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HCS mid-season roster changes
Publish Date: June 16, 2017
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At the end of Week Two of the HCS Summer Season, the first of two transfer periods opened up. Before long, rumors were abound and the community sought for scraps of news. With the second transfer period coming up, let’s recap some of the roster changes that have happened as well as what we can expect.
Str8 Rippin has had the most changes, with both Aaron “Ace” Elam and Bradley “APG” Laws reportedly departing the
roster. In lieu of these two players, Str8 acquired Timothy “Rayne” Tinkler from Team Liquid and played their matches this week with Hamza “Commonly” Abbaali. The Str8 roster will now likely be Rayne, Commonly, Richie “Heinz” Heinz and Dan “Danoxide” Terlizzi.
This change is somewhat confusing. Str8 has lost a lot of slaying power from APG as well as losing out on overall damage output and aggressiveness due to Ace leaving. Despite this, they have picked up two very objective-minded players. While Commonly is relatively similar to Ace in terms of objective plays and damage output, Rayne does not compensate for the slaying ability lost.
Combined with Heinz already being another objective-focused player and that leaves Danoxide with more pressure to slay.
Team Liquid has made a trade with Str8 Rippin, gaining Ace in return for Rayne. The Liquid roster is now Ace, Zane “Penguin” Hearon, Braedon “StelluR” Boettcher and Kevin “Eco” Smith.
This roster change may not have necessarily improved or worsened Liquid to any significant extent. While Ace does perhaps bring some more damage output to the team on paper, he also lacks the chemistry that Rayne had with the roster. This will likely leave Liquid in a similar spot to what they would have been in if they had kept Rayne.
Ronin has dropped the most controversial player in the HCS, Carlos “Cratos” Ayala for Visal “eL ToWn” Mohanan. The roster is now eL ToWn, Cory “Str8 SicK” Sloss, Tyler “Spartan” Ganza and Ayden “Suspector” Hill.