Was Meteos the secret to Phoenix1’s success?
The LCS veteran jungler made a huge impact this weekend by pulling off an upset on his former team, Cloud9.
It’s no secret that William “Meteos” Hartman is a veteran to the North American LCS. He played for Cloud9 as their jungler in several successful splits over a course of three years, and last week, he was subbed onto Phoenix1 as a jungler. It was his first LCS appearance on a team other than C9, and he looked.. really, really good.
With Meteos in the ranks, P1 went 2–0 over the weekend against the reigning first place team, C9, as well as Team Envy. Their first match was against Envy, a team that has been performing very poorly so far this split, so P1’s victory there was predictable even without Meteos. The victory that came by surprise was P1’s win over C9.
P1 has been a solid third-place contender behind both FlyQuest and Cloud9 since the beginning of the split. They didn’t look as bad as most other teams in the league, but they had glaring issues that Fly and C9 both appeared to not have. P1 is a very aggressive team, and it often seems that each member of the team is kind of flying off the handle whenever they see an opportunity for a kill. Teamfights and decisions were uncoordinated, but their individual mechanical talent as players still held them at a top 5 position in the standings.
Meteos, on the other hand, is very laid back and methodical. When he played on C9, the team was a very patient one, and games often were drawn out to beyond 50 minutes. Because of this, Meteos learned how to sit back and wait for a team to make a mistake before moving in. This experience is what landed P1 both their victories this past weekend. He brought a calm demeanor into a very aggressive team and it balanced out perfectly.
It was great to see Meteos back in the LCS. We always thought his departure from the scene was a bit too premature, and we’re hoping he sticks around this time. With how well he performed and more importantly, how well P1 performed around him, we wouldn’t be surprised to see Meteos become more of a permanent member of the roster. Even if P1 doesn’t elect to hold onto him, he definitely turned some heads, and it wouldn’t be a shock if another team were to pick him up for a starter position.
Side note: It was also awesome to see the anime-style battle between Cloud9’s young, new jungler and the old, scruffy jungler that was replaced.
