After being relegated as a part of MeetYourMakers, Jesper ”Jwaow” Strandgren accepted an offer to play in the revised Elements lineup.
And after scrimming together for a few weeks, the Swede is now looking forward to performing on the LCS stage.
– Everything feels great now, this is a team that can become really good, he tells Aftonbladet Esport.

Before the spring split, Elements were named as one of the top contenders in the European LCS. But as the season progressed, the results were lackluster and in the end they had to fight to avoid the qualifiers. After the last game, news started leaking that a major overhaul was imminent and sources told Aftonbladet Esport that one of the players coming into the team was Swedish top laners Jesper ”Jwaow” Strandgren. The past week the lineup was finally presented, with Jwaow in the squad.
– They had a tryout with me and I was the only one they had in mind. So I played with them for a couple of weeks before I went to Berlin again. Nyph asked me and it felt great because it is a team that could become good, Jwaow tells Aftonbladet Esport.

”promisq has performed well in scrims”

A surprise for many was the inclusion of support player Hampus ”promisq” Abrahamsson, a solo queue player that has never been tested on the big stage.
– Nobody knew about him. We played with Krepo at first, but he told us he didn’t want to play competitively anymore so we started looking at top Challenger players. We said that we could try him out so we played a couple of games. It worked out good, he has good mechanics and is a great guy. It was a bit risky to take a random player but everyone seems pleased and he has performed well in scrims. We’ll just have to see how he performs on stage.
Jwaow says that a lot of voices have been raised, criticising their pick. But he feels that promisq will show he belongs in the LCS.
– I think he’ll come in and show a lot of people that they were wrong.

”We played close games against Fnatic”

What’s the feeling in the lineup now, after you’ve been playing together for a while?
– It’s a whole new thing, and the problems that Elements had within the lineup is gone. The other players didn’t have very good chemistry and that’s an important part. You have to have a good synergy and trust each other. We like to do things together outside of the game too. Friendship is important, you have to be able to grab a few drinks together.
– And the scrims have been working well. We have good communication and have played the best teams. We’ve played close games against Fnatic and even won against them. Since it’s scrims you can’t exactly count that but we played good against them, that’s probably the best we’ve done so far. But it’s a lot of ups and downs, so we have to be more consistent and play on our top level. That’s what we’re working on now.

What did you think when you saw Fnatic perform so good at the Mid Season Invitational? Does it feel like the European scene has become better?
– When we saw Fnatic against SKT we thought that SKT didn’t play as good as they normally do. Fnatic played really good but SKT made a lot of mistakes. Then when you think that we’ve scrimmed against them a lot before MSI you think that we might be able to perform that good too. But Fnatic seem to play better on stage. I don’t know how we’ll perform up there. That’s something we’re looking forward to discover.

”Origen have a lot of experience”

– The European LCS wasn’t extremely good last split, but there were some teams that could perform. But I think the level has increased for the summer split. MYM are out, Origen are in. They’re really good, we’ve scrimmed against them too. They have a lot of experience from Worlds and tournaments like that. I think the skill level has increased a lot and that Europe is looking very good.

What kind of expectations do you have on yourself and the team for the coming split?
– Top three is what you want. I have no idea how we’ll play on stage and how good the other teams are. It’s a long split and anything can happen. A lot of teams have changed lineups and coaches. Some teams will perform better and some teams will perform worse than last split. But I think we’ll do pretty good, it feels like we can be top three.
– And before I joined MYM I almost didn’t play League of Legends at all, so I wasn’t too good at first. But in the end I started coming into my own. I learned a lot and it felt like when I left MYM I had reached a higher level. Once upon a time I was always better than Vizicsacsi, Odoamne and the other top laners, so now I’m trying to reach the top of the LCS.