After a disappointing year, Immortals has started to rebuild its LCS and Academy rosters by dropping four players from its starting lineup and releasing coach Adrien “GotoOne” Picard.
The League of Legends team announced that it’s dropping veteran top laner sOAZ, ADC Altec, support Gate, and mid laner Eika, while wishing them luck moving forward with their careers. There were many question marks surrounding Immortals’ roster this year and the decisions that led to them switching around players throughout the season.
Because of the uncertainty around the roster, a lack of synergy combined with lackluster performances made for disappointing results. The team finished in eighth place during the 2020 LCS Spring Split and dropped to last place in the summer with an abysmal 4-14 record.
Now, Immortals is left with Apollo and Hakuho in the bottom lane, Insanity in the mid lane, Allorim in the top lane, and both Xmithie and Potluck in the jungle. It’s unknown if Insanity will be the team’s starting mid laner or if the org will sign another player to take over the role.
It’s also unknown if Xmithie will be sticking with the team after being relegated to Immortals’ Academy squad last split. The seven-year pro might want to start for another LCS team next year and could opt for a transfer to another roster.
This also leaves the team without a head coach. It’ll be imperative for this organization to pick up a good leader for this squad moving forward into a new year if they want to reverse their fortunes in 2021.
Earlier this split Schwartz said that the team had to make some difficult decisions over the past week, namely letting go of former GM Keaton Cryer and head coach Zaboutine. All of these moves, however, were all made in preparation for the future of the team.
Immortals were criticized at the beginning of the season after the team announced that it would be benching some popular LCS names like veteran jungler Xmithie. The team eventually brought him back, along with the rest of its Academy roster in the hopes of shaking up results for week three. Although their new roster was able to pick up their first win of the 2020 LCS Summer Split, there are still plenty of improvements that need to be made for this team to get anywhere close to the results they wanted this year.
From what Schwartz said, it looks like Immortals is already looking towards next year in terms of improvements and “consistently developing younger talent.” The 2021 season is the focus for Immortals, which would make sense considering the state in which their League team is in right now.