It really feels like they used ascension in order to get some quick money and not actually build a competitive team because how are you selling your best players and then taking months to find replacements
Of course money is a incentive but it feels like Apeks is trying to maximise profits by building a not very competitive team as they are yet to even announce to the public who their fifth is
They sold core players that helped them get ascension and built a even worse team
Teams that didn’t make champs started trialing new players in July. Apeks didn’t ascend until mid September. Not only were the regions best players already unavailable, they didn’t know even they’d later lose their best players to other teams. They did fine