Prior to the start of the UKEL Season 4 (Spring Split 2021), Viperio made the conscious decision to establish a development roster within our League of Legends department. While most people are aware of its existence, many people don’t fully understand its purpose. In this article, we aim to give you insight into why we established a development roster, and how it benefits both our players and organisation.
What is the purpose development roster?
In short, our development roster allows Viperio to work with players who may have been missed by other organisations, gives players who don’t have a starting position to work with our coaching staff and continue to improve during the regular split.
Players on our development roster have the opportunity to earn spots on our starting squad, as demonstrated by 🇬🇧 Gregory “Greggers” Stallard ahead of the UKLC Relegation Series in March.
Why do we need a development roster?
One of the main benefits we’ve received from having a development roster is that our starting line-up have a practice squad for the whole duration of the split. We have an in-house team ready to challenge our main roster, allowing both teams to get more practice hours and learn from each other.
Furthermore, Viperio specifically craft our development roster in a way that any player is interchangeable with the starting player, so we have experienced, practiced subs ready to fill gaps if a substitution is needed.
Starting players are motivated to improve as their spot on our starting line-up is at stake, and development players have the opportunity to get match time in official league matches if they demonstrate desirable behaviours.
How will the development roster evolve moving forward?
With our recent promotion into the UKLC, should we avoid relegation, our intention is to enter our development roster into the UKEL Open Qualifiers. This will allow our development players to gain more competitive experience, with the intention of players moving up into our primary starting line-up when ready.
How can I get involved in the Development Roster?
We recently published an advert for a Team Manager to take ownership of our development roster under the guidance and assistance of Alan Reid, General Manager for League of Legends at Viperio.
As for players, we’ve been in talks with players who registered interest to join our starting line-up, but narrowly missed out on a starting spot. These players demonstrated favourable attributes. We’re still looking for the following players to join our development roster: Mid-Laner, ADC, Support. If you haven’t already reached out, please email us: contact@viperio.com
