‘The Church of LS’: Explaining the unorthodox style of Cloud9’s ex-coach

If you’re in any way involved in competitive League of Legends, chances are you’ve seen the influence of Nick ‘LS’ De Cesare.

He’s one of League’s most popular community figures, a streamer turned coach turned caster turned coach again. Perhaps most famous for his innovations in League drafting, he has been a vocal proponent of off-meta picks throughout his career. This innovative, inventive approach to the game has earned him a devout fanbase, nicknamed the ‘Church of LS’.

The fanbase’s name came about due to LS’s constant references to ‘sinner’ champions during his time casting the LCK. A ‘sinner’ champion was one that could only function successfully in game if the enemy team made a mistake, or if it got sufficiently ahead that it could no longer be controlled by the enemy team.

Without these advantages, which could never be guaranteed, sinner champions were, in LS’s eyes, useless. Campaigning against this ‘sin’ in professional games eventually earned LS’s game philosophies the moniker of the ‘Church of LS’, of which LS was the head.

More recently, he was briefly the head coach for Cloud9 in the LCS, his first coaching stint since he famously left LCK challengers team BBQ Olivers back in 2019. The team only played four games with LS at the helm, before his departure was announced by the org five minutes before their first game of the third week of the LCS.

The announcement that he would be leaving Cloud9 sent shockwaves through the League of Legends community, with fans and pro players alike expressing their disappointment that his innovative coaching style would be gone from the LCS. Even in his short tenure, LCS fans got a taste of LS’s unique flair, and Cloud9’s drafts were hailed as some of the most creative in the LCS.

But what are some of the core teachings of the Church of LS, and why is everybody talking about Soraka top lane?

Liandry’s over Morellonomicon

This is perhaps the most famous teaching of the Church of LS, so much so that LS has been immortalized in League of Legends through these two items.

Morellonomicon has been a fairly standard item on mages throughout League’s history. It began its life as a mana item that applied the anti-healing stat Grievous Wounds, and was one of the most popular starting items for mages in the game.

The item was changed in Season 8 to no longer give mana, and became purely an anti-healing item. It remained an incredibly popular purchase on mages, to the point where it was being built into compositions with very little healing, making one of its stats functionally useless.

LS was one of the most outspoken opposers of this inefficiency. He instead suggested the less popular Liandry’s Torment as a replacement for Morellonomicon in the majority of AP builds. This earned him the nickname ‘Liandry’s Salesman’.

His Morellonomicon/Liandry’s argument became so famous that he is now immortalized in the game through these two items. If you search ‘Last Shadow’ (the non-abbreviated form of LS’s handle) in League’s in-game shop, the results will come up as Morellonomicon and the reworked Liandry’s Anguish.

The Moonstaff combo

Much of LS’s drafting philosophy in League of Legends is based around the concept of scaling. How well any champion, any combination of items, will perform in the later stages of the game, and how can the risks of loss in the early game be minimized to reach this ‘optimized’ game state.

One example of a scaling innovation from LS is the Moonstaff combo. This was one of LS’s more recent itemization campaigns, and a competitive menace at the start of 2021.

Moonstone Renewer was one of the Mythic items to be released in the Season 11 item rework. It’s a support item that, alongside decent AP, Health, and Ability Haste, offers the Starlit Grace passive, which allows you to heal your lowest-health ally by affecting champions with your abilities during combat.

The combination of Moonstone Renewer and the legendary support item Staff of Flowing Water, affectionately referred to by the community as the Moonstaff combo, was one of the strongest and cheapest two-item power spikes in the game.

It was most effective on champions with decent AP scalings in their kit, with Moonstaff Lilia being one of the most consistently popular junglers in pro play throughout spring 2021.

The combination was nerfed in Patch 11.8, with Riot choosing to cut a massive chunk of healing out of the Starlit Grace passive in an attempt to bring the two items in line with the rest of the support item arsenal. The combo is still occasionally seen on enchanter supports, but gone are the days when junglers, mid laners, and top laners were utilizing it.

Enchanter solo laners

Janna top lane with smite terrorized solo queue and competitive play alike throughout the beginning of Season 12. But it’s not the first time enchanter supports have strayed from the bot lane.

LS has been a famous proponent of solo lane enchanters throughout his career. He advocates for their utility outside of just the support role, often playing Ivern and Soraka in his own ranked games on stream.

During LS’s time with C9 we saw Ivern and Soraka drafted for mid laner Ibrahim ‘Fudge’ Allami. The aim of these picks is mainly to facilitate high-damage carries in other roles, and to allow aggressive plays by teammates.

This makes it the perfect pick to pair with C9’s jungler Robert ‘Blaber’ Huang, famous for his aggression on champions like Olaf, Gragas, and Lee Sin.

You know a pick is good when it’s endorsed by the king of League esports himself, Lee ‘Faker’ Sanghyeok. After its competitive debut in the LCS, Faker played a few games of Soraka mid on his stream, with LS later revealing on a talk show that he’d discussed the pick with Faker in VOD reviews during his time with T1.

These champions are both good examples of another tenet of the Church of LS: the ‘saints’. These champions don’t require massive advantages or opponent’s mistakes to be useful, and they offer a low-risk, high-reward way of playing competitive League.

Cheater recalls

High-level League is a game of seconds. Any advantage that can be gained, however seemingly insignificant, can be the difference between victory and defeat. Nothing exemplifies this better than another teaching of the Church of LS, the importance of the cheater recall.

As with a lot of LS’s teachings, he did not actually invent the concept of a cheater recall. He is, however, responsible for bringing it to a much wider audience outside of competitive play through his live-viewing streams and public coaching sessions.

• Read more: Jankos claims there’s “no reason” to watch LCS after Cloud9 released LS

Farming minions and gaining experience are a crucial part of the laning phase in League, allowing you to accrue levels and items that enhance your abilities and make you do more damage for the all-important late game team fights.

However, because you have to return to base in order to buy items, it’s pretty much impossible for any player to last-hit every single enemy minion in their lane, every time.

The cheater recall is one way in which laners can circumvent minions lost while basing for items. It involves preventing the enemy laner from last-hitting all of your minions, and building a huge wave of minions by the time your cannon minion reaches the lane.

You can then recall, buy an early item, and walk back to lane before the enemy’s minions start being hit by your tower, meaning you miss almost no experience and gold, and don’t have to burn the Teleport summoner spell in order to gain this advantage.

It may seem insignificant to gain a tiny advantage this early in the game, but if utilized correctly, this strategy can almost single-handedly win you the lane phase.

It’s unclear what will happen with LS now. He’s had a storied past in the world of League, and many thought that this opportunity with Cloud9 would finally be a chance for him to make coaching work after multiple unsuccessful attempts.

It’s possible he’ll return to streaming and content creation full-time. He also runs a Patreon page which offers subscribers access to champion tier lists, analysis of patch notes, and even coaching opportunities for higher-tier members.

Whatever he chooses to do next, his congregation will follow him wherever he goes, and the Church of LS will live on in Soraka top lanes and cheater recalls across the world of competitive League.