EliGE: "I wanted to go to the team I felt had the most potential"

One of the biggest transfer sagas of the off-season was the destination of Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski, the long-term Liquid servant was looking for an new home after eight years with the prestigious organization and was close to joining EG before he decided on joining Complexity.

Now EliGE is set to take part in his first tournament as a Complexity player at BLAST Premier Fall Groups, with the team's first match being against a NIP side that has recently recalled IGL Hampus "hampus" Poser to the starting lineup. Before the tournament gets started, Dust2.us' Gonçalo "GoncOak" Carvalho spoke to EliGE about how he feels no longer being part of Liquid, Complexity's preparations for the event, and the reasoning behind his new hairstyle.

Let's start off with the big question: what's it like not being a Liquid player anymore after eight years?

It's definitely something to get used to. Even when I was looking at Liquid's BLAST group in the beginning I was like ''ah jeez that's a tough group''. I'm sure people saw that clip, I think it was just kind of funny. It is just a bit of an adjustment period for that, but life moves on and I'm happy to like to keep moving on with my new goals and everything.

Are you settling in well with Complexity?

Yeah, I think overall we have been getting on super well, the team culture is really positive and that is something that is good for fostering new ideas and criticism. Overall everyone has been receptive to new things we are adding and doing and making sure the learning process is continuously going. Everyone is super motivated to put in a ton of work with scrims and theory and everything like that, so overall I'm happy.

You welcomed a lot of players to the team when you were on Liquid, now you are the one being welcomed into a new team. Have they welcomed you well to the team?

Everyone has been super welcoming and friendly making sure I'm integrating well. Thankfully, from an in-game point of view, all the roles were one-for-one from FaNg so it wasn't really a big issue from an in-game point of view. Outside of the game, all of the structure things that we have been adding and things I have been suggesting from what has worked well for me and communication-wise, how we can make things cleaner everyone has been super receptive.

Talking about roles, Daniel from Dust2.us wrote an article comparing your roles to FaNg's and he came to the same conclusion as you said. The biggest change will be playing Vertigo, Liquid hasn't played Vertigo since 2022, so what is it like playing Vertigo again?

I think Vertigo is not a very good map, so I don't really like the map. I don't have as much feedback on the way we are playing, it has been harder in that regard. I have to do a lot more learning on that map to figure out what's the meta, what are our options against this. It's a bit harder for me when I'm in an active role on those maps to figure out the correct solution. It's just something I have to keep learning and getting used to how I want to play on both sides. I don't really like the map but I think we are good on it.

Reports said you were very close to joining EG, but ultimately you went with Complexity after rejecting their first attempt at getting you. Was the offseason as crazy for you as it seemed on the outside and what made you revert your decision about Complexity?

In the beginning, it wasn't that crazy for me, but then all of a sudden it got crazy. It was something out of the blue where what I was expecting to happen didn't end up pulling through. That was pretty much what happened for my decision to go to EG or if I wanted to go to Complexity. At the end of the day I wanted to go to the team I felt had the most potential to be competitive and as the decisions were being made I just kept trying to work out which one was better.

Do you think this Complexity roster is able to beat the current Liquid roster?

We have played them in scrims and it's been really close in all of the games. Which I have been happy with, obviously they are just scrim results but it would be different if we were just getting smashed in every scrim and not even competitive. I have been happy with how we have been playing in scrims, I think we have added a lot to the structure that is positive. Going through our flow charts of how we want to play our rounds in a really positive way, it is hard to say what would happen in an official right now but we have been playing well against a lot of the top teams in practice so far. It will be difficult against teams who haven't made any changes, like Heroic for example, but a lot of teams made a lot of changes and they will have to go through the same process as us.

Grim said in an interview that he thinks Complexity needs to spend more time in Europe. Is that something that has been discussed and do you agree with him?

We haven't spoken about living situations for next year but my perspective on that was that I was planning on making something more long-term in Europe next year, whichever team I was joining. I think it is really hard logistically for us to make something happen in Europe in the next six months, but that is the long-term goal because it is just not possible to play in NA right now unless something drastic happens structure-wise with TOs. Unless something can change that gets the top teams from the region playing in the region, or getting the top SA, Oceania, and NA teams playing in a league there, I don't think practice is viable in NA, which is super unfortunate to say, but it is just the reality of the situation. I'm not sure exactly what Complexity's schedule was before but I had the perspective and they agree that we should do at least 10-14 days of bootcamp in Europe before any big event.

What is the team's objective for this event?

We haven't talked about it as a team what the current goal is, but my goal for the team overall is just a mentality shift of everyone having the confidence that we can win against these top wins in these games, consistently. I feel like, just after their last string of results, they don't believe in it as much and I definitely want that to change, so that's the first thing, just having solid wins against these teams to start building that up. A realistic goal for this event result-wise is to be getting out of groups, we are definitely capable of that so that's our goal.

How much value does your experience add to this team, coming into the team as the oldest and veteran player despite being only 25 years old?

It's definitely funny being the oldest player at just 25. I have never thought of myself as the old guy on the team but here I am, the old guy on the team now. It is kind of funny, I have been making the 'you guys are young' jokes, even though I'm only one year older than JT. Back to the in-game part of the question, I think I add a lot of value to make their game more consistent from a structure point of view, adding all the good stuff I liked from Liquid but not trying to change the structure of how people like to play or how JT likes to call. It has been really positive so far that integration. JT is not going to do something he doesn't agree with, he will be like 'I like it this way but we can try that', he is very confident in his abilities for that. My main thing was I wanted to bring the stuff I liked from Liquid but I didn't want to change that [structure] and his mentality makes it very easy for that not to be an issue. That was my only worry, I know I have a lot of good things to offer and a lot of good structure things to add to make our game more consistent and make the game easier to read on the CT side. JT's mentality makes it very easy to make sure nothing is being overstepped and he is not agreeing to stuff he doesn't agree with, so I'm really happy with that aspect of it and there are a lot of positive things we have been adding to our game.

You have been working with JT for two weeks, how does his calling compare to nitr0's?

Honestly, he is really similar to how nitr0 has called his entire career. It is something I am really used to in terms of how he likes to structure the rounds and how he wants people to be playing. I would say that JT does a really good job at microing whereas nitr0 wasn't really much of someone who would micro in the mid-round. Nick had a lot of great ideas in the early to mid round but mid to late he wasn't someone who would micro a ton of options, it was more of a collective effort to make sure that is being done. Whereas JT is the main 'microer' on this team as opposed to a secondary IGL or someone else doing most of the microing. That's the main comparison, they are really similar in terms of structure and idea of how they want to play the game.

What can we expect tomorrow in the match against NIP?

Overall we have had a really good bootcamp, we haven't been super results orientated about our scrims. It is going to be really interesting to see how it goes for our first official, where we are putting everything into winning every single round rather than just practicing things. I'm not really sure exactly about the map pool as they made a change with their IGL and when you make an IGL change, teams aren't necessarily going to be preferring one map or the other because of the change. There is a bit of a question mark over the map both of us are going to go for, but overall I'm confident...they have had a similar amount of catching up as we have had to do during the last two weeks so it should be a pretty even match. I'm confident we will be able to win it but I think they are a really good first matchup for us.

hampus missed six months of this year, is that worse for them or for you because you have no information about his calling in recent times?

I don't think it is a crazy amount of time away from the game where he is not going to be into the meta or anything like that. I have a good idea of how he has played in the past and how he likes to call. It is more about how they have changed, and thankfully they played in the Gamers8 qualifier, so we have a bit more information on them than they have on us going into this match.

Does the new hairstyle mean anything deeper or is it just a normal change for you?

I was just sick of looking at myself and judging myself so for me it was more of a case of just moving on. I felt like with the change of me going from Liquid to Complexity I wanted to have a different...like not having to worry about external things like that. Overall I'm pretty happy with it and I don't think it looks bad, I'm happy about it and I don't have to worry about not liking how I look any more or anything like that. So it's just a different positive attitude I want to keep going for myself.