We’re only a few days away from the start of the 2020 Spring Split and every LCS team has made some big changes to their League of Legends lineup. Superstar AD carry Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng had plenty to say about the past offseason in a recent roundtable discussion video from Riot Games, saying that he’d be fine with losing the LCS if he could go farther in other international tournaments.
“I have to support and I do support the fact that we made a change [to our roster] because our goal is not to win LCS anymore,” Doublelift said. “This is going to sound stupid, but I would almost be fine losing LCS if it meant achieving greater things elsewhere.”
But the 26-year-old veteran also said that some teams can get a bit too overzealous when it comes to making changes to a lineup, especially if they have had a lot of success domestically. A prime example he gave was how TSM’s decision to replace him, Vincent “Biofrost” Wang, and Dennis “Svenskeren” Johnsen ruined the team.
Doublelift touched on some unusual roster moves this past offseason as well, such as Golden Guardians’ decision to move Yuri “Keith” Jew to support or Dignitas’ decision to let go of Philippe “Vulcan” Laflamme.
“There’s so much talent out there in the world,” Doublelift said, “There’s ways you can import [and] there’s ways you can develop rookie players like Biofrost and Vulcan from solo queue… there’s a lot of players you have options from.”
The development of talent has been a huge problem in North America. A constant issue in the region is that not enough teams are willing to take a chance on up-and-coming players and instead fall toward veterans of the league or imports from other regions. Meanwhile, Europe has become one of the strongest regions in the world because of its amateur and tier-two scenes.
The 2020 LCS Spring Split will kick off on Saturday, Jan. 25 when Team Liquid and Doublelift face C9 at 4pm CT.
