Heo Seung-hoon, more commonly known as ‘Huni’ is a Korean born competitive League of Legends player. Huni started his professional journey in the European scene with one of the region’s top teams, Fnatic. There, he gained recognition for his amazing outplays, building up a strong fan base which followed him as he moved on.
As most know, Huni plays as a top laner, a role he excels at even in the world stage. Every team / organisation to date that signed Huni has found immediate success with the player on their roster. There is no doubt regarding Huni’s strength; simply by taking a look at past teams, we can see their performance rise when Huni joins, and conversely dipping when he leaves.
While a teams’ performance may constantly fluctuate, Huni has always found success no matter the team he joins. This can be seen as early as his time on Fnatic, whereby short ten months (two splits) reaped stunning results, first place in both the EU LCS Spring and Summer Playoffs. In 2015, Fnatic also stunned many at the Mid-Season Invitationals, almost taking down SK Telecom T1, bringing them to the full five games, eventually endings 3rd – 4th place in the event.
Huni’s first League of Legends World Championship was stunning, with strong individual performance, it allowed Fnatic to top Group B in the group stage. From there, they steam rolled Edward Gaming, China’s top team at the time. While they did fall to KOO Tigers in the semifinals, this was by no means a letdown, as the Tigers at the time were the favourites to take down SKT and the championship.
Following his amazing run in 2015 with Fnatic, he was quickly scouted by Immortals, thus making the decision to move to North America. While Immortals were completely new, the roster they had was ‘completely stacked’, with big names like WildTurtle (formerly from TSM) joining the team.
With Immortals, the team almost had the perfect run in the NA LCS Spring Regular Season, going 17:1, only losing once to Counter Logic Gaming. While the team did do well throughout the year, they only secured third place for both the NA LCS Spring Playoffs and NA LCS Summer Playoffs.
By this point, Huni had a massive following in North America. However, he was not destined to stay, with an offer from his dream team and two time world champions at the time, SK Telecom T1, he chose to return to Korea.
Huni then spent a year with SKT where he played alongside some of the best players in the world, Bang and Faker. Playing in the most competitive region of LoL, Huni was able to stand his ground, following the teams’ lead. While he found success with SKT in the LCK (first in Spring playoffs and runners up in Summer playoffs), qualifying them for worlds, SKT fell short in their finals match, finishing second place behind Samsung.
Proving himself as one of the best top laners in the world, he once again moved regions after being offered a position with Echo Fox. His return to North America was surprising considering his strong performance in Korea, however, nonetheless, it was great for the region.
Echo Fox’s complete turnaround can be largely accredited to Huni with the players consistently performing well on stage. This allowed Echo Fox, who had repeatedly ended their seasons in the NA LCS between 8th – 10th place to dramatically shoot up, finishing second in the NA LCS 2018 Spring regular season and as a semi-finalist in the NA LCS Spring Playoffs match.
While Riot and professional teams do not release details on the specific of player contracts, including their salary / yearly pay, we can roughly approximate the earnings of the top players.
As a semi-finalist and runners up in the League of Legends World Championship on two occasions, Huni is regarded as one of the best top laners in the world. Both his skill and fame has combined to made Huni one of the highest paid League of Legends players despite his relatively short competitive career.
Judging by his decision to leave the top team in the world and the most competitive region of League of Legends, it is likely Huni has been presented an irresistable offer from Echo Fox. That said, his pay is definitely below superstars like Bjergsen or Sneaky who have cemented their standing in the North American scene.
We can assume Huni is worth at least $200,000 a year, a much higher salary compared to the typical player salary. But while he is skilled and wanted by many, it is likely he is worth less than the former world champion (when he first transferred), Piglet, who earlier moved to NA straight out of SKT.
Echo Fox built a completely new roster for 2018, consisting of some of the best players, of course, including Huni. Their new line up allowed them to completely flip all previous expectations of the team, coming from one of the worse teams in the NA LCS, to one of the top three.
Huni’s teammates:
While Huni’s teammates may not all have success in the highest levels of play, they are all individually skilled and filled with years of experience.
Since signing with Echo Fox, Huni has been streaming a lot less. However, this has mostly been due to the tight timing between his signing and the start of the Spring split, forcing him to ignore streaming, instead opting to train more with his new team. It is likely Huni will continue to stream prior to the starting of the Summer split, a period a handful of pros take to vacation, take a break, or even stream / make youtube content.
While he isn’t always on, when he’s free, he streams on his own channel on Twitch.tv, the most popular streaming site.
Click here to find out more about Echo Fox
Before playing any professional matches, Heo “Huni” Seung-hoon began his LoL career on Samsung Galaxy. He wasn’t a part of the organization officially, though, and Samsung used him as a practice partner for the team.
He got his breakthrough when he joined Fnatic for the 2015 EU LCS Spring Split. His team had a strong showing, securing a second-place finish in the regular season and even winning the trophy by defeating H2K and UOL in the playoffs. Huni contributed a lot to this success. His performance on carry top laners was already impressive, but it’s his synergy with Fnatic’s jungler—Reignover—that pushed Huni into a league of his own.
In summer, he had another dominant split. This time, Fnatic went undefeated in the regular season, securing a massive 18-0 winning streak. For the playoffs, they dismantled Unicorns of Love and went on to face Origen in the finals. And while they dropped two games, they still walked away with the series and the EU LCS victory on top of that.
In the off-season, Huni parted ways with Fnatic and went to North America together with Reignover. The duo joined Immortals to compete in the 2016 NA LCS Spring Split. Once again, Huni had an overwhelming showing during the regular season, going on a 32-game winning streak over the first six weeks of the competition. However, Immortals couldn’t live up to their name on week 7, falling in a series against Counter Logic Gaming. And even though they picked up the slack later, they looked weaker in the second half of the split.
Still, they had a 17-1 record, and they entered the Semifinals against TSM as strong favorites. But a sudden 3-0 upset spelled an end to Immortals’ dominance. After the games, Huni was criticized for his inability to adapt to the meta. When tanks like Maokai, Poppy, and Ekko thrived in the top laners, Huni still went for carries like Graves, Yasuo, and Lucian. And while his champion pool wasn’t the only issue, it definitely played its part in IMT’s losses.
For the third place match, Immortals regained their composure and scored a confident win against Team Liquid. Still, taking a bronze medal was a very underwhelming result for the best lineup of the regular season.
The team entered the 2016 Summer Split with the same roster. At the time, TSM had a resurgence and constantly challenged them during the regular split. Still, Immortals’ 16-2 record was enough to make them the clear-cut second-best team in the NA LCS. They had high hopes when they entered the playoffs, but a 2-3 loss to Cloud9 in the Semifinals forced them to play another third place match. And even though they won their hard-fought series against CLG, it wasn’t enough to punch their Worlds ticket.
They had another chance in the Regional Finals, but a swift 1-3 loss to Cloud9 sealed their fate. Immortals were definitely not going to Worlds this year.
In the off-season, Huni surprised his fans by joining SKT T1. His playstyle also evolved. He still had a few carries in his arsenal, but he was much more open to playing tanks and giving up resources for his teammates. At first, it seemed like Huni worked quite well on SKT T1. The organization took over the 2017 LCK Spring Split with a 16-2 record and went on to 3-0 KT Rolster in the finals.
However, more issues surfaced in summer. Despite his adjustments, Huni’s natural playstyle was far too aggressive for a team that wanted to play around its mid and bottom lanes. He often overextended and took brash fights that resulted in SKT T1 giving up key objectives. To solve the issue, they brought in a substitute top laner, Untara. And while Huni was still a starter for the majority of the split, he had to share playtime with his new teammate.
SKT T1 lost a lot of ground in the regular season, falling down to #4 in the standings. They somewhat redeemed themselves with back-to-back victories against Afreeca Freecs, Samsung Galaxy, and KT Rolster in the playoffs. But ultimately, they couldn’t overcome Longzhu Gaming in the finals and lost the 2017 LCK Summer Split.
In the off-season, Huni announced that he was leaving SKT T1 and going back to North America to join Echo Fox.
On Fnatic, Huni went to the 2015 Mid-Season Invitational. The team went through its share of hardships in the group stage, but fortunately, their 2-3 record was enough to qualify for the Semifinals. There, Fnatic clashed with SKT T1. They put up a good fight, but the series still ended with a 2-3 loss.
A split later, Huni took part in the 2015 World Championship. In the group stage, Fnatic crushed AHQ, C9, and IG to secure the #1 seed. They proceeded to dismantle EDG in the Quarterfinals, but their 0-3 Semifinals loss to KOO Tigers put an end to their run.
On SKT T1, Huni attended the 2017 MSI. His team had a dominant showing, taking over the group stage with an 8-2 record. In the playoffs, they scored confident victories against Flash Wolves and G2 Esports to win the trophy.
Huni also went to the 2017 World Championship. This time, SKT had a shakier showing, and they had to rely on their potent late game to come back from deficits and secure a 5-1 groups record. Their playoffs matches were even worse. Their series against Misfits and RNG came down to the wire, and many times it looked like SKT T1 were about to fall apart.
Still, they picked up the slack and went all the way to the finals. There, they met a fellow LCK team, Samsung Galaxy. However, their play was far too unstable to challenge Samsung’s controlled playstyle, and for the first time in history, SKT lost at the World Championship.
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