Meteos has recently stated that he is taking a break from the professional scene for the time being. But with the summer split still in motion, what could this mean for Cloud 9? Well, it’s pretty simple.
Cloud 9 is already doing horrible this season, aside from the beginning when they were included in the top three teams. Now, they are well on their way to the bottom of the list. It’s not that they’re a bad team, they’ve just been having a lot of bad luck recently. There are just too many things being changed around and it is hard to say if they’ll have a shot at qualifying for worlds this year.
So why is Meteos leaving and will it be permanent? Well, it’s safe to say that it will not be a permanent leave, but he is planning to leave Cloud 9. Meteos stated that he will return to professional gaming if he gets a good offer with a good team but he has no hopes to join a team that isn’t doing well. So with Meteos gone, and Hai now filling in for him in the jungle, what the h*** is going on? It just seems as if nobody cares about the team anymore. If worse comes to worse at least Sneaky will be able to find an offer on another team, but on the other hand, lemmon nation might find himself in trouble when searching for a new team.
It all started to go downhill after Cloud 9’s well known mid laner Hai, left because of a wrist injury that disabled him from playing. He stated that he could no longer play because of the injury, but in the 6th week of the summer split Hai returned to Cloud 9 to replace Meteos after he decided to leave. So as you can tell, Cloud 9 is all over the place. First they lose their mid laner, and then their jungler, and then their mid laner returns as a jungler, and then of course they sign Incarnati0n who just happened to have a perma ban for the past year or so for toxic behaviour. It just doesn’t make sense, and none of it sounds like it could help the team out.
Now all these changes sound pretty crazy for a professional LCS team that was high in the rankings when it all took place, but could it be for the better? Could all the moving around and adapting actually help Cloud 9? If you just stop the story here it sounds pretty bad, however, there is a different way to look at it.
First of all, Cloud 9’s top and bottom lanes haven’t changed. And both the top and bottom lane still perform very well, Sneaky is still one of the best AD Carries in the league, and Balls performs exceptionally well in the top lane, so there’s no problem there. As for the jungle and mid lane; well turns out Cloud 9 signing Incarnati0n was actually an upgrade from Hai. During the weeks leading up to Hai’s departure, the team was having trust issues and it has been said that Hai’s shotcalling wasn’t completely trusted, as well as his skills. So with Hai leaving for who knows how long, Cloud 9 got the chance to search for a new and better mid laner.
Things kind of worked out perfectly. Right as Hai left Cloud 9, Incarnati0n had his ban lifted and went on to search for a mid lane position on any LCS team. So why would Cloud 9 take a mid laner who had a “permanent ban” for toxicity? Well for starters, Incarnati0n has reached number one on the European solo queue ladder multiple times throughout his ban, and, achieved a 94% win rate on one of his accounts over the course of 67 games… That’s really good. With him joining the team, probably itching to just work with other professional players, the team wasn’t looking too bad. And then Meteos left.
So now Cloud 9 needs to find someone who can equally fill in for Meteos; someone with experience in the professional scene. Well who better than the ex mid laner from their own team himself, Hai.
Turns out Hai has had past experience with jungling in the LCS and not only was he up for the challenge, but he is actually pretty decent in the jungle. So now Cloud 9 has had a mid lane and jungle upgrade. If Cloud 9 can learn how to function as a team properly, they may find some late season success. But as of right now, it is hard to tell if they are going to be able to make any sort of improvements before the end of the summer split.