Team Liquid are the team to beat in the LCS at the moment. Find out what Veteran jungler Santorin had to say.
Team Liquid is off to a great start to 2022. The North American side took home their second Lock in championship and are currently 3-1 in the LCS spring split. After health issues hindered his 2021 season, Santorin and the rest of TL are firing on all cylinders. After their opening week victory over C9, the press got the opportunity to speak to Santorin. Here is what he had to say:
CoreJJ is still a key factor in TL's success
The LCS team is once again having to field a roster that was not planned ahead of the 2022 season. Despite Eyla performing admirably thus far, having the best Western support in Corejj on the sidelines is a hard pill to swallow.
Although there is no confirmation on when Corejj will become a resident, Santorin spoke about how the former World Champion has been setting his team up for success in his off the Rift antics.
"When it comes to how Core works with the team he is always watching scrims, always talking to especially our bot lane on how they can play you know laning phase better or like which champions he thinks can be good, he is very involved in that sense and he also a big part of draft meetings"
"I used to be pretty much a Karthus main, I played a lot of Karthus in my past" - Santorin
Santorin was faced with the task of facing a familiar champion of his. As is Cloud9's new philosophy, they will pick champions that fit the team comp they want to play as opposed to picking standard meta champions. Against Team Liquid, C9 locked in the Karthus for Blaber.
For TL Santorin, this was a champion he was very accustomed to. Although he has only played the champions three times in competitive play, this was a champion he played a lot when it was popular in the jungle throughout Seasons 8 and 9.
"So I mean first of all I used to be pretty much a Karthus main, I played a lot of Karthus in my past, especially in season 8 and season 9 so I know this champion really well."
Santorin did not have the best of games against Cloud9; C9 had drafted a champion that made life for the Danish Jungler difficult. Santorin spoke about the individual match and how it's very hard to play against Karthus with Viego.
"Viego feels really bad into Karthus. What happens is when you kill Karthus, when you pick up his soul, for example, he will pretty much kill you while you're doing it so it's definitely one of the most frustrating matchups. Karthus is one of those champs where if he gets to scale up he will be really strong but he's not that useful early on."
TL Santorin on LCS Champions Queue
Riot Games recently released the new LCS Champions Queue. Riot introduced this low ping server to improve the player experience in North America for its professional and amateur players. Santorin has been in North America for many years and has only been able to experience NA soloq on 60+ ping.
The current Champions Queue operates through a private Discord server. After each match, the winning team will earn LP. Players in the Champions Queue are competing for a share of the $400,000 prize pool. After getting to experience Champions Queue first hand, Santorin is thrilled at the prospect of low ping North American games.
I am really happy we get to play with low ping (on Champions Queue), that's something I have been wanting for six years.
Although the Champions Queue is a welcome change for professional LCS players, Santorin spoke about the features he would change to the current Champions Queue structure.
"The main thing I would change is the matchmaking system, right now how it's made is when you queue up, whoever is queueing with you at the same time will get the same game. So with that mindset you know sometimes you will have a way stronger team than your opponents."
"Sometimes I have been the only LCS player with four amateur players then the other team is like four LCS and one academy player. So in that sense, I want it to be more stabilised because you learn a lot more from games when they are more close rather than when it is just pure stomps."
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