source
Cloud 9 Summer Split: M Night Shyamalan Edition
As a longtime C9 fan, I've been in quite the precarious position right now, as there was quite a shake up in the main roster before the summer split was starting. C9 fan favorite players Jensen, Sneaky, and Smoothie were benched into the academy team, while academy team members Goldenglue, Keith, and Zeyzal were moved to the main roster.
Jensen, Smoothie, and Sneaky respectively.This roster change confused many longtime C9 fans, including myself, particularly because many of us understood that these 3 players were MVP-material, or top 3 in their respective positions in the North American region. This interview linked below shows the head coach, Reapered with the C9 team owner, Jack, and goes in depth to the reasons why these 3 players were benched.
As stated above, Jack and Reapered stated that the 3 players that replaced Jensen, Sneaky, and Smoothie worked very hard on the sub-team to make it to the main roster. In addition, it's been stated that Jensen and Sneaky were not doing well in scrimmages, or practice matches with other pro teams. The vice versa was also stated, where Goldenglue, Keith, and Zeyzal was outperforming the 3 players on the main roster.
The New Metagame: Patch 8.11
Patch 8.11 was quite a gamechanger primarily in the bottom lane. Marksman were nerfed across the board and their items that changed so that marksmen were stronger only in the late game. The problem is players that opted to play that role just picked champions that hit their power spike quicker, making almost all marksmen obsolete. No one would pick them in both casual and professional play. Sneaky is the marksman player of the C9 main roster, but professional games bring out champions meant for other lanes such as Vladimir or Brand.
source1source2
The problem here is that both of these champions are mages that are meant to be played in other roles. But because the need for a late game damage source is no longer needed, they're just replaced, and players like Sneaky do not have a big of a mastery for that champion as he would for other traditional marksmen.
That wasn't the only Twist...
There is another big strategy that has taken over another two roles, where the Mid Lane and the Jungler have adopted a strategy called the Gold-Funneling Strategy. This is another radical change to traditional gameplay, mainly because normally most of the gold is allocated to the Mid Lane. But this strategy emphasizes picking a Late Game Carry Jungler, and the Mid Lane picks a more supportive champion to let the Jungler take all of his minions and gold income.
source
This strategy is unheard of to be trying before, even in professional play. C9's main Mid Laner Jensen is not comfortable playing all these supportive champions, which may have attributed to the roster change. This coupled with a lack of motivation to learn the new meta game may have led Jack and Reapered to bench these players.
The only problem here is that Week 1 and Week 2 of the League Championship Series has passed, but C9 is currently at 1 Win and 3 Losses, among the bottom two teams. These impressive scrimmage results have not translated to the actual matches, so was this actually the correct solution?