dupreeh: "We don't want to be reliant on one guy"

The Dane gave his thoughts on a variety of topics, ranging from the team's focus on not putting all of their eggs in one basket to the state of best-of-ones in a CT-sided meta.

Vitality managed to get their first win in the PGL Major Antwerp's Legends stage after a first day in which they went 0-2, losing back-to-back best-of-ones to Ninjas in Pyjamas and Outsiders. Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire's men did so in a do-or-die elimination match against Liquid, knocking out the North American squad from the tournament while keeping their own chances of reaching the playoffs alive, albeit in a deadly 1-2 pool which includes the likes of G2, Cloud9, BIG and Outsiders.

After eliminating Liquid, one of Vitality's riflers, Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen, took some time to answer HLTV's questions regarding the team's state at the Major after a 3-0 start in the Challengers stage and the ensuing 0-2 in the Legends stage, while briefly veering off topic to discuss the problems of having a CT-sided meta when going into important best-of-one matches.

Congratulations on your first win in this Legends stage after a pretty rough first day. You guys seemed visibly frustrated at points yesterday, so what did you to bring it back and get a good frame of mind for today?

The only thing that mattered yesterday was that we were not eliminated from the tournament, which was not a possibility, but we had a really shit day at the office. Nothing was working, our communication was off and individually we were way off. In that sense, it was not just one guy, it was the entire team, so when you play best-of-ones you just end up losing and find yourself 0-2, which is what happened.

I think it's important for any athlete to remind yourself that at this stage, going 0-2, there's only one way going forward and that's taking it one game at a time, which is what we're trying to do now after getting our first win.

At the same time, it's still in our hands. It would have been horrible if we were in a situation in which we were depending on other teams winning, but it's still up to us. We know it's going to be tough, the next game can be even more tough, and the qualifying game can be really tough. We know we have to beat the good teams if we want to be in the arena, it's not something we're not prepared for, but it's something we have to deal with. If you want to be the best team in the world you also have to beat everyone, so.

One of the stories with Vitality is you trying to find comfort for both the Danish side and the French side. I was talking to Magisk and he mentioned that at first you were playing the Vitality style, but now trying to find a common ground. How is that evolving?

I think it has become a lot better, ESL Pro League was probably a wake-up call for us because maybe we focused on too much advanced stuff. We wanted to have the best of both worlds but it didn't really work out the way we wanted it to. So we decided to go bootcamp after that and we simply had to sit down and rethink the whole thing because we didn't even have the basics going on. We didn't have a proper default, we had no idea what we wanted to do in defaults, people were failing nades and misunderstanding each other. We just didn't feel comfortable.

It was all about taking one step back to realize that we're not playing well right now and to really get the fundamentals going, which is what we worked on. I think that's one of the main reasons why the communication so far is a lot better than it was at the beginning. It's still not perfect, at all, but it's better in the sense that we don't have this thing going on in the team... we still have it sometimes, but not as much as back in the days, saying like 'oh, I thought you were holding me,' or 'I thought you were doing this,' or 'didn't you say you did that?' That kind of stuff. We don't have that doubt in the team anymore, which is the first big step that we've taken.

I was really happy about the 3-0 Challengers stage that we just came from, but that's one of the reasons we played bad yesterday, we came in with some sort of confidence and wanted to keep going and keep rolling, but we realized that 'oh, shit, it's not going that good!' Everything started falling apart, so yesterday was important just to have a team talk and realize that we have to reset and try to do our best again.

One of the things with the previous Vitality roster is that they had a bit of a reliance on ZywOo, with apEX even saying at the previous Major that he had to step up or they would get eliminated. Is there that expectation in the team that he has to carry games or is it more spread out since you and Magisk joined the team?

Maybe a bit yes and no. I think it's more spread out now, we all contribute a lot more, but at the same time ZywOo will just have games where he goes off and we take that as a huge bonus. The most important thing for us is that we all play well as a team, that's what we want to achieve.

We don't want to be reliant on one guy because when it happens that he has a bad game — which doesn't happen that often —, but once it does, we won't play well and that sucks. It kind of shows that you're putting all of your eggs in one basket, but we want to be a consistent team that's good because we're a good team and do good things together, and other times we spice it up with individual performances.

I think it's good for the team that it's balanced, and it's good for ZywOo in particular, although he's not the kind of guy that pressure gets to him in that sense, at least you don't feel it. I remember back in the days, at the last Major when apEX said that if he doesn't perform they will go out, he just started killing everyone. He just plays the game for fun and is really good at it, but I think it's important that everyone contributes.

You're sitting in the 1-2 pool now, which is looking pretty deadly. How do you feel going into tomorrow, are you confident or is there some doubt? What's the atmosphere in the team like?

Today was an important mental win, mainly for us to realize that we still have what it takes to win games, obviously. We know we're potentially going up against a tough opponent and we'll have another one if we win tomorrow. So yeah, it's going to be tough and there's a lot of good teams. It's been messy so far and the Major seems really open right now. If you don't beat the good teams you don't deserve to be in the playoffs, I guess that's how I see it.

We need to beat at least one good team to go through and there's no bad team here. It's kind of weird saying there are no bad teams, we just have to take it one game at a time. I don't care if it's G2 or BIG or whoever it might be, that's just how the game is. Sometimes you get a lucky draw, others you get a bad draw, but that's how it is.

It's been pretty wild with CPH Flames and Spirit playing to go 3-0 and teams like G2 in the 1-2 pool. I've been enjoying it because there have already been a lot of interesting match-ups throughout, but how is it for you on the inside?

I think that the whole best-of-one thing is really entertaining in some ways, but at the same time it can be pretty tough. If you just have a bad day as a team, as we did yesterday, you can go 0-2. We had some crazy match-ups in the first round, and I think the main reason is probably because there are so many good teams.

Back in the days, going into the playoffs, it felt like 'OK, we're at least among the top 8 teams in the world,' but now it seems like there's 16 teams that can just beat each other. At the same time, there is a bit of randomness coming from the best-of-ones and I have to put a word in about the CT meta right now with the M4A1-S. Starting on the CT side in a best-of-one, if you just get rolling, it's ridiculous.

We put out a piece about it a while back, and some of the pros that we interviewed seemed quite OK with the meta. How do you feel about it? Do you think something should be changed after this Major?

It's very difficult to say, we've had the T-side meta with the SG, the CT meta with the AUG and now with the M4. I think that it seems like they're trying to find the balance but it keeps going in one direction. I don't know, maybe make the silencer a bit less accurate or make it cost a bit more. I think that's just it. It's hard to find the right balance because if they decide to upgrade the AK or something that may just get completely out of hand, you know? I don't know what it is.

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Expert take: What to do with the M4A1-S? (ft. ropz, ALEX, Plopski)

I think it's also because of the long range. You can barely win any long range duels against an M4A1-S right now. It's a really shitty duel, which it wasn't back in the days, it kind of forces you to play the game in a different way. When you played with the old M4, the spacing you needed to have as T was different. Now you have to be a bit more apart than back in the days, before it was important to be up close [to your teammate], but now you have to be a bit more apart because the spray transfer from one to the second is so easy and you'll end up getting a double kill since you only need 4 bullets per person.

There's a lot going into it, but I'd like to have the silencer nerfed just a tiny bit. When you see players like b1t with the big M4, it's like 'this guy is crazy! He's a giga chad, he just wants to play with the big M4 and prove that he's better than everyone else.' [laughs] But yeah, a bit of a nerf would be nice.

Finally, I had one question thought up for apEX about playing shox. Is there anything that came up or that you felt from the other guys regarding that?

I think that in some ways it maybe reminded me a bit of the Astralis match we had in the Challengers stage. At least from my own perspective, when we played Astralis, for our sake — even though we like the guys and there's no bad blood or anything —, on a personal level you want to prove that you made that you made the right decision and they probably want to prove that you made the wrong decision.

I think it was maybe a bit the same for the guys, shox wanted to prove that they were wrong and these guys really wanted to beat him. But we actually didn't talk much about it. We talked more about it when we played Astralis, playing them for the first time and at a Major, with the history we had with them at Majors and everything, there was just a lot on the line. It didn't really have an effect on the guys today, at least I didn't hear anything or anyone talk about it, so I assume it was nothing big.