a resident player, and there’s no way a Darshan/Malice combo would be stronger than Summit/Blaber, or that Malice/k1ng (or Malice/Zven if Zven gets his green card) would be stronger than Blaber/Berserker. So really, the Academy team is there to provide C9’s LCS lineup with an internal scrim partner, which could be valuable I suppose. I’d rather see C9 commit to their LCS starters more firmly and add one or two more prospects to their Academy team, but that’s not the direction they’ve chosen to go.

I get to express my doubts in certain aspects of C9’s offseason by assessing them with a B. They get to prove themselves right by delivering on their head coach’s stated goal of winning both LCS splits and reaching the World Championship Semifinals.

I’d love to see it happen! But I doubt it will.

4. TSM

Huni / V1per
Spica / Hyper
Keaiduo / Takeover
Tactical / Instinct
Shenyi / Yursan

CEILING: 2
OFFSEASON GRADE: B

Just to get this out of the way early: yes, of course it’s possible for this team to win the LCS. But it doesn’t seem very useful if I give too many teams a 1st-place ceiling, and I think a lot of things would have to not only go right for TSM, but also go wrong for other teams, before NA’s favourite team could end up lifting the trophy in summer 2022.

I can easily see TSM being better than one or two of the other top-5 teams, but it’s tough to see them outperforming all of them.

With that paperwork out of the way, let’s talk about the big story here, which is TSM’s two new Chinese additions out of the LDL, Shenyi (SHEN-yee) and Keaiduo (kə-EYE-dwo). I spent a couple of hours VOD reviewing each player on my stream (here’s the Shenyi review, and here’s Keaiduo), and more hours off-stream as well. While I don’t claim to be a full expert on either player, I can report that I feel reasonably positive about both.

Shenyi stood out to me a little bit more. He’s not hesitant on pulling the trigger for an engage when the setup is right, which helped him look really good in two late-season series on the FPX main team while he was covering for an injury. (To be fair, though, it would be hard not to look good slotting into that roster for a few games as long as you don’t actively int…) He generally moves to the right places on the map at the right times, though I began to see a trend emerging of slight delays in his arrivals to key moments, which sometimes cost him a chance to make a play. I also got a bit of a sense that Shenyi sometimes positions to preserve his own health bar too cautiously, and I wish I had seen a few more instances of him taking risks to set up creative flank angles. But these are minor concerns, and might be addressed if I had more time to continue watching his footage. All in all, I feel pretty comfortable pegging Shenyi as a mid-tier LCS support with good opportunity to grow further.

Keaiduo was harder to judge because, to be frank, his team made it hard for him to look good. I saw Keaiduo at his best when he could use Twisted Fate or Ryze to make well-timed plays into the side lanes with their semi-global ults, but those plays require clean map-wide setups from the team, not only work from the mid laner himself, and those weren’t always forthcoming. On champions like Viktor, he did a good job of farming and preparing himself for his scaling, wave-clearing, team fighting role, but meanwhile his team would often be forcing action in the river or side lanes that didn’t take into account the team comp’s win conditions—in other words, losing the game without him. His team fighting looks like a bit of a mixed-bag, but not worryingly so, just inconsistent. His side lane play in the mid-game was also inconsistent, but it’s difficult how much of that to attribute to him or to his team’s overall macro play.

In simple terms, I think TSM have found two solid players with potential, Shenyi a little more so, but neither strikes me as a superstar-in-waiting at this point.

They’ll be joining the established top/jungle duo of Huni and Spica and the new addition of Tactical. Spica is the reigning regular season MVP, an ultra-reliable player with high top-end performance who has shown he can adapt himself to a variety of roles based on what the team needs. Huni is still the mid-level player with occasional pop-offs that I tried to tell everyone he was a year ago, back when the consensus was that he was washed up and a terrible TSM acquisition. ;) I seem to be defending Tactical in a similar way these days, though not to quite so much extremity.

Assuming Tactical and Shenyi work well together, I expect Tactical to continue to perform at a high level, even if he gets bumped down the tier list, potentially, by the LCS arrival of some other strong players in his position.

Bringing this all together competitively, I expect TSM to be capable of beating just about anyone, domestically, but I also think they’ll have some struggles finding themselves in the early going, and I’m not convinced they’ll have an LCS Champion ceiling.

As an offseason grade, I’m assigning a B mostly because the TSM org always has the potential to set themselves up as true contenders, and I think there was a chance to go a little bigger. I don’t have an issue with the players they landed, and I think they’ve shown a multi-year vision, which I appreciate, but there’s a spark missing that could have gotten me more excited.

Also, I find their Academy roster relatively unremarkable (not bad, just… unremarkable), but as much as I’d reward TSM for doing really great things in Academy and amateur, I’m not really going to penalize them for failing to hit a home run here. They do have players in Takeover and V1per who have an outside chance at playing serviceable backups if Keaiduo or Huni falter, but I hope that doesn’t happen.

3. Evil Geniuses

Impact / Srtty
Inspired / Tomio
Jojopyun / Soligo
Danny / Kaori
Vulcan / Skytec

CEILING: 1
OFFSEASON GRADE: A+

Whoa, an A+. Are those even real?

When you promote the highest-potential prospect North America has seen in a long time, put him alongside the 2021 Rookie of the Year, flank them with the LCS’s best top laner and best domestic support, add one of Europe’s best junglers as your sole import (holding one import slot open in order to maintain flexibility in case of emergencies), and then cap it off with a nicely balanced Academy roster that combines strong domestic prospects with effective backup options for your young carries, then yes, an A+ is absolutely real.

There are clear risks inherent in building a roster with a mid and bot laner who need to add both of their ages together to equal mine. (Yikes.) You can have all the faith in the world in their ability to perform and improve, but you have to acknowledge that if you’re playing through the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, there are no guarantees of success.

That’s part of what makes EG’s roster construction so smart. Their two most experienced Academy players are Soligo and Kaori, either of whom should be able to step in to an LCS role pretty comfortably. We’ve seen Soligo hold his own in the LCS already, and Kaori was considered for a starting spot on at least one top-5 LCS team this offseason. And if those built-in backup plans aren’t working out, EG also have that open import slot, so if it becomes truly necessary, they can pull a 100 Thieves Abbedagge-style move mid-year (without even needing someone on their team to get a green card first).

But forget the hedging and Plans B, C, and D. Even if Danny and jojopyun only reach mid-tier status by late in the summer split, this team should be equipped with plenty of firepower to contend for a spot at Worlds. Impact is an immovable object and an excellent leader. Vulcan is the second-best support in the league (and ranking behind CoreJJ in anything is no real criticism), and he’s a domestic player, too, in a time when teams are so uncertain about the available support pool that they’re paying $3M/yr for SwordArt or calling players out of retirement. From certain angles, that makes Vulcan one of the most valuable assets in the entire league. Inspired is fresh off an excellent year in the LEC and is only 19 years old. We know he can carry if jojopyun or Danny are ever faltering, and we also know he’s up for inserting a bit of creativity and experimentation if the team needs a spark to get themselves out of a slump.

The stage has been set very effectively for both Danny and jojopyun to succeed, and I have confidence in both of them, and in their “supporting cast.”

Watch this team. They’re going to be a lot of fun. Watch their mid/jungle, especially, which I expect to take over games and potentially become the strongest such duo in the league.

In Academy, keep your eyes on Tomio, in particular. He’s one of the next contestants to move to the front of the NA jungle talent pipeline, and should do well with Soligo backing him up. Srtty and Skytec have a bit more ground to cover to put themselves in the conversation as top prospects, but both have decent potential and could become viable promotion candidates over the next couple of years.

2. 100 Thieves

Ssumday / Tenacity / Gamsu
Closer / Kenvi
Abbedagge / JimieN
FBI / Wixxi
huhi / Busio

CEILING: 1
OFFSEASON GRADE: A

When you’ve just won the LCS and acquitted yourself respectably, if not spectacularly, at the World Championships, then it’s hard to go wrong by sticking through the offseason with the same five players.

If that was all 100 Thieves had done, though, I wouldn’t have given them an A. They had a logjam of emerging prospects that they needed to resolve, and their handling of that logjam was the most important facet of the offseason. They addressed it by promoting Tenacity to their LCS team as a 6th man (he’s 18, turning 19 in February, but I’m still going to call him a man) and making Kenvi available, but ultimately not moving him.

I can’t fault 100T for holding on to Ssumday and Closer, even if my NA Talent Bias wishes we were getting Kenvi in the LCS next year. To be transparent, I wish 100T had either sold Closer and promoted Kenvi, or found a way to convince Kenvi that it was in his best interests to join another LCS org even if they didn’t look like a top-5 team on paper. (I don’t know for sure whether CLG would have paid the buyout 100T might have requested for Kenvi, for example, but in one of my more ideal realities, Kenvi could have landed on CLG and been part of their long-term plans.) It was Kenvi’s decision to spend another year in Academy rather than join a longer-term project, and it doesn’t hurt 100T to have him in the org helping to mentor the next wave of young players while continuing to improve himself, so I’m not docking any “points” on this account. But I do think, personally, that there are a couple of bottom-5 teams Kenvi should have been happy to land on, assuming they were interested in acquiring him—namely, CLG and Golden Guardians. Those projects could have been good places for Kenvi to join an emerging contender over the next two or three years.

All of that aside, I believe 100 Thieves have positioned themselves with a pretty decent shot at contending for another title and returning to Worlds. As long as they can carry over a similar level of performance to 2021, and maybe improve a bit if Tenacity can step up and take over from Ssumday, they should be able to hold off enough of the other contenders to at least finish top 3. If all three of the EG, TSM, and C9 youth-heavy projects work out successfully, 100T might find themselves in trouble, but that’s a longshot.

Meanwhile, 100T have backfilled their development pipeline pretty effectively, giving Busio the Academy starter spot where he can try to prove himself as one of the most valuable commodities in today’s LCS: a domestic support. They added Wixxi, one of the amateur Bot laners I was personally most interested in. And they brought in JimieN, a 19-year-old mid out of the PCS, to try to replicate the success they had with Luger in 2021, a player who helped their Academy team win and most likely paid his own salary by bringing in a buyout from another org at the end of the year.

On top of all that, 100 Thieves won the competition to sign General Sniper into their amateur team, now that he’s old enough to actually play in the amateur scene

Every LCS org that focuses heavily on scouting and developing NA talent was very excited about this player, but 100 Thieves got him, which bodes well for them in the long term assuming he enjoys his experience in 2022 and commits to them for Academy in 2023, as well.

For 2022, 100 Thieves are contenders in both the LCS and Academy, with multiple strong prospects working their way through the pipeline. I call that a very good offseason’s work.

1. Team Liquid

Bwipo / Bradley
Santorin / Armao
Bjergsen / Haeri
Hans sama / Yeon
CoreJJ / Eyla

CEILING: 1
OFFSEASON GRADE: B+

If this team doesn’t reach both LCS Finals and win at least one of them… It doesn’t really bear thinking about.

Expectations are sky-high for this group. They feature the league’s best player of both today and the last few years in Korean support CoreJJ, the league’s greatest player of all time in naturalized European mid laner Bjergsen, one of the highest-quality imports in recent memory in the form of one Europe’s best Bot laners, Hans sama, and a solid, flexible European top/jungle duo (one domesticated, one feral) of Bwipo and Santorin.

It might be the strongest roster ever put together (on paper) in the history of professional North American League of Legends.

As I discussed in Run It, there may be some need for Bjergsen and/or Bwipo to take on a more selfish role than they typically have in the past. That’s a very minor concern, and one I doubt the team will have too much trouble overcoming.

Of greater concern is CoreJJ’s green card process, but TL aren’t emanating any panic about it, so why should we?

Here is as good a place as any to take a moment and comment on TL Academy. They’re continuing with four of the same players from 2021, but they are replacing Jenkins with Bradley, a mid lane prospect out of the amateur scene who is role-swapping to top lane. I wish Bradley the best of luck, and I will continue to watch Yeon as an interesting prospect, and Eyla once he returns to Academy pending CoreJJ’s immigration process. As in past years, though, TLA will only be truly relevant to the org if something unexpected and dramatic goes down with the LCS roster (which, in fairness, seems to happen to TL a lot, as with Alphari and Doublelift and, now, hopefully briefly, CoreJJ). So as much as TLA have some players very much worth watching, they don’t really factor into my assessment of the team’s offseason “performance,” since I don’t believe the org has any of their Academy players penciled in as part of their long-term plans. And that’s fine.

At the end of the day, it’s a B+ effort from Team Liquid because, much like previous offseasons, their path forward has been fairly smooth sailing. They have a big budget, they spend it on the names at the top of the crowdsourced available-player lists, and that’s more or less that. Tearing Bjergsen away from TSM is a coup, and a fascinating storyline, but it remains to be seen how much of an in-game upgrade he’ll provide over Jensen, especially relative to the amount Bjergsen is probably getting paid. Hans sama is a great addition, if an obvious one. Bwipo is the same, if somewhat less so. TL even took the same approach with their Head Coach, paying a decent-sized buyout to acquire the widely respected Guilhoto from Immortals after he helped lead IMT to an overachieving 5th/6th finish in 2021.

But obviously, who cares if TL didn’t blow us away with creativity, if they didn’t defy any common roster-building conventions and blaze a new trail? Who cares if their moves were, on the whole, easy or predictable, as long as those moves give them a good chance to win?

This team should win. They are the favourites out of the gate. They have put themselves in that position by making the obvious moves. Good for them. B+.

But of course, they can be surpassed. In fact, I believe they will be surpassed. (I would bet the field against TL at even odds, if I were a betting man.) But right now I can’t tell you with any confidence which team is going to do it, so until proven otherwise, Team Liquid will remain the team to beat.

Let the chase begin.

Summary