Interview
With Save- and Nightfall
Vitalie "Save-" Melnic and Egor "Nightfall" Grigorenko talk about Virtus.pro’s disappointing run at the WePlay AniMajor. The team’s support and carry share how their expectations failed for the second Major in a row, touching on their drafts and how they realized they need outside help to prepare for TI10.
Source: - (19.06.21) (by Virtus.pro)
Team’s performance
Nightfall: “Right now our team plays official matches worse than scrims. We make critical mistakes that usually don’t happen in our games.”
Save-: “We made a lot of macro mistakes we shouldn't have. Or maybe we didn’t focus on that quite as much when we were playing against weaker teams. The teams at the major punish you a lot harder for those.”
“My personal opinion is that this DPC system is not well thought out. Yes, maybe it would’ve been better for our team to start from the group stage, warm up, play officials, and experience the meta instead of starting straight from playoffs. But in any case this isn’t an excuse for us. Both finalists PSG.LGD and EG started from the playoffs as well.”
Drafts
Save-: “The current meta allows you to play a variety of playstyles. Every team plays differently, the way they are comfortable. Speaking about our team, this particular tournament meta didn’t really affect us all that much. We played the same strats we prepared with.”
“We had a few options during game 1 vs Team Nigma. We already had Templar Assassin to carry the game, so we didn’t need an actual position 1. We decided to flex Mars there when last picking Kunkka, because it was a good game for him. We played this way in scrims, we had experience of these kinds of games, so we thought it would work out.”
Nightfall: “Talking about Spectre specifically, we underestimated the hero’s strength a bit. We played a lot of scrims against Spectre, but we won almost all of them. So we thought it’s impact in the game looked weak. Obviously, Spectre had an impact in the Major matches, but I wouldn’t say it was key for all three of our losses [Both games vs Nigma and game 1 vs VG]. It wasn’t about that particular hero.”
“After the first Major we realized that playing the same way we used to is a bit ineffective in an offline environment and that it would be more effective to be more active. Taking the series vs Nigma as an example, I think we had good strategies there: Magnus plus Ursa in game 1 and Templar Assassin in game 2. These heroes are very strong at any stage of the game right now and are strong pressure strategies which can also win in the late game if you use their strengths correctly.
Plans before TI10
Save-: “Back at the end of 2020, when we won EPIC League, we thought we didn’t have much to worry about, that everything was fine. Then at the One Esports Singapore Major we realized we had problems. We tried to solve them, but the process didn’t go as fast as we needed it to. After this second Major we are now completely convinced we need some kind of outside help. We are at a final stage of finding a person to help solve our issues from the outside point of view. It might not be an in-game coach, but a specialist in some other aspects to best equip us for The International 10”
Nightfall: “It would be nice to play more official matches if we will have that chance. We also had a plan to go to China to play against their teams, but it might not be practical. We would have to spend two week in a random hotel, isolated in one room. Plus it would be harder to get the TI VISA from China itself. So we’ll just do the usual review of mistakes we made at this event and attempt to fix them before TI.”
Closing thoughts
Nightfall: “It was very painful to drop out of the Major taking 12th place. We really wanted to play well here and show what we can do, but it is what it is. I would like to thank all our fans for their support and apologize for this performance. We will try to do better next time.”
Save-: “Our team still lacks experience in certain situations. But in any case, this is good material to work on in the future. We will try to do everything in our power to fix our mistakes before The International 10. Thanks for your support.”
Translator: dfs
