Group Stage Double Round Robin Each team plays 18 matches. All matches are Bo1 Top 6 qualifies to the Summer Playoffs Top 2 teams are seeded into Semifinals Remaining 4 teams are seeded into Quarterfinals 1st place team from Group Stage will select their opponent from Quarterfinals 2nd place team from Group Stage will face the remaining team from Quarterfinals
Playoffs Single Elimination All matches are Bo5 Top 3 qualify for Rift Rivals 2020 NA-EU Winner qualifies for Mid-Season Invitational 2020
100 Thieves Cloud9 Counter Logic Gaming Dignitas (Clutch Gaming rebranded to Dignitas) Evil Geniuses (Echo Fox forced to sell their LCS spot. Replaced by Evil Geniuses) FlyQuest Golden Guardians Immortals (Optic Gaming rebranded to Immortals) Team Liquid Team SoloMid
My quick, roster thoughts/power rank before the games start (OFC not taking visa issues into account)
TL- Only question is, is Broxah an upgrade in the sense a roleplayer jungle is a good fit with this roster and you allow another LCS team to significantly upgrade by making Xmithe available. Personally I would have probably kept Xmithe for these reasons, but TL got away with one because Xmithe went straight to ELO hell and not to TSM.
CLG- I don't think the roster changes matter as much as if Wiggly continues to grow into a star player or stops at strong player, I prefer Crown to POE, but he needs a strong jungler to really shine. Smoothe is a downgrade imo, but pretty minor/irrelevant
TSM-I actually really like this team, a lot of people are putting this one on Dardoch, which I guess is at least partially true in any dardoch team, but spring BB/summer BB is the real question mark for me, I have 0 doubts mid and bot will perform
C9-bold prediction, I think this team will struggle or have long painful wins this season, they will lose mid/jg the majority of their games and it will be hard for their bot and top to pull them back into the game. Good thing for them their top and bot are too good to fail.As an aside I do think Sneaky got played a bit, both by his stats being bad because of team decisions and because Zeyzal is incredibly bad in lane, but Zven at his best is an upgrade and getting to lane with Vulcan is going to make it look like a massive upgrade.
100T-I want to love this team but it's really hard to feel confident when the mid laner is a hard ?. not much needs to be said about Ssumday and Meteos. I think Cody is the obviously established himself as the 2nd best NA ADC, definatly one of the best non imports you can get. Stunt is also super underrated, I don't know what this guys personal problems are, but clearly he has a little dardoch in him or something as he's been cut from the LCS twice whilst having a winning record with both teams(and his teams literally lost games to sup diff after cutting him). Supposedly Cody returning to 100T had a lot to do with Stunt being on the roster so hopefully this works. as far as solo Q is concerned he is without question the best support on NA, not that that always means much in LCS.
FLY-I don't really care to say much, this meta is basically Santorin poison so it's hard to really say, especially if you think like me Jungle will not be what it is now by finals time.
EG-I think this team will look a LOT like 2019 C9, obvious reasons aside, I think mid/jung will carry them through the mid game in most of their games, and it's up to bot or top to be useful for them to actually win
IMT-Xmithie ELO hell, if he camps bot they will win occasionally but prob not ever off a top team
DIG-Sleeper strong team, I'm really excited to see Johnsun play, I hope he can prove himself, but I'm worried Aphro will hold him back and people will blame Johnsun since he's the less popular player.
GG-Trash org existing only to take trash contracts off of TL and C9's hands DIVESTMENT LUL
On January 26 2020 07:14 Slusher wrote: 10-GG 9-IMT 8-FLY 7-EG 6-CLG 5-100T 4-C9 3-DIG 2-TSM 1-TL
Damn Dig so high. :D
Everything else seems pretty standard. Though the middle tier is always hard to predict. Like EG might do well, I would have actually put them above Dig.
On January 26 2020 07:14 Slusher wrote: 10-GG 9-IMT 8-FLY 7-EG 6-CLG 5-100T 4-C9 3-DIG 2-TSM 1-TL
Damn Dig so high. :D
Everything else seems pretty standard. Though the middle tier is always hard to predict. Like EG might do well, I would have actually put them above Dig.
Let's draw conclusions only after one game. DIG>EG