Season 3: Too Many Roster Changes
Voyboy left the team at the start of the Season 3 Spring Split. Chauster moved to jungle, and HotshotGG went back to his home in top lane. This new gap in the bottom lane led CLG to pick up young talent Zaqueri “Aphromoo” Black, who impressed fans and analyst’s alike with his impressive support plays. It was around this time that HotshotGG was coming under fire for his limited Champion pool, and was believed to be bringing CLG down due to being a utility player and filling in other lanes.
With the constant roster and position changes, CLG lost their place in TSM‘s shadow, ending the Spring Split in fifth place. To make matters worse, the meta within League of Legends was shifting, and CLG was finding themselves slow on the draw. Their poor performance in the Spring Split led HotshotGG to step down from the active roster, Aphromoo leave the team, Chauster move back to support, and bigfatIp come back to the jungle. Doublelift was the only sense of consistency, staying put on ADC.
CLG‘s inability to adapt to the meta, lack of team chemistry, and continual roster changes ensured another poor performance in the Summer Split. CLG ended in sixth place, which marked the first year the team was ineligible for Worlds.
tl;dr
- Roster musical chairs
- Ended Spring Split in 5th
- HotshotGG removed himself from active roster
- Ended Summer Split in 6th
- Unable to attend Worlds
Season 4: Going from Bad to Good to Worse
CLG couldn’t catch a break. The start of the 2014 Season saw Chauster retire, Aprhomoo come back as support, and a fresh face in the form Dexter would become the new jungler. The Spring Split was nothing new to CLG fans, as they saw their team struggle in losing four of their six opening games. Yet in a twist of fate, halfway through the Split CLG began to gel as a team. Their newfound synergy allowed them to finish the Spring Split in third, their highest place yet. But despite their recent success, top laner Nientonsoh fell under criticism, and was accused of holding the team back with his underperformance. He ultimately resigned and was replaced by Seraph at the start of the Summer Split, destroying any synergy CLG had managed to create.
CLG saw mediocre results for the first half of the Summer Split as they continued to struggle with yet another roster change. They would hover in the middle of the pack until two clutch games against Cloud 9 and Complexity would launch them up to an unprecedented first place lead that they would hold until Week 9. Their fans lost their mind. CLG was in first place. They were back. They had gelled as a team, they were on top of the world. Then Week 9 happened.
Flailing in playoffs, CLG was sent tumbling down to sixth place where they faced relegation. The slip of LCS staple CLG falling from first to relegation was the most unexpected development in the history of competitive League of Legends. CLG struggled against Curse, losing their first two games, leaving the team to look at a reverse sweep as being the only way to stay in the LCS. Miraculously, they did just that and managed to stay in the LCS at the end of Season 4, after being involved in professional League of Legends since its beginning. The only way left was up for CLG, and they were ready to go into Season 5 and reclaim their lost glory.
tl;dr
- More roster changes
- Managed to end 3rd Spring Split
- Held 1st place for middle of Summer Split
- Slid from 1st to 6th where they faced relegation
- Came back from relegation, managed to stay in the LCS
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