Immortals miss Spring Split playoffs, going 0-3 in Week 9

Immortals finished the 2020 LCS Spring Split pretty poorly. They lost both Week 9 matchups, as well as their tiebreaker versus Dignitas, ending the regular season in eighth place. The losses kicked Immortals out of playoffs, with Golden Guardians taking the sixth place spot. 

The Spring Split was fairly consistent for Immortals. They hovered between second and fifth place over the first eight weeks, only dropping out of playoff contention in Week 9. Immortals exceeded expectations for most of the split. Most analysts put Immortals around eighth or ninth in their preseason power rankings. Their final eighth place finish does not necessarily reflect Immortals’ overall performance. 

Looking to the future

Unfortunately, the eighth place finish is also adding fuel to the fire of fans calling for roster changes, particularly targeting Eika. LCS fans already questioned the offseason pickup before Spring Split began. Now that all teams have shown 18 to 20 games, most agree that Eika is bottom-of-the-pack for mid laners. Compared to other newly imported mid laners, Eika has lagged behind.He does not have the early strength of Jiizuke or the teamfighting strength of Ryoma. 

The 2020 Spring Split marks Immortals’ worst finish in LCS history. Their only time previously missing playoffs while participating in LCS was 2017 Spring Split. Flame, Dardoch, Pobelter, Cody Sun and Olleh finished seventh place under SSONG’s coaching. Entering Summer Split, they traded Dardoch to CLG for Xmithie, and Immortals finished second in the regular season, tied with TSM’s first place 14-4 record. Immortals made it to the finals, before finishing second place in playoffs and qualifying to Worlds as North America’s second seed. 

That World Championship-qualifying roster included Xmithie and Pobelter. Maybe Immortals could look to trade CLG in the midseason again. They could also seek out Damonte from Dignitas Academy, as he has LCS experience, and qualified to Worlds with Clutch Gaming last year. If Immortals is committed to importing a mid laner, they could look to Saken from Vitality, LIDER from mousesports or maybe even Naehyun from Griffin. However, it might be best to keep the roster in-tact and continue building from pre-existing synergy. 

CREDITS

Check out TheGameHaus.com for more sports and esports articles and interviews. You can ‘Like’ The Game Haus on Facebook and ‘Follow’ us on Twitter for more content from Thomas and other contributors!