n0rb3r7: "Jame was missing a lot in previous tournaments, but now he is in really good form"

Virtus.pro endured a tough RMR against the underdogs, but are prepared to face the world's best at the Major.

Virtus.pro are into the Shanghai Major after reverse sweeping Sashi in China.

It's been an interesting RMR for David "⁠n0rb3r7⁠" Danielyan and company, suffering a day one loss to Passion UA and struggling at times against the European underdogs.

But they got the job done and can now enter the Opening stage with the possibility of rescuing their 2024.

Date	Matches
Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024 Europe RMR B
21/11/2024	Virtus.pro Finished 14:16 Passion UA	Match
21/11/2024	Virtus.pro Finished 13:10 TSM	Match
22/11/2024	Virtus.pro Finished 13:10 9 Pandas	Match
23/11/2024	Sashi Finished 1:2 Virtus.pro	Match

Asked whether VP had extra pressure in Shanghai because of their poor year, n0rb3r7 didn't think so: "I don't think we have pressure," he said.

"We just understand it's the last event of the year and we need to go as far as we can. After the Major, we will see."

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

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First of all, congratulations on making it, how does it feel to be back at the Major?

I don't know why, but it feels very good, great. I feel like the Copenhagen Major was a very long time ago, and it's the last event of the year, it's nice to be in it.

What's the preparation been like for this event, you told BanKs that you had been practicing really hard since Rio, but what were you trying to actually work on?

We were on bootcamp for 10 days, and we were fixing some problems that we were facing versus big teams, like NAVI, Vitality, FaZe, and other stuff. I hope we fixed it and we will see how we will play in the Opening stage.

I wanted to ask about the team style, we know it's been going through some changes. On Mirage, it seems like it's working, but on some of the other maps, maybe a little bit less, where do you think the team style is at?

I think we are trying to mix both playing fast and slowly, and it depends on the team. For example, teams like Passion UA, Sashi and TSM, we can play a bit faster because they expect us to play slowly, and we can find some gaps because they wont expect some fast stuff.

I saw some people say that you are defaulting a bit less now, and they were thinking "are they defaulting less because there is less confidence in the default?" Are you saying it's just a match-up thing, are you still confident in your defaults?

I think we are still confident in our defaults, I didn't even know that we are not playing like before, I mean we are always playing defaults. Only some stuff, if we know they have a bad economy we can do some rounds, for example like we did against Sashi. I think we are really confident in our defaults.

On the new coach, PASHANOJ, he was the analyst before, what is he bringing to the team?

He was with us for almost a year and a half, he knows everything that we had and he just tried to balance it, because after Xoma departed, we had some problems with our playbook, and he fixed everything with it, and now we are ready for the Major.

So with him being around for longer, is he getting Jame back to the position of power?

Yeah, maybe. They have good communication between them and they can do whatever they want.

On Jame's individual form, he has been really good this event, what do you think has sparked that uptick in form?

I think everyone understands it's the Major, and everyone wants to be prepared individually and focused on every moment and every frag, to not miss the shot, you know. You see AWPers missing a lot of shots, and Jame missed a lot in the previous tournaments, but I think now he is in really good form.

Overall this year has been a bit below what we expect from you guys, is there any added pressure on this tournament from the organization?

I don't think we have pressure, we just understand it's the last event of the year and we need to go as far as we can, and after the Major we will see.

It will be the Opening stage probably, you said you worked a lot on beating the tough teams, how do you think your style will do against more similar underdogs? Because we did see a few cracks against Passion UA and teams like that here.

I think we will talk about it later, we have one week here. We will re-watch all our games, we will see the problems that we faced here, and we will prepare better than now.