“I don’t think we were playing that well,” C9 Blaber on Cloud9’s current strength

Cloud9 secured their first best-of-five victory at MSI 2023 with a 3-1 win over their LCS brothers in Golden Guardians. The pressure was on the Spring champions following a shaky performance against the LPL's Bilibili Gaming. C9's Robert "Blaber" Huang stepped up to the plate when his team needed him most as he dominated the LCS second seed.

Esports.gg had the opportunity to sit down with Blaber following their MSI win over GGS for an exclusive interview. Blaber spoke about the preparation going into the Golden Guardians series, the overall strength of Cloud9 right now, and how their new coach Christopher "Duffman" Duff is adjusting to his new organization.

That was really entertaining. Did you expect game 4 to go the way that it did because you were 10k gold up at 10 minutes? I was like, alright, this is gonna be a quick one, but then they stole Baron and it looked really shaky from there. Did you expect the game to flip like that?

C9 Blaber: I expected the game to go really well for us because they drafted really greedily in my opinion. They drafted a weak jungler, three losing lanes, and I think that should be punished. I think we punished that well in the early game, we got a little bit more than maybe we should have normally. In regards to the Baron, I was saying “wait for Maokai to come in, just kill him, K’Sante is gonna ult him out" and then randomly, at 2000 hp, Berserker says “burst the Baron”, and he just arrows it in the head, and I didn’t Smite it, it’s also my bad.

So the play in the future is to not listen to your ADC? [laughs] Because in an interview after the BLG series, you said Berserker made a last-minute call for you to not use Kindred ult and you lost a Baron in that series.

C9 Blaber: Yeah [laughs] it's weird because I'm blaming my ADC twice now but you know, f*cking Berserker [laughs].

What was your assessment of Golden Guardians before the series and was your mind changed post-series? Obviously, a team like C9 has benefited from the Play-ins ramp-up time. Do you think they got any better?

C9 Blaber: I think that we could have closed out game three today. I think we played really poorly in that game honestly. I felt we were favored in the draft in that game, or at least we were very comfortable, and we just threw. Even towards the end, we could have won if Berserker didn’t die. But I think that they are pretty much similar to what they were before. Obviously, they’ve improved, don’t get me wrong, but I think all the other teams have also improved, so in comparison, I feel like we’ve improved more I guess.

Would you have preferred to play in Play-ins or at the very least have the teams start at the same stage? From speaking to other teams they think Play-ins do have good advantages.

C9 Blaber: I didn’t really mind not playing in the Play-in stage, because we have spent a month practicing regardless. I think that was plenty of time for us to be prepared for the stage games. I think we just didn’t play so well in our first series, and I think we played better in our second series, although we were also against a worse opponent.

So on that, how has the preparation been going? I’ve heard you guys have been doing well in scrims, but Fudge said on the broadcast he thinks you guys are playing poorly, where do you stand on C9’s strength right now?

C9 Blaber: Yeah, I agree with Fudge. I don't think we were playing that well. And I think that we definitely need to step up our game in the next two days. Look at how we can play better otherwise Gen.G definitely beat us. I think that they are the favorites going into the match no matter what, but hopefully, we can have a good showing.

So recently Cloud9 announced Duffman would be joining the organization, we saw him on stage today, how has he been in your first few weeks working with him?

I think Duffman has been doing really well. He's more of an analyst where he kind of tells us the tendencies of other teams, the tendencies of our team, how teams ward, etc. He's just very good. For example, he will help prepare what we should do for level one, what they will do for level one, etc. I think he's been doing really good on that. He also is pretty smart about the game actually. He's never played the game professionally but I do think he's actually pretty smart about the game and he brings up good points during reviews too.

 We have started to see more of an evolution in your play from primarily a carry player to playing the supportive role from time to time, did anything cause that change or is it just the natural progression of a player as their career progresses?

C9 Blaber: For me, I think I can play any champion the meta right now it’s basically that. I just play what I think is best and that will work the best with my team. Regardless of if it’s a tank or a carry champion, I'm just gonna pick I think what is best I think for our team in the moment. 

Final question looking ahead to the Gen.G series, how do you think the pick and ban could play out against Peanut? It felt in the G2 series he was trying to flex his muscle on some of the more aggressive picks before being put on Maokai duty, do you think they will try to go more aggressive against you specifically?

C9 Blaber: Well, I think Maokai is a very strong champion right now regardless of if it's Peanut playing it or someone else playing it. I think that Maokai is just a really strong champ. I definitely think Peanut prefers the more tanky champions but I wouldn't say a champion like Wukong is a tank. I think the only champion he doesn't really play right now is Nidalee. But it doesn't seem like the Asian teams in general have a high priority on Nidalee.

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