EN DE CN BR ES RU
Image
Icon

Worlds 2021: Will Cloud9 deliver on its promise to dominate?

After the acquisition of arguably one of the best Western players to ever grace Summoner’s Rift, Cloud9 with Luka... Fragster | 30. September 2021

After the acquisition of arguably one of the best Western players to ever grace Summoner’s Rift, Cloud9 with Luka “Perkz” Perkovic promised to dominate. But the year has not been dominant for one of North America’s fan favorite organizations. 

Perkz replaced Yasin “Nisqy” Dinçer, who went into the European organization Fnatic. Cloud9 also let go of native talent Eric “Licorice” Ritchie to promote Ibrahim “Fudge” Allami into the main roster, following Riot Games’ decision to give Oceanic players North American residency. This move was met with some skepticism as Fudge was more of an unknown quantity from an emerging region, and he was replacing the region’s best native top laner. 

With one of the most successful players to ever play in the West, the expectation around Cloud9 was to be one of the top teams in the LCS. After all, they still had superstar bottom laner Jesper “Zven” Svenningsen, LCS MVP Robert “Blaber” Huang, and one of the best supports in the league in Philippe “Vulcan” Laflamme. Despite the change to a top laner whose performance no one knew about, the belief was that Perkz was so much better than everyone else that he could elevate the whole team. 

In the LCS Lock-in tournament, Cloud9 lost 2-3 to Team Liquid, and the team appeared to be out of sorts in the majority of the tournament. Granted, it was a pre-season tournament, but Perkz looked like he was not a cut above the rest of the mid laners in North America. Fudge also seemed like a huge liability for the team. They did make it to the final, and analysts noted that they can only improve from there. 

In spring, the team made massive strides, especially when it comes to Fudge’s form. The team placed first at the end of the regular season. They had a rather easy run at the Mid-season Showdown, cleanly sweeping 100 Thieves 3-0, beating Team Liquid 3-1, and then winning over Team Liquid once again in the final with a 3-2 scoreline. 

At the Mid-Season Invitational, things were rather different. The team was wildly inconsistent, having lost to teams from emerging regions, while also taking games against the LEC, LPL, and LCK representatives. Because of their up-and-down form, they were eliminated in the Rumble Stage. In an attempt to fix the issues that surfaced at MSI, Zven was swapped out for their Academy bottom laner, Calvin “K1ng” Truong. The team’s form did not improve, however, and their record still suffered. Eventually Zven was brought back in, but not much changed. 

The team went into playoffs of the summer against another struggling team, Team Liquid. Cloud9 were thought of as the favorites in the series, but they got soundly beaten. They then went on to have dominant 3-0’s over Golden Guardians and Evil Geniuses, and then won a hard-fought series against TSM for the last Worlds spot with a 3-2 scoreline. In their attempt to return to the finals, though, they were stopped by 100 Thieves, losing the series convincingly.

Cloud9 is a team composed of strong individual players, but most times, not all of them are in the same form at the same time. While they can generate leads for themselves in the laning phase, the team is also prone to making immensely aggressive in-game decisions. This is illustrated best by their bad fights over the Rift Scutler within the first few minutes of a game. 

If the players are able to find their form, synergize, and temper their decision-making, they would be able to deliver more consistent results. After all, for North America, Cloud9 is always the one team that is trusted to deliver acceptable international results, and with Perkz, the expectations are higher than ever. Will they be able to fulfill their promise of domination? 

 

(Header image via Twitter/@Cloud9)