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On Wednesday, May 22, League of Legends team Invictus Gaming announced the signing of support Zhao “Vampire” Zhe-Can.
The 18-year-old’s arrival is part of a significant roster rebuild, which the Chinese team initiated following a concerning run through the LoL Pro League (LPL) 2024 Spring.
As one of the league’s most successful teams, Invictus Gaming haven’t accomplished anything since their semifinal appearance at the 2019 LoL World Championship. And despite not reaching a single LPL playoff stage in the 2023 season, IG decided to run it back with the same five in 2024.
Initially, Invictus saw some success and found themselves in the running for a mid-table finish. But they ran out of steam in the latter stages of the regular season, barely clinching a spot in the playoffs.
Unfortunately, their playoff run was rather short-lived, ending in the first round with a 2-3 loss to Weibo Gaming. Two months later, and with the summer season knocking on the doors, Invictus Gaming decided to rebuild.
A day after parting ways with jungler Lu “Leyan” Jue, mid-laner Yuan “Cryin” Cheng-Wei, and ADC Zhang “Wink” Rui, IG promoted top-laner Cheng “ZUIAN” Zi-Hao, jungler Li “glfs” Hao, and ADC Zhao “neny” Zhi-Hao from the academy roster and added Vampire as the new starting support.
Out of the four new arrivals, neny and Vampire are the only players with some experience in China’s top flight.
Vampire debuted in the LPL with EDward Gaming, who signed him as starting support for the LPL 2024 Spring season. He also attended the pre-season NEST 2023 and Esports Shanghai Masters 2023, which EDward won with a 3-1 victory over Gen.G in the finals.
Throughout LPL 2024 Spring, Vampire played 37 maps but posted somewhat underwhelming numbers. With a 29.7% win rate and 1.9 KDA, Vampire ranked as one of the worst supports in the league.
However, that number reflected his team’s performance more than Vampire’s talent.
Vampire will debut for Invictus Gaming in the newly introduced LPL Summer Placements stage, set to start on June 1. There, IG will play in Group D, alongside Anyone’s Legend, Ninjas in Pyjamas, Weibo Gaming, and Ultra Prime.
The event will feature all 17 teams, divided into four double round-robin groups based on their placement in the spring season.
All matches will be best-of-three series and include a unique ‘fearless draft’ rule, forcing teams to pick any champion only once during the series.
