Hanwha Life Promote Cheoni To LCK Roster

In a bid to revive its season, Hanwha Life Esports announced changes to its League of Legends roster. As revealed by the Korean LoL team, Hanwha Life Esports will play with a new ADC in Jo “Cheoni” Seung-mo, who joins the team ahead of the fifth week of the competition.

The way Hanwha Life Esports’ season has gone so far, it was only a matter of time before the team announced roster changes. And those came this Monday, July 10, when HLE revealed Cheoni as the new starting ADC. The 21-year-old joined the team from the HLE Challengers roster and will replace Lee “SamD” Jae-hoon, who got demoted to the academy team.

Hanwha Life Esports made the first roster change since March when the team demoted Cheoni to the academy lineup alongside jungler Koo “Seonbi” Kwan-mo, who served as a temporary substitute for LCK 2022 Spring. Although a massive roster change, it makes a lot of sense for Hanwha Life Esports, who need to find some traction in the league if they wish to contest a playoff spot.

In the announcement, HLE did not specify the reason behind the sudden roster change, but considering the team has managed just one win from eight games in LCK 2022 Summer, it was clear that something had to change. Currently, the team is placed ninth, ahead of only Fredit BRION and well behind the top teams.

“Our second-tier member ‘Cheoni’ was called up to the first tier, and the first-tier member ‘SamD’ was sent down to the second tier,” read the announcement.

“Please give warm encouragement and support to the team members’ efforts for progress and growth.”

Cheoni joins Hanwha Life Esports as a product of HLE’s academy project. He started his esports career with HLE Academy in August 2020 and spent a short stint with the main lineup in December of the same year before getting demoted to the substitute position.

At the start of 2021, Cheoni moved to the HLE Challengers’ main lineup, where he has spent 1.5 years helping the team achieve impressive success. He led Hanwha Life Challengers to a bronze medal in LCK CL 2021 Spring and reached the finals of the Spring Playoffs.

In December 2021, Cheoni also appeared at KeSPA Cup 2021, where he led HLE Challengers to the semi-finals. Unfortunately, success was hard to come by in 2022.

With HLE Challengers, Cheoni could only place 10th in the LCK CL 2022 Spring and missed out on the playoffs. He also appeared in a few of Hanwha Life Esports LCK matches, but he couldn’t help the team reach the postseason.

Regardless, the Korean LoL team seems to believe that Cheoni would be a better fit for the team than SamD, which led to the roster changes that got recently announced. Whether the arrival of Cheoni will help HLE bounce back is anyone’s guess, but things can hardly get much worse.

To say that Hanwha Life Esports have not gotten off to a strong start to the 2022 season would be an understatement. And if they continue on this journey, they are guaranteed to miss the playoffs again.

After eight rounds of play, Hanwha Life Esports have managed just one win against Fredit BRION, who they beat back in June. But they weren’t nearly as successful in the remaining seven bouts, losing against the likes of Kwangdong Freecs, Gen.G, DRX, Nonghsim RedForce, KT Rolster, Liiv SANDBOX, and DWG KIA.

Over the eight games, HLE have managed a 13% series win rate and equally as unimpressive 29% map win rate (6-15), cementing themselves as one of the weakest teams in the league. With a 1-7 record, HLE is just one win ahead of Fredit BRION but three short of breaking into the top six.

But things likely won’t get better anytime soon, knowing that Hanwha Life Esports’ next match is against the 2022 MSI finalists and the defending LCK champions, T1. The two squads will clash on Tuesday, July 12, for the first time of the split.