flameZ: "Astralis won 3 majors, but they haven't won 2 Grand Slams."

It doesn’t need repeating how well Vitality have done this season. What could use some repeating however, is praise for flameZ’ individual year so far. The entry has been Vitality’s secret weapon all year, so when XTQZZZ told us about a change in routine, we got curious.

Media day gave us a great opportunity to satisfy that curiosity, by asking the man himself. We talked to flameZ about his new routine, Vitality’s attempt at “peaking at the right time,” and the ammo update.

We recently spoke to your coach about your improvement. He mentioned you had a new routine, I was curious to know what you changed?

I think mostly, when I was working hard I was just grinding matches, like playing FACEIT. The thing that I changed about it was taking more time to work individually, on aim just to separate what I'm working on. Just aim, Refrag, aimbotz, whatever I feel comfortable at.

The second thing is preparing for games, just watching more CS, analyzing myself more, and watching what I can improve, my mistakes, what people can understand about me. I think that made a difference also in efficiency. We play 4,5 praccs a day, the 6th, 7th, 8th, game is not gonna be that sharp or focused as the first or the second. It's a bit better for me.

I think obviously at some point I will come back to playing FACEIT or any platform that offers 5v5, because I also enjoy playing the game.

But for now, what's good for me is I have more time to work on the things that I need to work on instead of just playing. [On FACEIT] you don't control what map you're going to play, you can't work on the specifics you want to work on.

Do you think that part of that is understanding the game more now that you analyse yourself more?

So, I think that when I was running into issues I was feeling like I don't have answers to a lot of the questions in the game. I wouldn't know what to do against certain teams, they would do something good, and I'm just clueless. I felt like I wanted to have the answers. So I would watch that until I felt like I had a few answers, and then I would feel really confident in a game.

That confidence alone is going to make me shine more and kill.

But also on the other end, I know how to set myself up a bit more. Obviously apEX is a former entry, so he knows a lot of the time how to help me kill. He kind of feels when I would want a flash, when a HE would be good for me. But also, I know for myself a bit more what I want to do in this round. That helps apEX a lot, and that helps me as well, to just put myself in positions where I'm really comfortable.

I think mainly in CS, it's not about how fast you can shoot. Obviously there's players like donk who are on the extreme side of that. But also, a lot of the time it's that their positioning is really good, and that they put themselves into really good situations. That's something that allows the really good players to perform like that.

What would your advice be to the upcoming entries who are playing FACEIT?

I think to be honest, if you're young and an upcoming player, you have to grind FACEIT. When you're in tier 1, you don't have to grind as much. You can take a step back from the grinding department of FACEIT, and grind other things.

I think there aren't really roles on FACEIT, you just have to make yourself win. You can call, you can bait, you can AWP, you can do whatever you want. Your only mission is to show yourself up in the ELO, and have a good rating. People will start looking at you, and potentially you get a team. Then you can kind of build your habbits. If you're 15, 16, 17, and you have insane aim just use it to win games and show yourself in the top 10 of FACEIT.

Just grind out?

Absolutely.

About the team, you were talking about peaking at the right time in an interview around Cluj. Now you've won that event, and you've had some rest, do you guys have a different view on that?

You know the thing with Vitality is that every event we say this event is going to be a bit more chill. Then we come into it and it's not chill, we do the same things.

The only difference is the prep before the event, this time we had 10 days off after we came back from Cluj. Then we had two weeks of practice, and those two weeks weren't the best weeks of practice. Sometimes practice is a bit shit, the enemy team doesn't care about practicing, they care about winning. So you get some bad practice, two per day and you waste some of the games.

This kind of prep is not that good, but you also come into Rotterdam and we know that we're going to give our best and those practices are not going to reflect.

Obviously Rio is going to be an important tournament, because we want to win the Grand Slam. If not that tournament, then IEM Atlanta is taking the priority. If not that, then obviously the Cologne Major. Either way, it's going to take priority because we can win the Grand Slam, and the Major.

Cologne is the highest priority, but you have the Grand Slam which is like one point five priority, not number two even. Because we want to establish an era, we want to do things other teams didn't do.

Astralis won 3 majors, but they haven't won 2 Grand Slams.

Just to end it off, I want to ask about the reload update. This event you're not playing on it yet, but have you had time to play on it, and will it change anything?

We have practiced a bit, I think the only difference is you gotta remember not to shoot shit bullets, like shoot and reload insta. So I think it's a bit of muscle memory.

I think you will for sure have two, three situations that you're gonna fuck up, and you're gonna shoot some bullets. I played with it, and I don't think it's going to make a big difference for the riflers. I think the only thing potentially is that you need to spam smoke less if you're not sure. But again, you have two magazines more, there is still late round so many weapons on the floor.

I think potentially if you're just starting out the game, it might be annoying to you. Because you know, you shoot like 15 bullets and want to reload because you need a lot of bullets if your aim is not that good. But I think for the pros, for the lvl 10s, 9s, 8s Faceit, is not gonna change their life. Maybe with the USP, glock isn't gonna make a difference, but with the USP sometimes you spam a few bullets through a smoke, and then you have one magazine left if you reload by chance.

It also gets annoying, because if you shoot like 3 bullets you'll have 9. You want to have those 12, you're gonna want those extra three so you might reload. But again, most of the time enemies are gonna execute, or the enemy is gonna push something pretty straight forward on the pistol. So you don't have a lot of question marks, you have only one thing to do.

Vitality will face the winner of Aurora vs The MongolZ on Saturday, the 28th of March at BLAST Open Rotterdam.