It's week two, day one of the LCS. I'm speaking with Cloud9 Blaber.
you just played a game against Dignitas where you won. There was another pause unfortunately. What's your thoughts on the game?
C9 Blaber: I think that the game we actually played pretty well. I think we could have done some better things, but we didn't tunnel too hard on like dragons and stuff like that. Even though they had a really scaling comp, I think we played to our win condition, which was just getting the zone, team fighting, burning their summoners, and playing with our early game advantage. We had three winning lanes, or prior at least, so I'm glad we were able to play well with that.
Yeah, you guys gave up some early dragons. Was that part of the plan coming into the game?
We got the first dragon, because we had a really good roam bot from Fudge, who had TP advantage in his matchup, because Rumble always gets TP advantage in that matchup, and he just runs bot, gets us a couple kills. I think Berserker didn't need to die, but we secured the first dragon, and the second dragon weren't at TP advantage because of what we did on the first dragon. But we were very happy to give that dragon, because we were able to get like three plates, like three waves advantage on top lane, and we thought that was like really worth for our game.
You and JoJo had a really nice combo at the end of the game with Nocturne-Orianna pick. Guess that's something you guys have been practicing in scrims?
No, actually, this was our first time picking it, ever, together. We were like talking about before the game, hey, how do we do the combo?, because we've seen people do it, but we were like, how do you actually even do it? And I was just like, it's fine. Just wing it on stage. Just throw it on me when I'm flying. I won't fly from too far and then hopefully it works. Then we didn't mess up once. So I mean, I guess this synergy is there.
Photo by Marv Watson/Riot Games
So this is the first time any region is on the live patch, straight after the next. How has it felt in both scrims and just playing on stage now?
It's really different. We need to adjust very quickly. This week, for example, you only get two days of solo queue or three days of solo queue because even at the beginning of the scrim week, you're not on the live patch. They had a hotfix on Thursday where they hotfixed Rumble and Brand. Now I have basically one day to figure out the changes. I think people who can adapt well to this and have good ideas it benefits them, but it's really a different change of pace where before you'd play on the same patch for two weeks, you're playing on the same patch. No micro patches, and it's just a really different change of pace, I would say, for how fast you need to figure out what you want to play.
There was a massive meta shift, I would say, with double support items going away. We saw, for example, Karma and Twisted Fate being picked a lot in solo queue. Any thoughts on Karma or Twisted Fate in pro play?
I think both of them are strong after the changes. I think Karma is more OP than TF. I think Karma is really strong on this current patch, we can't see priority of Karma in other regions because they're just not on our patch, right? So it's just, you just figure out what works for you, just what works in general, and then you just go with it. You have like three or four days of practice. Just like, if you win on it, play it. If you don't win on it, just ban it.
Has there been more solo queue being played as it's on the live patch, or is it still mostly scrims and 1v1s and some champion queue?
I think people are playing about the same amount that they would normally play. Obviously, it's nice to have on the live patch. Like, for example, I find my practice much more useful on the live patch. Whereas before, I'd be like at Worlds specifically, right? Like they changed jungle, like completely on 13.20, prior to 13.19. And I was like, well this is not as useful. It's definitely more useful when you're playing on the same patch. But I would say my laners, bot, top, mid, they're all still doing 1v1s, 2v2s, because those are also very useful.
Photo by Marv Watson/Riot Games
You've won LCS a lot of times. You've gone to Worlds, MSI, you've played at the international stage. What is your goal for this year specifically?
My goal for this year is just still to win LCS. My goal every split is to win LCS. I'm not happy if I don't win the LCS. I always try to focus on like domestic success first, because in order to make it to the international events, you have to win domestically. Ultimately, my goal is to do well internationally, of course. But I try to focus on things one step at a time. I don't want to get ahead of myself, just because we're winning right now doesn't mean we'll be winning during playoffs or even summer or anything. So I just want to focus on each game, one game at a time.
Finally, any comments to the fans?
Thanks everyone for supporting us. Hopefully we live up to expectations.
