It has been a strange journey for Cloud 9's bot lane. The long-time duo of Zachary "Sneaky" Scuderi and Daerek "LemonNation" Hart, the ever consistent backbone of the team, had finally been broken up when LemonNation decided he would step down from playing to become the team’s head coach.





Then began the musical chairs as players shifted around the rift. Long time mid player and plug-and-play jungler, Hai "Hai" Du Lam, moved to the support position to share time with newly acquired support veteran Michael "BunnyFuFuu" Kurylo.





All things pointed up for Sneaky as he finally had a mechanically gifted support in BunnyFuFuu, who everyone expected to start after getting some much-needed tutelage in shot-calling from Hai, yet as the split continued, Cloud 9 struggled when Hai wasn't in the driver seat, and BunnyFuFuu never had a chance to shine.





After a disappointing exit in the playoffs, Cloud 9 returned to the drawing board for the support position.





After another offseason of musical chairs, Andy "Smoothie" Ta was added to the rotation.









Both players have been given time to show their strength as Smoothie has played 11 games, and BunnyFuFuu has played 13, and they have shared time through each series, no matter the result. Even if one player is on a tear, head coach, Bok "Reapered" Han-gyu won't hesitate to swap in the other support.





Their play styles are somewhat similar with Bunny FuFuu seemingly mastering Thresh, but overall they both have the same champion pool. After yesterday's devastating loss to Team Liquid, Smoothie and BunnyFuFuu share relatively the same win percentage, 64%, and 62% respectively.





Really disappointing performance from us. Really uncharacteristic things happened, but all bad things lead to improvement!GG @TeamLiquidLoL — Andy Ta (@LiquidSmoothiee) July 2, 2016

The more important stats for supports are incredibly close for both players, but Bunny FuFuu has the edge: 1.36WPM for Bunny FuFuu and 1.30WPM for Smoothie. Though Smoothie has a higher kill participation, 82.8% to Bunny's 75%, the biggest difference is in-game communication. You can hear in Cloud 9 Genesis that BunnyFuFuu has a much calmer voice while Smoothie is more abrasive. Smoothie also seems to be the more vocal of the two, but we have such a limited perspective to get a clear answer from just audio clips.









Even though it may give teams an initial advantage to have interchangeable players, cohesion is the primary goal, especially in the bottom lane. ADC and support need to have pinpoint precision and clear communication. Cloud 9 are at a crossroad, and they need to make the difficult decision at support. Whoever brings the "best" out of Sneaky should get the starting spot because, in the end, Sneaky is here to stay.





Then finally we will see Cloud 9 in their pure form.