We don’t know exactly where to start with this bit of League of Legends (LCS North America) Team Liquid news because they’re all kind of ridiculous. Gwang-jin “Piglet” Chae, superstar World Champion AD (Attack Damage) Carry, is moving to the mid lane – which will see him change his playstyle from ranged physical damage champions to magic casters, assassins and pokey ranged physical champions. While Liquid’s new AD Carry will be Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng – a pro player on hiatus that isn’t even on the team: he used to play for competing teams CLG and TSM. Lastly joining on support will be Adrian “Adrian” Ma, who was on Phoenix1 but will compete with current support Matt “Matt” Eleno for the position. These changes were prompted by the team’s lowest rank in the LCS right now, with a 3 Win, 9 Loss score.
Piglet
So who’s leaving? Greyson “Goldenglue” Gilmer was the former mid laner and will be replaced by Piglet. Reasoning being that the AD meta right now prefers utility champions that don’t necessarily carry 1v5 like Piglet would want. We’d also guess that Goldenglue isn’t performing as good in the mid lane, at least from the matches we’ve seen him play on.
We expect Piglet will still play generally AD Carry champions in the mid lane, which isn’t far off from the meta. Corki is a popular pick mid – which is a magic-casting AD Carry, and Varus is good mid as well – a long range poke AD Carry. But who knows, maybe Piglet will start playing mages and assassins to carry the team? We’ll have to wait for their next games to find out.
Doublelift
Doublelift temporarily joining Liquid is another huge change. Peng is a superstar himself, being a very vocal CLG player from the start, joining their arch-nemesis TSM last year, and going on hiatus after a total of 6 whole years of playing the game professionally – he’s been a professional player ever since the LCS started. Now Liquid is hoping he can offer his expertise to bring the team back from the brink of losing their LCS spot.
Adrian
As for Adrian vs. Matt, time will tell. We’re not expert analysts here, but we’ve seen Adrian play on more teams throughout the years and Matt is a relative unknown to us. At this point though, its less about individual skill and more about how they’ll synergize with Doublelift, as the bot lane is a volatile place and any miscommunication or incompatible playstyles will make even the best players lose against weaker opponents.
All three players will be joining Liquid’s current roster of Samson “Lourlo” Jackson in the top lane, and Kim “Reignover” Ui-jin as their jungler. Let’s hope they can reverse their fortunes this coming Summer Split.
Sources: RiftHerald, Dot Esports, Riot Games (Pictures), Leaguepedia (pictures)
Alex likes doges and wowes. Much bio.
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