The League of Legends competitive landscape is nebulous - balance changes, roster changes and unforeseen in-season circumstances force players to stay on their toes. Such is the case with Team Liquid and its Spring Split roster shakeup.
Mid laner Greyson "Goldenglue" Gilmer has decided to bootcamp by himself in South Korea. Chae "Piglet" Gwang-jin moved from AD Carry to mid lane, and support Adrian "Adrian" Ma joined this week. Lastly, AD Carry "Doublelift" Yilang has come aboard temporarily from Team SoloMid. These are drastic moves for a team desperate to avoid relegation.
We want to focus on what Piglet did, though, or more specifically, a player changing roles. His swap showed some success (27/14/36 Kill/Death/Assist scoreline across six games), but the move to mid also serves as a reminder that several players have taken such a path before with varying degrees of success.
With that in mind, we took a look at six of the most significant role changes across the five major regions in League of Legends history, some which have altered or defined the primary narrative of the regions they occurred.
Europe: Bora "YellOwStaR" Kim, from AD carry to support, Season 3
Europe has been the hotbed of several marquee changes. Some have gone unnoticed, forgotten to history as they occurred before a player made a splash into the scene. However, Bora "YellOwStaR" Kim's transition from AD Carry to support not only defined Fnatic's legacy, it cemented the player's position among the all-time greats in the West.
As Martin "Rekkles" Larsson became eligible to play in the League Championship Series near the end of Season 3, YellOwStaR switched to a position that matched his in-game strengths the most. His ability to read the game and keep tabs of important events helped Fnatic stay afloat in tough situations, and his adaptation to the role allowed the team to assert itself as the strongest in Europe during his tenure (before his brief stint in North America). Between June 2013 and December 2015, Fnatic appeared in five EU LCS split finals, winning four of them.
Most remarkable was his tenure within Fnatic's rebuilding effort in 2015 after everyone else departed. He helped curate a new Fnatic, leading the team into the mid and late-game stages regardless of whether Heo "Huni" Seung-hoon, Kim "ReignOver" Yeu-jin, Fabian "Febiven" Diepstraten or Rekkles had secured early-game leads (which happened very often) or not.
South Korea: Go "Score" Dong-bin, from AD Carry to jungle, Season 5
Go "Score" Dong-bin was initially an AD carry and gained a reputation as one of the most consistent players at the position. He was instrumental to the success of the KT Rolster Bullets, narrowly missing the World Championship in 2013 due to SK Telecom T1.
However, with the abolition of the sister team system in the South Korean League of Legends scene at the end of the 2014 season, organizations created a logjam at specific positions when they merged teams. KT Rolster Arrow and KT Rolster Bullet's combination meant that Arrow and Score would have shared playing time, but Score capitalized on the departures of Choi "inSec" In-seok and Lee "KaKAO" Byung-kwon and switched to the Jungle position instead.
KT met immediate success with Score roaming the map, and its legacy would have been different had KOO/ROX Tigers not stood in the way in the 2015 World Championship quarterfinals (KOO), and in the 2016 LCK Summer finals (ROX). Currently, he's the sole remaining player on KT from the pre-LCK era.
North America: Hai "Hai" Du Lam, from jungle to mid... to jungle to support, then back to mid, Season 3, 5, 6
North America has been the theater of several role changes, such as Brandon "Saintvicious" Di Marco's switch from top to jungle, or Zaqueri "Aphromoo" Black's switch from AD carry to support. However, Hai "Hai" Du Lam's switch from the jungle to mid lane defined his legacy (more so than Saintvicious missing his Smite) and Cloud9's in a more significant manner than the aforementioned positional swaps.
Even as he plays for FlyQuest, it is difficult to dissociate Hai from Cloud9 legacy-wise. He helped C9 either dominate, or remain relevant, in the North American LCS across three different positions. However, due to nagging injuries, he retired in the summer of 2015... temporarily.
When Cloud9 flirted with possible relegation in the 2015 summer split, Hai returned to the starting lineup in the jungle and brought leadership and stability to the lineup, allowing the organization to prevent a 2016 Promotion Tournament appearance. Not only that, he helped the team qualify for the Regional qualifier. Against all odds, and with reverse sweeps against Gravity and Team Impulse, Cloud9 qualified for the World Championship.
In the Spring of 2016, Hai again made a role swap, this time to support; he replaced Michael "Bunny FuFuu" Kurylo and helped C9 reath a 5th/6th place finish. Then Hai moved to Cloud9's challenger team for the summer, where he moved back to the mid lane.
Say what you will about Hai, but it's clear he's flexible.
China: Ming "Clearlove" Kai, mid to jungle, Season 2, and Yin "LoveLing" Le, support to jungle, back and forth, Season 2 Onward
Team WE and EDward Gaming dominated the Chinese League of Legends circuit at different times, and Ming "Clearlove" Kai serves as a bridge between them. In both eras, he encountered Yin "Loveling" Le, whose playstyle in the jungle was a perfect contrast to his.
Clearlove's more farm-centric style on semi-carry and carry champions initially helped provide threat within Team WE's system, allowing the squad to reign supreme following the Season 2 World Championship. However, LoveLing's aggressive lane-centric style and understanding of game flow propelled OMG ahead of opponents locally, and was extremely effective on the international stage.
In a way, their contrasting styles set different standards in the Chinese scene. When Clearlove could take over games from time to time, LoveLing provided pressure and resources to his teammates, who went on to snowball games - as he would do when playing support, when he swapped roles with Ou-Yang "pomelo" Wei-Qi.
The two players most synonymous with the jungle in China started off in a different role, but went differently about their roster swaps. Clearlove's switch from mid to jungle was permanent, whereas LoveLing switched back and forth between the roles and provided in-game direction regardless of his role.
LMS: Kang "Albis" Chia-Wei, Multiple roles into support, Season 5
The Taiwanese League of Legends scene struck gold when one of its representatives, the Taipei Assassins, won the Season 2 World Championship against Korea's Azubu Frost. Since then, the scene would be either underrated or forgotten until the 2015 World Championship, when its representatives blitzed their way to the bracket stage (and, of course, the recent IEM Katowice win from Flash Wolves).
The Taipei Assassins and Flash Wolves have been the scene's frontrunners at different eras, but ahq have gained notoriety by simply being part of the conversation when you talk about the LMS region. Kang "Albis" Chia-Wei helped the squad upstage TPA in the 2013 Garena Premier League championship as an AD carry, but did not participate in the World Championship. Following a 2014 season spent in the mid lane, jungle and support spots of sister team Ahq Fighter, he returned to the main lineup and filled Sa "GreenTea" Shang-Ching's position as a support.
The change helped Ahq dominate the LMS in 2015 and score a quarterfinal finish in the World Championship that year, outperforming their 2014 rendition on that regard. It also helped Ahq maintain a high-level rivalry with Flash Wolves, who have also scored noteworthy results on the international stage.