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3 months ago
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Following a disastrous performance at the ESL One Kuala Lumpur 2023 and failure to qualify for the DreamLeague Season 22, LGD Gaming announced it was changing its mid-laner from here on.
On 28th January, LGD Gaming took to the Chinese social media platform Weibo and announced that it was moving its mid laner Zhou "Emo" Yi to the inactive roster. in his place, it signed former Vici Gaming mid laner Gao "Setsu" Zhenxiong. Interestingly, earlier rumors from many Chinese Dota 2 professionals and Emo himself foreshadowed this change.
Setsu Joins LGD Gaming While Emo Moves to Inactive Roster
“In compliance with the player's personal wishes, and after friendly consultations and internal communication with multiple parties, it was announced that the LGD E-Sports Club DOTA2 branch has made the following adjustments: The original second-position player became inactive on Monday (ID: Emo). Player Gao Zhenxiong (ID: Setsu) officially joined the LGD esports club DOTA2 division as the second position,” wrote LGD Gaming on Weibo.
According to the post from LGD Gaming, the motivation behind the roster change seemed to be a lack of synergy between the LGD Gaming players and Emo.
Emo joined LGD Gaming in November 2023 along with Xiong "Pyw" Jiahan to fill in the void left after Cheng "NothingToSay" Jin Xiang’s departure. During this short tenure, LGD Gaming played at the ESL One Kuala Lumpur 2023 but failed to find success. Winning only one series at the tournament, LGD Gaming finished with a disappointing 9th-10th standing.
Following this, LGD Gaming also tried its hands at the DreamLeague Season 22 qualifier and impressively managed to reach the final stages of the qualifier. However, it fumbled its chances at qualifying by losing to Azure Ray and G2.iG.
In the final game against G2.iG, Emo played Lina and displayed a lack of synergy with his teammates. Even though he had enough farm and was on the top 3 net-worth charts throughout the game, the sheer inability to make impactful plays and mispositioning in team fights ultimately led to G2.iG’s victory over LGD Gaming.
Noticing that Emo’s game style did not match the rest of LGD Gaming, even before the official announcement, Lu "Somnus" Yao reportedly said, “I feel like Emo is still a decent player, but his playstyle doesn’t suit LGD and they don’t have that much of team chemistry playing together too. I don’t know who replaced him in LGD, but if Emo and LGD don't suit together, they should make some changes as soon as possible to not waste any time of their own.”
Notably, earlier statements from players such as He "Inflame" Yongzheng foreshadowed this roster change. The retired Chinese Dota 2 player shared information on Setsu’s tryout as the new LGD Gaming’s mid-laner and Emo’s substitution. Interestingly, Emo himself also joked that he was voted out by six members of his team (including himself) because he was just that bad.
The new roster of LGD Gaming already made its debut at the ESL One Birmingham 2024 and it seemed stronger than ever. LGD dominated the series against Go Along in the upper bracket quarterfinals and advanced to the upper bracket semi-finals where it will now face Team Bright.
