Photo Credit: SNS Gamers
The LCS Summer Splits for North America and Europe are set to start in just under 2 weeks with the top teams from those regions competing for the title of best Western team. The LCS Summer Splits also have huge Worlds implication with the top teams receiving a good helping of championship points. First place in this split is guaranteed a spot at Worlds as the first seed from that region.
NA LCS Changes
Recently, the NA LCS saw several rulings from Riot that forced three of the NA LCS Spring Split teams to abdicate their spots in the league. Renegades, Team Dragon Knights, and Team Impulse were forced to sell their spots in the LCS after two separate rulings. The situation was covered in our previous article found here. This left three vacant spots in the NA LCS that needed to be filled for the summer. Originally from the Challenger circuit, Apex features several veterans in their lineup such as Xpecial and Diamondprox, two players who have been around since the start of League of Legends. Their entire roster has ten players with a sub for each position.
The next team that will be joining the LCS in the summer is Team EnVyUs, a decorated organization that had its roots in Call of Duty, but has since moved on to many other big games. This team contains three of the ex-Renegades members, Seraph, Ninja, and Hakuho and are currently in negotiations for a jungler and ADC. The final team that purchased one of the available LCS spots is Phoenix1. Their roster has not been finalized yet and not much is known about this team at the moment.
On top of three new teams joining the LCS, several of the other existing teams have also underwent roster changes. Yellowstar from TSM has left to return home to Europe and play with his old team, Fnatic. This resulted in TSM bringing in a promising new rookie support in Biofrost. Cloud9 has also revamped their lineup with long time member Balls being replaced by Impact and Meteos returning to the jungler role. Although it is unclear what the exact lineup is for Cloud9 at the moment, the players who are not starting in Cloud9’s LCS team will be playing in the Challenger series. NRG has also shuffled up their roster completely with only GBM remaining from the previous team and long-time veterans, Quas, Santorin, Ohq, and Kiwikid joining the team.
EU LCS Switch-Ups
The EU LCS saw less changes than the NA LCS, but there was still several high profile moves. The two teams to join the league are ROCCAT and FC Schalke 04. ROCCAT was relegated last season and has returned with a new roster to try and restore their team to its former glory. FC Schalke 04 has several names from previous iterations of the EU LCS and only their support, sprattel, does not have much experience on the big stage.
The biggest move in Europe was FORG1VENGRE and Hybrid moving over to Origen while Zven and mithy moved over to G2 Esports from Origen. This shuffle also resulted in H2K picking up Freeze to fill in the hole that FORG1VENGRE left. Another high profile roster change was the return of Yellowstar to his beloved Fnatic team and lane partner, Rekkles.
Last Thoughts
The changes in both regions will change the result of both splits drastically. Can the top teams maintain their spots or will new challengers wrestle Worlds away from them?
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