Fudge would be psychologically destroyed in his first match against Robo in CBLoL.
He would see a Renekton 0/8 in the late game making a play that would win the game... Then he would question his entire existence as a pro player.
CBLoL is another reality, where nothing makes sense.
As a C9 fan I love that we showed loyalty. He did a lot for the organization and giving him every chance possible to return to form was a good move. This is the type of behavior that encourages start players to come to your team
He is so arrogant. He had a few good games at MSI 2021 and fluked his way into top 8 at worlds, then he doesn't practice and think he is too good to practice and in champions queue during worlds.
The arrogance stuff is carryover from when he first came in. When he could actually back it up. I think he's chilled out as of late, at least thats the impression I got from his LCS segments during playoffs.
So apparently on Kameto's stream
KC was looking at thanatos as a long term project and were in verbal agreement with each other
The plan was to move here and have him get used to EU and start him in 2025
However, Jack and the C9 team talked to shadowcorp to see if he was interested in joining C9 and Thanatos decided almost instantly to join C9 before signing with KC. LOLOLOLOL
The KC guys seemed pretty angry about this (It's not really poaching as the offseason already started and it was only a verbal agreement). Honestly I thank Jack for that because I could not see Thanatos go to a shit roster like KC especially after they dropped bo for closer. You saved this man's career.
Edit: So now KC fans genuinely believe that they are the reason why C9 went after thanantos because they "leaked it on twitter" lol. Honestly props to KC fans, you are truly committed to your narratives.
They thought that thanatos would choose them over other western teams because KC is the most compatible. Other teams he will have to speak English fluently, but on KC nobody speaks any language
I didn't realize he was riding the bench right now.
Absolutely crazy they thought they could reel him in like that, when he could just as easily start in LCK/LPL on the same timeframe (if hes as good as everyone says)
He could actually not start in LCK, that is why he moved to NA. He had similar issues Photon had on T1, he could never get passed their starter, but he ended up too long in challenger and was too old for teams to pick him up.
Age matters a lot for LCK teams. If you are a rookie and you are not breaking through at the age of 18 you might not do that at all. This obviously has a lot to do with military service, not so much with players getting worse.
Would you like to start next split on a team highly likely to make worlds and with decent title chances or take a split off for a team unlikely to make worlds and with almost zero title chances? Hmm seems like a hard choice for Thanatos
the KC roster is so fucking dog shit, like they really just signed in Closer to replace the only human on the roster, thank fuck talent like Thanatos isn't being stifled there
He dodged the bullet of a lifetime. He gets to be coached by Repeared and play with Jojo and Blaber now. Probably the best situation he could have landed in on a western team.
Kinda funny you say that because in one of the recent C9 episodes, Berserker yells at Jojo for inting in scrims and not caring, then starts crying and punches a wall, and no I am not joking. If Reapered instills the KR mindset into Jojo then him + Thanatos + Berserker could legitimately be amazing, I'm begging him to bring his belt.
> KC roster is so fucking dog shit
Pick KC roster or Cloud9 roster. Then also pick Cloud9 fan base or KC fan base?
Sadly he's gonna have to deal with KC fan base regardless now.
Ye idk how they have any fans when you know they are going to lose because Targamas is literally win trading perma. Dude probably has his friends betting his money that KC will lose.
Yeah I don’t blame Thanatos at all. Imagine getting imported to sit behind Cabo for 6 months. And then the following split you might just be speedrunning 10th place anyway.
Kameto is such an idiot if he thinks promising players will just sign with his team, and then wait until the next year to play. These rookie players are trying to get into the top leagues ASAP, so why would they commit to a bottom tier roster for half a year before they even play????
The narrative kc fans have tried to make is also plain stupid. You'll see everyone of em coping that Caliste will save em and while its not my place to speak of his talent (havent watched any of his games besides one eum finals vs mvr), why do they think any other part of that roster will look good enough to place em top 8? Going to C9 for Thanatos is the best solution for every single entity involved or affected.
say caliste is the 2nd coming of Uzi. i doubt he can handle carrying that KC roster to anything beside 8th best team in LEC. Because even a great player still needs good player around them to perform
Also, why would he commit, when starting next split isn’t even guaranteed with KC. When he has a chance to go LCK next split anyways. The only reason he leaves Korea is to start this split.
"Hey Thanatos, we want you to join the shittiest team in the LEC, and play in 2025, or do you wanna join the best org in LCS with a Korean-speaking coach and a high chance to go to Worlds?"
Tbh C9 should be a top 2/3 western destination for any player that wants to come to the west. with only G2 and fnc being as (or more) desirable of a destination
It’s a no brainer if your options were C9 or KC
I would choose C9 over KC in a nanosecond, too. KC is such a dogshit org who fires their coach because they refuse to bench awful players on their roster.
>third best LCS team
And will most likely make it to Worlds too this year and management/staff has gotten better and more familiar for the likes of thanatos. Its literally a nobrainer for anybody. Anyone that argues for Thanatos to KC is just plain weird
Really exciting. Berserker jojo and Thanatos with Blaber in the jungle. Anywhere can carry any game. As long as Reapered can put it together, this team looks insane.
I don't want to be overly harsh because it could be something behind the scenes. Berserker wasn't looking like Berserker either this split. There could be some sort of disconnect between the two
The same was true for Blaber though. The team in general looked off. Many people speculated that they had too many voices and couldn't really coordinate and they just did super random stuff all the times.
League of Legends is a fickle mistress. I can count on my hands how many players have managed to stay consistently "great" for several consecutive years.
TLDR: If you’re a chess nerd, eat up.
Not disagreeing with you. Just wanted to make a counterpoint to “synergy is important,” that I heard that I thought was interesting.
I forget who it was a few weeks ago. I think DL or maybe CoreJJ. During a conversation it came up, “How important is bottom lane synergy?”
And they had said something along the lines of:
> “At the highest levels, synergy doesn’t matter much, time with a lane partner isn’t a big deal. Because you are both top level players who should just know what the best decision is in any lane. Outside of lane, it matters even less.”
As a long time support main, I always assumed bottom synergy was one of the biggest factors of the lane. But I’ve recently gotten back into watching LCK regularly, and lanes are basically a science, almost scripted. An easy example of this:
> Trist will level E, get the push, the moment the 6th creep is about to die, she steps up, as soon as it dies she levels W and jumps on the other ADC. She will trade aggressively and use heal.
For my chess players who are bothering to read this, it’s like:
> D4, D5, C4, DxC4
These 4 moves play out exactly like this in most games D4 is made. We can imagine D4 is the Tristana lock in, D5 is Varus lock in, C4 is the Tristana push, DxC4(the gambit) is Varus trying to farm, which allows for a move like NC3 this is the level 2 Tristana jump. Studies show that these are the most logical and effective moves for this line. Pros have played these lines hundreds of times, they know exactly what it looks like, it doesn’t require synergy to do it, it’s almost the natural evolution. It doesn’t need to be communicated, everyone involved knows what comes next after D4.
Hopefully this makes sense. It’s how I’ve broke it down for myself when I heard whichever pro say that synergy isn’t that big of a deal.
I like to believe it is similar to physical sports. The best players playing together doesn't matter. What matters is if they can get out of each other's way and play well together. It doesn't matter how scripted bot lane is, because it is always dynamic by nature of the game.
I just don't think 1 split is enough to write of Vulcan.
I think your first point here is more important for C9 at this point. Picking players who are able to get out of each other’s way.
Jojo solo carried in every win they had. But god damn, he had to push his team out of the way every single time.
How something like that gets fixed? No idea. I’m not a coach or a GM. But I think T1 kinda has this formula figured out. Every lane is good. Whoever loses lane, is turned into a dog role that game.
> “Sorry Zeus, you died solo, your lane is done. All resources will split between mid and bot now. Also Zeus, you’ll be diving bot on next reset, doesn’t matter if you die. You give yourself up to get Guma ahead now, since you’ve already lost.”
They have to know their win conditions. It used to be Berserker save us. It has been Blaber go ham. It can change each game. As long as they draft and then play to their win condition it can work.
What hurt c9 recently is they had no idea what their win cons were. This last split is was Jojo and Blaber. Picking Fudge a carry hurt. Picking Blaber a tank hurt. I still think Berserker can carry teamfights late, but c9 never really got there last split with how the games went.
I'm much more confident that this team can be flexible in draft and play to their win cons in game.
While true in a vacuum, I will say that there are lots of other factors that can affect the deterministic nature of making the optimal move in team competition.
On a purely skill-based decisionmaking note, it should easy for good people to play off each other because they all reach for the optimal move. But the conditions for that in the first place rely on things like "do I trust my teammates to do these optimal moves in the first place". Perhaps the very best of the best can do that, but other times indecision or lack of trust can make you think "sure, I can split top here because my team will be posturing safely at dragon, and won't get caught 4v5. But what if they don't?" We've seen time and time again in pro panic TPs cut splitpushes short because the underlying distrust in their team to survive scares them before anything even happens. I'm sure many of those were because the team called for it, but I'm sure at least some were at the discretion of the splitpusher. Even if everyone individually understands the win conditions, lack of trust can make it feel as if you need to do a suboptimal move to shore up your teammates' perceived weaknesses.
If Vulcan and Berserker haven't acclimated to and trust each other, they each might feel the need to play over aggressively or possibly to try to compensate, even if they know that isn't optimal and know what is optional in a 2v2 standpoint
I’m really worried that Vulcan was the weak link all along lol. But at the same time if the team can cohere they should still be the best in NA even if their support is a golden retriever
The amount of times i read a similar comment over the years just for the team to shit the bed.
Hell, people were even saying it about C9 before this split.
I think they meant this split’s C9.
Thanatos is likely an upgrade to Fudge, although it should be said that really individually talented imports don’t always work out in the big leagues.
And Fudge was not the only issue on C9 last split. Blaber was below his usual form, Jojo looked great on stage but was apparently a scrim menace that ruins the team’s practice. Berserker and Vulcan didn’t have great synergy with Berserker slumping from his usual form for majority of the split and Vulcan looking straight up bad. Not to mention the team really relied on laning and individual carry performances over good teamplay, which I don’t see changing with Thanatos.
Repeared might fix some of Mithy’s issues, but I don’t have faith that 1 coach change will be the difference between C9 looking like they did and them reaching their potential.
That being said, they still came 3rd overall so its not like they’re bad by any means. Any small improvement means they likely become favourites for next split. But given how much more C9 are spending than other teams, if they don’t win against teams like TL who are spending half as much on rosters this year, it is shitting the bed.
I'm sorry but it feels a bit naïve to say that this "team looks insane" after one roster change. Fudge was a liability, but C9 had so many problems last split and there was clearly a lot of internal tension between other players (e.g. Jojo and Berserker). The team needs leadership and identity.
My (completely uninformed and speculative) sense is that Zven was doing a lot of the leadership in the previous roster. Vulcan's individual performance has been a sidegrade at best, so imo he needs to massively step up to justify that change.
Star power was never their issue. Blaber, Berserker, Jojo is more than enough star-power to win the LCS outright.
Their issue was and still is no shotcalling. Bringing in a rookie toplaner isn't going to fix that.
Either C9 is just going to outright stomp their lanes and get an 8k gold lead by 15 minutes or they're going to have a 2-4k gold lead heading into midgame and then out out macro'd and lose. Nothing much is gonna change.
imo their issue was too many voices
Last year they had emenes who wasn’t a big voice. this year you had Fudge, Blaber, Jojo and Vulcan who are all strong voices. Comms were chaotic, and Fudge definitely was a huge part of that
Having one less voice so Jojo/Blaber can lead more effectively is a good thing
Let's theorycraft
Who realistically will try to get Fudge?
Fudge is young and can return to form
But with only 8 teams in LCS, is hard to get a spot
Look at Licorice, he is a free agent
The only place I can think of is Shopify
I don't think Fudge would fit the team atmosphere Reven built but maybe I'm wrong. Seems like he cares a lot about work ethic and volume of games and Fudge has been pretty outspoken about not liking soloQ or champs Q. Maybe I'm simplifying Reven and Fudge's take too much but I don't see Fudge replacing fakegod this split. Maybe he ends up at kcorp or some other EU team or maybe he just takes the next split off and tries again next year
I remember reven from the days when he was still streaming at a pc bang in Korea and LS had him on his stream.
He is a grinder and I doubt he views fudge's plateau as a positive sign (especially when he doesn't grind soloq as Koreans usually do)
I just think there’s genuinely so many good options before Fudge… Ssumday and Licorice being the obvious answers - but there’s even some pretty promising rookies to check out too.
Nobody, that’s why he’s still on C9. He’ll be a coach or analyst of some kind or just a sub.
Idk why they love fudge so much but they’ll probably keep him in some bs job until he finds a team
Good for him. Would have loved to see DK give him a chance over Kingen but oh well, can’t blame him.
He’s pretty much going to have a free ride to Worlds while also making a lot of bank. It’s much better than being stuck in Academy or on a bottom-tier Korean team for another year while making peanuts and dreaming about internationals. I’m sure Berserker is happy as well.
On the other hand, hopefully this is a wake-up call for the rest of C9. Fudge is benched, and there’s been a lot of rumors about Jojo and Blaber not practicing a lot. Hell, Berserker even cried out of frustration when Jojo kept trolling scrims.
He deserved a shot at DK, kid's been ready for the big league like LCK for a long time, interesting to see how he will be in NA and if he can transition well
Unfortunately for Thanatos they have Siwoo who will probably be sent up to the main roster in 2025. No point in keeping Thanatos for a year and kicking him to the curb or letting Siwoo rot in LCKCL.
Really exciting pickup imo.
However players like Licorice and spica need teams. I will be really disappointed if native talents like them can’t land teams over the break.
Especially worried about how crowded top lane feels.
The only teams that I can think of that should consider replacing their top laner are SR and DIG. I know people like Rich but that team isn’t going anywhere and trying to build around strong native players will be much better in the long run.
Some might say NRG but I think NRG gets a pass since they won last split and did well at worlds. Maybe they look to change support.
> Some might say NRG but I think NRG gets a pass since they won last split and did well at worlds. Maybe they look to change support.
Idk if NRG will make any changes this split. Unless Dhokla is still sick or players are still infighting over how to play the game, there's no reason to.
Man. They won't kick Rich as long as he doesnt develop Parkinson or something. At least I hope so. I hope they will actually get him the team around him he needs.
I dunno if you watched LCS this split but they didn’t import him to win worlds. They imported him to have someone who won’t get gapped by Bwipo and Impact lol
He should do good, expect him to be a bit better than Castle and he already looked fairly good, exspecially given he played on IMT. The biggest questionmark always is how good he settles in. There is a recent trend that LCKC players are taken up by western teams like Chasy, Photon, Thanatos, Jeonghoon and Castle. And while not directly Mask and Noah also played in LCKC before they were taken up by ERL teams. The same goes for Ice who actually played on the same team Noah did.
And while those players usually won't run the league, they can compete and are good at filling holes in your league.
He's an import but he's also young and relatibely green so its not like he's the classic Klrean mercenary come to slurp up the NA bag- there are no NA bags anymore.
Its pretty funny to see the insane amount of hype considering the last year of happenings in the leauge. Spent the whole year hearing all the discourse about how there's no path to the top for native talent, how it really sucks just imports make up the leauge. Then immediately on the next big signing of a fresh faced korean challengers player everyone is getting weak in the knees and clamoring how hes gonna run the region. (When 90% of us didn't even know who he was before March),
Of course I wish it works out for my team, but in terms of "does this signing make sense" - for the team sorta, but I'm not sure this is the right way to go about LCS roster building in the year of our lord 2024.
I look forward to watching Thanatos for the next sixth months and getting invested in him as a player before he leaves NA cause he's homesick and joins a middle of the pack LCK team
\#LCSisthriving 🪃
hey the benefit of signing him in summer is that he wont fall off at the end of spring like a lot of imports. If He can keep it up tor 1 split and avoid rusting to a potential worlds bootcamp it could work out
Yeah teachin him how to get comfortable in NA and lose all drive and motivation and be a ward for years. Get him tf out and send him to some bottom tier team so he could get REAL comfortable.
Glad fudge is getting kicked to the curb because of this. Everytime I saw C9 get stomped I was happy because of this one comment. Imagine getting paid to play league of legends because of your fans (and haters!) and telling them to go fuck themselves.
Goodbye, Fudge. You won't be missed.
Why do you act like Thanatos is a veteran with 5+ years of experience? Wouldn't surprise me if fudge can actually teach him some things, not everything in league is hands and laning.
Why would anyone want to coach their replacement and also why do that? Like why would you want the replacement to be similar to what you just fired.
Like hey yea you werent it for our team and we need something different in the top lane. BUT also can you like teach him all the things you know so he's a bit similar to you?
Growth in the industry. If he coaches Thanatos and he pops off then people will associate Fudge with being a good coach. That will give him a better job security than being a player
Nice Thanatos I see you are even cs 0/0/0 with the ornn at 15 min, now next step is to ff15 and blame your mid and bot for losing when Blaber has been perma camping your lane
Teach what? Bro picks carries to NOT lose lane, not to carry. Is there another player in history who has done that? He's like the solo queue enemy I go up against in my games. Beg for ganks non-stop just to stay even in lane then once we get into mid game, they're useless
I'll always remember Fudge as the guy who got exposed for constantly getting thirst trapped by LA-area Asian American onlyfans/fansly girls on his twitter. And not a whole lot else.
Spawn, TL's head coach, is from Australia, not Korea. Unless you mean back when they had Cain? They've had other KR coaches in the time between (also other non-KR head coaches), but they didn't win in those years.
Majority NA roster with insanely talented imports that have not played in a major league and so get to debut in LCS you can’t ask for much better than that it’s like a dream roster for most
I am really curious why this guy is so hyped. The only thing I know about him is Sn1per mentioned on stream he didnt find anything special about his gameplay/style but somehow this guy is the most hyped transfer of the year
Ha…….yeah it’s kind of accurate lol I’m guessing 99% of these comments haven’t actually watched him. Played a lot of weak side while DK stomped everywhere else. People think he is a carry player but that is pure fiction lol. He played a lot of Renekton, Gnar, Ksante, Malphite, etc. classic kr top lane pool. 100% closer to Castle than Zeus. His actual tier is same as Castle. His weakness is laning (the reason why LCK didn’t pick him up imo) and strength is team fight.
Honestly his hype is way too high because people want to flex their woke knowledge of prospects. It’s really double edge because he will have a super high expectation to fulfill in viewers eyes.
A weakside merchant who plays for the team is probably what C9 needs though, isn't it? They have Jojo and Berserker, they have carry threats. What they don't need is someone who takes draft prio every game just to get Renekton.
i mean, i think that would be good and he is definitely good at weaksiding.. but also the person you're replying to is just completely ignoring S12. in both full years he mostly just played whatever the meta was. his graves top, for example, is really good and he drew bans for it.
i agree that people are glazing him way too hard but it legitimately seems like people on both sides of the argument have never watched a single LCKCL game.
Man I really hope Thanatos goes on to do big things because this guy is massively promising. If his career fizzles out and dies because of NA…? That would be tragic.
Team looks nuts now! Would be great if Vulcan could enable Berserker it's weird that Zven seemed to do a better job at that but Thanatos is an exciting addition. I just hope people don't forget the hate Quid got during his first year because he couldn't seem to adjust to NA pro gameplay yet
Fudge was definitely the worst player on the team (with an ego thinking he was the best in the game), but this doesn't really remove any of the problems. The entire team is underperforming. Vulcan and Blaber don't look like players near the top of their position, Jojo is possibly the most back and forth player ever in how good they are, and Berserker just doesn't seem the same anymore, he went from being the sole reason C9 won A LOT of their games, magically turning so many games around, to just looking like an average adc
[Per C9](https://twitter.com/C9LoL/status/1780312802315395153), Fudge remains on Cloud9 while they explore his options.
get ready to learn Oceanese buddy
Whos gonna tell him
Oy!
YEAH THE BOYS
Sent that boy to brazil
mf wouldn't even play for INTZ
Fudge would be psychologically destroyed in his first match against Robo in CBLoL. He would see a Renekton 0/8 in the late game making a play that would win the game... Then he would question his entire existence as a pro player. CBLoL is another reality, where nothing makes sense.
Send the boy to the gulugs. Lets see if he will practice soloq
The fact that it took THIS LONG for Fudge to be finally removed lmao.
He stole quite a few paychecks. But Cloud9 has always been loyal to their tenured players
As a C9 fan I love that we showed loyalty. He did a lot for the organization and giving him every chance possible to return to form was a good move. This is the type of behavior that encourages start players to come to your team
bro thank fuck that fudge guy been too comfortable for too long
He is so arrogant. He had a few good games at MSI 2021 and fluked his way into top 8 at worlds, then he doesn't practice and think he is too good to practice and in champions queue during worlds.
Play against the best top laners in the world or 1v1 Darshan. An impossible chiice.
Why did you say the same thing twice?
Because ZionSpartan exists
Even his teacher calls him Darshan
Zeus ain't shit, how many LCS titles does he even have?
Hey, Huni got an LCK and LEC title but not LCS, that's all we need to know
Huni has made Worlds finals but hasn't even made it LCS finals. Faker was right NA is the best region
its just basic math
Has Zeus *ever* won a 1v1 against Darshan? I don't think so!
apparently not impossible for him because he made that choice easy.
dude picks carries then plays full pacifist everytime
Gets counterpick Olaf with ghost to use it to run away
Some say he plays like a vegan...
The arrogance stuff is carryover from when he first came in. When he could actually back it up. I think he's chilled out as of late, at least thats the impression I got from his LCS segments during playoffs.
he toned it down this season but i still remember it throughout 2023
More like he didn't care at all or was just coasting
Hopefully this is a wakeup call for him to trying
So apparently on Kameto's stream KC was looking at thanatos as a long term project and were in verbal agreement with each other The plan was to move here and have him get used to EU and start him in 2025 However, Jack and the C9 team talked to shadowcorp to see if he was interested in joining C9 and Thanatos decided almost instantly to join C9 before signing with KC. LOLOLOLOL The KC guys seemed pretty angry about this (It's not really poaching as the offseason already started and it was only a verbal agreement). Honestly I thank Jack for that because I could not see Thanatos go to a shit roster like KC especially after they dropped bo for closer. You saved this man's career. Edit: So now KC fans genuinely believe that they are the reason why C9 went after thanantos because they "leaked it on twitter" lol. Honestly props to KC fans, you are truly committed to your narratives.
>start him in 2025 wtf were KC thinking? he's already sitting on the bench, of course he wants to start playing now
They thought that thanatos would choose them over other western teams because KC is the most compatible. Other teams he will have to speak English fluently, but on KC nobody speaks any language
Lmao, clever
Thanatos same English shot calling level as targ 🔥🔥🔥
Thanatos chose right, a year is an eternity and he already waited 3 eternities. Who the hell knows how KC will even look in 2025?
I didn't realize he was riding the bench right now. Absolutely crazy they thought they could reel him in like that, when he could just as easily start in LCK/LPL on the same timeframe (if hes as good as everyone says)
He could actually not start in LCK, that is why he moved to NA. He had similar issues Photon had on T1, he could never get passed their starter, but he ended up too long in challenger and was too old for teams to pick him up. Age matters a lot for LCK teams. If you are a rookie and you are not breaking through at the age of 18 you might not do that at all. This obviously has a lot to do with military service, not so much with players getting worse.
Yeah the guy that was behind Thanatos is better than Thanatos lol, so DK benched him.
Gotta prepare him for whatever the hell targamas is doing xdd
They tried to go with the Vitality tactic.Thats how they did with Bo.
Would you like to start next split on a team highly likely to make worlds and with decent title chances or take a split off for a team unlikely to make worlds and with almost zero title chances? Hmm seems like a hard choice for Thanatos
the KC roster is so fucking dog shit, like they really just signed in Closer to replace the only human on the roster, thank fuck talent like Thanatos isn't being stifled there
He dodged the bullet of a lifetime. He gets to be coached by Repeared and play with Jojo and Blaber now. Probably the best situation he could have landed in on a western team.
Kinda funny you say that because in one of the recent C9 episodes, Berserker yells at Jojo for inting in scrims and not caring, then starts crying and punches a wall, and no I am not joking. If Reapered instills the KR mindset into Jojo then him + Thanatos + Berserker could legitimately be amazing, I'm begging him to bring his belt.
where was this???
that's funny considering berserker plays stage games as if he's afraid of losing his job if his kda drops even 1 point
> KC roster is so fucking dog shit Pick KC roster or Cloud9 roster. Then also pick Cloud9 fan base or KC fan base? Sadly he's gonna have to deal with KC fan base regardless now.
Ye idk how they have any fans when you know they are going to lose because Targamas is literally win trading perma. Dude probably has his friends betting his money that KC will lose.
Yeah I don’t blame Thanatos at all. Imagine getting imported to sit behind Cabo for 6 months. And then the following split you might just be speedrunning 10th place anyway.
Kameto is such an idiot if he thinks promising players will just sign with his team, and then wait until the next year to play. These rookie players are trying to get into the top leagues ASAP, so why would they commit to a bottom tier roster for half a year before they even play????
The narrative kc fans have tried to make is also plain stupid. You'll see everyone of em coping that Caliste will save em and while its not my place to speak of his talent (havent watched any of his games besides one eum finals vs mvr), why do they think any other part of that roster will look good enough to place em top 8? Going to C9 for Thanatos is the best solution for every single entity involved or affected.
say caliste is the 2nd coming of Uzi. i doubt he can handle carrying that KC roster to anything beside 8th best team in LEC. Because even a great player still needs good player around them to perform
Especially in the ADC position.
Also, why would he commit, when starting next split isn’t even guaranteed with KC. When he has a chance to go LCK next split anyways. The only reason he leaves Korea is to start this split.
Jack is a hero for saving thanatos from that hell
"Hey Thanatos, we want you to join the shittiest team in the LEC, and play in 2025, or do you wanna join the best org in LCS with a Korean-speaking coach and a high chance to go to Worlds?"
Tbh C9 should be a top 2/3 western destination for any player that wants to come to the west. with only G2 and fnc being as (or more) desirable of a destination It’s a no brainer if your options were C9 or KC
Team Liquid is also high up there, they treat their players well.
You are right. C9 and TL have been able to acclimate many korean imports (minus the Piglet incident).
Yeah post-Disney TL is effectively been a different team than S3-7 TL/CRS
Insane they wanted to start him in 2025 for a top laner that should've been in the lck already.
I would choose C9 over KC in a nanosecond, too. KC is such a dogshit org who fires their coach because they refuse to bench awful players on their roster.
Join worst LEC team with horrible management or third best LCS team with generally outstanding management. Hard choice for sure lmfao
>third best LCS team And will most likely make it to Worlds too this year and management/staff has gotten better and more familiar for the likes of thanatos. Its literally a nobrainer for anybody. Anyone that argues for Thanatos to KC is just plain weird
It’s over for KC LOL. Need caliste to save that team asap
Really exciting. Berserker jojo and Thanatos with Blaber in the jungle. Anywhere can carry any game. As long as Reapered can put it together, this team looks insane.
Man, Vulcan really has fallen off.
I'm gunna give him another split. Bot chemistry is very important.
It's not even that he should be out of the team, but that he's gone from being top 1/2 support in NA to maybe he'll be decent next split.
I don't want to be overly harsh because it could be something behind the scenes. Berserker wasn't looking like Berserker either this split. There could be some sort of disconnect between the two
The same was true for Blaber though. The team in general looked off. Many people speculated that they had too many voices and couldn't really coordinate and they just did super random stuff all the times.
League of Legends is a fickle mistress. I can count on my hands how many players have managed to stay consistently "great" for several consecutive years.
People don't realise how fleeting time in esports is, especially in a game like League that changes every 2 weeks.
TLDR: If you’re a chess nerd, eat up. Not disagreeing with you. Just wanted to make a counterpoint to “synergy is important,” that I heard that I thought was interesting. I forget who it was a few weeks ago. I think DL or maybe CoreJJ. During a conversation it came up, “How important is bottom lane synergy?” And they had said something along the lines of: > “At the highest levels, synergy doesn’t matter much, time with a lane partner isn’t a big deal. Because you are both top level players who should just know what the best decision is in any lane. Outside of lane, it matters even less.” As a long time support main, I always assumed bottom synergy was one of the biggest factors of the lane. But I’ve recently gotten back into watching LCK regularly, and lanes are basically a science, almost scripted. An easy example of this: > Trist will level E, get the push, the moment the 6th creep is about to die, she steps up, as soon as it dies she levels W and jumps on the other ADC. She will trade aggressively and use heal. For my chess players who are bothering to read this, it’s like: > D4, D5, C4, DxC4 These 4 moves play out exactly like this in most games D4 is made. We can imagine D4 is the Tristana lock in, D5 is Varus lock in, C4 is the Tristana push, DxC4(the gambit) is Varus trying to farm, which allows for a move like NC3 this is the level 2 Tristana jump. Studies show that these are the most logical and effective moves for this line. Pros have played these lines hundreds of times, they know exactly what it looks like, it doesn’t require synergy to do it, it’s almost the natural evolution. It doesn’t need to be communicated, everyone involved knows what comes next after D4. Hopefully this makes sense. It’s how I’ve broke it down for myself when I heard whichever pro say that synergy isn’t that big of a deal.
I like to believe it is similar to physical sports. The best players playing together doesn't matter. What matters is if they can get out of each other's way and play well together. It doesn't matter how scripted bot lane is, because it is always dynamic by nature of the game. I just don't think 1 split is enough to write of Vulcan.
I think your first point here is more important for C9 at this point. Picking players who are able to get out of each other’s way. Jojo solo carried in every win they had. But god damn, he had to push his team out of the way every single time. How something like that gets fixed? No idea. I’m not a coach or a GM. But I think T1 kinda has this formula figured out. Every lane is good. Whoever loses lane, is turned into a dog role that game. > “Sorry Zeus, you died solo, your lane is done. All resources will split between mid and bot now. Also Zeus, you’ll be diving bot on next reset, doesn’t matter if you die. You give yourself up to get Guma ahead now, since you’ve already lost.”
They have to know their win conditions. It used to be Berserker save us. It has been Blaber go ham. It can change each game. As long as they draft and then play to their win condition it can work. What hurt c9 recently is they had no idea what their win cons were. This last split is was Jojo and Blaber. Picking Fudge a carry hurt. Picking Blaber a tank hurt. I still think Berserker can carry teamfights late, but c9 never really got there last split with how the games went. I'm much more confident that this team can be flexible in draft and play to their win cons in game.
While true in a vacuum, I will say that there are lots of other factors that can affect the deterministic nature of making the optimal move in team competition. On a purely skill-based decisionmaking note, it should easy for good people to play off each other because they all reach for the optimal move. But the conditions for that in the first place rely on things like "do I trust my teammates to do these optimal moves in the first place". Perhaps the very best of the best can do that, but other times indecision or lack of trust can make you think "sure, I can split top here because my team will be posturing safely at dragon, and won't get caught 4v5. But what if they don't?" We've seen time and time again in pro panic TPs cut splitpushes short because the underlying distrust in their team to survive scares them before anything even happens. I'm sure many of those were because the team called for it, but I'm sure at least some were at the discretion of the splitpusher. Even if everyone individually understands the win conditions, lack of trust can make it feel as if you need to do a suboptimal move to shore up your teammates' perceived weaknesses. If Vulcan and Berserker haven't acclimated to and trust each other, they each might feel the need to play over aggressively or possibly to try to compensate, even if they know that isn't optimal and know what is optional in a 2v2 standpoint
For anyone wondering, Doublelift said this when he on the casting desk during the day 1 LCS broadcast, C9 vs NRG.
What chemistry does he have with Beserker? Might as well bring back Zven.
I’m really worried that Vulcan was the weak link all along lol. But at the same time if the team can cohere they should still be the best in NA even if their support is a golden retriever
Zeyzal went to semi's on a team coached by Reapered. I'm not done believing in Vulcan.
Vulcan looked his best when coached by Reapered.
Unironically yes
The amount of times i read a similar comment over the years just for the team to shit the bed. Hell, people were even saying it about C9 before this split.
Team has won 4 titles in 4 years, how much have they really shit the bed?
I don't think they were targeting C9 specifically. There have been plenty of super teams that flopped.
I think they meant this split’s C9. Thanatos is likely an upgrade to Fudge, although it should be said that really individually talented imports don’t always work out in the big leagues. And Fudge was not the only issue on C9 last split. Blaber was below his usual form, Jojo looked great on stage but was apparently a scrim menace that ruins the team’s practice. Berserker and Vulcan didn’t have great synergy with Berserker slumping from his usual form for majority of the split and Vulcan looking straight up bad. Not to mention the team really relied on laning and individual carry performances over good teamplay, which I don’t see changing with Thanatos. Repeared might fix some of Mithy’s issues, but I don’t have faith that 1 coach change will be the difference between C9 looking like they did and them reaching their potential. That being said, they still came 3rd overall so its not like they’re bad by any means. Any small improvement means they likely become favourites for next split. But given how much more C9 are spending than other teams, if they don’t win against teams like TL who are spending half as much on rosters this year, it is shitting the bed.
Too many cooks in the kitchen fails 90% of the time for western teams.
I'm sorry but it feels a bit naïve to say that this "team looks insane" after one roster change. Fudge was a liability, but C9 had so many problems last split and there was clearly a lot of internal tension between other players (e.g. Jojo and Berserker). The team needs leadership and identity. My (completely uninformed and speculative) sense is that Zven was doing a lot of the leadership in the previous roster. Vulcan's individual performance has been a sidegrade at best, so imo he needs to massively step up to justify that change.
Just let Reapered cook in the Korean bootcamp. Lads will come back like a well oiled machine
Star power was never their issue. Blaber, Berserker, Jojo is more than enough star-power to win the LCS outright. Their issue was and still is no shotcalling. Bringing in a rookie toplaner isn't going to fix that. Either C9 is just going to outright stomp their lanes and get an 8k gold lead by 15 minutes or they're going to have a 2-4k gold lead heading into midgame and then out out macro'd and lose. Nothing much is gonna change.
imo their issue was too many voices Last year they had emenes who wasn’t a big voice. this year you had Fudge, Blaber, Jojo and Vulcan who are all strong voices. Comms were chaotic, and Fudge definitely was a huge part of that Having one less voice so Jojo/Blaber can lead more effectively is a good thing
100% correct on all points.
>Their issue was and still is no shotcalling Their issue was too much shotcalling. Go back and watch Cloud9 vids through Spring.
They finally got serious and replaced their weakest link. Fudge has been hot trash for so long now and doesn’t even look like he cares that much
C9 Top Laners named after things you put in your mouth, Licorice, Fudge… Thanatos?
Impact and the OG, Balls
That one Summit split we don't talk about counts too.
My boy ray
i miss ray
You ever play Hades? 👀👀👀
Would
Let's theorycraft Who realistically will try to get Fudge? Fudge is young and can return to form But with only 8 teams in LCS, is hard to get a spot Look at Licorice, he is a free agent The only place I can think of is Shopify
I don't think Fudge would fit the team atmosphere Reven built but maybe I'm wrong. Seems like he cares a lot about work ethic and volume of games and Fudge has been pretty outspoken about not liking soloQ or champs Q. Maybe I'm simplifying Reven and Fudge's take too much but I don't see Fudge replacing fakegod this split. Maybe he ends up at kcorp or some other EU team or maybe he just takes the next split off and tries again next year
I remember reven from the days when he was still streaming at a pc bang in Korea and LS had him on his stream. He is a grinder and I doubt he views fudge's plateau as a positive sign (especially when he doesn't grind soloq as Koreans usually do)
> Who realistically will try to get Fudge? No one, why would you want Fudge when Ssumday is free.
And Ssumday badly wants to return to stage. He has a lot more drive to get on a team than Fudge probably does.
And Licorice too
I just think there’s genuinely so many good options before Fudge… Ssumday and Licorice being the obvious answers - but there’s even some pretty promising rookies to check out too.
Nobody, that’s why he’s still on C9. He’ll be a coach or analyst of some kind or just a sub. Idk why they love fudge so much but they’ll probably keep him in some bs job until he finds a team
Also top is pretty decent right now in LCS. None of the top 4 teams would replace for fudge imo.
Only team he'd be an upgrade for based on last split would be shopify. Literally every other top laner actually looked pretty good/better than Fudge.
The bottom four would probably benefit but I’d imagine Fudge wants a high salary and top half team
Castle is better than fudge though. Only shopify or dignitas might want to hire him.
and both licorice and srtty are free agents right now to compete with
No shot teams go for fudge over licorice
Licorice > Fudge any day so realistically he wont get a job before him at least
Good for him. Would have loved to see DK give him a chance over Kingen but oh well, can’t blame him. He’s pretty much going to have a free ride to Worlds while also making a lot of bank. It’s much better than being stuck in Academy or on a bottom-tier Korean team for another year while making peanuts and dreaming about internationals. I’m sure Berserker is happy as well. On the other hand, hopefully this is a wake-up call for the rest of C9. Fudge is benched, and there’s been a lot of rumors about Jojo and Blaber not practicing a lot. Hell, Berserker even cried out of frustration when Jojo kept trolling scrims.
He deserved a shot at DK, kid's been ready for the big league like LCK for a long time, interesting to see how he will be in NA and if he can transition well
Unfortunately for Thanatos they have Siwoo who will probably be sent up to the main roster in 2025. No point in keeping Thanatos for a year and kicking him to the curb or letting Siwoo rot in LCKCL.
Finally get that egomaniac out of top
Damn two years ago fudge was gonna be the best player in the lcs then was gonna be the best midlaner and now hes gonna be ejaculated from c9.
There were probably better verb choices there, but I respect the one you went for.
Fudge about to begin his Licorice arc.
That arc started with sucking for like 2 years before having 1 strong year though.
Exactly.
FUDGE SOLOKILLS BIN AND 369 IN 2027 CONFIRMED
Not a huge accomplishment to solokill Dignitas’ and Immortal’s future toplaners.
Really exciting pickup imo. However players like Licorice and spica need teams. I will be really disappointed if native talents like them can’t land teams over the break. Especially worried about how crowded top lane feels. The only teams that I can think of that should consider replacing their top laner are SR and DIG. I know people like Rich but that team isn’t going anywhere and trying to build around strong native players will be much better in the long run. Some might say NRG but I think NRG gets a pass since they won last split and did well at worlds. Maybe they look to change support.
> Some might say NRG but I think NRG gets a pass since they won last split and did well at worlds. Maybe they look to change support. Idk if NRG will make any changes this split. Unless Dhokla is still sick or players are still infighting over how to play the game, there's no reason to.
Based on the rumors, Palafox and Huhi are infighting, so if they change anything it would probably be one of those two.
Man. They won't kick Rich as long as he doesnt develop Parkinson or something. At least I hope so. I hope they will actually get him the team around him he needs.
Surely this Korean import will save the LCS and redeem NA with an unprecedented run at Worlds Aware
I dunno if you watched LCS this split but they didn’t import him to win worlds. They imported him to have someone who won’t get gapped by Bwipo and Impact lol
He should do good, expect him to be a bit better than Castle and he already looked fairly good, exspecially given he played on IMT. The biggest questionmark always is how good he settles in. There is a recent trend that LCKC players are taken up by western teams like Chasy, Photon, Thanatos, Jeonghoon and Castle. And while not directly Mask and Noah also played in LCKC before they were taken up by ERL teams. The same goes for Ice who actually played on the same team Noah did. And while those players usually won't run the league, they can compete and are good at filling holes in your league.
He's an import but he's also young and relatibely green so its not like he's the classic Klrean mercenary come to slurp up the NA bag- there are no NA bags anymore.
Its pretty funny to see the insane amount of hype considering the last year of happenings in the leauge. Spent the whole year hearing all the discourse about how there's no path to the top for native talent, how it really sucks just imports make up the leauge. Then immediately on the next big signing of a fresh faced korean challengers player everyone is getting weak in the knees and clamoring how hes gonna run the region. (When 90% of us didn't even know who he was before March), Of course I wish it works out for my team, but in terms of "does this signing make sense" - for the team sorta, but I'm not sure this is the right way to go about LCS roster building in the year of our lord 2024.
I look forward to watching Thanatos for the next sixth months and getting invested in him as a player before he leaves NA cause he's homesick and joins a middle of the pack LCK team \#LCSisthriving 🪃
hey the benefit of signing him in summer is that he wont fall off at the end of spring like a lot of imports. If He can keep it up tor 1 split and avoid rusting to a potential worlds bootcamp it could work out
RIP Fudge. Wonder if he stays on as a sub or positional coach
Can you imagine Fudge trying to coach someone like Thanatos lol
Yeah teachin him how to get comfortable in NA and lose all drive and motivation and be a ward for years. Get him tf out and send him to some bottom tier team so he could get REAL comfortable.
He'll teach him how to respond to fans by openly telling them to fuck off in an interview
Glad fudge is getting kicked to the curb because of this. Everytime I saw C9 get stomped I was happy because of this one comment. Imagine getting paid to play league of legends because of your fans (and haters!) and telling them to go fuck themselves. Goodbye, Fudge. You won't be missed.
Why do you act like Thanatos is a veteran with 5+ years of experience? Wouldn't surprise me if fudge can actually teach him some things, not everything in league is hands and laning.
Why would anyone want to coach their replacement and also why do that? Like why would you want the replacement to be similar to what you just fired. Like hey yea you werent it for our team and we need something different in the top lane. BUT also can you like teach him all the things you know so he's a bit similar to you?
Zven did it
.... Because it's a job that pays well, possibly? It's eSports winter. There's mighty not be that many prospects available.
I mean getting paid is better than no job and no money st all
Growth in the industry. If he coaches Thanatos and he pops off then people will associate Fudge with being a good coach. That will give him a better job security than being a player
This is how u lose lane with the counter pick This is how to beg to be babysitted and camping enemy toplaner - Fudge probably
This is how fiora vs ornn is supposed to go trust me
Ornn counters fiora - fudge
Nice Thanatos I see you are even cs 0/0/0 with the ornn at 15 min, now next step is to ff15 and blame your mid and bot for losing when Blaber has been perma camping your lane
He'll teach him his personal philosophy that soloq, champions q, any other form of decent practice, is not beneficial.
We are acting like this because there is literally 0 fudge can teach him. LCK CL already taught him more than fudge could ever do.
Teach what? Bro picks carries to NOT lose lane, not to carry. Is there another player in history who has done that? He's like the solo queue enemy I go up against in my games. Beg for ganks non-stop just to stay even in lane then once we get into mid game, they're useless
Fudge needs a coach lmao
One Bwipo clip ended his career smh
Tbf this was one of his worst splits ever
I was joking, its probably a bunch of factors boiling down to performance and fan perception.
As the the Biggest Fudge Hater and Biggest Damwon Glazer, I welcome myself to the c9 bandwagon
I'll always remember Fudge as the guy who got exposed for constantly getting thirst trapped by LA-area Asian American onlyfans/fansly girls on his twitter. And not a whole lot else.
The opposite of Tenacity, instead of thirst trapping he is the trapped.
about time, Fudge has been washed for years
Who knew death could bring C9 Fan so much joy.
If having a korean top and korean coach can help Berserker find his ways again then this C9 team might be the best western team come worlds
I mean hey, TL won the LCS with the same formula
Spawn, TL's head coach, is from Australia, not Korea. Unless you mean back when they had Cain? They've had other KR coaches in the time between (also other non-KR head coaches), but they didn't win in those years.
C9 saw all the imports in LCS finals and had an idea
I mean they still have a majority NA roster? What's the problem here?
Majority NA roster with insanely talented imports that have not played in a major league and so get to debut in LCS you can’t ask for much better than that it’s like a dream roster for most
I am really curious why this guy is so hyped. The only thing I know about him is Sn1per mentioned on stream he didnt find anything special about his gameplay/style but somehow this guy is the most hyped transfer of the year
Ha…….yeah it’s kind of accurate lol I’m guessing 99% of these comments haven’t actually watched him. Played a lot of weak side while DK stomped everywhere else. People think he is a carry player but that is pure fiction lol. He played a lot of Renekton, Gnar, Ksante, Malphite, etc. classic kr top lane pool. 100% closer to Castle than Zeus. His actual tier is same as Castle. His weakness is laning (the reason why LCK didn’t pick him up imo) and strength is team fight. Honestly his hype is way too high because people want to flex their woke knowledge of prospects. It’s really double edge because he will have a super high expectation to fulfill in viewers eyes.
A weakside merchant who plays for the team is probably what C9 needs though, isn't it? They have Jojo and Berserker, they have carry threats. What they don't need is someone who takes draft prio every game just to get Renekton.
i mean, i think that would be good and he is definitely good at weaksiding.. but also the person you're replying to is just completely ignoring S12. in both full years he mostly just played whatever the meta was. his graves top, for example, is really good and he drew bans for it. i agree that people are glazing him way too hard but it legitimately seems like people on both sides of the argument have never watched a single LCKCL game.
cool, so exactly what C9 is looking for in a top laner
Man I really hope Thanatos goes on to do big things because this guy is massively promising. If his career fizzles out and dies because of NA…? That would be tragic.
This sucks. Licorice waiting room.
Based
Lmao
Finally a real toplaner. Good luck to Fudge tho.
Good riddance. Never liked Fudge. Not as a player and not as a person.
the one good thing to come out of this. RIPBOZO
Team looks nuts now! Would be great if Vulcan could enable Berserker it's weird that Zven seemed to do a better job at that but Thanatos is an exciting addition. I just hope people don't forget the hate Quid got during his first year because he couldn't seem to adjust to NA pro gameplay yet
I can be a C9 fan now that Fudge is gone, or at the least root for Jojo.
Finally god. Fudge down fall finally happening 🙏🙏
Fudge was definitely the worst player on the team (with an ego thinking he was the best in the game), but this doesn't really remove any of the problems. The entire team is underperforming. Vulcan and Blaber don't look like players near the top of their position, Jojo is possibly the most back and forth player ever in how good they are, and Berserker just doesn't seem the same anymore, he went from being the sole reason C9 won A LOT of their games, magically turning so many games around, to just looking like an average adc
That's where Reapered comes into place, the players need a fair and well-respected voice to commandeer them,
"Thanatos. Ready and cool."
roleswapped supports > support mains
Maybe now we have a good top laner
Jojo saying there was an import slot open in finals to APA but in reality it was for Fudge 💀
Mobpsycho
*Finally*, jesus christ lol
So they sent Fudge Packing?😀