Cloud9 swap out Diplex for EMENES in LCS trial run

Cloud9 have decided to give EMENES, their NACL mid-laner, a shot at the LCS. He’ll start on week 5, and Diplex will play for the academy roster.

Cloud9 have had a pretty good split so far, much better than their Summer 2022 regular season performance. They went on to sweep playoffs with that roster, but things got off to a rocky start. Now, they’re 7-2 and looking like one of the strongest teams in Spring, with almost the same team as last year.

Dimitri ‘Diplex’ Ponomarev is a fresh talent from Europe and was the big questions marks for Cloud9 at the start of the split. From the outside looking in, C9 is looking good. But, after their 3-0 super week, they’ve decided to sub in Jang ‘EMENES’ Min-soo.

This was termed a “trial” in the official announcement from C9, and he’s going to be starting next week. Diplex will be playing for their NACL team instead.

EMENES gets promoted to Cloud9’s LCS team

EMENES is a reasonably notorious player. He’s repeatedly shown that he’s one of the brightest import prospects from Korea and has been a standout player through the numerous regions he’s moved through in his career.

However, he’s also allegedly hard to work with, to the point that he was taken off of XL’s academy team due to “irreconcilable differences” within the team environment.

Despite all this, Cloud9 decided to pick him up for his academy team and quickly promoted him to the LCS roster.

Diplex hasn’t been throwing games by any means; this trial run has been earned by EMENES, according to C9’s announcement.

EMENES has been crushing the NACL, and he’s being swapped in to try and improve Cloud9’s already strong team. That said, reactions to this change have been mixed.

Some fans believe there wasn’t a real reason to change here with how well the team is already doing, while others are confident that EMENES will be an upgrade and could push C9 into being the best team in NA. Whether or not he is an upgrade remains to be seen.