Sitting at 5-0, Cloud9 are one of only two teams to remain undefeated after six weeks of the LCS Spring Split. Searching for their first domestic title since 2023, Jesper “Zven” Svenningsen remains a core pillar of the team, holding down the bot lane alongside support Phillippe “Vulcan” Laflamme. I spoke with Zven on their Week 6 series against Dignitas, whether Yunara is overrated, Cloud9’s current strength, and more.

Caymus: How you doing?

Zven: I'm all right. Not the greatest games today, so I'm a little pissed off about that. at least we won. At the end of the day, that's all that actually does matter.

Caymus: Yeah, it’s been a crazy season low key. Anyway, I just wanted to chat with you a little bit mostly about today’s games, a little bit about yourself. So you mentioned that you were pissed off about today. Is there something specific that happened in the games today or just not happy with the performance?

Zven: I’m not happy with my performance and the bot lane in general. I think we didn’t play lane phase very well today in maybe any of the games to be honest. I think game one was okay and an overall fine game but game two especially was a really bad lane phase and I think we should have two to three hard winning lanes with a strong jungler in early game and it did not look like it at all in bot lane so that annoyed me a little bit. We can play a lot better than that, so that pissed me off a little bit.

Caymus: Do you mean generally or with that comp?

Zven: That comp we should have at least, when you play Varus top you’re winning against almost everything like you know more or less guaranteed, it’s just how it is. He’s just an op champ in lane phase and we have a strong jungler in the early game so the jungler has not much to do besides camps, and in bot lane we obviously get counterpicked because we have Varus top, right? So we should have at least two winning sides in this game. And because our jungler is stronger, often that impacts mid directly because he can cross over mid a lot more often than not. So we should have a much better early game in that game than we did and that kind of like, annoys me that I know we can play better. So a little frustrated about that performance from us.

Caymus: Do you think something went wrong in particular or just like a bad game?

Zven: I think we just took a little bit too much damage in the early game, on the early waves. And then because our jungler is taking their jungler’s camps early, right? Like his chickens level one, It means that Xin Zhao will be what we call homeless, no camps to take. So he has to gank somewhere, right? And hope he gets something done for someone else while he’s behind. So on that timer, we to make sure that one, we have prio in our lane so that they can’t counter invade us, but also make sure that two, we don’t get ganked by Xin Zhao.

Kind of like a balance between pushing but not dying to anything or getting impacted too much. The first base had we had to give up a frozen wave to their botlane which is really bad when you’re playing a winning matchup in the early game so that was the biggest problem of that game. Everything kind of snowballed from there because they got six first and then eventually they got a better buy because blah blah right? So it’s all about that first four waves went wrong for us we should have based I think earlier and then game would be much better

Caymus: Obviously this is true for most teams, that if you win lane, you’re going to do better in the game. But it feels like you guys in particular, when you guys win the lane phase, it feels like you’re really good at holding onto the lead. We don’t see too many silly throws out of you guys, at least not recently, right?

Zven: (Laughing) It happens time to time.

Caymus: Yeah, for sure. I mean, that’s the NA blessing right there. On average, I think you guys are pretty, reliable to close out a game once you’re in the lead. I wanted to ask you, this is a little bit unrelated to the series. I’ll go back to the series in a second. I just wanted to ask this.

People pick Yunara right? And they’re like, Yunara’s going to like hard scale. And if you if you get to the late game, Yunara is just going to stomp. But I feel like Yunara just loses all the time. Like all of the time. You obviously won a game with her against sentinels pretty recently with her, but she loses so often I see. Especially if they pick like Ashe or something. Do you think Yunara is overrated?

Zven: Yeah, for sure overrated. I mean, I don’t think she’s a bad champion, but she’s definitely not a game one or two in Fearless. I think combos like Ashe + Seraphine or Lucian + Melio, we saw that in LCK a lot this week, is winning against it, and it’s really hard for Yunara. And if you lose early game too hard, you don’t even outscale at that point. You’re playing down 500 to 1,000 gold the whole game, right? I definitely don’t think she’s very good at this current moment. She’s also kinda tied a little bit to Lulu I feel like. Without Lulu she’s not as good so you’ll often see like game one/game two you play like these Ashe + Seraphine, Ezreal, Caitlin/Bard team comps and then in game two or three you’ll see Yunara + Lulu, Corki + Nami come out more. I think she’s good in those places, but she’s not like a game one fearless champion at all.

You’ll see Varus probably banned most of series. But yeah, I think Yunara is a good champion, but picking it too early in the series is definitely bait. I think it was like zero and six until we won against Sentinels a couple weeks back, and then Berserker won a game as well. So it’s like two and six or two and seven or something. Yeah.

Caymus: (Jokingly) Whenever people pick Yunara I’m just like welp gotta fight back to a reverse sweep now, cause that one’s over. Anyway, I wanted to ask - Coming into the series, did you expect them to be this strong right now?

Zven: I mean, when you have this like Ashe/Seraphine split where one team takes Seraphine and the other takes Ashe, usually Ashe is strong in the early game, but isn’t very good in team fights against a lot of champions that are played in game one.

Champions like Rumble or Ornn, Jarvan, Pantheon, Nocturne, these kind of champions that played in game one are hard for Ashe to team fight against if you play well. So I wasn’t worried about the early game being hard. I think we actually were winning early game if we played a little bit better. We got Drakes in the early game in that game, believe. So the game was going kind of well for us. We had one bad Drake fight where I think we engaged too far up when they were not even on the Drake at all. But otherwise, we just got every Drake and that’s how the game is played when you have this Annie + Jarvan team comp. You just hit the Dragon, you flash Tibbers and that’s it, right? So it went okay. I think Bot lane phase could have been better. Once again, we got to gank at like level five. We got Lulu’s Summoners and then they ganked us. I should have maybe been more ready for that play.

But yeah, I think they arenot a bad team by any means. Their top laner and their bot lane are both pretty good in lane phase. The reason they start losing games isn’t because of their laning phase, usually, in my opinion. It’s because, you know, their mid game or their team fighting is not very good. And we saw it last week against Flyquest. They’re making a lot of big mistakes in team fights and in mid game. And I think that’s what caused them to lose most of their games, but their lane phase is solid. So, yeah, I think I wasn’t surprised when they were good in the early game. FBI has always been a decent laner, I think. And so is Photon.

Caymus: Okay, so it’s safe to say no one’s being overlooked.

Zven: Yeah, I mean we’re always aware as a team not to be too overconfident despite having an undefeated record so far. We’re always being careful with complacency and overconfidence.

Caymus: You guys are undefeated right now. Number 1 team in the league obviously. It’s been a little while since Cloud9 has won a regional tournament.

Zven: Three years, yeah.

Caymus: You got second very recently at Lock-In and the America’s Cup. Do you feel like this is your time? This is a really strong iteration of Cloud9 right now. Are we seeing a new version of Cloud9?

Zven: I’m not sure, I know that we all work really hard. We play a lot of games and we spend a lot of time together talking about the game. I think that it shows that we’re a hardworking team that tries really hard and we do everything we can to win. And we’ll see what that gets us, you know? It’s all we can really do. It’s our best, right?

Caymus: Yeah, that makes sense. And then I guess just to close things out, I did want to ask you about the strength of bot lanes right now. Who’s the strongest bot lane for you in NA right now?

Zven: In NA in terms of rankings, I think TL (Team Liquid) is the strongest laning duo when they’re winning specifically. But when TL is playing bad matchups, I don’t think they’re as scary. So there’s that.

I think FlyQuest is kind of coin flippy, but also very strong lane. They will often die a lot in lane, but also win lane harder than other teams. So they’re kind of like a weird bot lane to rank, but they’re pretty good mechanically in that front.

Sentinels is a very consistent botlane. I think when they play their good champions, they’re very solid. Rahel is very consistent. That’s kind of his playstyle and huhi’s back in form. So I think they’re pretty decent. I’d say that’s the top three bot lanes besides us. I think LYON is a strong botlane. It should be like TL, LYON are the #1 and #2 bot lanes.

LYON’s biggest strength is they work very well with their jungler. They pressure a lot when they can and they never die to ganks. This is kind of an inspired thing, I think. So I think their strength isn’t stomping lane, it’s more like being very consistent at winning lane when they can and never leaving openings while teams like TL and FLY are like, they might win this hard, but they will often give openings for us to make plays.

I think that’s the top half. TL and Lyon, Fly, Sentinels. I’m not sure who is after them. I think DIG is decent. DSG’s (Disguised) bot is probably the worst, but I’m not really sure. It’s hard to rank them because they all have different strength and weaknesses, different champion pools, different levels of team. So it’s hard to say. Some teams are worse than others, you know, the ball is better than others. I’d say the hardest two are LYON and TL.

Caymus: Cool. Well you play FlyQuest next week, so you’ll have to go up against one of those bot lanes. That’s pretty much all I have for right now. And hopefully I get to talk to you again in the playoffs after another win. Looking forward to it.

Zven: All right, have a good day bro. Bye-bye.