‘Chiu on This’ is a short and regular opinion blast





Cloud9 has been in a downward spiral ever since Stewie2k and Tarik left the squad in 2018. They’ve been playing the world’s longest game of musical chairs with their CS:GO lineup as players have come in and out with no guiding idea or philosophy of where they want to go or what they want to do.





Cloud9 could finally get out of that wayward spiral. RUSHB reported that Cloud9 are considering roster changes after their recent failure in the online qualifiers for the Minor. The report states that they are looking to add daps and TenZ and have them replace vice and Golden. On paper the move makes sense. Golden has failed to live up to expectations as a rising in-game leader. As for vice, the move never made any sense considering that Cloud9 needed more fragging power and vice was never that type of player.

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As for the additions, both daps and TenZ make sense. Daps is a top two leader in NA right now. Daps has consistently built solid foundations for his teams and is one of the best at raising young talent. This makes the TenZ pickup a good addition as daps can mold him into the next rising NA star.





Most importantly it fixes two of the big identity problems that Cloud9 has struggled with. Over the last year, Cloud9 has wavered between sticking to a NA lineup or going international. They were stuck in no-man’s land where they never went all-in on any of the rising NA talent and they never got the best international talent. By getting daps and TenZ, it forces their trajectory down a mostly NA lineup. The other problem the move fixes is roles. If the roster becomes: Daps, TenZ, autimatic, RUSH, and cajunb, then the general roles are well defined. Autimatic as the AWPer, TenZ the star rifler, cajunb as a hybrid system/star player, RUSH as the support, and daps as the in-game leader.





With these broad roles, Cloud9 get a better view of what to expect from each player and will have an easier problem identifying roster problems going forward. If this potential roster changes go through, Cloud9 could see some light at the end of the tunnel.