The great North American shuffle

This article was originally published on GameSpot's sister site onGamers.com, which was dedicated to esports coverage.

The professional scene of League of Legends is constantly in flux. Whether it's new teams forming or players retiring, the competitive landscape doesn't stay the same for too long. It's also no secret that the North American region gets a lot of flack for being behind the rest of the regions in terms of top tier teams. There are many theories as to why this is, including lack of work ethic and too much of a focus on streaming soloq. Another point of critique is North America's tendency to recycle talent when trying to find new players for an existing team.

Arguably, the biggest offender in this regard has been Counter Logic Gaming. Even when the team has undergone major roster changes, the pool they've drawn from has been incredibly limited. During the Chauster Jungler era, the two Support players that CLG ran with were Locodoco and Aphromoo. Instead of bringing in fresh Support talent, the team looked to groom two former ADCs into great Supports. This proved to be unsuccessful and Chauster eventually returned to the Support position.

This left a vacant spot for the Jungler role, and, again, a familiar face was offered the position. CLG's former Mid laner, bigfatlp was given the spot. This was met with lackluster results, and at the end of Sesaon 3 bigfatlp returned to being a substitute. CLG also lost Chauster who announced his retirement at the end of the season. In a move the surprised many fans, CLG announced that Aphromoo would return to be CLG's Support for the 2014 season. On a positive note, CLG attempted to branch out when it came to finding a new Jungler. At IEM Cologne they used TrickZ, a player who had limited playtime in professional League. Soon afterwords it was announced TrickZ would not become a pertinent member of the team, but it was nice to see the effort.

CLG, of course, is not the only team who is guilty of this practice. When Curse was rebuilding the team for the 2014 season, their Bot lane was originally going to be Aphromoo and Zekent. These players have a long history in competitive League, but have been unproven for a long time. When things with Aphromoo didn't work out, Curse brought Cop back to be the starter. Luckily, NA isn't completely devoid of finding new blood

In the case of Curse, they found this by moving Voyboy Mid and picking up Top laner Quas. Quas had a lot of hype built up around him by other pro players. During the MOBAFire Challenger Series, Quas developed a reputation for pulling off big plays and pro LoL Twitter feeds blew up with praise for the amateur player. Despite being on a promising team, the chance to play for Curse was too much for Quas to pass up.

Another prime example of new talent comes from NA's most successful team of Season 3, Cloud 9. Composed of fairly well known players who had a decent presence in Season 2, Meteos stands out as a completely fresh talent. He wasn't as well known as a lot of players due to his tendency to play normal queue games for a long time, but if anything he proves that great talent can be hiding where it's least expected. Finally, Team Coast turned some heads when they announced their new ADC would be WizFujiiN. Despite actually trying to qualify for the LCS on Team Summon, this was a player that not many people recognized. This was compounded by the fact many people expected Chaox to get the job, which would have been a prime example of recycled talent.

While it's easy to chastise teams for not finding new talent, there are a multitude of reasons why it might actually be harder than it seems. First and foremost, the logistics of becoming a pro LCS player are pretty dramatic. A lot of potential players are in college, and while the idea of dropping out and playing video games professionally may sound like a dream scenario, in the long term it could be detrimental to the player's future careers. New players have to put their education on hold and move away from their friends and family to pursue a career with limited job security. On paper it's actually a pretty scary proposition. Another possibility is the existing talent is just better.

At the end of Season 3, Dignitas announced they would be benching their Top laner, KiWiKiD. This was their attempt to being in new talent and the results were fairly negative with KiWiKiD racking up the most deaths in the Summer Split of the LCS. Dignitas set out to find a new Top laner and eventually went with Cruzerthebruzer, a player who has been around since Season 2 on Team Legion. The reaction to this was mixed as many people pointed to it as another example of the NA scene relying to much on known talent. On League of Legends subforum of Teamliquid, Dignitas' analyst Vlanitak responded to the criticism saying “...we tried a lot of people for our top lane tryouts and still ended up on someone who already falls in the old player category. The other tryouts simply werent good enough, didnt have the drive or work ethic etc.”

NA deserves the reputation for reusing the same talent. In Korea, teams have been built around soloq superstars such as Faker and Marin, but that's not something we see over here. This is likely due to Korea's longer history in eSports and their experience in scouting talent. Or if some outspoken community members are to be believed, the quality of NA soloq just isn't good enough to foster new talent. That said, it's clearly a problem that isn't as easy to solve as many people make it out to be. Moving forward, it's important to keep in mind that teams should always be open to the idea of bringing in new players and not just go with known quantities, but sometimes it's just impossible.