DragonX announce their 2023 LoL roster

DragonX were one of the most surprising teams of the 2022 LoL season. They didn’t do much during the regular season but when it mattered most, they played better than anyone had ever dreamed they could.

DRX won LoL Worlds 2022 and effectively ruined Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok’s dream of claiming his fourth Worlds title six years after winning the third. In the Grand Final, despite being at a huge disadvantage (1-2), DRX made a spectacular comeback that will forever remain in the esports history books.

DRX’s unusual decision

Almost as soon as they won Worlds 2022, DRX decided to sell the entire team. Only one player of the old guard has been retained: Cho “BeryL” Geon-hee. It seems that the team’s management had very little faith in the players and assumed that their victory was a fluke.

Based on this reasoning, it’s not hard to understand why the decision was made to let almost everyone leave and rebuild the roster.

The former DRX players joined teams like DAMWON Gaming, Hanwha Life Esports, Team Liquid, and Freecs. The ones who joined have come from all kinds of LoL teams and not all of them are South Korean.

• Kim “Rascal” Kwang-hee (KT Rolster)
• Lee “Juhan” Ju-han (PSG Talon)
• Kim “Croco” Dong-beom (Sandbox Gaming)
• Yoo “FATE” Su-hyeok (Freecs)
• Seo “deokdam” Dae-gil (DAMWON Gaming)

These are all good players, but there is one problem. It isn’t easy to turn individual players into a cohesive roster, no matter how good they are.

Can the new DRX roster succeed?

Usually, teams try to keep a core of at least three players when going from one season to the next, to ensure that the system that had been developed and had proved to be successful can be maintained.

When the whole roster is changed, everything needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. There’s no communication system, there are no clear tactics to deal with specific situations, the overall strategy is unclear, and the drafts are based mostly on instinct rather than trial and error.

Against a team of weaker players, this can work. But against the likes of T1, a roster like this cannot succeed unless the opponent makes severe errors.

No doubt, until the Summer Split, these DRX players will learn how to compete as a unit and might even surprise everyone with their teamwork. But it’s hard to be optimistic about their Spring Split chances. The LCK is probably the toughest league in LoL and anyone that does what DRX did will fail in most cases.

Header: Riot Games