ImAPet: "We started [considering changes] when we plateaued"

We spoke to NRG's coach, Chet "⁠Chet⁠" Singh, on day one of StarSeries i-League Season 7 and quizzed him about the addition of Tarik "⁠tarik⁠" Celik and the team's start at the Chinese event.

NRG kicked off their debut with tarik on the right foot, defeating their 2018 rivals North in the first round of the Swiss group stage. In the series, the North American side picked up their first-ever LAN victory on Dust2, a map they had previously avoided, and went on to close out the best-of-three with a 16-0 thrashing on Train.

After the match, we asked the coach, Chet, about why NRG needed a change and tarik's addition, as well as how the new lineup dealt with role changes.

Given the timing of tarik's signing, which was quite close to the ending of the Major, it almost looked like you were considering the change before Katowice, can you elaborate on how that came about?

It all started when we thought we plateaued a little bit in terms of performance. Obviously, when we won cs_summit, it gave us more longevity in our lineup, but shortly after, we bombed out of Odense and we needed to figure out what we want to do, do we want to make a change and risk it and maybe we'll get better and maybe we'll get worse, or do we want to stay the same always? I think everyone agreed that they wanted to further their career and get into the top five and solidify themselves and we figured we really needed a change for that. We decided before the Major that if everything goes well and we get top four, then we would probably keep the lineup, but if we didn't get top four or even make Legends, then we would change. It was kind of ongoing, we were considering making it, but we wanted to give FugLy a decent chance to prove his spot.

So was the Major somewhat of an ultimatum or did the change happen because you got that option of adding tarik?

Well, we also wanted tarik because he's an experienced player and he makes a lot of plays and good suggestions. We felt like we needed something fresh in our team just to bring motivation back, so maybe even if we reached our goal we probably wouldn't have kept the lineup, but it's hard to say. It definitely feels like we needed to do something. Like I said, I felt like we plateaued a little bit.

So far it looks like it's not just a plug-and-play change as tarik and FugLy are quite different players, how did you deal with that? How much of a change was it role-wise?

FugLy was more of a lurker and a solo site player, so we kind of split up the duties a bit. tarik takes some spots directly, like Mirage, he plays CT side upper B and kind of plays the same T side role, but then on other maps he has more freedom, he plays lane on Inferno. We gave him chances to pick and choose what he likes and we work around it, so daps took more of FugLy's roles, but not the lurking sense, he's part of the core.

With tarik we got someone who fills in some of the spots but also brings on more entry potential for us, and I think that's something we lacked before. We had more defensive, passive players and tarik's more aggressive but still very mindful of what he's doing. I think that's the biggest change, so it's not a basic plug-and-play, we worked around the system a lot.

At what kind of level are you going into StarSeries with about a month's worth of preparation?

We had a bootcamp and it was a pretty productive bootcamp, but at the same time, the level of practice wasn't so great. Our minimum goal is to make playoffs, it'd be nice to make like top four, but I think we're shooting for playoffs to see how we fare against other European teams because we don't really know how our map pool is stacking against good opposition. We're in NA playing against Mountain Dew League teams and that's the best practice we can get, so it's kind of hard to tell where we're standing.

Going into your first match here, you know North very well from playing them so much over the past year...

Too much.

Well, exactly - how do you approach a match like this, one that you know so well?

I think this time around we had the upper hand because they usually antistrat us a lot and this time, we don't have as many demos they can watch, so we had more of a surprise factor on them. Also, we never used to play Dust2 and I think that caught them off-guard, they thought it might have been an easy win. Even in the pregame chat, when we were doing the knife round cadiaN said like 'you know this is your permaban when you don't know where to do the knife round,' so they got caught off-guard by our preparation. We had that upper hand and the surprise factor going into it this time.

daps correctly pointed out that this is the first time he has ever won Dust2 with NRG, did you start putting more focus on it with tarik?

We tried it with FugLy once before, but it failed miserably, so we stopped with that. With tarik, we have great aimers, a great AWPer, a great IGL, I think we have all the right pieces for Dust2. It's a pretty simple map, I think anyone can pick it up, it's not like Nuke where you have to learn all the rotations and all these reactions, Dust2 is more free-flowing, so I think it fits our playstyle better.

16-0 on Train is not something we see very often, how did that happen?

It also came a huge part down to the knife round, we were able to get the CT side. We just played our standard game, we knew what they like to do and I guess they didn't really know what we like to do since we haven't played it much. We just did our pushes, timed them right, we didn't play scared... I think that's the one thing that was good, as we were up we made sure to keep having the momentum, keep going for plays, that's one thing we lacked before. Beforehand we would be passive, but with this lineup it feels like we really get in their face and prove that we're the better team.

What are your thoughts on the recent economy change?

I think the economy change is good just because you can't get instantly reset, but I think the biggest problem is let's say you win six rounds in a row, the other team gets two 3,400 bonuses. I think there needs to be some kind of cap, once you hit five it can't keep going, it should go down lower each time. As you win, there isn't a lot of reward for it besides getting the round, you can't really keep their money honest, they always get 3400. Versus North, even though the economy didn't play too much of a factor, let's say we lost on round nine or something, they would have just had full money for the rest of the game. It's a bit of a joke, it should reduce to 2900 instantly. Maybe there will be an adjustment, but knowing Valve it will be after the Major (laughs), I'm not expecting anything fast.