Team Heretics enter LEC Summer with three new starters in the five

Two names are left from the Team Heretics five that began the 2026 League of Legends season: Serin in the middle of the map and Tracyn on the top side. The other three places have changed hands, and the last of them changed this week. Sheep Esports set out the completed roster on Thursday, July 9, 2026: Hype takes the AD carry position for the Summer Split, next to Way and Daglas, who both came into the lineup during the spring.

The LEC, short for League of Legends EMEA Championship, is the top league of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, run by the game's publisher, Riot Games. Its year is cut into three separate competitions called splits. Team Heretics finished seventh in the first of them and last in the second, according to Sheep Esports. Summer is the third and last.

Sheep Esports, July 9, 2026. The series count runs to that date and includes the Esports World Cup qualifier.

The five for the Summer Split

A League of Legends team fields five players, each with a fixed position. The top laner and the mid laner each hold one of the map's three lanes alone. The jungler moves between the lanes. The last two play together in the bottom lane: the AD carry, the player who deals most of the team's sustained damage late in a game, and the support, who protects that player and sets up fights.

Sheep Esports gives the Team Heretics lineup position by position, and its earlier reports date each arrival.

The outlet sums the year up in one line: between the beginning of LEC Versus, the opening competition of the season, and the start of Summer, Team Heretics changed three of its five players and almost all of its coaching staff.

Hype, signed in the offseason and playing from July

The newest starter is not a new signing. According to Sheep Esports, Hype was signed by Team Heretics during the offseason, the break between two competitive years, and then stayed on loan at Misa Esports until the Summer Split. A loan leaves a player under contract with one organization while he plays for another for a set period. Misa Esports plays in the TCL, another league of the EMEA region.

Way took the same road a few months earlier. He also played for Misa Esports, and Sheep Esports reports that the team won the TCL Winter 2026 split with the two of them in the bottom lane. Way then moved to Team Heretics ahead of the Spring Split, and Hype follows him for Summer.

The pair go back further than that. Sheep Esports writes that they spent two years together, in 2023 and 2024, at KT Rolster Challengers, the second team of the South Korean club KT Rolster, and that they won the 2024 Asia Star Challengers Invitational there. Team Heretics therefore start the Summer Split with a bottom lane that has already played together on two other teams.

In March, when only Way had arrived, the head coach of the time already presented Hype as part of the plan. Hidon told Sheep Esports in an interview published on March 30 that the move was not yet finalized, and described Hype as the move meant to secure the team's future.

Three changes in six months

The first change came after LEC Versus. Stend, the support, was benched after that competition, Sheep Esports reported, and Way took his place for the Spring Split. A benched player stays under contract but is no longer in the starting lineup. Hidon explained the decision in the same March interview, saying the team had met a problem it felt was unsolvable. "Our vision is long-term, but a long-term vision does not mean being delusional about what you have," he told Sheep Esports.

The second change came in the middle of the Spring Split. On Wednesday, April 15, Team Heretics announced on its social media accounts that the jungler Sheo was benched indefinitely and that Daglas would join the main team until the end of the split. Sheep Esports, which reported the announcement the same day, wrote that Sheo had asked to step down from the active roster after talks with the coaching staff, and that the staff had accepted. Sheo had been on the roster since the start of 2025 and, once Stend was benched, was its longest-serving member. Team Heretics had one win and five losses at that point.

Daglas, a Polish jungler, came up from Team Heretics Academy, the organization's second team. He has been part of the organization since early 2025. It was not his first time at this level: he played in the LEC in the 2023 Summer Split with Team Vitality before losing his place there, according to the same report. The arrangement announced in April ran to the end of Spring. In the lineup published on July 9, he is the starting jungler for Summer.

The third change is Hype. With it, the bottom lane is entirely new compared with the start of the year, and the jungle has changed too.

Serin and Tracyn, the two who stay

Serin, the mid laner, and Tracyn, the top laner, are the only players who have held their place through the whole year. Sheep Esports describes Tracyn as a rookie, a player in his first season at this level.

The organization has built part of its new staff around him. On Tuesday, July 7, Team Heretics announced that sOAZ, a French veteran of the European league, joins as top lane positional coach, Sheep Esports reported that day. A positional coach works with the player of one position and not with the whole team. He works with Tracyn, fully remotely, and takes over a post that had been vacant since the winter.

A coaching staff rebuilt around Nukeduck

The players will work under a head coach who was not there in the spring. Nukeduck joined the organization in May, Sheep Esports wrote on July 7. Hidon has stepped down as head coach. According to the July 7 report, he stays with the team in a role centered on the human side of the group and no longer on the game itself.

The same announcement confirmed two departures. FEBIVEN, who coached the mid lane position, has left; the team director, Niklas Geiß, explained that Nukeduck knows that position from his own playing career, Sheep Esports reported. Arkhe is no longer on the staff either.

Mithy remains assistant coach. He and Nukeduck worked together at FlyQuest and reached the world championship twice with it, according to Sheep Esports. Mithy, who had been supporting the team remotely, will move to Berlin for a time, for the preparation of the Summer Split and its opening week. An analyst, Deam, is also traveling to Berlin for the split. Geiß said twelve members will work from the team's Berlin office during Summer.

The picture is not final. The organization has said that more details on the coaching structure will follow, Sheep Esports wrote on July 9.

What the first two splits looked like

The changes follow two difficult competitions. Team Heretics finished seventh in LEC Versus, which Riot Games played with twelve teams: the ten LEC organizations and two invited teams from the regional leagues. The Spring Split, played by the ten LEC teams alone, ended with Team Heretics in last place. Sheep Esports calls it the organization's worst split since it entered the LEC.

One figure from the outlet sums it up: the team has won a single best-of-three series all year. A best-of-three is won by the first team to take two games. That win came against SK Gaming at the opening of the Spring Split, by two games to one, Sheep Esports reported on March 30. The count does not improve with the qualifier for the Esports World Cup, where Team Heretics were eliminated at once.

How Summer is played, and when it starts

Summer keeps the format used in Spring, according to the same Riot Games announcement. The ten teams play a single round robin, in which each team meets every other team once, so every team plays nine series. Every series is a best-of-three. The top six teams go on to the playoffs, played as best-of-five series, won by the first team to take three games.

For Team Heretics, that means finishing above at least four other teams after ending Spring below all nine.

The split does not begin for everyone on the same day. It opens with a roadtrip, the name the LEC gives to rounds played away from its Berlin arena and hosted by one of its teams. Karmine Corp hosts this one in Paris, at the Adidas Arena, from July 24 to 26, with G2 Esports, Movistar KOI and Team Vitality. Sheep Esports reported on May 11 that six best-of-three series are scheduled there, two a day, and that the arena is reported to hold between 8,000 and 10,000 spectators for sporting events.

Each of the four teams plays three series in Paris before the rest of the league joins, the outlet wrote on July 7. Team Heretics are among the six that wait: their first series is on July 31, in the second week, against Team Vitality.

That opponent will already have three Summer series behind it. Team Heretics will play their first with a bottom lane that is new to the LEC as a pair, a jungler kept after his spring promotion and a head coach who arrived in May.

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