The LCS enters its fourth week this weekend, and there’s already only one team left in sole possession of first place—Team Liquid.





Liquid have been the undisputed titans of the North American competitive League of Legends league since the beginning of 2018. After signing some of the best players at the end of 2017, including legendary bot lane carry Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng, discussions around the standings quickly evolved from “Which teams are the best?” to “Is there anyone left that is objectively a better team than Liquid?” The answer, for the vast majority of the year, was no.





That’s why the fact that Liquid is completely dominating the standings in 2019 is no surprise. They’re the same team as they were last year, but they somehow managed to become even more dominant. That’s thanks to their post-season roster moves, which completely shocked fans and analysts in the scene alike. Included in those roster moves was the acquisition of Cloud9’s long-time mid laner Nicolaj Jensen, who is regarded by many to be the best mid laner in the entire region.





Upcomer had the chance to talk with Jensen after Liquid’s crushing victory over FlyQuest last week.





There are two undefeated teams left in both major western regions, but Liquid looks more dominant than G2 when compared to the other teams in their region. Do you believe Liquid actually has a weakness?





Jensen: I think every team has some sort of weakness. What we're really focusing on, though, in Liquid, is trying to fix it. We're not trying to look at the other stuff too much. Our main focus is just fixing what we're bad at so that, you know, when it comes around to the bigger, international tournaments and playoffs and stuff that we don't actually have any weaknesses at all. But I would say, right now, we definitely have stuff that we could do better, so we just are trying to fix those. But I wouldn't say we have any big weaknesses, no.





As someone who’s played against the rest of the league’s teams in scrims and on-stage by now, who is your toughest competition right now in the mid lane?





I think every mid laner has better strengths than others and bigger weaknesses than others. I would say, just in the case of a more rounded player, it's definitely [Søren“Bjergsen” Bjerg]. I think he doesn't make a lot of mistakes, but I also think there's other players who can pressure hard on lane. For example, I think someone like [Kim "Fenix" Jae-hun] does that pretty well, but then he has a lot of weaknesses, so that’s why I can’t really rate him super highly.





But I think Bjergsen has always been, like, my main competitor, but I don’t think TSM is looking that strong right now. So, from a team perspective, there's not really any team I think that is a competitor to us.





Does it feel strange to play against Cloud9 and to view them as competition now?





I think, at first, it'll always feel a bit weird, and it's still weird to me when I see C9. Sometimes I'll even look at the schedule and be like, "Oh, C9 is playing. Oh, I'm playing this early?" And then I'll look again and I’m like, "Wait, I'm not on C9 anymore." So there's a lot of weird things still for me. It's still a learning experience, but, at first, I'd say it's probably the first game that's the most, you know, weird, where you're playing against your old team and stuff. But I’ve played against former teammates a lot, so I know how it feels. I think after a while you stop thinking about it as much. I think it's just the first match is always going to be the most, I don’t know how to describe it, the weirdest one, I guess, where you really think about it like, "Oh, God." There's a lot of thoughts that go into your head before that match, for sure.





I thought I would be a lot more anxious going into the match against C9, but I wasn't at all. Honestly, I think that the weirdest thing for me was just having to see them all again for the first time after not having seen them for so long, wondering what their reaction would be just towards me and everything. But, honestly, just playing the game, it felt totally fine. It was a good feeling, beating them.

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Was there any weirdness with your C9 teammates after you announced your decision to leave?





No, I think it was mostly respected. They made some joke comments, but I think it was all just in good fun, yeah. It would be like calling me a traitor as a joke. Yeah. I mean, they all seemed to be understanding of it, there wasn’t any drama.





C9 has always been the North American team at Worlds. Other teams from NA have gone, but only C9 have ever really done anything, with only a few exceptions. Do you think you brought some of that magic with you to Liquid?





I definitely say I took a part of it with me. I think there's not many players that can stand up to any mid laner in the entire world, and I think one of my strengths is I know how to play almost every situation really well, even if I’m behind, or if I’m ahead, or if I’m playing a hard matchup. I think I play extremely accordingly to my situation, and I think that's a weakness with a lot of other mid laners. If they get put in a tough situation, they can't handle it as well. I think, just for me, I'll always be stable no matter who I play against. I think that's like that's one of the qualities I bring. But, it's hard to say why the other teams fail as much as they do. It seems like a lot of teams just default to playing differently internationally, but I think it's important that you keep in mind what you do well.





Is there any specific strategy Liquid is trying out with the new roster, or is it just a blanket, “We need to do better internationally,” sort of approach?





Liquid are just trying to make sure they fix the mistakes they made last year at Worlds, for example. But some of it will, you know, apply to every one of us. But it's also just fixing the big things that they thought they did wrong last year. So we're making sure there won't be any slip-ups going into an international tournament moving forward.





What do you think of Sylas?





Honestly, I'm not really too sure where to rate Sylas myself. I played it a bit, and I still have mixed reactions to the champion. I don’t think when we play against these teams we need to take risks if it could be a risky pick because we think if we just play centered or play just normal comps well beat the other team because we're just better than them.





What do you think is happening with 100 Thieves that has caused them to drop from constantly on TL’s heels to struggling this much?





I think it's hard to say what specifically is going on with them. They seem to lack more of an identity as a team, and they don't really seem on the same page as much. They also have a lot of inexperienced players even though they have some big names. So it seems like they're just not gelling together too well right now. From playing against them in the past, you could tell that this team was not going to look or start off strong, but, you know, maybe now they're picking it up more, so we'll see how it goes with them.





What do you think is preventing other North American teams from competing on your level right now?





I think it is mainly that our roster is incredibly stacked, and we all know how to play our roles very well. There's not really too much of a learning process when it comes to stuff. It's mostly just we need to figure out the meta, figure out how we want to play certain situations as a team because we're not really making many individual mistakes in the game so we're naturally just going to look better than the other teams, I think.