Cloud9 Zven Interview: “I think anyone can be the second best support in the LCS”
Coming off a split where he didn’t play a single game, then role swapping to support, Cloud9’s Zven has found new life in his career in the support position. Even though he is in his first split as support, fans have ranked him in the top three in the league.
How does he feel about that ranking, and what are his other views on the support position? I asked him about it after I sat down with him for our Cloud9 Zven Interview.
Cloud9 Zven interview transcript:
Below is the transcript from my conversation in the Cloud9 Zven interview. Questions will be marked in bold font.
Coming off of that back-and-forth game against Team Liquid Honda, a crazy game from the viewer’s perspective, what was that game like?
The early game was okay, we got a double kill bottom lane. We blew their flashes and got a really good lane gank. We got a kill on CoreJJ. We traded dragons for the top side, which is not Cloud9’s playstyle these days, which is we leave Fudge alone and we stack dragons to get soul at twenty-something minutes.
The game went okay. There were a few moments where I thought that it was a bit sweaty. Like when they killed Jensen and got both top-tower and mid-tower, and the herald, where we got bottom tower and the dragon. It wasn’t a bad trade if it was literally just top tower for bot tower and dragon since dragons scale better.
The mid-tower and kill on Jensen was kind of sketchy and made us sweat a little bit. I don’t think we played the mid-game too well. We got every dragon, which is good, we got every baron and dragon, so it looked fine I’m sure, but I think that we could have pressured more. We didn’t get the top tower and the middle tier one until twenty-five minutes into the game so there’s stuff to review, but overall I’m happy with the game.
I was a little bit shaky because I’ve never played this lane matchup before, so I wasn’t sure when I win, when I should trade, etcetera.
I wanted to ask about your lane actually. The Renata and Kalista lane has seen popularity rise astronomically throughout the world, with teams playing it best in Korea and China. In the LEC and the LCS, it’s kind of been a bit spotty, where we have games like today where you guys played it really well, but other times teams haven’t been able to play it to its potential. What makes that lane so good in the early game, whereas before the premier early game bottom duo was seen as Nami and Lucian.
It’s a conversion of a lot of things, but Kalista is always a good laner, we all know that. Renata is a ranged champion, so she procs the W of Kalista really well, and that also deals more damage with her passive on her auto attacks. Kalista procs really well with her auto attacks and her E. You have a lot of ranged damage and a lot of all-in power.
You also have a really good trading pattern, with Renata’s E, she can shield two people, she has the slow, and her Q is really good in all-in lanes and into melee matchups, so she has enough power to be both a good ranged champion but, you know, with her base stats, she’s also good into melee champions like Nautilus and Leona.
Her (Renata) W makes it, in extended fights, that if you all-in Kalista, she has enough time to stack enough spears to kill someone back, so you can get the revive. Overall it’s really hard to all-in this lane, and you can’t really land poke all that well. It’s a super strong lane that really only loses to things like super late game scaling champions.
READ MORE: EG Danny: “I don’t think that our bot lane is necessarily better”
I wanted to ask about you playing support because you’ve only been playing it for a split. We passed the halfway point of the split a couple of weeks ago. I don’t know if you watch “This or That” with Kobe and Dash, but there was a question posed on there from one of the viewers if you are a top three support right now. Where would you rank yourself in the league right now?
I think that right now there are no support players playing really well, besides Vulcan. Though Vulcan is on the best team. The team is, to be fair, the best because of him. Him and Inspired mostly. It would be unfair to say that he is not the best support by far.
With that out of the way, I think that anyone can be the second-best support in the LCS right now. CoreJJ is not playing as well as he used to. I think that the rest are just okay players. I think that most of them are just middle tier. They aren’t great, but I think that they aren’t bad either.
Some of them have some qualities that I admire like Olleh can play champions like Sejuani support, I can’t do that. Others are good at champions that I’m not really good at. For example, Biofrost plays a good Rakan. Aphromoo is more experienced, he brings more value to his team for sure, but overall I think I can be a top-tier support, I think the top two is not too far-fetched of an idea by the end of the split.
READ MORE: FlyQuest Aphromoo: “I mean thank god for the durability patch.”
A big thank you to Cloud9 and their support Zven for sitting down to talk with me after their game on Sunday for our Cloud9 Zven Interview. If you’re interested in more of Zven, you can find his page here. Cloud9 play this weekend against CLG on Saturday and 100 Thieves on Sunday. For all the local times and the full schedule, you can find that here.
