Yahoo Esports' All-NA LCS Team for 2017 Spring Split

With the 2017 North American League of Legends Championship Series playoffs around the corner, it’s time to look back at another tumultuous but entertaining season of LoL. Alongside playoffs come season awards, the first of which is the All-NA LCS team.

Here to present their criteria and individual picks, which contributed to the Yahoo Esports vote aggregate, are staff writers Taylor Cocke, Kelsey Moser, and Emily Rand.

Taylor: With the parity in North America during the 2017 Spring Split, standout players made themselves known by eking out the smallest advantages to help their teams get through the scrum that was the middle of the NA LCS pack. While I hesitate to focus purely on results-based praise, the first half of the 2017 season was, to me, defined by the players that pulled their teams out of the muck and into the tops of the standings.

Kelsey: Many of the teams in the NA LCS this split formed as a mess of miscommunication, making standout performances more obvious. Rating players just on individual “carry” ability, however, discounts efforts to improve the team overall. It’s important to assess not just how often a player goes for the flashy moves, but how consistently he manages to apply pressure and create opportunities for his team.

Emily: It’s been an odd split for North America. Another influx of primarily-Korean imports combined with a few notable domestic talents and rookies form a muddled stew of parity. I leaned toward players that I felt contributed the most to their team’s efforts along with their individual standout moments and statistics. As in previous years, I weight efficiency and reliability highly in my evaluations.

Top Lane: Team SoloMid’s Kevin “Hauntzer” Yarnell

Runners-up: Phoenix1’s Derek “Zig” Shao, Dignitas’ Kim “Ssumday” Chan-ho

Taylor: As for top lane, I was in absolute agreement with Kelsey and Emily about Team SoloMid’s Kevin “Hauntzer” Yarnell. While the kid has always been a carry threat from up North, the Spring Split saw him finally evolve into a veteran player capable of taking advantages and running with them. He punished misplays better than anyone in the league, used TSM’s newfound top side focus to great effect, and generally made intelligent plays around the map to ensure his team’s first seed. He may not have had the highest highs of any NA top (that award is reserved for Jung “Impact” Eon-yeong), but his influence on TSM’s first place run is undeniable.

Kelsey: Like Emily and Taylor, I selected Kevin “Hauntzer” Yarnell as my top laner for this split. Team SoloMid shifted much more to a top side focus in the absence of Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng. This meant more attention from Dennis “Svenskeren” Johnsen and Soren “Bjergsen” Bjerg, which occasionally led to catch outs when top side vision wasn’t properly defended, but also meant the team relied much more on Hauntzer. Though he only got occasional leads from misplays made by his opponents, he converted them well, and his Teleports made a strong impact.

Emily: I first watched Hauntzer on Gravity Gaming in 2015. Back then he had occasional moments of teamfighting brilliance that made me wish he was on a team that could make the most of that talent and nurture it. Last year, TSM was that team, yet he often played from behind, especially in laneswaps, as the team funneled more attention and resources towards AD carry Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng. This split, with Jason “Wildturtle” Tran back in the bot lane, TSM turned their attention top, as did their opponents. Hauntzer turned enemy dives — admittedly some of them were ill-advised — into immediate leads, then snowballed those advantages into team control of the top side.

Jungle: Team EnVyUs’ Nam “LirA” Tae-yoo

Runners-up: Immortals’ Joshua “Dardoch” Hartnett, Phoenix1’s William “Meteos” Hartman

Taylor: My jungle pick didn’t even make the top three of my Yahoo Esports colleagues’. While the other two went for the admittedly amazing Nam “LirA” Tae-yoo, I put up Juan “Contractz” Garcia as the NA LCS jungler I’d like most to have on my team. The rookie had to once again redefine the way that Cloud9 played with their jungler after the jungle shuffle that saw the vastly different styles of William “Meteos” Hartman, Lee “Rush” Yoon-jae, and Hai “Hai” Lam get a run through the roster. Despite his youth, he was able to adapt, even working well with two separate top laners, and secured Cloud9 a top two finish at the end of the regular season. There are certainly some kinks to work out for the youngster (his inability to gank mid, for example), but he’s a rising star I wouldn’t pass up for anyone.

Kelsey: Both statistically and based on the flow of the game, Nam “LirA” Taeyoo had the largest team impact of any jungler in NA LCS. By this, I mean he could identify where to create pressure and control the enemy’s jungle. NV managed to get leads off his sense of pathing. As a jungler, he takes the prize. He did his job extremely well. As an individual player, however, it’s harder to call given NV’s disastrous record.

Emily: LirA’s dominion over the jungle since he arrived in North America, weeks late due to visa issues, has been remarkable. Putting aside his top-tier statistics, no jungler in the region has had the same combination of mechanical prowess, understanding of where to be and why, and in-the-moment adjustment like LirA. While it’s true that he was on the last-place team, nV would have been so much worse off without LirA, the primary factor behind their comparatively strong early game.

Mid Lane: Team SoloMid’s Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg

Runners-up: Henrik “Froggen” Hansen, Nicolaj “Jensen” Jensen

Taylor: Fun fact: Non-Danish mids didn’t get a single NA LCS All-Team vote from any of us this split. For me, the Lord of the Danes in Spring was Cloud9’s Nicolaj “Jensen” Jensen. The most consistent early game mid laner in all of NA, Jensen did one thing better than anyone else in the league: Take his lane opponent out of the game. He pressured often and hard, denying roams and often taking massive leads from 1v1 plays alone. Jensen’s teamfighting never reached Froggen or Bjergsen’s levels, but the sheer threat of his mechanical ability regularly helped Cloud9 win brawls before they even started.

Kelsey: While both Emily and Taylor deferred to the Danish mids at the top of the table, I prefer Henrik “Froggen” Hansen for the amount of control he brought to the lane and teamfights. He may not have consistently gotten the same lane leads like Jensen or committed to as many effective roams as Bjergsen, but he ensured a path to create vision in the enemy jungle and coordinated better with his jungler than Jensen. He also often made games against Echo Fox winnable with his late game map control, despite myriad macro errors committed by the rest of the team.

Emily: As long as Bjergsen is in the NA LCS, he’s nearly a shoo-in for my mid lane vote. Although Bjergsen/Faker comparisons are rote at this point, the two mids are extremely similar in their importance to their respective teams. TSM is not the same team without Bjergsen, and although he had fewer dazzling highlights this split compared to seasons prior, the amount of small, crucial things he does for the team elevates every other member of TSM. Froggen received my runner-up vote. His steadfast presence on Echo Fox helped free up jungler Matthew “Akaadian” Higginbotham along with providing a pushing mid lane and a strong teamfight presence. Cloud9’s Jensen came in third to these two. Although he’s still unstoppable in the 1v1, Jensen still lags behind his two Danish mid lane counterparts in the finer details.

AD Carry: Phoenix1’s Noh “Arrow” Dong-hyeon

Runners-up: Counter Logic Gaming’s Trevor “Stixxay” Hayes, Cloud9’s Zachary “Sneaky” Scuderi

Taylor: No player in North America had a bigger impact on his team than No “Arrow” Dong-hyeon. Despite the uncertainty in their jungle slot with Rami “Inori” Charagh and Dark Meteos shifting in and out of the position, Phoenix1 remained consistently near the top of the table in NA. And that’s largely thanks to Arrow’s stellar play. Whether he’s picking fights on a utility AD or carrying fights on a mechanical champion like Ezreal, his versatility has been a major key to Phoenix1’s success.

Kelsey:Arrow easily takes the AD carry spot for me. He managed to output consistent damage, showed up as a star performer on a variety of picks, and even had a better sense for engage that many members of his team. Arrow also had strong coordination with the team when it came to holding mid in 1-3-1, and he and Yoo “Ryu” Sangook appeared to lead the charge when P1 made cross-map trades.

Emily: I’ve watched Arrow play for what seems like forever, but is only about three years. This is a kid who was berated for his small champion pool and poor laning throughout much of his Champions career (“as long as I hit my minions, we’ll be okay,” he said in 2015 in reference to his own laning mistakes.) For Phoenix1, Arrow has been strong in lane but a monster out of it. Nearly everything on P1 goes through Arrow, and he has controlled P1 teamfights despite substitutes and uncertainty in the jungle and support positions.

Support: Cloud9’s Andy “Smoothie” Ta

Runners-up: Zaqueri “Aphromoo” Black, Vincent “Biofrost” Wang

Taylor: Cloud9 has always had trouble with the support position. They’ve never had the most mechanically gifted players in the role, instead finding success with great strategic minds like Daerek “LemonNation” Hart and Hai sitting in the fifth chair. Even their current support, Andy “Smoothie” Ta, hasn’t been known as a star player in his two years in the LCS. This split, though, he’s shown that he’s just been waiting for the rest of the players in his position to falter before taking over the spot as the best support in North America. He may not be the flashiest player, but he consistently pressures his lane, finds solid roams, and is one of the better teamfighting supports in the league. His consistency makes him my pick to round out the All-Team NA roster.

Kelsey: Cloud9 have struggled all split to improve coordination between their jungler and their lanes. The laners, however, perform well individually, and as a support,Smoothie is a major part of that. When teamfights come, C9 seem extremely reliant on his ability to set up engages and zones while the top laner comes in for flanks. With the other supports in North America performing less consistently, Smoothie was an easy pick.

Emily: Next to jungle, support can be the most difficult of all positions to evaluate due to how much the role relies on unquantifiable, out-of-game factors. Smoothie has not only been smart about applying pressure for his team in and out of lane, but has also been C9’s most reliable initiator and is often the loudest voice in their comms. A cursory glance at his screen on the LCS stage reveals that Smoothie is almost always talking, relaying information to his team and, according to teammates, coordinating many of C9’s map movements.