With Phoenix1 playing against Team Dignitas this Saturday, fans should be speculative over the performance of their newest roster additions.

After Adrian “Adrian” Ma left for Team Liquid, Phoenix1 signed two support players to fill the void: Jordan “Shady” Robison and William “Stunt” Chen. Starting for Phoenix1 in support against Team Dignitas will be Shady, sharing the bot lane with one of the most acclaimed ADCs of the NALCS, Dong-Hyeon “Arrow” No. Shady is effectively a nobody in comparison to the star power of the players on the top three NALCS teams, but he is a nobody that also must play alongside some of the most hyped players in the league in Phoenix1’s jungler, Rami “Inori” Charagh and mid laner, Sang Wook “Ryu” Yoo. The pressure is on for Shady, whose previous experience on Robert Morris University’s team, the same team Adrian came from, may not allow for him to flourish on the competitive stage.

While Adrian and Shady share similar experiential backgrounds, his history playing for XDG Gaming and Team Impulse allowed him to hit the ground running on Immortals during their near flawless split. Shady, on the other hand, has only had the competitive stage experience during his two losses against TSM, compiling 101 minutes in total.

That being said, Shady currently holds rank 46 on the Challenger ladder, which as a support main is exceptionally high. In addition to this, his specialty in high damage mages such as Brand, Malzahar, Vel’Koz, and Zyra make him particularly hard to target ban. His lack of fear in pulling out Brand support, which he performed well on despite the defeat into first place team, TSM, proves he is already comfortable mixing things up on the stage.

Towards the center of the Rift for Phoenix1 lies their greatest strengths: Inori and Ryu. These two superstars have taken games dual-handedly with dominant solo kills by mid laner Ryu and relentless aggression by jungler Inori. Ryu, like Arrow, draws upon experience from Korean team KT Rolster Bullets where he played up until joining the EULCS in 2014. Since then, he achieved second seed for Europe in Worlds with alongside H2K before ultimately leaving to join Phoenix1 this split. His experience in both high caliber and high-pressure teams has paid off as he has proven to be one of the top four mid laners in the league.

While not boasting quite as impressive of a history, Inori can boast the highest kill participation of any jungler and the third highest kill participation across all roles in the NALCS at 71.7 percent. Inori’s aggression knows no bounds as he is involved in a little over one kill every four minutes. To put that into perspective, Inori has more kill participation per minute than the current jungler with the most kills in the league, Joshua “Dardoch” Hartnett. If Inori can get ahead early, he stays ahead and turns games into bloodbaths unbeknownst to any other jungler in the league.

Also an option for Phoenix1 is the substitution of William “Meteos” Hartman, also known as “Dark Meteos”. While this substitution may aid in more team fight based compositions, Phoenix1 will lose out on Inori’s unparalleled pressure. That being said, both of these junglers are top tier and will be crucial factors taking a victory over Dignitas.

Phoenix1’s match against Dignitas will not be their biggest challenge, but more importantly, this match will set precedent for P1’s new support, Shady. Shady needs to bring his solo queue prowess onto the stage. If he picks a high damage mage support, he needs to have explosive impact using that champion’s level 6 power spike that he can then use to snowball Arrow. If this does not happen, he will be a detriment to Phoenix1’s superstar, Arrow. Additionally, Phoenix1 must prevent Dignitas’ top laner, Chan-Ho “Ssumday” Kim from taking over the game by using target bans towards the tanks he consistently shows up on. If these stars align, Phoenix1 should expect to win 3-1. However, the real challenge will come from the next match against Cloud9 where Shady’s lack of true competitive experience and synergy with Arrow may be Phoenix1’s ultimate shortcoming.