Interview conducted by Aaron Mickunas; article written by Brian Chang





Team Liquid ruled North America last year, crushing everyone en route to two straight domestic titles. Yet, at both international events the team attended, they faltered. They failed to make it out of groups at both the Mid-Season Invitational and at the World Championships, where they were forced to watch Cloud9 make history with their run to the semifinals. For star marksman Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng, those were just another series of stinging losses in a career filled with under-performances on the game’s biggest stage.





Over the offseason, the team retooled, bringing in Cloud9 star mid laner Nicolaj Jensen to replace Eugene “Pobelter” Park and former world champion support Jo "CoreJJ" Yong-in to play alongside Doublelift. The changes immediately improved the roster, which roared out to a 7-0 start before dropping their first game to TSM, Doublelift’s former team. After securing the first seed before week eight, the team seemed to slump, ending with a 1-3 record over the last two weeks of play.





We caught up with Doublelift at the end of Week 9 in the LCS to talk about the team’s uncharacteristic losses, how he’s meshed with CoreJJ this split, and how he expects the team to perform at MSI and beyond.





Team Liquid were undefeated for a long time, and then games started to drop. Can you put into words what you think the core of the losses were, if there’s maybe one big reason?





Doublelift: I think against TSM, FlyQuest, and yesterday’s match against [Echo Fox], I think those matches we just lost in draft. Like, the first one we first picked Yorick, the second one we had a Vayne team comp with no front line, and then the third one we just had three losing ones and an early-ganking jungler so we didn’t have any synergy. Today, I think our draft was actually totally fine, we just got outplayed. Obviously losing is always the same -- the enemy team was just better than you, but I’m not super worried about it.





It’s mostly just some mistakes here and there when it comes to our team comp-building when we’re drafting and then today against TSM I feel like we got outplayed and we got stifled out a lot of our plays. We basically didn’t get anything going, and I’m not really sure why because usually we’re pretty proactive once we have ults, but that game we just didn’t really do much and it felt like we couldn’t do much, so we’re in the process right now of improving. I feel like we’re in a bit of a slump as well, but it’ll pass.





Are you confident that when the playoffs start and things matter a little more, that perhaps you won’t miss plays, things won’t feel as stifled?





Photo via Riot Games





Yeah. I’m usually really confident coming into playoffs, like I kind of save a little bit of my energy for playoffs every year because if you try to go all-out during the regular season you’re going to burn yourself out or you’re just not going to have that extra 110 percent. You can’t be going at 110 percent all year, so during the regular season when the stakes are pretty low, being comfortable is really important, but when it comes toward playoffs time I think our team, we’re going to get really grindy.





We’re going to get really uncomfortable and days are going to be long and every day is going to be hard to get through, but I think that’s just how you have to do it if you want to play at your best during playoffs.





Do you think that, with that being said, maybe just the fact that you guys already locked in first had something to do with the losses that have been happening lately?





I would say once we locked in first we were definitely more loose, there was no sense of “We need to win this game.” It was more like taking LCS games as, not like a troll game, but more like as a scrim where we’re able to experiment and we’re able to pull out new things on stage, but as far as running five-carry comps, I feel like that’s not even the meta, but also we aren’t very good at it. Since that’s over now, I think we can be a lot more comfortable and just play what we’re good at.





You’re remaining optimistic. Were things on-par with TL’s usual strength, how do you think you all would rank internationally?





Photo via Riot Games





When we’re playing comfort, and when we’re playing our best and what we’re good at, I’d say we’d be able to play and win against any team. I really think our team is insanely good when we are on, but we haven’t been on in a while in LCS. It doesn’t feel great to say that.





At the end of the split, now that we’re heading back into the playoffs and we’ve got the whole nine weeks behind you, how was it playing with CoreJJ the whole split? How’s your relationship?





As far as relationships, it’s always been really good. We have a lot of mutual respect for each other and when we talk things out, it’s really productive, really fast. We hang out even outside the game, which I think is a good sign that we really enjoy playing with each other and hanging out.





In the beginning, I just wanted my voice to be really quiet with him on the team, and the reason why is because I didn’t think I played my best when I was the big voice and I was thinking about where people should be, what people should be doing. I really didn’t like the feeling of telling people what to do all the time because it felt like it damaged my relationship with my teammates and it also put a lot more responsibility on me that I don’t really want. I let Core do that, but as the split went on, and this is fluctuating a lot, but as the split went on I realized I wasn’t really contributing much to the team. I’m basically just a bot that plays AD Carry, and sometimes the team needs that but sometimes the team needs someone to be a real leader.





Our team sometimes, because the nature of League is really chaotic, and our team can get lost. The games are really fast-paced, high-action, within 30 seconds the game can just switch around, the losing team can become the winning team. I think for the most part I have a really clear idea of how to play the game. Even if it’s not always the absolute optimum way to play the game, I think my picture of it is something the team can really get behind, so I’ve been starting to be more vocal within the team and it has good and bad effects. I think a good effect of it is our team feels more connected, and a bad effect is our coms become more cluttered because there’s another big voice.





Other than CoreJJ and yourself, who else is a big voice in-game?





I think literally everyone on the team makes a lot of calls, and I think honestly some of that needs to be cut down since some stuff is just unnecessary, but because of people’s habits over the years, they’ve become accustomed to calling certain things. On a team of players that are really good, you don’t need to call everything.





You mentioned that perhaps your presence as an in-game leader damaged relationships. Can you speak to why that may have happened?





Photo via Riot Games

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I think overall there are only so many resources in the game. There’s only so much gold, so much time the jungler can spend influencing lanes, and so much time the mid laner can roam, et cetera. Basically, when I see a play, I call it out. I’m like, “We can do this. Let’s go for the gank. Let’s go for the dive,” or “I need vision here, here, and here.” I set the plan around myself, but over time that can be stifling for my teammates because they feel like, “Oh, I’m being controlled by Peter,” or top lane is like, “Well, he’s always asking for help, and I don’t get anything. I think I deserve to get some help at these times but it’s being overriden.”





I think it has value because the way that I make calls, it’s successful domestically, but in the long run being a really one-dimensional team like that is not necessarily the best. There’s definitely a balance where I can step up, get the team going if we need it, but otherwise I can stay back and just listen.





Do you think that CoreJJ joining the team will make a difference when you guys hit the international stage?





Yeah, I feel like the main difference will really come in international events. Domestically, I’m not super worried because I know we put in a lot of work. I almost want to say we put in the most work out of any team so that gives me confidence at all times, just knowing that you’re grinding harder. Internationally I feel like everyone is about working the same, so then it comes to really intangible stuff like clutch factor, talent, mechanical ability, stuff like that.





You’d say that CoreJJ has those things?





Yeah, I’d say that Core is really calm under pressure. He has a really good eye for plays, great mechanics, just really clutch. Jensen is the exact same.





Photo via Riot Games





As one of the most veteran bot laners in the league, maybe you have some insight on this. What do you think happened to [100 Thieves AD Carry Bae “Bang” Jun-sik] this split?





I think Bang’s team is just really bad, and AD Carry is pretty useless right now as a role. Right now you just try your best to influence the game but AD Carry doesn’t carry as hard as it used to in previous years. Even last year, Season 8, the first split, I remember AD Carry was almost all that mattered. Pretty much year after year, AD has been really high impact. This year, I think it’s just not the case.





Games are really fast, you don’t get a chance to scale, ADs are taking non-scaling runes like Inspiration, and you basically just win or lose the game off your first item. I think Bang is still really good, he just plays on a bad team. No matter what he can’t impact the game as much as he would be able to in a different meta, and basically in lane, support does like 70 percent of the trades, so if [Zaqueri “Aphromoo” Black] is getting outtraded, [Bang] can’t do anything except for farm.





So you think it’s mostly just the circumstances that he’s found himself in?





Yeah, pretty much. The only real way you can tell how good someone is is by playing against them, and when I play against Bang I can tell that he’s really good.





Speaking about Aphromoo, there’s been a lot of drama lately. Do you think there’s any credence to all the hate that he’s been getting? Do you think it’s mostly nonsense? Maybe it’s a mix of the two?





I think Aphro has been playing really bad. The other stuff people assume about him, that he’s given up or he’s there because of nepotism or doesn’t care, that sort of stuff basically people just made up. It sounds right to other people so it gets upvoted and stuff, but I would say just objectively he’s been playing really bad, and all the other things don’t really matter.





You guys have unfortunately flopped at the last two international events, being Worlds and MSI. Assuming you guys make it this year, what do you think has to change to make it so that you succeed this time around?





I think we already made the changes necessary to be a lot better. I have to be in really good form since winning bot lane is pretty important to enable the support to roam. I think our team, while we aren’t the most strategically diverse team, we are really good at what we are good at, and usually at international events being strategically diverse doesn’t mean anything. It’s always about how well you’re able to execute on your strats.





Photo via Riot Games





Do you think you learned that from playing on TSM?





I just learned it from watching and realizing why the teams win. Usually they have a winning strategy and get really good at it.





Let’s talk about solo queue just a little bit. We had the ranked reset happen. Do you think that was necessary?





Yeah, the ranked reset definitely was a really good idea. The only gripe I have is that it didn’t happen sooner.





What do you think could have been a benefit of positional ranks, or do you think it was just a bad idea from the get-go?





I don’t really see any benefit in positional ranks. It sounded like a novel idea to rank individual players by different roles, but it just became really cluttered. I didn’t really understand the purpose other than to make people feel better when they got filled to another role, but it ended up just feeling worse.