Fnatic
Roster
NEW: Gamsu (Top), Spirit (Jungle), Noxiak (Support)
RETURNING: Febiven (Mid), Rekkles (ADC)
Of all of the rosters going into this upcoming split, Fnatic may have the most questions surrounding theirs. After finishing 18-0 in the 2015 Summer Split and going on to finish in the top four at Worlds, Fnatic lost three of their five starters in the offseason. Toplaner Heo “Huni” Seunghoon and Jungler Kim “Reignover” Ui-jin both departed for salary increases and a new challenge over in the North American League Championship Series (NA LCS) with LCS newcomers, Immortals. While Huni and Reignover were hard to let go, Fnatic’s biggest loss came in losing Captain, Shotcaller, and Support Bora “YellOwStaR” Kim to NA LCS favorites, Team SoloMid.
Fabian “Febiven” Diepstraten and Martin “Rekkles” Larsson are both players with strong carry potential, as is new jungler Lee “Spirit” Dayoon, but a language barrier may prove to affect that. We got a small taste of the potential of this new roster at Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) Cologne with Fnatic smashing the QG Reapers in the first game before showing their lack of experience together and the ability to alter their strategy. Spirit looked as strong as expected, but played very selfishly, grabbing as many kills and as much farm as he could get his hands on. Noh “Gamsu” Yeongjin had a strong display on his Sion in game one as well, working closely with Spirit, and showing that the pair could rival Huni and Reignover’s synergy. Lewis “Noxiak” Simon Felix also impressed with smart engage plays that could be key in the team’s rebuilding and meshing process. Overall, this team has the skill and potential to keep pushing the top three spots, especially with Luis “Deilor” Sevilla still at the helm.
Origen
Roster
NEW: PowerOfEvil (Mid)
RETURNING: Soaz (Top), Amazing (Jungle), Zven (ADC, formerly known as “Niels”), Mithy (Support)
Origen is coming into this split strongly predicted as the team to beat. With all five of their World Championship Semi-final roster still intact (xPeke serving as a midlane sub), Origen comes in with an already established synergy that sets them apart from the rest of the competition already. Origen made one roster move early in the offseason adding Tristan “PowerOfEvil” Schrage to their starting five, which many believe is an upgrade over Aging Esports Legend xPeke. We already saw the potential of this roster after the addition of PoE at IEM San Jose where they ran away with the tournament.
With Maurice “Amazing” Stückenschneider and Alfonso “mithy” Aguirre Rodriguez bringing a strong ability to roam, provide vision and impact the map, similar to that of FNC’s Reignover and YellOwStaR of last split, Origen is already in prime position to dominate the scene this split. The only thing that could potentially hold them back from running away with first is the fact that the team currently lacks a head coach and has a light analyst staff at the moment after losing a majority of their staff to other teams after Worlds. Regardless, expect a top 2 finish at the least though from this powerhouse team.
H2K Gaming
Roster
NEW: Jankos (Jungle), Forg1vengre (ADC), Vander (Support)
RETURNING: Odoamne (Top), Ryu (Mid)
H2K comes into this split with three strong lanes freeing Marcin “Jankos” Jankowski of a lot of the pressure he felt to perform last split already. This alone will allow Jankos a lot of flexibility in the lane he chooses to gank for, as well as allow him to be creative with his jungle pathing. This team’s botlane is also a large strength with very talented AD Carry Konstantinos “FORG1VEN” Tzortziou-Napoleon being paired with Oskar “Vander” Bogdan, potentially his strongest support partner yet. There is a lot of potential with this roster, but the key will be utilizing their strength in lanes to become unpredictable and even more importantly the success of this roster will come down to keeping FORG1VEN’s ego and destructive attitude in check.
Unicorns of Love
Roster
NEW: Diamondprox (Jungle), Fox (Mid), Steeelback (ADC)
RETURNING: Vizicsacsi (Top), Hylissang (Support)
Last season UoL functioned on getting Midlaner Tristan “PowerOfEvil” Schrage ahead in order to win games. With PoE moving to Origen this offseason, the Unicorns need to rethink their strategy as Hampus “Fox” Myhre will not be able to fill his shoes. The highest chance for the Unicorns success this split is unlocking the potential of Kiss “Vizicsacsi” Tamás and rediscovering the engage potential that Zdravets “Hylissang” Galabov brought to the team last Spring split. UoL took a hit in midlane, but improved overall at AD Carry with Pierre “Steeelback” Medjaldi taking over for a lackluster Pontus “Vardags” Dahlblom of last season.
One of the Unicorns’ biggest struggles this past season was their inconsistency at the jungler role, going through multiple junglers throughout the season. Danil “DiamondProx” Reshetnikov has been far from his dominant form of Season 2, but he does bring a lot of much needed experience and vision control to the team. Diamond helped establish Cabochard as a top lane talent last season and if he can have a similar impact on Vizicsacsi then the Unicorns could be fighting for a spot toward the upper middle half of the table.
Team ROCCAT
Roster
NEW: Fredy 122 (Top), Airwaks (Jungle), Betsy (Mid), Safir (ADC), Edward (Support)
RETURNING: None
ROCCAT had a tough offseason to say the least. After showing flashes of success at the end of last split, but still falling short, ROCCAT wasn’t able to maintain its roster partly due to high contractual demands that they weren’t able to meet. With that being said, they were still able to piece together a decent roster for this upcoming split. Simon “Freddy122” Payne, Karim “Airwaks” Benghalia, and Edward “Edward” Abgaryan have all had above average moments throughout their careers, but unfortunately the emphasis is on “moments”.
Felix “Betsy” Edling was able to produce a handful of highlights on Gambit last year, but again the emphasis is on “handful”. Nothing against Karim “Safir” Tokhi either, but he has yet to prove that he can truly carry a team. Bottom line, ROCCAT has potential, but I doubt it will come to full fruition this split. Expect a bottom half finish.
Giants Gaming
Roster
NEW: Atom (Top), Kou (Jungle)
RETURNING: XPepii (Mid, formerly known as “Pepiinero”), Adryh (ADC), Godfred (Support)
Giants Gaming is coming into this season after hovering on the fringe of success last split, but never quite crossing its threshold. Isaac “xPepii” Flores was the biggest highlight of this team last split dealing just shy of 40% of the team’s damage. In order for this team to succeed the other members need to step up and play a part. New jungler Tri “Kou” Tin Lam showed early potential in the challenger scene on Cloud 9 Eclipse, but has hovered around the scene ever since never really finding success. He brings a stronger aggression to the table than previous jungler, Federico “Fr3deric” Lizondo, but his objective control is much weaker. This may allow Giants to find a different style of gameplay though.
Peter “Atom” Thomsen also brings some potential to the table coming in as a highly regarded solo queue player, mainly playing in the jungle though. It’ll be interesting to see what he can bring to the top lane, but one can assume that his champion pool will be bigger than the small pool that Jorge “Werlyb” Casanovas brought to the table last season. Expect this team to finish in the lower middle to the bottom of the table.
Elements
Roster
NEW: Steve (Top), Gilius (Jungle), Eika (Mid), MrRallez (ADC)
RETURNING: Sprattel (Support, formerly known as promisQ)
In short, this team is mainly made up of players who were seen as flops on their former teams. Hampus “sprattel” Abrahamsson, then known as “PromisQ”, Etienne “Steve” Michels, and Berk “Gilius” Demir all fell short of expectations last split. The brightest stars of this roster come in the form of ADC Rasmus “MrRalleZ” Skinneholm and rookie mid laner Jeremy “Eika” Valdenaire, both of whom are still not the most impressive on paper. Coach Patrick “Nyph” Funke has his job cut out for him this split with a lot of growth needing to come to this team before they can compete in the top half tier of the EU LCS.
Team Vitality
Roster
NEW: Cabochard (Top), Shook (Jungle), Nukeduck (Mid), Hjarnan (ADC), Kasing (Support)
RETURNING: None
After buying Gambit Gaming’s LCS spot, Team Vitality dove straight into the free agency pool and acquired top talents from across the EU LCS to create a potential super team. The consistency in this roster comes from top laner, Lucas “Cabochard” Simon-Meslet, who was arguably the top-ranked player in his role for the EU last season, and the former H2K bot lane duo of Petter “Hjarnan” Freyschuss and Raymond “kaSing” Tsang.
A lot of the success of this roster is going to come down to the plays that Ilyas “Shook” Hartsema is able to create. Erlend “Nukeduck” Vatevik Holm and Cabochard are both used to funneling in gold as their former teams’ center of attention, so this will most likely mean that Shook will focus on ping-ponging between the top and mid lane leaving the bot lane duo to fend for themselves most of the laning phase. If everything starts to click, this team has a high ceiling that could have them vying for a top three finish this split.
Splyce (Formerly Follow Esports, Formerly Team Dignitas EU)
Roster
NEW: Trashy (Jungle)
RETURNING: Wunderwear (Top), Sencux (Mid), Kobbe (ADC), Nisbeth (Support)
Splyce will be the first team to enter the EU LCS with five Danish starters on their rosters. Chres “Sencux” Laursen is arguably the top talent on this roster, already being highlighted as one of the players to watch for rookie of the year. With that being said, Splyce is still a bit of a wild card in the EU LCS. The team was inconsistent throughout the length of their time in the EU Challenger Series, slowly losing momentum as the season dragged on. In order to refocus the team and bring more strength to their early game map pressure, Splyce added Jonas “Trashy” Andersen to switch up the roster and environment a bit.
In the challenger scene, Spylce focused on controlling the dragon objective; however as we have seen so far this offseason, the dragon seems to have lost a lot of its focus due to the introduction of the Rift Herald and games seem to be ending quicker in general, so a new strategy may have to be implemented here. All-in-all this is a team with a lot of potential to grow under new head coach Jakob “YamatoCanon” Medbi, but this growth won’t happen over night either.
G2 Esports
Roster
NEW: Trick (Jungle), Emperor (ADC)
RETURNING: Kikis (Top, formerly mained jungle), Perkz (Mid), Hybrid (Support)
G2 Esports, formerly Gamers2, is surrounded by quite a bit of excitement from their rise into the LCS from the Challenger scene and particularly their offseason additions. Kim “Emperor” Jinhyun was brought in from Team Dragon Knights of the NA LCS following a rocky season in NA stunted by VISA issues. Emperor looks to bring veteran experience to this team of multiple rookies and can carry the team as well if he can pull back from his sometimes too aggressive playstyle.
The second offseason addition to G2’s roster came in the form of Kim “Trick” Gangyun as the team’s new jungler. Trick showed flashes of brilliance playing a few games for CJ Entus before making the move to Europ and his aggressive champion picks may come in handy as the meta shifts in their favor. With Trick being imported for the jungle role, former jungler Mateusz “Kikis” Szkudlarek shifted to the top lane. As with any role switches, the transition is never easy and will require a lot of effort and hardwork to help it pan out. G2 will most likely stick to playing around midlaner PerkZ as they did in the Challenger Series; however, they have more threats across the board to choose from as well now.
The European League Championship Series Spring Split kicks off this Thursday at 12:00 PM EST with Origen taking on Fnatic. At the very least, this should be one heck of a split to watch. Season 6, here we come!
Featured image courtesy of lolesports.com
