Gaming
esports
Get to know Cloud 9's Jensen
Let's Celebrate LoL Worlds with a look at the career of one of NA Region's stars
League of Legends is a game of small moments. A cursor positioned just a few pixels off or a button pressed just a second too late could be the difference between crushing defeat and the thrills of victory. But at the end of it all, we learn and push on, grinding for that next moment and hoping for a better outcome.
The same can be said for the careers of the players themselves. A player can very quickly be defined by their highs and lows all the while they need to remain confident in themselves and keep grinding to cement themselves as a top player and few players may be as familiar with that feeling as Nicolaj "Jensen" Jensen.
Since his debut in North America in 2015, Jensen’s career has been defined by key memorable moments, from the pressures of flying across the world to a new region to replace Hai "Hai" Du Lam, one of the best domestic mid laners in the region’s history, to this eventful current season that has seen Jensen starting without a team to lifting the LCS trophy as a member of the team where it all started. Despite all the criticisms and praise of his play, Jensen has managed to push through on the way to becoming one of the most decorated mid laners in the LCS. Now Jensen will once again face the familiar challenge of representing North America as the best team in the region and the pressures that comes with it once again.
Career of parallels
After spending the 2022 Spring split teamless, Jensen joined a Cloud9 roster that had a disastrous first half of the season. Amid a split that was highlighted by a sudden and newsworthy change to the coaching staff just 3 weeks in and a meltdown in the playoffs where the team was outclassed and swept by 100 Thieves and Evil Geniuses, big changes were coming.
With some uncertainty from fans around the decision to remove Spring MVP Park "Summit" Woo-tae, Ibrahim "Fudge" Allami moving back to his original role, and Jesper "Zven" Svenningsen swapping to support, Jensen’s return to the team where he started his career came with a lot of pressure to be the piece that would bring everything together. But that experience was something that Jensen had dealt with before when he first joined the team in 2015 and replaced Hai, who many saw as the leader and face of the team.
Coming into a team with that much expectation riding on you can be crushing for any player let alone a rookie who is flying across the globe but Jensen didn’t crack:
“Back then, I was extremely confident that I didn't really feel much pressure, I kind of had the mindset that I'm an EU player, going to NA and I'm gonna crush everyone. And I watched Bjergsen do it, so I felt very confident back then.”
While it didn’t start off quite as easy for Jensen as he had expected, he was able to meet expectations and became one of the best mid laners in North America. This time around, while Jensen wasn’t replacing a keystone player like Hai, he wasn’t expecting things to be easy.
“When I first rejoined the team, I was looking at teams like EG and TL, and they were looking really good. So in my head, I thought we will probably slot in as the third team,” Jensen said. “I just felt a lot of pressure that I have to go to Worlds because it's been a big part of my legacy at this point.”
A new Cloud9
Success didn’t come easy for Cloud9 in the Summer Split. After losing all three matches in week 1 as a result of having to field their Academy bot lane, Jensen and his teammates found themselves struggling to achieve a winning record as they not only had to make up for the lost time but also figure out what type of team they wanted to become
“I think you have to find a team identity to become a really good team and we struggled a lot with that because we didn't practice the month leading up to the season starting and we didn't have our roster until week two or week three of the season,” Jensen said. “We weren't really sure what worked best for us. And some games we'd win, but other games, we would lose, and we still weren't really sure what the fix exactly was going to be.
For his part in finding a role in a new Cloud9, Jensen recognized a shift in the competitive meta and quickly shifted to providing the support needed to allow rookie Kim "Berserker" Min-cheol to succeed.
“I think at some point, I realized in this meta you don't have to carry too much as a mid laner, your role is going to be to help your ADC deal as much damage as possible, or take up as much space as possible. You just need to be a distraction, and not die, or you need to enable the ADC. So that's what I figured out would work best for our team so that was what I tried to go for more as the season progressed.”
As his team worked towards forming its identity, Jensen faced another challenge. While he was only out of the league for a single split, a new crop of young mid laners have begun making a name for themselves and were looking to further cement their place in the LCS by taking on a storied veteran. While Jensen was once in their position as the upstart rookie, the experience as a veteran was a much different one.
“In the past, I was used to the LCS just being me versus Bjergsen and then maybe someone else like Nisqy, other than that, it was a big epic drop off in terms of player quality,” Jensen said. “I actually wasn't sure what to expect too much. I hadn't really played against the other players too much. So I thought coming back that it was kind of going to be a walk in the park. But I quickly realized that all these players these other mid laners were actually a lot better than what I expected,” Jensen said.
But Jensen wasn’t just some rookie anymore, this time around he was the veteran with years of experience on his side and he knew that experience would make all the difference.
“I thought as long as I would figure out how to consistently deal with them in lane, I would always be the better player because I think my experience and understanding of the game outside of the laning phase is very important. And that's something I have over all the rookie players, that's where they're still lacking a lot of the time.”
It’s all coming together
Despite all the challenges the team faced during the regular season, Cloud9 qualified for the playoffs as the fifth seed. While winning a title will always mean a lot for any player, this playoff run was more important for Jensen as it was his first chance to finally deal with some unfinished business. While Jensen had many opportunities as the mid-laner for Cloud9, his performances in the finals will be more remembered for some key misplays that led to the team watching the trophy be lifted on the sidelines. Luckily, with many teams struggling as they headed into the playoffs, Jensen felt like anyone could’ve made it to Chicago and competed for a title and a trip to Worlds.
“All the teams were looking good and I thought even FlyQuest at CLG could potentially beat us in a five games series. And surprisingly, CLG was the toughest team for us,” Jensen said. “I thought all the teams looked so close to each other. And I thought it would just come down to like small moments as to whether we would make it or not.”
With the playoffs looking so close, each team was in for what could have been one of the toughest playoffs in LCS history. But for Jensen, while a title win with Cloud9 was an important goal, there was something else on his mind: making it to Worlds once again.
Even amid all the nerves that come with a long playoff run ahead of them as the fifth seed, the fact that Jensen has never missed a trip to Worlds throughout his career was an accomplishment that wasn’t lost on him. “I was also thinking about the fact that I had made it to Worlds every single year I played, Jensen said. “And I thought this year was by far the toughest in terms of competition from multiple teams. So I thought: Oh, like this could end up getting really close and this could be the year we don't make it.”
Cloud9’s Round 1 match against CLG would prove to be the team’s toughest challenge after a back-and-forth five-game series. Following that series, Cloud9 would get better and better as a whole, and Jensen’s confidence in winning the title and punching in his ticket for Worlds also grew substantially.
“Playing against EG game one like I could tell that we can definitely compete with them and that we're probably better than them,” Jensen said. Going into the playoffs many considered EG the favorites to win it all once again but Cloud9 had other plans “Once the series against EG started like I knew that we were pretty much going to make it to Worlds even if we were to lose that series.”
Ultimately, the results went the way of Cloud9 as they dropped EG to the lower bracket with a 3-1 score. From there Jensen knew that the LCS title was finally going to be his as a member of Cloud9 because to put it quite simply: “we were just head and shoulders above the rest of the teams”
Looking ahead to Worlds
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Going into this year’s World Championships Cloud9 is North America’s hope for a strong showing on the international stage. This time around, however, Jensen and the rest of Cloud9 will have a tough road ahead of them with the respective Chinese and Korean powerhouses EDward Gaming and T1 in the same group.
For now, the pressure hasn’t gotten to Jensen, but he is aware of the reality of the situation. “Obviously, I have some very, very good mid laners in my group, so it's not going to be an easy task,” Jensen said. “I've been here before I know what to expect, so I'm just excited to finally get started.”
Regardless of how Jensen performs at Worlds, there’s no denying that he has had one of the crazier seasons to date. From Cloud9’s roster overhaul heading into the Summer Split to struggling to find an identity during the regular season, Jensen himself is grateful that everything worked out.
“I'm just happy that it turned out the way it did because this would have been impossible for me to predict. You know, I was thinking is this really the end of me in the Spring Split. Like what is going to happen to me now? Am I gonna be one of those players who come back and end up on a bad roster and are not able to make anything out of the rest of my career? I'm super happy everything turned out the way it did and C9 wanted to take a chance on me.”
Despite all the doubt he or the fans may have had in himself at times throughout the season, Jensen and the rest of Cloud9 were able to raise the LCS title and will now represent the region in front of a hometown crowd. While it’s easy for North American fans to act all doom and gloom about the state of the region, Cloud9 has always represented a hope for something better and this year is no different with Jensen feeling the confidence himself.
“I think this team has the most potential of all the rosters I’ve played on in terms of being able to compete with the best team so I'm also feeling very confident so you should too.”
