During the summer 2016 playoffs of the North American LCS, William “Meteos” Hartman, former Jungler of Cloud 9, was asked what it was like to play with with Jeong “Impact” Eon-yeong. He responded, “It’s pretty easy, ya know…he just goes ‘Top die’ and he gets a solo kill, so uh…I don’t know, he’s really good.”

Ever since he first dawned the white and blue jersey, Impact has been perhaps the most valuable player on the Cloud 9 roster. With the recent news of former world champion’s almost certain departure from the Cloud 9 organization, now is a good time to review the impact he had on the team.

Impact joined Cloud 9 in the offseason between the spring and summer split of the 2016 NA LCS. He had previously been on Team NRG alongside the very hyped former Jin-Air mid laner Lee “GBM” Chang-seok. After a promising 4–0 start to the season, NRG’s rookie split was marred with inconsistency. The team limped into the playoffs, only to be dominated by Team Liquid 3–0 in the quarterfinals. Impact was a notable bright spot on the team, especially his last appearance against Liquid, but his title as the best top-laner in the league had been taken away by the freshly imported Heo “Huni” Seung-hoon.

After an underwhelming spring showing of their own, Cloud 9 approached Impact with an offer to play for the team. Cloud 9 underwent a massive overhaul, removing several of their legacy players from the starting roster, including long-time captain and shot-caller Hai “Hai” Lam. The initial idea behind the offer was in the spring of next year Impact would have become an NA resident, giving Cloud 9 another import slot. C9 would then be able to have a starting line-up of Impact, Nicolaj “Jensen” Jensen, and hard carry Jungler Lee “Rush” Yoon-jae.

Unfortunately for Cloud 9 this plan eventually did not materialize as Riot increased the amount of time an import must play within the league to achieve resident status from two years to four. Cloud 9 eventually adjusted their plans, but Impact remained on the starting line-up.

Impact’s arrival on Cloud 9 was initially similar to the average performances he displayed on NRG. Though as the meta shifted and the team developed more Impact soon returned to form. In fact, looking back on the team’s accomplishments over the past year and half it would be hard to argue that without Impact Cloud 9 would have, or could have, achieved much of the successes they indulged in.

The Sleeping Giant:

Throughout his time on Cloud 9, Impact routinely played whatever role the team needed him to play. When he first arrived Impact was little more than a consistent Top-laner with an impressive past. He was a consistent player on a team full of consistent players. Jensen, Meteos, and Zachary “Sneaky” Scuderi had built their careers on consistent high-level performances. In the beginning Impact was just a more mechanically talented version of Balls, he didn’t offer anything new to the team.

Their summer season was a reflection of the team’s consistent, yet unspectacular level of performance. Cloud 9 were much better than the teams below them, but did not possess the edge that would allow them to be better than the teams at the top of the league. Throughout the split, Cloud 9 had failed to win a series against Team Solomid or Immortals who placed above them in the regular season. It was not until the summer playoffs that Cloud 9, and more importantly Impact, showed something beyond what was expected of them.

In their semi-final series against Immortals, the first game played out much like teams’ previous meetings during the split. However, as the series went on Impact began to become more and more of a problem for Immortals. Immortals’ entire strategy was built around getting Huni fed, with the help of Kim “Reignover” Yeu-jin. Even if the rest of the team was falling behind, as long as Huni and Reignover destroyed the top side of the map the team could pull out a win. This one-dimensional playstyle was extremely successful for Immortals because it focused around the fantastic play of Huni and Reignover.

Immortals’ strategy was not a reliable one unfortunately. The team routinely dropped games throughout the summer split due to teams exploiting Immortals’ overreliance on Huni and Reignover, or Immortals’ own arrogant play. Their system was so effective despite their obvious weaknesses that Immortals finished the split in second place. When they faced off against Cloud 9 in the semi-finals the boys in blue had not shown they had the tools to topple Immortals’ gameplan during the regular season. Unfortunately for Immortals, they were about to run headfirst into a sleeping giant.

Immortals relied more and more Huni’s success as Cloud 9’s players proved too talented to just roll over. Reignover began to completely abandon the rest of the map by game 3 when it was clear that he would only be wasting his time. Immortals put all their eggs into getting Huni ahead of Impact, but Impact had other ideas. For the remainder of the series Impact made several 2v1 outplays against the unbeatable duo of Huni and Reignover on his legendary Gnar.

By the time game five rolled around Impact had done so much damage to Huni psychologically that the Immortals Top-laner began to take riskier trades. Eventually Huni dug himself into a hole that even Reignover could not save him from. Cloud 9 went on to defeat Immortals for the first time in the organization’s history 3–2.

Impact did not single handedly win the semi-finals for Cloud 9, but without him consistently outplaying Huni and Reignover it’s hard to imagine they would have come out on top.

Top Die:

Impact continued his dominance of the top-lane into the summer finals against TSM. Despite losing the series, Cloud 9 were kept in several of those games in large part due to Impact’s outstanding performances from the top-lane.

Cloud 9 recognized the importance Impact had on the team’s success and structured much of their Worlds team compositions around the former world champion. Carry picks like Kennen and Rumble, which C9 had shown almost no preference towards during the summer split, had suddenly become top priority to C9. This is not because of the worlds meta shift, but a change in the way the team thought they should play around their best player.

Though Impact would never against reach the heights he displayed during the end of 2016, he continued to be Cloud 9’s X factor. Impact came back to NA with performances far below what people were expecting. Despite the team’s undefeated streak in the first half of the split, Impact appeared to be playing worse as the split went on. It got so bad that Impact began to make uncharacteristic mistakes, such as aggressively positioning under enemy turret against a Shen in their week 5 match against TSM, getting taunted, and dying.

As Impact’s play became a fifty-fifty gamble, so too did Cloud 9’s teamplay, eventually resulting in the team losing their first-place spot in the league. Impact slowly began to shape up his play during the remainder of the split, and Cloud 9 too rose back to the level they had shown in the beginning of the split. There is a clear dependent relationship between the success of Impact and the overall success of Cloud 9.

In the spring finals against Team Solomid, Cloud 9 elected to start Jeon “Ray” Ji-won in 3 of the five games. Though Impact went 1–1 in the games that he played, Cloud 9 looked far more successful as a unit with Impact than with Ray. A trend which had been apparent all split long. There is an argument to be made that had C9 started Impact in that final game, perhaps they would have won the final. TSM did not change up their drafting in any significant way to warrant the swap in hindsight. Perhaps Cloud 9 were hoping TSM would leave up Shen when Ray started, thinking C9 would put him on a stronger carry champion, but TSM banned it all the same.

For the majority of the next split Cloud 9 chose to stay with Impact as the starting top-laner. Perhaps the team felt they had weakened themselves by trying to swap out arguably their most important player in half of their games. This came at a time when their bottom lane duo of Sneaky and Andy “Smoothie” Ta were performing at a wildly inconsistent level. On top of the fact that the team’s inexperienced Jungler Juan “Contractz” Arturo Garcia needed a more controlled environment to fully develop into a top tier Jungler.

Cloud 9’s summer playoffs series against Team Dignitas exposed just how reliant C9 were on Impact. Dignitas managed to win multiple areas of the map after C9’s Jungle and bottom lane consistently fell behind. Critics can suggest how Dignitas mainly won due to exploiting one very specific Nunu Baron control composition, but the fact remains that Cloud 9 were forced into a position where they needed Baron to not lose the game outright.

The team had to relied on their solo laners to pull them out of such a deficit. Impact’s lane opponent Kim “Ssumday” Chan-ho continually held the advantage in the top lane throughout the series. With Impact and the rest of the team falling so far behind C9 lost the series 3–1 in embarrassing fashion.

Resurgence:

Form is temporary, but class is permanent as the old saying goes. Once against Cloud 9 found themselves fighting through the gauntlet to make it to worlds. Once again Impact would prove himself to be the man Cloud 9 could rely on to bring them back to the world stage.

Cloud 9 only had to play one series against Counter Logic Gaming to win the regional finals. During the series Impact returned to the level he had shown one year earlier against Immortals. In the first game of the series Impact was drafted into a losing match-up of Maokai into Gnar. Despite Contractz giving up first-blood to Darshan “Darshan” Upadhyaya, Impact continued to have a 20 CS advantage on his fed lane opponent and win the lane.

The story did not change much for the rest of the series. Darshan was outclassed in every game by Impact both in and out of lane. Impact’s teleport flanks created plays which propelled C9 into a position to close out the match. Once against Impact displayed just how important he was to his team’s success.

Going into Worlds 2017 Impact was arguably Cloud 9’s most valuable player. Though the meta revolved around ardent censor and hyper carry bottom lanes, Impact still managed to show why he is considered one of the world’s best. Impact continued to display his previously mentioned 1v1 mechanics and his expertly timed TP flanks during the group stage of the tournament. He demonstrated the necessity to ban his Shen, but his final surprise would come in the quarter-finals.

Cloud 9 were pitted against the weakest of the first seed teams, the Chinese representatives Team WE. After losing the first game, Cloud 9 revealed a pocket pick they had been saving all tournament. C9 locked in Singed for Impact in the top-lane, an old favorite he used to run back on SKT. The amount of pressure that Impact was able to create in the side lanes with Singed took WE by surprise and played a large part in Cloud 9’s game 2 victory.

In Game 3 WE left up Singed once again, and once again Impact created havoc on the rift. Impact became such a problem both in the side lanes, and when he decided to group middle with the team. WE’s AD Carry, Jin “Mystic” Seong-jin, instantly used any escape he had at his disposal in an attempt to get away from the poison wielding champion. However, with Ghost, Singed ultimate, and Righteous Glory active, it was impossible to escape Impact, significantly helping C9 win game 3.

Impact’s performance on Singed caused so much damage that Team WE ended up banning it away for the rest of the series. This is an aspect of great players that goes overlooked far too often. When a player is so good on an off-meta pick that they enemy team is forced to give up a previous ban in order to deal with it, that player becomes so much more valuable to a team. Cloud 9 did not win a single game in that series in which Impact was not playing Singed. It may be too much to suggest Impact was the only thing allowing them to win games against WE, but he certainly was the team’s most important player once again.

Unexpected Farewell:

Throughout the year and a half in which he played for Cloud 9, Impact largely defined the way the team played. His consistent performances provided stability when the team needed it. His unconventional picks and mechanical ability provided hard carry performances when we least expected them. Impact was perhaps the most valuable player Cloud 9 has had at their disposal over the past year and a half.

Losing Impact is going to be a massive blow to Cloud 9 when you look at just how much he brought to the team. Cloud 9 probably won’t fall massively behind without their star top-laner, but the team will have to figure out a way to play the game without relying on a former world champion when the rest of the team falls behind.