Role Swaps and Player Flexibility in the LCS

The League of Legends professional players all have a “main” role, as do most amateur players. While they will occasionally play a different role in solo queue with the amount of skill and competence you could expect from a professional player, it is rare that one of them will play a different role in a competitive match.

However, it is not all that rare that a professional player will change roles within his team or even move to a new team in a new role. Aphromoo, Heartbeat, Yellowstar, and Nientonsoh have all played different roles in their competitive careers, and some of them within the same LCS split.

Additionally, the last week of the EU LCS saw the first two temporary role swaps in the LCS. Tabzz played mid lane in the LD-MYM game, and EG’s Froggen swapped roles with Krepo in their game for third place against Gambit Gaming. While the first role swap could be considered an outlier as the LD-MYM game result would have no effect on either team’s standings in the post-season, the Krepo-Froggen swap was a risky but successful strategy that EG used to throw their opponents off guard and steamroll their way to third place.

So what is the importance of players being able to play multiple roles? Like EG’s seven-man roster I discussed a few weeks ago, players who can swap roles on a moment’s notice bring a lot of flexibility to both their team and themselves.

A Player’s Flexibility is Important for Job Security

Unfortunately, the LCS has proved a rather volatile environment for the professional players, and job security is not a sure thing. In addition to the chance of being relegated post-season, pros have to worry about being replaced by their team’s organization or their teammates. Lucky players may get to remain on the team as a sub, but others simply receive the boot. While it’s no guarantee, the ability to play multiple roles certainly helps players keep their spot as professionals. Some pros, such as Nientonsoh and Heartbeat, have managed to join a new team in a different role after the relegation of their old team. Others, like Chauster and Yellowstar, have stayed on their team by taking on a new role when a new player joined. When job security is as dicey as it is in the LCS, the ability to adapt to a team’s needs could be the difference between keeping your job or not.

Role Swapping Can Allow New and Surprising Strategies from a Team

While the most obvious case is EG’s performance in the tiebreakers, there have been several examples of a team’s opening up new strategies through role swapping. EG’s swap of Krepo and Froggen allowed Froggen to play Blitzcrank, who Gambit would not ban against Krepo, and Krepo to play mid-lane on Anivia. This strategy was a one-time thing and was more a risky, gimmicky move by EG than a serious role swap. While Froggen’s Blitzcrank was securing kills for the team and rapidly gaining an advantage over Gambit, Krepo was struggling to play Anivia, one of his old favorites. The team revealed afterwards they were expecting Krepo to do much worse, and were banking on Froggen’s ability to keep the team ahead. Thus, this temporary role swap, even if planned and practiced, isn’t something most teams can pull off, and is quite risky since one player may seriously struggle in the new role.

Meanwhile, more permanent swaps can open up a lot of new strategies for a team. Velocity E-Sports moved Vileroze from mid to top lane and immediately scored a victory thanks to new strategies based on Vileroze’s Shen. Chauster has been amazingly versatile on CLG, able to go from support to jungle then back to support and learning new champions with each CLG roster, allowing the rest of the team more breathing room in their picks.

The ability of players to swap roles to adapt to not only changes in their team’s roster, but also to changes in their team’s strategies brings a great degree of flexibility to a team when going through a roster change. New players can be brought in to roles other than empty ones, and older players can be moved to accommodate new teammates.

Temporary role swaps like Froggen and Krepo’s will most likely be a rarity, but the ability of individual pros to play multiple roles is an asset that is undoubtedly important both for them and their team. Some pros like Aphromoo have said they dislike playing roles other than their “main”, but it was this ability to play multiple positions that allowed Aphromoo to join CLG in the LCS spring split. Without players ready and willing to adapt to new roles, we could see many of our favorite players losing their place on teams to roster changes and new members. Instead, we get to see them bring their playstyle and personality to a new place within a team.