I got a chance to interview Christian "IWillDominate" Rivera after Team Liquid came out on top of the third place match of the NA LCS playoffs against Team Impulse. Before the interview, Dominate drops down in his seat asking for a few minutes to himself to compose himself after the thrilling conclusion of the fourth and final game of the 3-1 victory, eating some snacks until he deemed himself ready. The entire interview, Dominate was calm, confident, and bore a weary but happy smile.

How’s it feel to win the third place match against TiP?

It feels really good but if TSM doesn’t end up beating CLG then it means almost nothing so I hope they win so we can go to Worlds.

So who do you think will win between TSM and CLG tomorrow?

We’ve been scrimming against both teams a lot so I have a feeling that TSM will win.

What do you think the score will be?

3-0 or 3-1 for sure.

Given how far TL has come with problems at the beginning of the season, how would you say you feel about how much you’ve accomplished since then?

It feels good and I think we’ve been doing well but we haven’t accomplished what I’ve really wanted to accomplish which was to win NA. It’s just really hard to gauge it because we still have communication issues and there are some comps we can’t play yet because of those communication issues. For me it’s mainly just proof of it because between the end of last season until now we haven’t gotten much better, so we were able to elevate our game to a good enough place where we can beat most NA teams. [I’d like to reach] a point where we can elevate our game to the next level to win NA and perform well at Worlds.

From here to Worlds, how much more do you feel is realistic for an improving goal by the time Worlds comes?

I mean, I think if we could make it out of groups at Worlds, then that’d be more than I could ask for. If we went from a team that was in sixth place a few months ago to potentially getting out of groups, it would feel really good so for me, we just really need to figure out what to improve on because I feel like we haven’t begun making huge strides.

Speaking of international, who do you want to face at Worlds the most?

The best teams. I mean it’d be nice to make it out of groups and be able to play teams like LGD, EDG, SKT, one of those great teams and just get smashed by them because it’ll give you such a good learning experience. You could feel how they play in-game and you could improve on how to adapt or copy what they do.

As a follow up, who do you think you’ll match up the best against at Worlds, not including NA teams of course?

I think we could do well against teams that have loose styles like Impulse, kinda like EDG or something I think we’d match up decently, because we play similar but they’re just better than us at it. But I think they’d be a better match against us than like SKT, LGD, QG, basically a team that just does things that we don’t do better than us and they’d just smash us.

So they’ve said that games at Worlds on patch 5.18 and there won’t be any competitive games from 5.15 to 5.18 until Worlds, how do you feel about that? The meta could change so dramatically without official experimentation.

I just have the same thoughts on like what they did with the new champions they just changed like Skarner is actually insane right now. The champion right now has the highest win rate on any reworked or new champion to ever be released I think. I assume they’ll tone those champions down but if not it could be really a boring stagnant Worlds where you don’t have a lot of meta options and you just end up choosing or banning the same champions over and over again so everything just gets reduced to being the same thing every game.

So with that in mind, how much would it benefit you to have pocket picks? Do you think it’ll benefit you more than other teams?

I think it would. If you’re an underdog team like us at worlds or any tournament you’re not going to beat them with standard teams or things they’re used to so I think if that happened it’d be good.

Final question, if this TL lineup stays together for next season, how well do you expect yourselves to do next season? I know there are a lot of variables up in the air like other teams having roster changes, foreign imports…

It’s really really tough to say but I’d say top two [if this lineup stays together].

Alright, thanks again for the interview and congrats again on the win.