Team Liquid to hold tryouts during two week IEM Katowice break
In a Facebook Live stream and AMA, Team Liquid co-owner Steve Arhancet announced that the League of Legends team would be holding tryouts during the two week NA LCS break for IEM Katowice.
While Arhancet didn’t explain exactly what roles they would be holding tryouts for, he did point out the shift in meta away from a bottom lane focus and towards carry junglers is a contributing factor to Liquid’s current 2-8 record and last place spot.
“In the offseason, we started off with a lot of hope,” he said during the stream. “We really wanted to have a carry kind of bot lane… We also saw jungle as a very important role, so we went with our two import slots for [Kim “Reignover” Yeu-jin] and [Chae “Piglet” Gwang-jin].”
Unfortunately for them, the meta has shifted towards utility ADCs and assassin junglers.
To solve that problem, the team is making some changes.
“The first week that we have we are going to have tryouts,” he said. After that, they plan on figuring out exactly what to do with the roster.
He did point out one player as an underperformer though, saying, “We recognize that [Greyson “Goldenglue” Gilmer] is underperforming on the roster.”
So if Goldenglue is underperforming, what about subbing in Austin “Link” Shin?
“We tried Link out in scrims, and we have statistics associated with those scrims,” Arhancet said. “They were very obvious that Goldenglue was the better choice for the team… It was unanimous that [Goldenglue] was the better player.”
He went on to say that Link needs more time to develop, and that time isn’t a luxury the team can enjoy.
When asked about the rumor of Piglet moving to mid lane, Arhancet said it was a possibility.
“We’re evaluating all kinds of options. We’re not leaving one stone untouched. We’re going to look at bringing in new players, based on availability… We’re testing everything.”
“At the end of this testing week, we could decide that all these options suck in comparison to staying with the current setup… We’ll probably be making that choice Sunday of this week.”
Follow Taylor Cocke on Twitter @taylorcocke.
