nicoodoz: "I'm not satisfied or happy at all with my performance so far"

"I've been working very closely with the coaching staff and other members of the team to help myself find consistency," the Danish AWPer added.

HEROIC's current roster displayed some impressive pace out of the blocks at the start of the year, running G2 close and defeating Vitality at IEM Katowice whilst playing admirable CS.

Since their promising start progress has been slow, with the team producing inconsistent results varying from a flawless run through the opening stage of the Major, which included a 2-0 win over Eternal Fire, to a meek 0-2 loss to OG in BLAST Showdown and an early exit from the recent EWC open qualifier.

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Nico "⁠nicoodoz⁠" Tamjidi admits his team have struggled to hit their best level consistently and reckons now is the time for HEROIC to start raising their floor and regularly make deep playoff runs. Ahead of his team's ESL Pro League campaign the Danish AWPer spoke to HLTV not only about HEROIC's trajectory this year, but also his individual performances and how the team are planning to improve moving forwards.

Date	Matches
ESL Pro League Season 19
30/04/2024	Ninjas in Pyjamas 16:30 HEROIC	Match

If you do not see the SoundCloud embed above, you can listen to the interview here.

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First, I wanted to ask about HEROIC's trajectory. When you first brought the team together there was a lot of promise and people were impressed with your level, but it's been a bit inconsistent since then. We've seen some good highs, I'm thinking of when you beat Eternal Fire 2-0 at the Major, and then we've seen a few lows as well, like losing to OG at BLAST Showdown and failing the recent EWC qualifier.

Where do you as a team feel like you're at? Are you happy with the level right now?

CS is a kind of game where you can never really be happy at your level, you always have to strive to improve and keep improving. You can never really be satisfied because the only time you could be satisfied is if you win multiple tournaments in a row, and we're nowhere near that level yet.

So we're always doing our best to improve. It's been, as you say, a lot of inconsistencies right now and we're working our best to figure out why this is happening, and then working on improving. When you fix one problem, another problem shows up. You fix that problem, and then it keeps going, right? That's just how CS is.

What is the level you are aiming for? Have you set any goals or targets, like winning tournaments, world ranking, anything like that?

I mean, with time, we definitely want to win tournaments. It's hard to say right now because we've been a team for around four-and-a-half months, five months, so it is about time to show some results now we have actually had a little bit of time together. Maybe it's not been a full year, but five months is quite a bit even though there are so many tournaments and limited practice days. We would at least like to start consistently making playoffs for different events.

When does it start feeling like changes are needed? I know that, like you say, you've not been a team for that long, but at what point do you start getting worried that maybe you can't push on to the next level?

I don't think that's so much for us players to think about, I think that's more for the management side and coaching staff, they think more on those kinds of things, and we have to think more about performance ourselves. Like how, as this group of five players, can we improve as a team, and not really think so much of the outside factors. Yeah, it might happen in the future, who knows, but maybe it will not. It's not like us players need to to put energy into that and think about it.

What do you think is causing you to be a bit inconsistent and holding you back from hitting like your top level?

It is really hard to point out because, as I've said, it is different stuff that's happening, sometimes it could be our energy level, sometimes our communication. Sometimes CS is a game where you just have to kill the enemy in front of you and if you're not shooting back, then you lose games by shooting bad.

There's been a lot of different stuff happening for us, but right now we're just working on keeping up a high level of communication and keeping it consistent, so we at least have a high floor.

How do you feel about your individual levels so far on HEROIC? The community likes to focus on stats, and I think for AWPers probably even more so, but it doesn't always tell the story.

Obviously I'm not satisfied or happy at all with my performance so far. There have been some outside factors which I've tried to not focus too much on, like I have a small wrist injury and, for example, in Chengdu I was really sick. But other than that, at other tournaments I've been fine, so I just need to step up. I know this for a fact, that I need to put up better numbers and improve my own individual level of play.

Do you think that's down to you, or is it down to the way you're operating in the team? Do you have an idea of what's preventing you from hitting the top level?

I think it's about consistency, honestly. For some games I've been playing fine, and then some games I just completely fall through. I've been working very closely with the coaching staff and other members of the team to help myself find consistency, and improving it that way.

Looking at this ESL Pro League group, you must be pretty confident, right? Other than NAVI, there probably aren't any teams that are better than HEROIC on paper.

We are confident about making it to playoffs, I think we have good matchups coming up and it is a good group compared to some others (laughs).

Looking a little bit further forward for HEROIC, are there any goals set for the rest of the season?

At this time in the team, we would like to start making playoffs at least consistently for multiple events and start making more deeper runs. We haven't really bombed out of tournaments, but we still haven't been on a consistent level, we want to reach playoffs and want to play in those stage games. We believe ourselves that we have the skill, we just have to show it.