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Cloud9 made several changes heading into the 2022 League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) Summer Split. Jesper “Zven” Svenningsen, who recently returned to the main roster, is playing the support role as opposed to his former ADC role.
It has not been an easy transition for Zven, as the Danish player has pointed out that he is still making costly mistakes. Although the 25-year-old is no newbie to LoL, he is taking some time to get used to his new role.
In a recent interview, Zven gave an insight into how he is adjusting to his new role as the support. It is the first time in his professional career he is playing the support role, and it has not been a cakewalk.
“I think I still make a lot of mistakes that, looking back at them, are almost rookie mistakes. There is a learning curve that you simply cannot learn fast enough in (the support) role. The role is a lot more about brain, experience, and decision-making than it is about raw mechanics and laning phase,” he said.
“I feel confident in the future, but right now I still find myself making mistakes both in lane and in team fights here and there. But I think I have a lot of advantages by knowing the ADC role very well, like knowing how they think and their champions. I can help ‘Berserker’ (Kim Min-cheol) with that kind of stuff.”
Zven’s former teammate Philippe “Vulcan” Laflamme, who currently plays as Evil Geniuses’ support, believes Zven could be a great performer in the role. The two made an impressive bot-lane duo in the past before Vulcan moved on. Although the EG player thinks Zven has the potential to succeed as a support, he said the transition might take some time.
“The best support players are those that played ADC in the past; that’s where I come from too. I think it’s just about how well he can click with his team. But I think Zven was always the kind of teammate that can work easily with a bunch of different players so, in my mind, it won’t be an issue,” Vulcan said.
“Zven is very good mechanically, and I think he’ll be able to play support, no doubt. There’s definitely a learning curve though in the support role. There’s a lot of small things you have to know. I expect him to not be very good out the gate… but I think he can be quite good.”
Zven’s partnership with Berserker in the bot lane has not been the smoothest, mainly due to the language barrier. However, they are committed to making it work, with Berserker making an extra effort to improve his English.
“Sometimes he writes down words on a notepad during scrims and then asks our translator ‘what does this mean?’” Zven revealed.
“And some of the words aren’t even real words, they’re League slang or League terms. Every day there’s something new that he learns.”
C9 are currently ranked seventh in the LCS Summer standings after three weeks of action. They lost their first three games of the event in the absence of Zven and Berserker who were unavailable due to “misplaced passports and COVID-19 issues”.
However, C9 are looking more formidable since their return. They have only lost one game in their last four over the past two weeks.
Although C9 were the heavy favorites across several esports betting sites with moneyline odds of -277.78, they failed to get the win. FlyQuest put an end to their three-game winning streak to close week three.
C9’s next game will be against ninth-placed TSM. There is still plenty of action in the group stages before the playoffs commence.
A top-eight finish will guarantee C9 a place in the playoffs. Meanwhile, Zven said that the team’s goal is to win the Summer and secure seeding to the 2022 LoL World Championship.
“My goals are very clear, but every win the goal might get a little bit higher. Making Worlds would be good enough for me in my first split as support. But with that said, we will do everything we can to win Summer.”
Group stage action started on June 18 and will run through to August 14. The date for the playoffs is yet to be announced. However, all matches at that stage will follow a best-of-five format.
