While Cloud9 Academy took Clutch Gaming to the cleaners in the final day of the 2019 LCS Spring Split, C9 Mid Laner Yasin "Nisqy" Dincer sat in the crowd in street clothes. Nisqy, sitting with Jungler Dennis "Svenskeren" Johnsen and Top Laner Eric "Licorice" Ritchie, supported C9A with a cheeky smile on his face and a sign that read, "Challenger Mid Laner formerly LCS LFT". 

Last time Nisqy was subbed out of the Cloud9 lineup, it was for more serious reasons. The Mid Laner had been sick all week and splitting scrim time with Greyson "Goldenglue" Gilmer, and was too ill to even sleep the night before the match. C9 made the decision to start Goldenglue, but dropped the match against Echo Fox. 

Nisqy returned to the starting lineup the next day, facing off against the likes of Lee "Crown" Min-ho and OpTic Gaming. Nisqy, while not 100%, was well enough to put together a solid performance on Taliyah as a part of a global pick composition drafted by Cloud9. 

Despite not yet fully recovered, Nisqy sat down with Inven Global after his victory on week 8, day 2 of the LCS to discuss his health, mid laners in North America, and Cloud9's focus for playoffs.

It's good to see you back in the lineup, Nisqy. How are you feeling?

I think I'm kind of still recovering. I'm not dying or anything; I don't feel any pain. It's mostly that my focus and my awareness when I play the game was really low during the week due to being sick. Friday, it felt like things were really going downhill. I couldn't even sleep, I just sneezed all through the night.

I think the team played great yesterday. Goldenglue actually did a good job of playing the game on Saturday, and he deserved the start because we split scrims that week. I'm happy that we both play, and I hope I did what the team needed from me today.


The game went well for you guys today. You had a fun global composition with Taliyah mid against a pure teamfight composition. Can you break down your win conditions and how you executed upon them?

It's focused on making picks, usually. We had more global and semi-global ultimates, so we could always get a man advantage in place. Also, our team should get an advantage early game, which we didn't really do that well outside of the kill on top side.

Our composition wants to play fast, and then at level 6, dive whatever side is most diveable and take objectives like Rift Herald and Dragon. They actually got Rift Herald this game, which was kind of awkward.


You and Svenskeren did a good job spreading your presence to the side lanes in the form of kills, but the towers didn't start falling right away. What was the cause of this?

Taking towers is quite hard against their type of team comp. They had Ezreal, who was just chilling mid and taking waves with Q 24/7, so we had to make plays around the map. Playing towards our side lanes was not easy this game either, since they had Lissandra and Aatrox.

I think we had to try to get more vision, which we did later on in the game and everything went fine. We could do Baron, and while hitting the nash, we could either zone them off with Taliyah's ultimate, or trap them and kill them.

It's a higher difficulty of execution than the conventional scaling team fighting compositions that most teams are drafting as we head towards playoffs. In choosing different compositions, is Cloud9 looking to diversify the styles in which the team is comfortable playing?

Yeah, and also, having a deeper champion pool is really important. Going into playoffs, you need to be able to play two, three, or even four playstyles. You can't just stick to only team fighting or only 1-3-1. I don't think any team is going to playoffs and planning on only playing team fight compositions and win all of their games that way. That's not going to happen that way, so we're trying other stuff, for sure.


Since Cloud9 has already qualified for playoffs, was this a recent switch of focus?

We want to secure 2nd place, but we will probably focus on other things like new play styles after we get a win to do that.


Last time we talked, it was the first week of LCS. Now that you've been here a full split, what's your opinion on North America's Mid Lane talent pool?

It's really interesting, a lot of players are playing different stuff. The only thing I think NA Mid Laners lack is playing really aggressively. The only exceptions are Bjergsen and Jensen; they are the only ones who will fight back and look for kill angles. That's really something I'm trying to implement as well, because that's not something I was implementing earlier on in the split. When I was playing Aatrox and stuff, that's one thing, because I need to win lane to make that work.

Today, I tried to overextend a lot and got punished, but I think playing to the limits of a champion or yourself is really good. NA mids are lacking in that they either play too safe or way too aggro and just die.

Crown also came to NA from another region before this split. What did you think of his play today?

I think he played well, but I wouldn't say I felt his pressure too much. He didn't make a huge impact outside of killing Licorice once, but that's not too hard, because Licorice is going to die if you just gank him. However, Crown played well and didn't give me that many angles. He's for sure a top half Mid Laner in the region.

I'm going to keep this short since you're still not feeling well, so one more question: Are there any teams you're looking forward to playing in playoffs, and why?

I want to play TSM in playoffs. I think Bjergsen is the best Mid Laner in NA. Also, last time we played, he kind of smacked me around. I want to get my revenge and beat him in lane, or at least be really useful to my team.