Cloud9 drops the Fortnite Stars Vivid marquee and Chap in shock

The League of Legends offseason is almost over, with the LCS and LEC set to return for the 2021 season. Now that all the rosters have been locked, Dexerto takes a look at the biggest winners and losers in free agency LoL.

The 2020/21 offseason has perhaps been one of the most important in League history. A number of top veterans, including Bjergsen, Doublelift, have put in time for their rich careers, and dominoes have fallen in both North America and Europe in a massive roster reshuffle.

In LCS, almost every list is different; only the core Golden Guardians lineup has stuck, and even they will sport a different banner.

Two of the biggest power changes came from G2 Esports.

The first was to let eight-time LEC champion Luka ‘Perkz’ Perković go to North America. The second was their decision to replace him; Eternal Winners drew Fnatic’s Martin ‘Rekkles’ Larsen to black and silver as 2021 approaches.

Here are our picks for the biggest winners and losers of the 2020/21 offseason.

Off season winners

Cloud 9

For a team that so often “loses the off-season“⁠— at least according to LoL fans ⁠— Spring 2020 champions Cloud9 have done pretty well as the 2021 season approaches.

The eternal LCS heavy hitters actually made just two changes to their starting roster, but they were big. Yasin “Nisqy” Dinçer and poster boy Eric “Licorice” Ritchie out, Ibrahim “Fudge” Allami and Perkz, the self-proclaimed king of Europe, in.

And that’s all Cloud9 needed to “win” the offseason this time around.

We can be quick on Fudge. He is a rising star and left Australia last year. He tore the Academy apart and should do the same in the LCS.

Then there is Perkz. Its record speaks for itself; eight LEC titles, one world final and semi-finals on each side. The only question about the Croatian is the fact that he has played for ADC for most of the past two years. A clear “winner” for sure.

G2 Sports

Oddly enough, G2 Esports is another big winner in the 2020/21 offseason, despite losing Perkz to Cloud9. Simply put, losing an ADC-traded mid laner, and picking up Europe’s best bot laner in his stead, can only be positive for the team.

The defending LEC champions lose their spiritual leader and captain, but Rekkles has never been one to coach his teams.

If he can deliver the same rock-solid performances for Fnatic over the past seven years, while the rest of the G2 Esports roster do what they do best – wreak havoc – then G2 should win another title. in 2021.

100 thieves

Nadeshot’s 100 Red and White Thieves are my pick of the offseason winners. The 2020 Golden Guardians roster was well equipped to make it to the Worlds, and without a little mistake against Team SoloMid, they would have made it too.

Now, heading into 2021, they’ve kept the heart together and received a monster upgrade in the upper lane to boot. Can ‘Closer’ Çelik, Victor ‘FBI’ Huang, Tanner ‘Damonte’ Damonte and Choi ‘huhi’ Jae-hyun all made the switch to 100 thieves on long-term deals.

Add Kim ‘Ssumday’ Chang-ho, and it’s a killer LCS lineup.

Expect 100 Thieves to challenge for their first North American title by the end of this season. With so many upheavals in the LCS, having four members of the same roster together from the start will prove to be the key, and Ssumday is just the icing on the cake.

SK Gaming

The final winner may be an outside choice for some: SK Gaming. The German organization has revised its 2020 roster and recruited a number of exciting young European stars from the Masters.

It gets a big green check mark of approval from our side. These aren’t names that many people will have heard of in the wider League of Legends community, but up-and-coming rookies like Ersin ‘Blue’ Gören, Jean ‘Jezu’ Massol, and Kristian ‘Tynx’ Hansen aim to impress. .

Treatz and Jenax are more well-known quantities, but tossing together this large pot of mixing young European talent should be an exciting roller coaster for SK Gaming fans. Dexerto has a good feeling that SK should make the playoffs with a flurry, like MAD last season.

The only problem could be a similar extinction, as MAD Lions suffered at the Worlds in late 2020, but with Jenax and Treatz bringing in the experience, everything should be fine.

Losers out of season

Gold keepers

If 100 Thieves was one of the biggest winners of the offseason, then the Golden Guardians must be one of the losers. It makes sense, with Golden State Warriors owners withdrawing their funding in 2021 to deal with the NBA crowdless situation, but it’s still a loss.

As mentioned before, GGS came very close to the Worlds last year. Without double elimination, they would have been essentially a shoo-in. Instead, they had to watch from home as TSM flew to Shanghai for them, and then they lost that star list to boot.

There is also little to like about the new range. Academy pickups like Ablazeolive are interesting but, unfortunately, new faces won’t win titles this year.

Astralis

It’s a bit difficult to lower expectations after failing in tenth, but Astralis managed to do it. Picking up some youngsters is a good idea, but when your veteran core is Nukeduck and promises, it’s hard to get excited.

Astralis was picked clean by Team Liquid, Fnatic and Immortals during the offseason. Looks like they’re just trying to piece together the LEC numbers this year.

Jeskla could be a bright spot, but there are question marks about the Swede until he plays, and having promisedq as a support won’t help. Astralis excels at CSGO, sure, but seems to have missed the mark again in League of Legends.

Fnatic

Now, on paper, Fnatic hasn’t done too badly. Elias “Upset” Lipp is considered a strong European ADC. Nisqy could be an improvement over Tim ‘Nemesis’ Lipovšek. Any offseason that sees you hand your best player over to your rivals is a loss, however, and one that Fnatic knows all too well.

Since LEC veterans gave G2 Esports their mid laner, Caps, they have lost four consecutive seasons to their nemesis. Now, they’ve let Rekkles go, too, and none of their new signings are expected to close the gap that just widened.

Fnatic may have improved overall and could be a clear second team if all goes according to script. The odds are against them to break this mold.

SoloMid team

And so we come to TSM and their 2021 roster. This could well be a coinflip formation, and the reigning North American champions might well have been called ‘winners’ if the team’s rivals hadn’t so well recruited. There are, however, a few issues.

The first is Heo ‘Huni’ Seung-hoon. The South Korean top laner has a list of accomplishments any League star would be proud of, including a world final and several national titles, but he is far from his glory days in 2021. For the most part, he is a bad choice for TSM.

This is particularly striking when Licorice and Impact were available.

TSM also lost two of its biggest stars, Bjergsen and Doublelift, before 2021. That in itself makes the new season difficult as they seek to find their feet in a new era. Only the jungler Mingyi ‘Spica’ Lu remains in the 2020 lineup in a massive overhaul.

Tristan ‘PowerofEvil’ Schrage, Hu ‘SwordArt’ Shuo-Chieh and Lawrence ‘Lost’ Hui are all solid. Let them work together, well, we’ll see.

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So there you have it; all the winners and losers of the LCS and LEC as the new year approaches. The first European competition is scheduled to begin on January 22, while the LCS will kick off a week earlier with their preseason “Lock In” tournament on January 15.