In the aftermath of Team SoloMid’s early exit from the 2015 World Championship, the team announced that they would be replacing four of their five starting players. Only Bjergsen remained to anchor the Mid lane. It was a drastic move, though not entirely unexpected.
The next move was bigger. Less than 10 hours after SK Telecom T1 clinched their World Championships victory, TSM dropped the bomb: the star player of their forever-rivals, CLG’s Doublelift, would be joining TSM for the 2016 season, the first new member of their revamped roster.
Let’s see if we can make any sense of this new reality. First we’ll explore the two keystone players TSM will be building around, and some implications. Then I’ll present some players I think they should consider for the other three roles.
Speculation is swirling around Adrian Ma, who played Support with Team Impulse in 2015. Here’s why he’s so highly sought after this offseason.
Adrian accomplished his very impressive stat line while playing on a sometimes disorganized Team Impulse, alongside a Jungler who placed the second-fewest wards in the NA LCS. Impulse finished the 2015 Summer regular season with a 13-6 record, good for third place in the region, and was eliminated from the North American Regionals tournament by Cloud9.
Team Roccat announced today that they have re-signed Norwegian Mid laner nukeduck for the 2016 season.
In a region packed with strong Mid laners, nukeduck holds his own, with an impressive 4.9 KDA and stronger laning stats than players like Febiven, Ryu, PePiiNeRO, and PowerOfEvil.
Roccat has now confirmed three returning players from the 2015 roster, with nukeduck joining the team’s Jungler, Jankos, and Support, Vander.
