kyxsan: "We had a few weeks of practice without officials, I can see it paying off"

The Macedonian captain is looking forward to facing Astralis for a playoff spot.

HEROIC's early struggles are starting to fade away after the roster has had more time to practice together and resolve early visa issues.

The team made playoffs at ESL Pro League Season 20 before an eventual loss to MIBR, and has started IEM Rio off with an upset victory over G2, bringing the recent Fall Final champions crashing down barely a week after their trophy lift.

One win away from the playoffs is a position Damjan "⁠kyxsan⁠" Stoilkovski's HEROIC has been in a few times this year, but the 24-year-old tells HLTV that he is hopeful that, with three weeks of practice, his team can secure an arena appearance as they look to continue making progress.

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

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Survived the comeback attempt from G2 there, but a solid upset over the recent Fall FInal champions to start your Rio campaign. Tell me your initial thoughts on the game after finally getting it over the line.

Obviously, I'm happy that we won, we showed some great CS in the first half. I would also say in the second half because we should have won some rounds that we lost in the end. But overall, I'm happy with how we played. Finally, we had a few weeks of practice, without any official, so I can see it paying off.

I've heard from a couple of teams already that their practice coming into this wasn't great, or they had limited practice. You've talked a lot in recent interviews at some events about communication issues and how it's been a bit of a struggle to get on the same page. Can you tell me how this practice period has helped with that?

We had some issues with communication at the start of the season because degster had some issues, then we played with our coach, then we played with another stand-in. So when you don't play with the full lineup consistently, it's hard to be consistent basically.

Now, we have been playing together for more than one-and-a-half months so we can see the improvements, practice has been going really good recently. And yeah, we're just happy about it.

The first half was 10-2 for you, you ran over them on the T side. Can you tell me a little about the game plan now that it is over?

I cannot go into too much detail, but I think they changed the way they played a little bit. They played a bit more aggressive, but obviously we were ready for it and we punished their mistakes and also, we were just shooting well. We won one 3v5, we want some XvX rounds that could have gone both ways. So yeah, we had a great game plan, and we were also shooting well in the first half.

Second half, as you were saying, was a bit of struggle. A couple of lost 5v3s for you guys and so on. What was going wrong, was it communication issues cropping up again or..?

I don't think it was communication issues because I think our communication was really good actually, in both of the halves. It was mostly some duels, like for example, I individually lost like three duels and If I won these, we won the round. But I think the comms were great, we were just missing some little details, but I'm happy that we did it in the end.

The way you closed out was from this insane sjuush triple from Cat. What did the comms sound like in the team then?

Yeah, at one moment, it seemed like It's a bit hard for us because they mollied Short and we had a Five-SeveN and I had MP9 and we were like, 'If they come now, we are dead.' sjuush said, 'HE and then flash instantly for me,' I did it, and there were a few seconds of silence on TeamSpeak and it was the moment when he killed three. I just look at the scoreboard and I see one, two, three (laughs). I haven't seen the highlight but it seems like it was insane shots.

You have this exit at Dacha, then you went into the playoffs in EPL, and now you're in this position, one game away from playoffs here. It seems like you're slowly improving over time. Coming here and getting this win, can you tell me how that feels and perspective going into the next game?

We have been in this situation so many times with this team. Like in many events we were one game away from the playoffs but then something happened. We are already playing for like nine months together, we got some experience from this, and I hope this time it will be different. We're not trying to think too much about it, we're just taking it game by game and hopefully, we'll be in the playoffs tomorrow.

Is there a goal set for when you 'need' to start getting these results? Because as you said, You've been a team for a while, you have had some issues obviously, with visas and so on, but is there a conversation going about when this finally needs to happen?

No, I don't think so because if we do that it will just add even more pressure on us. We're not trying to think about it long term but we are taking our time. There is no pressure for us. Right now we're in in a good position, we're playing together with the same lineup for almost two months and as I said we can see the improvements. So I'm confident that if we keep doing what we're doing now, that we can reach what we want soon.

How about for you personally, in terms of wanting those results outside of the team perspective?

I haven't thought too much about it, but I would say for now we're just focused on this season. We have Rio, then we have Elisa, then we have the RMR and Major. For the Major, our goal is to at least get to the playoffs. We are just taking it event by event by event.

You play the winner of Astralis-Eternal Fire, who would you like to face out of those two?

I would say Astralis, definitely. With this lineup we have played them three times. We have a good record against them, we won twice, they won once, so I think it's always a fun game against them.

Bit of a different one this time around though. cadiaN is in, sjuush and TeSeS could have a bit of a grudge going. Anything there?

For me, it will be the same. It might be a bit more of a special game for them. But I don't think we're thinking too much about it. We're just focusing on ourselves and how we want to play and that's it.