A productive role-swap is a rare sight in League of a Legends, a game where even the best players must specialise in one role and dedicate themselves to learning every trick and nuance of their positions.
As a result, the best instances are duly celebrated as the miracles they are. Just as an impressive role-swap, such as YellOwStaR's from AD Carry to Support can transform the fortunes of a franchise, an equally bad role-swap can doom a team to irrelevance for a split or a key series.
These are the 15 worst role-swaps in competitive League of Legends history. I took into account both the aptitude of the player at his new role, his strength at his old role and the impact his play at the new role had upon his team's success.
15. KiWiKid - Top Laner to Support
Player: Alan "KiWiKiD" Nguyen
Team: Team Dignitas
Date: 07/12/2013
KiWiKid had been the much maligned Top Laner of Team Dignitas for both splits of Season 3. When Dignitas performed very well over most of the Spring split, he was piling up wins on Singed and Elise, but as those champions disappeared from the meta do did Kiwikid's ability to do anything in the Top Lane.
Come the play-offs, Dignitas had been hit across their team by champion nerfs and as a result KiWiKid quickly became a factor who only favoured the opponents hope for success when it came to Dignitas' play-off run, which saw them eliminated by Good Game University, the bottom seed, in the first round.
The Summer would be a similar story, as KiWiKid showed some proficiency with two champions, this time Zac and Kennen, but fell apart in the play-offs, even when getting to play these champions. The result was that Dignitas failed to qualify for the Season 3 World Championship. Along the way, KiWiKid would become famous for setting the record for the most deaths in NA LCS history. Certainly, he was not a good Top Laner, but the world had little realisation of what would come next for KiWi and Dignitas.
At the end of 2013, prior to Season 4, it was announced that KiWiKid was to be the starting Support of Team Dignitas for the next split. The trend for KiWi was similar to his role as Top Lane, as he would get a grasp on a couple of champions, perform worse on them in the play-offs and then repeat the cycle with the changing meta for the next split. What's worse is that with this role-swap KiWiKid had a much more damaging impact on Dignitas' chances for success.
One of the long-time strengths of Dignitas in the LCS era had been their Bottom Lane. Imaqtpie had always quietly been one of the stronger ADCs in NA and Patoy had blossomed in Season 3 into one of the best Support players. Despite apparent discontent between the two, meaning they rarely ever spoke to each other during matches, they somehow made it work and were a huge factor in helping Dignitas vie for top spots in LCS.
KiWikid arrived and had the opposition relationship with qtpie, developing a strong and natural friendship, but also the opposition career trajectory for the two. Suddenly, the Dignitas Bot Lane was far from a notable threat to opponents and it would instead be players like Shiphtur and ZionSpartan, in the other lanes, who were expected to carry the game.
Even now, after four splits at Support, KiWikid is far from an accomplished player and looks as if he will never be considered a top player at this role.
14. Imagine - Jungler to Support
Player: Jang "Imagine" Hyeon-su
Team: Winterfox
Date: 07/01/2015
In their previous incarnation as Evil Geniuses, one of the few bright spots of what would become Winterfox had been their Bot Lane, where the rising talent Altec had been paired with savvy veteran Krepo.
Their run in the final super-week of the Summer split saw them scoring a number of wins and show-casing a surprisingly good synergy. With Krepo leaving the team after the split, an obvious priority should have been getting a strong Support to pair with young Altec.
While Winterfox did attempt to accomplish as much, pursuing Korean Support player IgNar, last minute complications, with the player inexplicably changing his mind about joining, left the team scrambling to find a player on their way out of Korea from their bootcamp.
In the end, they decided to take Imagine on, despite the fact he had played as a Jungler for his professional career. In Korea he had played with the amateur team VTG Monsters. What's worse, a jumbled up visa processing period led to the team being unable to use Imagine until the fifth week.
When Imagine did arrive, the team won the first game and then lost their next three, before making the drastic move of removing him entirely, bringing their coach (Paragon) in as AD Carry and putting AD Carry Altec over to Support. Imagine's part to play in Winterfox's down-fall was clearly not the primary one, but it was a point along the path of their failure to properly manage their talent acquisition, visa processing and role management.
Winterfox would finish the split playing in a relegation match and Imagine went off to China and returned to the Jungle position, where he played for Hyper Youth Gaming. He would rename to yolo, perhaps exhibiting the philosophy his time spent playing for Winterfox had impressed upon him.
13. Ambition - Mid Laner to Jungle
Player: Kang "Ambition" Chan-yong
Team: CJ Entus
Date: 02/12/2014
Ambition is one of the greatest Korean players in history, having been the starting Mid Laner of the Blaze teams which won OGN Champions Spring, MLG Summer Arena, the IEM VII World Championship and World Cyber Games 2013. At one point in time he was rightfully considered the best Mid Laner in Korea and perhaps the world, as he was a core component powering Blaze to the final of OGN Spring in 2013 and was riding a 100% win-rate on Twisted Fate in competitive play.
While Ambition’s switch to Jungle was not the kind of disaster many of the other role-swaps cited on this list were, it is the context of his swap that makes it worth mentioning. As a Jungler, Ambition did not show any aptitude for reading the opposing Jungler's pathing or when to put on early game ganking pressure. In team-fights, he found a way to be useful and was a reasonable enough player, in the context of the Junglers left after the Korean exodus, to allow CJ to somehow cobble together a coherent team-fighting side and make a deep run in the LCK Spring play-offs, almost making the final.
The problem is that Ambition was never a bad or average Mid Laner. Even in his dying days at the position, in Season 4, he still continued to produce good performances and would generally only be out-performed by the consistent elite Korean Mids, who were by extension the best in the world at their position. Against average or below average OGN level Mids, Ambition was still a strong player with a decent champion pool and an understanding of how to play within Blaze's system, as evidenced by the team's OGN Spring 2014 semi-final run, which was only ended in a blind pick fifth match by NaJin White shield.
With Frost having CoCo on their roster, who showed more promise for growth than Ambition, the team decided to role-swap Ambition to Jungle, where he had supposedly played many years prior to the OGN era, in order to keep both players and maintain Ambition’s strong fan following as the player with the most OGN appearances. From CJ's perspective, the marketing aspect makes sense, however in terms of competition, one has to imagine they would have been better off looking for a solo queue talent for the Jungle position, as their Mid Laner was their primary carry in this new team.
For Ambition, it would have also made more sense to go elsewhere, as most of the Mids capable of beating him had exited Korean soil, thus he would have had a legitimate chance to reassert himself as a top player and potentially earn star status within a lesser team.
In the end, one must conclude that a large part of Ambition’s viability was helped by many of the best Junglers leaving Korea for China and other regions in Season 5.
12. Reapered - Jungler to Mid Laner
Player: Bok "Reapered" Han-gyu
Team: Jin Air Green Wings Falcons
Date: 10/2013
Reapered is a legend not only renowned as an individual player and one of the first true masters of Top Lane carrying in Korea, but also as a leader, capable of shot-calling and coming up with unique compositions to give his teams the edge over their opponents.
The latter strength, which has always been worth its weight in gold, would ultimately doom his career to a gradual demise, despite still being capable greatness within his original role.
As a Top Laner, Reapered will fondly be remembered for both his starring roles in MiG Blaze's OGN Spring 2012 Championship and carrying SK Telecom T1, a team made up of solo queue players, to the IEM VII Cologne title, defeating a dangerous FNATIC team in the final.
Returning to Korea following the latter feat, his SKT side would reach the quarter-final of OGN Spring 2013, but face the then near unbeatable Blaze, who were en-route to their 13 game winning streak, and lose 0:3, causing him to weep tears of anguish in the booth.
With a team of players who were clearly inferior in comparison to almost every other team in the league, Reapered had some hard decisions to make. What's more, SK Telecom decided to remove the team entirely, choosing to focus on Faker's SKT Telecom T2 and build a new second squad. Reapered had offers from elsewhere to play Top Lane for other teams, but he would later say that loyalty to the members of the team he had built meant he took a different path.
Reapered first switched to the Jungle position as he wanted to make room for solo queue talent MiSo and may have believed that Jungle was an ideal position from which he would still be able to shot-call the team. Despite a fairly underwhelming season at Jungle, his team still made the play-offs, again losing in the first round. Roster moves prior to the Winter season of 2013 would see former Mid Laner Roar moving down to AD Carry, Reapered moving to Mid Lane and ActScene joining as Jungler.
ActScene had long been an OGN Jungler and had more recently played for the sister team of Reapered Jin Air Green Wings Falcons, the Stealths. In came ActScene and Reapered attempted to make a third position work. Unsurprisingly, he did not show aptitude as a Mid Laner, even attempting to use Tryndamere in half of his game, and would fail to make the play-offs of an OGN season for the first time in his career. He retired shortly after said failure.
For a player as great as Reapered, one can see the circumstances which motivated his decisions, but a more selfish approach to the game could have seen his career's success extend much further and perhaps even his playing time itself. Many teams in Korea lacked for a good shot-caller and a good Top Laner, something he could have been in both regards, whether his level had dropped from being a Top Lane deity or not.
The ultimate irony, of course, is that the Top Laner he originally made way for, Miso, would later rename himself to Fenix and move to play Mid Lane with Team Liquid in Season 5, where he was considered a top player at the position. Had MiSo have played at Mid during the final season of Reapered's career, the great Top Laner could have returned to his original role.
11. Altec - AD Carry to Support
Player: Johnny "Altec" Ru
Team: Winterfox
Date: 04/03/2015
In the Summer split of Season 4, Altec had been considered of the rare true rising NA talents in the league. The next split would see him eventually forced into playing the Support position for two games, with his coach becoming his AD Carry. This move saw the skilled ADC delivering a combined 4/10/14 performance on Leona over those two games, with Winterfox losing both.
It was said that Altec himself had played a part in making the role-swap happen, citing his frustration with playing alongside four Korean speakers, as a non-Korean speaker, and thinking that moving to Support would allow him to be more "productive" and "vocal".
The following season, Altec would be hailed as one of the best AD Carries in NA, playing as one of the stars of Gravity. He has never again expressed any desire to play Support and appears more than productive enough.
10. Saintvicious - Jungler to Support
Player: Brandon "Saintvicious" DiMarco
Team: Team Curse
Date: 04/02/2014
Saintvicious is a North American legend, having been the best Jungler in the region and one of the world's best players. Within Season 3, Saintvicious was still a fully competent Jungler, playing for organisations capable of defeating the best of teams; however, he was far from an elite level at his position. For Season 4 it was decided that he would step back from competitive play and become the coach of the team, having long been the shot-caller and deeply invested in the side's strategies and approach.
Curse went 3:5 over their first three weeks, with the third week seeing them drop both games in their first whitewash. At this point, it was bizarrely decided that Saintvicious would insert himself into the line-up as the Support player, replacing Zekent. Curse would win their first game against Team Dignitas, but for the total games Saint’s would play the position Curse finished 2:6, bringing their overall record to 5:11 and placing them at sixth place, in an eight team league.
Saintvicious departed the line-up and the arrival of BunnyFuFu would see him playing some very promising LoL, hinting at what was to come from the rookie Support player. Saint, on the other hand, would join the Curse Academy, the Challenger team of the Curse organisation, a few months later and would eventually help them qualify for the LCS as their Jungler.
While Saint's shot-calling had always been a plus side of his career, especially due to its decisive nature, he was never going to be an LCS level Support player and the net sum for the team was negative. Both Curse and Saint would prosper with the reversal of his decision to role-swap. Perhaps he just wanted to try it out, since all his old CLG team-mates had received the opportunity to give it a chance.
9. bigfatlp - Mid Laner to Jungler
Player: Michael "bigfatlp" Tang
Team: Counter Logic Gaming
Date: 26/05/2013
Bigfatlp was widely considered the best League of Legends player in the world during Season 1. In Season 2 he had begun to struggle in his role, dropping off as a Laner and experiencing a bizarre lack of confidence with his skill-shots. In addition to this, having Saintvicious depart as his Jungler and HotshotGG, a new-comer to the role, take over can't have helped the situation. When Season 3 began, CLG replaced bigfatlp with Link as their Mid Laner. It appeared as if his days as player for a top organisation had finished.
Having gone off to play for the Challenger team Azure Cats, bigfat would find himself back on CLG for the second split of Season 3, as he role-swapped to Jungle, allowing Chauster to return to Support. While the latter move had a rationale behind it which made sense, since Chauster had been one of the best Supports in the world and famously worked very well with AD Carry Doublelift, bigfat had no outstanding reasons to suggest he would be a good Jungler.
As the split went on, bigfatlp would deliver a fairly unconvincing performance in the Jungle. What's more, this marked the third role-swap for CLG into the Jungle position alone, perhaps showing how much they undervalued the position with the departure of Saintvicious early in Season 2. CLG would fail to make it past the first round of the play-offs and bigfatlp was removed for Dexter.
The very next split, CLG would finish third and were close to reaching their first ever LCS final. Bigfatlp has not played for a top LCS team since.
8. Alex Ich - Mid Laner to Top Laner
Player: Alexey "Alex Ich" Ichetovkin
Team: Ninjas in Pyjamas
Date: 08/05/2014
Following Gambit's disappointing Spring split play-off performance in 2014, when they had failed to finish in the top four at an offline tournament for the first time in the history of that five man line-up, Alex Ich decided enough was enough and departed from the team. The Mid Laner was one of the greatest in history within his position, a champion of numerous tournaments and inextricably tied to the identity and playing style of Gambit.
The issue of having to travel to Germany every week, combined with his frustrations over some of the Gambit players not committing themselves to a professional practice schedule saw him leave the team to join the Ninjas in Pyjamas organisation, where he was promised a visa to live in Sweden and residence at their team house, along with his wife and child.
Alex would not feature as a Mid Laner for NiP, though, as the organisation put together a potential all-star team of talent, featuring k0u, highly touted young Jungler; Nukeduck, the star Mid Laner of the old Lemondogs and previous NiP; Freeze, the ADC who had been considered quietly one of the better LCS ADCs ever since arriving at NiP the previous Summer; and mithy, a monster Laning Support who had been stuck in Challenger due to NiP's failure to qualify for LCS on the last occasion.
This left Alex Ich to play the Top Lane position, one alien to him. It was not the first time he had considered it, as he had been playing with Froggen's super-team, later to become Alliance, during the off-season of Season 3, but had decided against both the role-swap and leaving Gambit. NiP would never get the chance to qualify for LCS with this line-up, losing mithy and Nukeduck to behaviour bans which saw them ruled out of competitive play.
While NiP were able to win the amateur competition Dreamhack Summer, using PowerOfEvil as their Mid Laner, Alex would decide to take over the reins of Mid Lane again. NiP would fail to qualify for LCS and Alex was mocked for his inability to perform to his previous level against Challenger Series Mids. As it happened, those Mids were Febiven, Fox and PowerOfEvil, players who would be considered some of the best and play for the best teams in the following LCS split.
Alex's switch to Top Lane was not only unsuccessful in respect to his own play, but it cost him match fitness within the Mid Lane position when he decided to role-swap back. One can only imagine what an Alex Ich who had stayed at Mid would have been like coming into qualification for that split. NiP's failure to qualify would see Alex move to North America, where he has helped two teams qualify for LCS: TDK and Renegades, his current team.
7. Xmithie - Jungler to AD Carry
Player: Jake "Xmithie" Puchero
Team: XDG Gaming
Date: 14/01/2014
In the Summer of Season 3, Xmithie was in consideration for best Jungler in North America. His strong mechanics, heavy pressure ganking style and intuitive synergy with Mid Laner Mancloud had seen the two become stars of their roles within their region. They qualified for the World Championship and even gave a good account of themselves, at times, in international competition.
Upon returning home, the team made the bizarre decision, supposedly agreed upon by a majority of the players, to role-swap AD Carry Zuna into the Jungle role and Xmithie into AD Carry. Part of their logic suggested that Xmithie's strong mechanics would allow him to perform well at ADC, one of the most mechanically intensive roles within the game. While many might have considered Zuna's role-swap one worthy of this list, that player has been, at best, an average ADC, so it is Xmithie's role-swap which is the primary offense and Zuna's merely an after-effect.
XDG would go 3:11 over the first six weeks of play. With Support BloodWater departing from the line-up, they would choose to revert their role-swaps, but it mattered little. XDG would finish the split 7:21, in last place, and relegated. Xmithie's return to the Jungle did not see him regain the same force he had previously been and XDG were never against a team of any note.
With the Spring split of 2014 being the period in which Xmithie's rival, Meteos of Cloud9, had assumed a similar low econ early ganking style, one is left to wonder if Xmithie would have fallen off naturally or if the role-swap catapulted his career into the dumpster. He would eventually get a second chance at LCS with CLG, joining for Season 5 and eventually winning the LCS title in the Summer split, playing as a Jungler.
XDG's role-swap remains one of the most puzzling in history, in respect to the outcome they legitimately thought possible as a result of it. In the end, one can only screw up their eyes, laugh and say "GG" to such an ill-fated move.
6. Rhux - Top Laner to Support
Player: Keenan "Rhux" Santos
Team: Team Curse
Date: 20/04/2013
Rhux was known as a solo queue Top Lane player, but after becoming a player for Team Curse, he would be used as a substitute on a number of occasions. In an online competition and at IPL5 he would replace Elementz as their Support. At IEM VII Katowice he played Mid Lane, in place of NyJacky, even helping the team defeat the legendary Gambit Gaming.
When friction between Elementz and Saintvicious reached an impasse and the team had lost all five games of the final week of the first LCS split, Curse made the decision to replace Elementz with Rhux for the play-offs. Curse had been dominating the regular split of LCS, holding the first place spot right up until the final week, but had relinquished it to TSM at the very end. Still, as the number two seeds, they were expected to face TSM in the final.
Instead, Curse and Rhux would find themselves finishing in fourth place, the worst placing possible for a team which had received a BYE through to the semi-finals. 2:1 losses to both GGU and Vulcun, sides which had failed to finish in the top four of the regular split, saw Curse's dream of a potential LCS title dead and buried.
While internal conflicts can obviously be justifiable as a motivation to make a drastic roster move, one can wonder how Curse might have fared if they'd stuck with the five who had earned them their number two play-off seed. Could they have turned matters around after that disastrous super-week and made a better run to the final? Rhux has played in the LCS as Top Lane stand-in on one occasion since.
5. MaKNooN - Top Laner to Mid Laner
Player: Yoon "MakNooN" Ha-woon
Team: CJ Entus Frost
Date: 11/10/2013
Back in Season 2, MaKNooN rose to promise as one of the most skilled and aggressive Top Laners in the entire world. The star of NaJin Sword, a team built around him within the NaJin organisation, he helped his team to qualify for the World Championship, finish second at the MLG Fall Championship and become the champions of OGN Winter 2012/2013. Coming off his OGN championship, MaKNooN would see his Sword team fall heavily the following season, only making it to the quarter-finals of OGN Spring 2013.
At this point, he decided to depart and go to KT Rolster, who wanted to build a team around him and qualify for OGN again. Failing to qualify, he was considered damaged goods that Summer, with no team wanting to touch him. His return to OGN would come as a result of desperation from Frost, once perennial championship contenders but now far from a side who could legitimately be expected to reach an OGN final.
With the masterful Shy still performing well in the Top Lane, despite the team's other struggles, the open role for MaKNooN was Mid Lane and he took his chance to reinvent himself, playing for a long-time rival organisation, no less. Despite the team winning three of the four games in which he played, Frost did not like the look of the team and chose to remove him in favour of GankedByMom. That marked the end of MaKNooN's season and indeed his career in Korea.
Such was an underwhelming and disappointing end to top level competitive play for one of the game's great Top Laners.
4. Locodoco - AD Carry to Support
Player: Choi "Locodoco" Yoon-sup
Team: Counter Logic Gaming
Date: 22/10/2012
Once upon a time, Locodoco was one of the elite Korean AD Carries, early in the game's development within his home country, back in Season 2. Even after switching from MiG Frost over to StarTale he continued to perform at a high level. When ST failed to overcome his rival MaKNooN's NaJin Sword and fell in the quarter-finals, he decided to leave the team and was surrounded by offers within Korea.
A number of prominent Korean eSports organisations wanted to build teams, but Locodoco instead chose to go across the Pacific and join Counter Logic Gaming and his former frenemy Doublelift, wanting to leave personal troubles in Korea behind him. As Locodoco had been known for working with Supports to improve him, he rationalised that he could switch to Support and play a shot-calling role within CLG.
At the two tournaments they attended, CLG had decent results, finishing in fourth at the MLG Fall Championship and top six at IPL5, a very competitive event. However, the problem was that Locodoco's performance at Support was abysmal, effectively only able to play Nunu and even then sometimes failing to deliver what was needed. Even worse, this period of learning Support came with Doublelift at the peak of his powers, a truly world class player and a dominant force within the game. In spite of Loco, Doublelift was able to secure multiple penta-kills and solo carry games against top opposition.
After these two events, Locodoco would leave the team and return to Korea to attempt to start life over as an AD Carry once again, eventually ending up playing for the NaJin organisation, bizarrely. He would remain an AD Carry for the rest of his playing days.
3. DanDy - Jungler to Top Laner
Player: Choi "DanDy" In-kyu
Team: Vici Gaming
Date: 31/05/2015
DanDy is the greatest Jungler in history and went to China in his prime as a player. An OGN champion and a world champion, his accomplishments domestically and internationally saw his résumé just as loaded as his individual game was with talent and ability.
Joining Vici Gaming for a truck-load of money, DanDy found himself lacking any elite team-mates at the traditional carry positions, making it hard work for him to enhance the play of his side.
Six games into the LPL Summer split, Carry, Vici's Top Laner, was hospitalised and DanDy decided to move to the Top Lane and take over his position. He would remain there for the rest of the split, including VG's play-off run. DanDy was not a spectacular Top Laner, but he was not terrible either. He would put in a number of solid performances, adapting to main champions like Hecarim, Gnar and Maokai, all meta picks of the time.
Vici would go 20:18 for the rest of the split and even manage to take down Uzi's OMG in the play-offs. Losses to LGD and iG would see them fail to make a significant impact on the season, though.
While other players on this list truly struggled at their new positions, DanDy's role-swap is more of a crime in as much as it took one of the greatest Junglers LoL has ever produced and made them merely a serviceable player at another role. Replacing Carry should have been the number one priority for VG, to allow DanDy to continue to play within the role he had become a household in.
DanDy has now moved back to Jungle and with Easyhoon joining VG as his Mid, many await a season in which perhaps he will look like the DanDy who dominated the Season 4 World Championship with an MVP level performance.
2. Uzi - AD Carry to Mid Laner
Player: Jian "Uzi" Zi-Hao
Team: StarHorn Royal Club
Date: 11/2013
Uzi is one of the most fearsome AD Carries in history and had just led Royal Club to the final of the Season 3 World Championships. However, a radical overhaul of the roster, as a result of retirements, saw him take the decision to strangely move into the Mid Lane. Originally, the logic behind this decision was that the only Support player he wanted to play with in the Bot Lane was Tabe, who had retired, so out of the Bot Lane he went.
As a Mid Laner, he began by playing almost entirely AD champions, even using Vayne Mid Lane. Even his early forays into actual Mid Lane champions involved playing the likes of Riven and Kha'Zix. With time he began to vaguely approach the meta of the day, early 2014. Even in games in which Uzi could pressure the opposing Mid Laner well, he showed no understanding of how and when to roam around the map, seeing him unable to transition a lead of any size into something meaningful for his team.
SHRC would go 1:4 in series and win only a single game during his time as a Mid Laner in LPL. As week five ended, Uzi returned to the ADC role and SHRC would go on to finish the split in sixth place, failing to reach the play-offs.
For a player as skilled at ADC as Uzi, to waste half a split is almost unbearable, especially considering that upon his return to his original role he was able to help SHRC reach the World Championship, as the second seed from China, and eventually make another run to the final. At that World Championship he proved to be the best at his position.
1. HotshotGG - Top Laner to Jungler
Player: George "HotshotGG" Georgallidis
Team: Counter Logic Gaming
Date: 19/05/2012
HotshotGG was one of the first stars of League of Legends, both for his streaming persona and his powerful Top Lane play. His play on Nidalee was so notable that many speculated Riot nerfed the champion specifically to limit his unstoppable performances on her. As Season 1 ended, he was considered one of the best in the world at any position. Season 2 saw CLG put together arguably their most talented roster ever and contend with the top teams of the era.
Internal fighting with Saintvicious led CLG to remove the Jungler and it was decided that rather than recruit a replacement, the team would pick up Voyboy, star Top Laner of Team Dignitas, and have Hotshot role-swap into the Jungle. Despite initial struggles, Hotshot would find new niches that worked for him, playing Nautilus and Cho'Gath.
However, his problem was that he was both an entirely different style of Jungler to the carry Jungler Saintvicious and his replacement suffered from having a more farm-orientated Jungler rather than one who could pressure and snowball him.
The outcome was that CLG's results began to slide down and by the Season 2 World Championship they found themselves unable to even reach the final eight of the competition, barely finishing out of last place. CLG would remove Voyboy and HotshotGG returned to the Top Lane, but his struggles were far from over. While he had dropped from being the best prior to switching to the Jungle, he was still a good Top Laner and had a wide champion pool.
After returning from the Jungle, Hotshot's confidence was destroyed and Chauster was able to convince him that he could only play a very limited role as a Top Laner and was simply there to play a basic game and support the others on the team, including star ADC Doublelift, zoning and peeling for him. Hotshot would never again be the Hotshot of old and never again approached star status. In the first LCS split, he would become a constant target of criticism and mockery, a meteoric fall for what was once the best Top Laner in LoL.
After the Spring split of 2013, Hotshot retired from competitive play to focus on streaming and his career as the owner of CLG. His down-fall and that of CLG can be charted almost directly from his move into the Jungle.
In association with Thorin's Top 15 Worst LoL Role-Swaps of All-Time, we are giving away five Poro Plush's! (Closes Sunday 13th December at 18:00 hours GMT, winners picked by panel of judges at Gfinity, all decisions are final, winners will be contacted within 24 hours).
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