League of Legend star player Snoopeh is stepping down temporarily from his position in the Evil Geniuses team. The shock move comes as part of a larger restructure of the team following a run of less-than-stellar performances in the League of Legends Championship Series.
Discussing the teams plans on Reddit, Snoopeh explained that the team required a new direction after going from being a world-class team in the previous season to bottom of the table in the current season. With only a month before play-offs, Evil Geniuses will fail to qualify if they don’t make the top six.
To boost their chances of making it into the top slot, Evil Geniuses started looking for someone to analyse their playstyle and suggest improvements. They saw that other teams were swapping out their rosters, and discovered that Christoph ‘nRated’ Seitz had been released from Fnatic. Snoopeh realised this was the opportunity that Evil Geniuses needed, and the team snapped him up. “[nRated is] a very capable player in terms of skill, he has a sharp mind when it comes to decision making in game and as he is a friend, we are able to respect his opinion and observations of our team both in and out of game,” explained Snoopeh. “He will play several roles, but primarily he will be the Analyst of the team, filling a hole which already in the short time he has been with us has made a considerable impact in decision making and highlighted things which we were previously ignorant of.”
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Alongside nRated, Mojtaba “Shacker” Aflaton will be joining the team, who transfers from Animate eSport. Shacker will act as Snoopeh’s replacement. Snoopeh explains that his decision to step down is “not as a result of any external pressure – Evil Geniuses has no impact on this… However, as a team we realize that we are running out of time, it’s 4 weeks until play offs, we are not where we need to be and we cannot tolerate being anywhere else but Worlds. I don’t know and we as a team don’t know if substituting me will be beneficial, but we want to try it out now.. rather than later.. (as we need results now).”
Snoopeh stepping down is only a temporary move, and the team are looking to alternate between Shacker and Snoopeh as the team’s jungler in the future. nRated will offer support and evaluation during practice. “The idea behind this is to improve our performance as a team, not to act as a threat to the starting line up (even though this added pressure can result in people stepping up their game, which is a good thing!)” explained Snoopeh.
Evil Geniuses next play at LCS Tenerife, where despite not playing Snoopeh will be in attendance and streaming solo. You can catch his stream over on Twitch and follow his progress on Twitter.