Redeeming Meteos: Repairing the narrative against Cloud9

William “Meteos” Hartman’s reputation, as with many storied League of Legends professionals, has waxed and waned.

Following a disappointing 2016 World Championship showing public opinion has not smiled upon Meteos, shoving most of the blame onto his shoulders for Cloud9’s Group Stage struggles. Meteos parted ways with Cloud9’s starting roster before 2017 to make way for rookie jungler Juan “Contractz” Arturo Garcia.

This Saturday, Meteos returns to the League of Legends Championship Series to start on the opposite side of the Rift from the logo his jersey has traditionally sported. As Phoenix1 takes on Cloud9, they’re most likely to lose, but for Meteos, it’s a chance to prove that his former squad isn’t necessarily better off without him.

To conclude his 2016 season, Meteos advanced to his third ever World Championship quarterfinal. Though he has played in the quarterfinal of every World Championship he has attended, he has suffered harsh criticism along the way. This time around, the narrative suggested that he spent too much time farming, not ganking his lanes, and fumbling several plays on Lee Sin.

This narrative has always followed Meteos. It’s just that initially it was a positive one.

In 2013, would-be pundits looked favorably upon Cloud9’s international chances because Meteos could farm well enough for early teamfights to consistently win with an experience advantage over his opponent jungler. A few foreign teams testified that this translated into scrims, as Jian “Uzi” Zihao famously resolved to temporarily role swap to jungle following the World Championship because of Meteos’ ability to carry the game from that position.

Problems arose when other teams could more easily contest Cloud9’s lanes. If the enemy jungler interfered with lanes more often, then top, mid, or bottom lane could snowball even harder than Meteos, nullifying his advantage. Cloud9 debuted in the Season 3 quarterfinal as North America’s first seed, but immediately lost 1-2 to Fnatic.

In 2014, Meteos and Cloud9 were less consistent. Though they still rocked the Spring split with only four losses, they tied with the more aggressive LMQ for 18 wins and 10 losses in Summer. More surprisingly, Cloud9 lost their first LCS playoff final to Team SoloMid.

Despite strong KDAs, Meteos’ struggle to execute more early gank or skirmish oriented picks like Lee Sin attracted his first wave of impassioned critics. Many began to doubt he could adapt at all, but when Cloud9 returned to the World Championship and again lost in the quarterfinal stage, it was mid laner Hai “Hai” Du Lam who ultimately received the most blame.

Hai’s own narrative stock continued to spiral into the red. Gimmick phrases, many of them patently false, began to dog Hai in the LCS as Cloud9 experienced their least convincing season in terms of individual play. They once again lost to TSM in the Grand Final.

Though Hai certainly wasn’t Cloud9’s only problem, his mechanical play was perceived as their most glaring flaw. Cloud9 made the decision to replace him with Danish mid lane rookie, Nicolaj “Jensen” Jensen (then known as Incarnati0n, previously held on indefinite ban status).

Despite widespread praise for the move, Cloud9 actually plummeted in the NA standings to the point where relegation seemed more like a certainty than a risk. The team appeared entirely disconnected, and Meteos’ farm-centric tendencies stood out even more than they had in the past. An incredulous last minute substitute of Hai for Meteos in Week 6 finally turned the tables and remains perhaps the greatest slight against Meteos as an individual player.

Cloud9 started to win again. Shockingly, with heavy farming picks like Shyvana, Hai’s style didn’t differ drastically from Meteos’. He averaged a 19.4% of team gold (an amount even higher than Meteos’) for that split. Perhaps that was the point, however; Jensen had started to split push more, the team grouped for more early teamfights, and the jungler consistently picked up a farm advantage.

They looked like the old Cloud9, even without Meteos, long heralded for his high KDA and decisive engages. Though Meteos stood out as Cloud9’s most celebrated star in 2013 when they first debuted in the NA LCS Summer split, Hai’s ability to almost flawlessly fill his shoes and improve the overall team’s performance still stands out as the most damning period of Meteos’ career.

With Hai in the jungle position, Cloud9 only narrowly avoided the relegation tournament and advanced to the World Championship Regional Qualifier, where their rough and near-miraculous gauntlet run is still celebrated. Cloud9 won three straight best of five series (two of which lasted five games) before whisking themselves off to Korea for a bootcamp. That year, however, was the only year Cloud9 didn’t at least make the quarterfinal of the World Championship.

Meteos didn’t return to Cloud9 until 2016 Summer. Korean jungler Lee “Rush” Yoonjae decided to leave the team, and Hai focused on the Cloud9 Challenger project that would eventually become FlyQuest. Meteos finally had his shot at redemption.

With Meteos, Cloud9 didn’t perform better than they had in Spring, but they didn’t perform worse, either. That summer, Cloud9 placed third in the regular season and managed to defeat Immortals 3-2 in playoffs and again in the World Championship qualifier with a match score of 3-1.

Cloud9’s rise as a serious North American contender without Hai’s presence on the roster was an impressive story, but it belied the change to Meteos’ playstyle. While I would not call him the best jungler in North America, Meteos didn’t seem as intent on building his jungle share and ignoring his lanes.

No one could call Meteos a skirmish or ganking oriented jungler, and many plays around mid lane that Cloud9 could have taken in 2016, they let slip by. Jensen often acquired lane leads on his own and gained a reputation for strong laning, if not strong map play.

But rather than focus on building himself individually, Meteos appeared to make an active effort to match the enemy jungler’s movements. When his opponent would shift to a camp, Meteos would work his way to the same side of the map. Though Cloud9 didn’t coordinate plays together, they seemed more aware of the enemy jungler’s location.

Cloud9’s almost hilariously teetering struggles in the 2016 World Championship group stage led to a critical examination of Meteos. Cloud9’s group featured the least decisive late game team of the tournament: the LMS’ Flash Wolves. This resulted in some of the least conclusive back-and-forth games played on the professional stage, including a 70-minute game between Cloud9 and and the early game-oriented squad from Taiwan.

Naturally, when problems arise in the early game, spectators are quick to blame the jungler. A basic understanding of League of Legends often leads fans to believe that a jungler who ganks more is better. Despite frequently being able to match his opponent’s map movements, Meteos received the brunt of the blame for Cloud9’s early game failings.

That isn’t to say Meteos doesn’t deserves to bear his fair share of the blame. Cloud9’s communication was clearly riddled with dead air at crucial moments (like when Jensen and Meteos could have moved together to contest the raptor camp’s Oracle buff), and Meteos rarely appeared for a counter gank or aided the team in setting up early objectives well. These problems, however, are usually systemic ones that cannot be traced to a single player, but rather to a poor understanding of how to coordinate the early game or an unwillingness to communicate.

Statistically speaking, Cloud9’s early game objective control in 2017 Spring has been similar to their less commanding 2016 Summer season, despite the team holding an undefeated record. At the moment, Cloud9 averages the lowest share of jungle creeps farmed in the league (48.4%), which isn’t far off from their jungle creep share in 2016 Summer of 49.8%.

While changes to jungle spawns shouldn’t be overlooked, the fact that Cloud9 is unable to capitalize well on lane leads to invade and control enemy jungle camps (or even be aware of spawn timers) suggests that the lack of coordinated play between the jungler and lanes is as much a problem now as it was when Meteos was part of the roster.

To add insult to injury, Cloud9 currently sit at the bottom of the NA LCS for acquiring the first turret in a match (only 32% of games). They only acquire the first three turrets in 48% of matches, and first dragon in 47% of matches. These numbers, again, don’t vary drastically from 2016 Summer’s Cloud9, where they took first turret in 45% of games, the first three turrets in 48% of games, and the first dragon in only 30% of matches.

Cloud9 had a much weaker regular season in 2016 Summer than their playoffs or Regional Qualifier run because of the switch to standard lanes. In lane swaps, because of questionable execution, top laner Jung “Impact” Eonyeong would often be left out and isolated off creeps in long lanes after turrets were taken. When standard lanes were enforced in Patch 6.15, he began to take advantage of 1v1 matchups and stood out as a true star of the team. Meteos’ style again seemed to excel in the context of NA, where he could effortlessly match the enemy’s movements and rely on his lanes to succeed in isolation.

So now that standard lanes are nearly universal, and Cloud9 are able to use their ability to draft strong matchups and play well in 1v1s, it’s even more surprising that Cloud9’s early objective control has hardly improved. As I’ve highlighted previously, Cloud9 still exhibit some of the same problems with early game coordination, despite Contractz’s addition to the roster, as they had with Meteos.

Only it’s a little worse. Based on his pathing, Contractz seems even less aware of where the enemy jungler is on the map. This has lead to uncoordinated invade attempts where four members of the team stand in river before Andy “Smoothie” Ta advances solo into the jungle, burns his ult without backup, and leaves Cloud9 unable to contest the dragon.

Phoenix1 play very differently from the current Cloud9. They place a heavier emphasis on early dragon fights, which has led to an 84% first dragon acquisition rate in the NA LCS. While Rami “Inori” Charagh interacts much more with his lanes than Meteos traditionally ever has, farming well for first dragon fights has historically been his specialty, which means he could well function as a serviceable stand-in as P1 look to make up for losses in their last three sets. P1 with a substitute are still very unlikely to win, but Meteos has the opportunity to demonstrate his strengths in matching Contractz and performing well in early teamfights.

The narrative surrounding Meteos’ career at this point is so suffocating, it might be hard for him to achieve perfect redemption and reclaim the glory of 2013 NA LCS Summer.

It’s not that he deserves to do so either. Meteos’ jungle style wasn’t even particularly innovative in the context of NA in 2013, as in 2012, Counter-Logic Gaming had success with a heavy farming jungler and strong lanes as well. But Phoenix1’s series against Cloud9 may shed some light on what Meteos did for his former team that may have been more valuable than what Contractz currently provides, and it may also serve to vindicate him as the sole scapegoat for the problems that began in 2016 Summer and persist to this day.

All data from OraclesElixir.com.

You can follow Kelsey Moser on Twitter @karonmoser.