The Piltover Post

After a tumultuous year with mixed results in the LTA North, Disguised made a few changes in an attempt to turn their luck around. Not only did they make some changes to the roster, they also promoted their assistant coach, Ian “ido” McCormick to the head coach. With this adaption to their playstyle, Disguised found success in the promotional tournament against the “LTAN rejects” of Luminosity Gaming. McCormick talks a little bit about their year and how they became more flexible.

Q: You’ve been a coach/analyst for most of your career, save for a short stint with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Do you think lack of experience as a player affects your perspective?

A: I think there’s some things I’ll have missed out on never being a pro at the highest level, like you said really only playing at a tier 2 level after some collegiate matches. There’s a lot of things that go into being a coach, and although I can’t sympathize with them about playing on a big stage with high pressure, I’ve made up for it in other areas; helping them find patterns in gameplay, developing frameworks for how for them to consider their options in game, creating environments conducive to learning and more.

Q: This was your first year as a head coach in the LTA North. How did that experience compare to when you were with tier 2 teams like EG Challengers, Fear x Starforge?

A: Honestly I felt less pressure than in Academy. EG Challengers was a team built to win NACL and promote all 5 players. To be tasked with that felt like anything less is a failure. Joining Disguised, they were already dead last, it can only get better and I had a gameplan for how to achieve more. Fear was also kind of the same expectations to win the league, but by that point I had learned so much and was confident in my ability to fix and elevate teams. 

Q: You were originally signed on to Disguised as an assistant coach. Was it jarring to find yourself promoted a month later? Did you feel unprepared?

A: To be honest, I was brought on first for data analytics since that’s what I’m doing my Masters in. They asked me to also pick up some positional coaching which I was more than happy to since Mid and Jungle are my best roles at teaching. Then I was asked to make some presentations for upcoming changes, or structures we can add, set plays and things like this. So it wasn’t actually all that different to me, I picked up a part time role and I was slowly becoming more and more effectively full time anyway.

Q: With Rahel and Darkwings added to the roster for the last split, it felt like the team was turning things around. Do you feel like you could have finished higher in the standings with more time/games?

A: For sure, I think from the outside, a takeaway could be that we were just enjoying a honeymoon phase. There was no honeymoon phase, for the first week of scrims we were getting dogged and already had to have some tough conversations about the level we are as a team even after changes, where we want to be, and how to get there. It didn’t change overnight. We had some more firepower but individuals don’t solo win games. We were slowly scaling up from nothing and even toward promotions we were still looking to improve. Even though the other teams in LCS would also be improving too, I’m confident we could have jumped another placement or two with some time.

Q:  From a viewer point of view, it’s made games a lot more interesting because we aren’t looking at the same champions duking it out for five games in a row. What are your thoughts on the change and how much has it forced you to adapt and change your drafts? Does it ever make you pivot and do a 180 on your plans? 

A: I was actually playing Fearless in the NACL in 2024. Alongside the LoL Development League, we were the first regions to test it out, so I had a head start on everyone in the LCS when it came to practising and working on Fearless theories. For example, in game 1 when Loki had his best champion, Azir, we should have given it to him while there were still viable options open, otherwise we would have been forced to ban or pick it first for the rest of the series. We also countered it with Yone, which we had prepared so that we could remove that option from Loki too, making the next games more flexible and allowing us to use our bans to create unexpected and winning scenarios. I think many teams this year struggled to adapt and found themselves having to ban the same three champs every game. This is especially the case since they potentially lost those OP banned champs’ more viable answers in games 1 and 2, rather than opening it up for a reasonable trade. Personally, I love Fearless. Creativity and adaptability should be measurable metrics in assessing someone’s skill, and we had a lot of fun with it, particularly since Darkwings was really receptive to the niche picks I wanted to implement.

Q: With the World Championships drawing the 2025 season to a close, how do you think your year went? Did you surpass personal goals? What do you look forward to the most in 2026?

A: Overall, I was happy with the year. Surprisingly, relegation was never at the forefront of our minds. I don’t mean to say that we thought it was impossible, but rather that if we focused on becoming a great LCS team, it would put us in a strong position to defend our slot, which it did. That being said, my goal for the one split we had together was to definitively separate ourselves from the bottom of the league, which I think we achieved. My stretch goal was to qualify for the LTA regional tournament, i.e. a top-three finish. If we want to split hairs, we were one game away from the top four, so I’d say we landed somewhere between the comfort and stretch goals. Of course, we also managed to defend our slot, so all in all, I think that, given that the current roster and I have only been together for a few months, it was a successful year.

*Photos courtesy of Riot Games.