After 2022 LCS failure, what\u2019s next for Team Liquid? Twitter @TeamLiquidLoLThey were one of the most stacked superteams in the world \u2013 and they won\u2019t be going to Worlds 2022. What happened to Team Liquid\u2019s LCS roster, and what can we expect from the team heading into 2023? 2022 seems to be the year that the superteams fall. First, it was Team Vitality, the European superteam designed to net Vitality their first LEC title \u2013 who failed to get anywhere close to an LEC final in either Spring or Summer. And now, it\u2019s Team Liquid. Pound-for-pound one of the most individually talented rosters North America had ever seen, they failed to qualify for the World Championship and will enter a long offseason without a domestic or international title to their name. Team Liquid have never quite known failure on this scale before in the LCS. They\u2019ve had their years of poor performance (the Team liquid fourth meme exists for a reason) but never with this level of investment behind them. At the start of the split they had a strong case for having the most talented players, pound for pound, in every role. At the end of the split, Team Liquid are missing Worlds for the first time in four years. What happens when a project of this scale falls apart? Not only does Liquid have some truly incredible talent \u2013 they have some truly incredible imported talent, for whom the future is immediately uncertain. Where will those players go? Can Liquid realistically go for a total rebuild after this level of investment? Change needs to happen Failure on this scale is inexcusable for an organization of this size. But how do Liquid go about fixing what\u2019s broken with minimal casualties? The first port of call for a failing team of all-star talent is to look to the coach. Because how could these players fail, if not for some kind of systemic issue? Andr\u00e9 \u2018Guilhoto\u2019 Pereira has received his fair share of criticism for the TL disaster, and rightly so. Players this good don\u2019t suddenly start inting. Something is clearly wrong on an organizational level, and it\u2019s easy to think that replacing the coach will fix the problem completely. But it\u2019s rarely that simple \u2013 life rarely offers us quite so easy a solution for such a complicated problem. So, replace Guilhoto. Perhaps even replace Jonas \u2018Kold\u2019 Andersen if you feel like the team needs a complete, clean reset. But what happens if these players keep underperforming after they\u2019re gone? Team play and fundamentals weren\u2019t the only issue for Team Liquid\u2019s LCS 2022 run. Their bot lane in particular has had some serious issues with how they\u2019re playing out teamfights, especially in the playoffs, and that\u2019s not necessarily a coaching problem. It\u2019s likely that S\u00f8ren \u2018Bjergsen\u2019 Bjerg, Lucas \u2018Santorin\u2019 Larsen (barring a few recent slip-ups) and Gabri\u00ebl \u2018Bwipo\u2019 Rau have all performed well enough to stay. But the bot lane is a real problem, and a new coach isn\u2019t going to magically fix that. Steven \u2018Hans sama\u2019 Liv, a player labeled as a true hard carry AD Carry, had one of the lowest kill shares of any AD Carry in the LCS throughout the Summer split. Those things in themselves are not necessarily negatives, but Bjergsen is not a hard carry, and Bwipo isn\u2019t going to provide that crucial DPS needed in a teamfight. Team Liquid needed Hans sama to step up and be the Draven\/Tristana\/Sivir carry of old, and he just\u2026 didn\u2019t. Jo \u2018CoreJJ\u2019 Yong-in has also underperformed, and that\u2019s just not something you get the opportunity to do as a former World Champion. Not all change is good Bjergsen is Bjergsen. He\u2019s not the kind of player a team will just get rid of \u2013 his brand value in the LCS alone is enough for Team Liquid to overlook any moments of weakness. And more importantly, he\u2019s performed consistently just well enough that getting rid of him just wouldn\u2019t be worth it for TL. He\u2019s still the same undisputed KDA king that he\u2019s always been, and he\u2019s a great rock for the team to rely on in the mid lane (even if his passivity and champion pools are still a significant problem). The identity of this team seemed, to me, pretty apparent from the moment the roster was announced. A support whose strength lies in making the primary engages, and a jungler who\u2019s competent at following up on those engages with picks like Sejuani and Trundle. A top laner who can help make those engages by picking off priority targets in side lanes before a fight even starts. A consistent, control mage mid laner who can help create space within fights for the hard-carry AD Carry to work his magic. But this isn\u2019t what it ended up becoming. CoreJJ has been stuck on enchanter supports, unable to make the plays he\u2019s so famous for. Santorin\u2019s been forced to become TL\u2019s primary engage tool, a role that he admitted in an interview with Dexerto that he thinks CoreJJ is better at. Bwipo\u2019s gotten more than his fair share of kills (the most of any LCS top laner in the regular season), but they\u2019ve rarely been able to provide the necessary utility to the rest of his team. And both Bjergsen and Hans sama have shown nothing but passivity in their respective roles. Team Liquid\u2019s core identity as a team has gotten lost, and they\u2019re floundering. Rebuilding an identity for Team Liquid LCS The two most glaring problems for this roster are its bot laners \u2013 specifically Hans sama. Team Liquid had the second-lowest damage per minute of any of the eight teams in the LCS playoffs. Hans sama did 28.8 percent of that damage, racking up a measly 580 damage per minute \u2013 insufficient numbers for an AD Carry drafted onto a team with a notoriously low-damage mid laner. CoreJJ\u2019s also had issues with not fulfilling his role, but his issues have been much more meta-based than a breakdown of his identity as a player. He\u2019s been on enchanter duty almost the whole split long, but especially in the playoffs, and that\u2019s simply not where he shines. Even as far back as Spring, CoreJJ\u2019s ability to work with ranged enchanters has been an issue for TL. In a Discord AMA midway through the Spring split, head coach Guilhoto explained that while Hans sama worked best with ranged supports, CoreJJ\u2019s comfort was on engage and roaming \u2013 and that the pairing needed to \u201cfind a balance and play both at a higher level.\u201d That hasn\u2019t happened. This synergy issue might be solved by a change in coaching philosophy. This team feels designed for each player to perfectly fill an archetype that creates one harmonious whole \u2013 you can afford to play a little outside the meta if it means fulfilling the conditions of your team\u2019s success. If a coach is willing to draft him comfort picks and hope he can just skill gap his opponent, then we might see a return of the old CoreJJ. But the same can\u2019t be said for Hans sama. The current bot-focused meta is pretty well suited to him, and he\u2019s been put on consistently strong picks throughout the summer split and the playoffs. It hasn\u2019t yielded results anywhere close to what fans, and likely Hans sama himself, would have expected or wanted. If a change were to be made in the bot lane, it would make more sense to me to replace Hans sama than to replace CoreJJ. But it would also make sense to make a coaching staff change first \u2013 see if putting CoreJJ on comfort picks and having Hans sama adapt can repair their fractured synergy. There\u2019s also perhaps an argument to be made for replacing Bwipo. But much like CoreJJ, I think a lot of his issues stemmed from the draft, and particularly from his reluctance to play champions like Gnar and Sejuani. In fact, he was one of the only top laners in the LCS to not play Sejuani once throughout the course of the Summer split (and only once in the Summer playoffs) \u2013 she\u2019s been one of the most popular top laners in the international meta. Whether this is a refusal to play those champions, and therefore a potential attitude issue on his behalf, or the choices of TL\u2019s coaching staff, we\u2019ll probably never know. But if it is a coaching staff issue, that\u2019s something that can be fixed without replacing one of the players that TL spent an offseason and an unfathomable amount of money to acquire. Ultimately, it\u2019s unlikely that we\u2019ll see any major changes come out from TL. If I were to hazard a guess, I\u2019d say the most likely solution they\u2019ll take will be to change their coaching staff and keep their players as they are and attempt to make a 2023 rerun. Perhaps they\u2019ll get rid of their two big EU imports in Bwipo and Hans sama and look to domestic talent to fill the gaps, but it would be an undeniable waste of two of the biggest signings an NA team has had in quite some time. Realistically, this roster only gets one more shot at the title before they wear out the good faith of fans. Now, we just have to wait to see what that shot will look like.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After 2022 LCS failure, what\u2019s next for Team Liquid? Twitter @TeamLiquidLoLThey were one of the most stacked superteams in the world \u2013 and they won\u2019t be going to Worlds 2022. What happened to Team Liquid\u2019s LCS roster, and what can we expect from the team heading into 2023? 2022 seems to be the year that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66320\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}