“The mood in the team is good, although no one is happy, we are improving”

Virtus.Pro had a tough tournament, losing to Immortals, SK and Heroic in the group stage of ESL One Cologne. After the tournament ended early for them, Wiktoz “TaZ” Wojtas gave an interview about the team’s problems this year.

Virtus.Pro continued to struggle, as they were eliminated from the group stage in all three of the major events they attended: IEM Katowice, StarSeries S3 and the current ESL One Cologne. In Germany, VP looked good in the opening game against Immortals, but SK and Heroic really weren’t easy.

^{Virtus.Pro is on the right track, although they didn’t show it in Cologne, says TaZ}

After being eliminated from the tournament, TaZ talked about team problems, relegation, and other dilemmas.

The team got off to a good start at the start of the year, runner-up at the ELEAGUE Major, and winning the DreamHack Masters Las Vegas, and then two bad tournaments came to the team. Tell everyone how the team went through that phase, from being at the top to falling into terrible form, how do you feel?

It wasn’t easy, we had a good start at the beginning of the year, but I really think the China event (WESG 2016) was a huge failure. Overall, it looks like 2017 was on the right track, we were strong and everything was smooth. But after Vegas, I think the team became complacent, but we were able to do something, experiment with our play.

The thing is, I don’t think we played poorly at Katowice, I think the team had a good tournament. We lost two tight maps at the beginning, to Na`Vi and North. We almost came back against North at Cobblestone and they won the round force-buy. Against Na`Vi, I think we started well at Train, but then the team lost that advantage and let them win. And finally, the match against Heroic, unfortunately we picked Heroic’s best map. It’s also a pretty strong map with overalls, they implemented well and surprised us.

Overall, I feel Katowice is a good tournament for the team, I feel comfortable attending the next events. But we changed a lot of things after Katowice, we practiced in other aspects of the game, but I think the team forgot how to play the game: play simply, the same way we always played. Adapt to the opponent and play simple, not some crazy strategy cards, right?

And we were destroyed at StarLadder S3, then the team changed some things in the game, we changed the IGL (in-game leadership), we changed positions. Basically what we do is change the roster. For example, because I have been playing Nuke for 17 years in the position of always on the ‘uppter site’ (bomb A), and now I am on the ramp again. For me, this is the first three months of playing on the ramp at Nuke. And the same goes for other maps. It took time to adapt, and during this time the team had to play Pro League, and we played really badly.

All in all, to make it short, we had a good start to the year, but then we lost our heads at Katowice, and Starladder. I feel like the team is getting better and better, but we just haven’t shown that in the tournament. Right now we’re ‘boot camp’, and hopefully we’ll be able to show it off in Krakow. If we can’t do it, we need to rest, and then, in a good mood, the team will start all over again.

^{An unexpected dark period after Virtus.Pro’s success at DreamHack Masters Las Vegas}

Then something happened that the team was relegated to ESEA Premier. Although it was only online, it marked the team’s relegation to second place. The team feels hurt, more than people think?

Of course it hurts, it’s not that we don’t care about Pro League or ECS, we are all interested in online tournaments because the league’s LAN events are great; and getting media attention is a great thing at those events. So it’s really bad that we can’t play in the Pro League next season, but it hit our pride that we need to focus more on playing online. Not only the important games but also the training games. We used to let loose in training games, and we needed to change it, and we’re changing it now.

And maybe it’s good for us, of course, that there’s going to be a lot of jokes about Virtus.Premier (pun) – in a funny way – but it’s also a good thing to wake us up and playing against teams that we often have difficulty with. We always have the hardest time against the second tier teams, sometimes even the lower tier teams. We usually play on par with the opponent’s team. Therefore, if the team learns from the Premier to play against those teams, we will recover faster.

Speaking of the current tournament, on the map against Immortals, the team performed well, something that people haven’t seen before. But in the end, the Immortals were the winning team. Can you talk about that game, what went wrong?

Basically, I think it went pretty well. We played poorly on CT, I didn’t play my best on CT at Cobblestone, the map I played very well. Other than that, I think it’s because boltz always pushes us, we’re always ready to push for about 10 rounds, and then boltz push in the round right after the technical break. . It sucks, but that’s what happened, boltz had the guts to do it.

Then we entered the ‘alley’, and just lacked tactical deployment. When we took out lucas, it should have been pushing into ‘matrix’, taking ‘alley’, but everyone paused for about 2 seconds to give kNg time to shine. Those decisions, in my opinion, decide the whole game. If we had won rounds like that, it could have been closer, maybe extra time or something like that. But it was a really good match, I think.

^{VP takes their opponents too seriously in the match as one of their problems}

After that, he lost to SK, which is not a big surprise considering SK’s recent form; and again the team faced Heroic in the elimination match. And again, Heroic seeing off VP, tell me about that, is the approach to the game different, compared to the Katowice tournament? What happened in the match?

Obviously we don’t let Heroic play Nuke. We wanted to play on other maps, and we got to play Cobblestone. And then you see we lost miserably on the T side. It was heartbreaking to play and heartbreaking when we watched replays of that match.

I think this is something the team should learn from and take a different approach while we play. It feels like we’ve overestimated our opponents in the game. It seems the other teams don’t take anyone seriously. Right now, Counter-Strike is all about pushing, it’s about active play, and playing with simple strategy. When you want to deploy, do cool, colorful things with smoke, you will be very lucky if you deploy without any casualties.

So I think this will give the team a new approach to the game. Of course, we should have played smarter and more prepared, which we didn’t. Therefore, it was our fault that we lost, we overestimated the active teams and they destroyed us.

The team doesn’t have… much time before the Major in Poland, its home tournament. You talked about that, but tell me more about the current mentality and goals of the team, what does the team really want to do, what to fix and what to change over the next few days?

I think it’s just about how to control time. We need to play the maps, change a little bit of the approach we talked about, play more proactively and try to enjoy the game, see how it goes. There’s nothing to stress or pressure over because we’ve already lost a few events, which will result in the team being disbanded.

This just puts more pressure on each member, on the team, and you think they’ll play well. And there are events, just enough pressure on the teams. We do not force ourselves in any way that might humiliate the members. We’re going to play the game our way, and hopefully, show the good side of Virtus.Pro, because you guys haven’t seen it in half a year.

^{TaZ feels no concern from pasha’s comment (comment)}

Do you have any comments on pasha’s facebook post, what do we really understand, what does he really mean?

I don’t think it’s that serious, that we have a big problem in the team. It was just a voice to the fan and everyone about how he thought what was going on with the team, that we weren’t standing and were just looking around, that we were doing our best and it wasn’t working. fruit. Maybe you should ask pasha directly, because if you ask me, I can tell that the mood in the team is still good, although no one is happy, but we are improving. That is the attitude of the team, we will improve until the team wins. It has worked for the last three years and even if we don’t have the same big winning streak as other teams, we always come back. We’ll see if members can do this again. Hopefully, we can.

Source: HLTV