apEX on Team Vitality: “We definitely underperform at times.”

apEX: We definitely underperform at times. To be honest, our failure at the Esports World Cup was a huge wake-up call for us. French fans were furious with our performance, and most of that criticism was rightly directed at me, since I’ve unfortunately always underperformed in tournaments of this series. We really wanted to put up a good showing, but we completely fell short. That disappointing loss to Team Spirit on Mirage left a lot of questions unanswered. But there’s a silver lining: after that, we put in a tremendous amount of work on that map. Sometimes a team simply needs such severe slumps to critically reevaluate its performance on the server and once again stay one step ahead of its opponents. We held the lead for a long time, but at some point we lost our advantage, so we had to thoroughly analyze the current meta and understand the reasons for our failures. Our team’s greatest strength lies in our ability to recognize our weaknesses in time and quickly address them. Our roster is made up of incredibly experienced players and true workaholics, so we’re always finding new approaches to maps instead of mindlessly repeating the same old strategies.

apEX: Last time, in a match against PARIVISION on Inferno, I set a record by dealing about 900 damage with grenades while on defense. This time, I only managed 500, so I was a little disappointed in myself. We joked about how flameZ got 16 kills but dealt less average damage per round than I did with my seven kills. Someone joked that I’m the best at grenades, and it’s true—I throw a lot of them. If you look at our team’s damage stats on Inferno, unlike our opponents, we always deal more damage. So it’s not just my doing, even though I love this style. My gameplay on Inferno boils down to dealing damage to opponents with grenades, providing information to my teammates, and then they just land headshots with the M4 and close out the round.

mezii: They’re looking really good right now. Any international team always needs time to get into a rhythm, especially when Turkish players have to get used to switching languages and new players have to gel with each other. When we played against them for the first time, their style seemed a little strange to us, since we’d never faced them before, but we adapted quickly in the final. On an individual level, the players are dealing massive damage. Jimpphat is playing incredibly well—when a team has such a consistent anchor who can step up at the right moment and single-handedly secure a point with two kills, it really helps the team. Woxic’s clutch plays are also insane. Aurora Gaming is gradually finding its rhythm and striking a balance, while kyxsan is building coordination around the roster. On stage, Wicadia always impresses me; he’s the true star player on this team and is delivering great results, fitting perfectly into the current lineup.