What has changed in the game Virtus.pro? 5 important points
In Kraków, the Polish five were looking much better than they had been in Cologne. What were the causes of those improvements?
The Cologne bootcamp
After being eliminated early from ESL One Cologne 2017, the Poles shut off from the rest of the world and spent the time they had before the football match practicing heavily. According to Virtus.pro General manager Roman Dvoryankin, that impromptu “bootcamp” helped; before the next upcoming tournament in Malmö, the team will once again get together for 7 to 10 days. In Cologne, the Poles showed good tactics, even surprising Immortals with shrewd strategies on Cobblestone, but falling short on shooting, or focus, or accuracy. It was different in Kraków: the team got itself together, approached games with extreme concentration, and didn’t give up a single map without a fight (except for the 5-16 on Inferno against Immortals in the semifinal). We should also note the incredible support the team was receiving from the crowd at the arena in Kraków, which pashaBiceps promised would be remembered “till the rest of our lives”.
pashaBiceps and his AWP
In the overall tournament stats, pashaBiceps was in the top five on total AWP kills (93 frags on 9 maps). He was only surpassed by Immortals’ HEN1 (129) and Gambit’s mou, but the Brazilian had played 13 maps, and the Kazakh, 11. Jarosław Jarząbkowski was also in the top five on average AWP kills per round, at 0.41 (oskar from mousesports led with 0.54). It would seem that the slump that prompted pashaBiceps to temporarily give up his sniper rifle is a thing of the past now. Jarosław has changed his mouse (he now uses a SteelSeries Rival 100) and is getting his 2014 back.
Snax and his in-game leadership
The team is getting more and more used to the new in-game leader, and Snax is becoming more and more comfortable with his new role. Speaking after advancing to the Major playoffs, TaZ said, “We’ve changed in-game leading because we felt that we are stuck. Snax has a different approach to the game plan, so it was something fresh”.
The clutch in the match against Immortals that would prove Wiktor Wojtas and his teammates had made the right choice of leader.
Snax is also in charge of supervising the team’s coach/analyst. According to Wiktor Wojtas, Dawid “Junior” Jędrzejowski does better when Snax tells him, “Man, you’re doing your job wrong. You have one week to do everything, or you’re getting kicked.”
TaZ and his experience
After Cologne, the Kraków Major’s eldest competitor has shown that he’s still doing as fine as ever. His wealth of experience was especially useful in the match against Cloud9 on Train, winning which took Virtus.pro into the playoffs. TaZ said that during that game, he questioned k0nfig’s courage and kept inviting the opposing team to his bomb site, but they were apparently afraid of turning up.
The round in which Wiktor Wojtas essentially suppressed the Americans with his authority.
byali’s shooting and NEO’s assistance
In the group stage, byali showed excellent aiming for opponents’ heads, and ended up in the tournament’s top three on headshot percentage (57%). NEO should be noted too; while less conspicuous, with the lowest frag count in the Kraków event (146), he was extremely useful, in providing the most assists to his teammates. Here, Filip was in the tournament’s top three, at an average of 0.2 assists per round (0.24 was the top result).
Perhaps sangfroid and automatic responses were the only things that were missing for Virtus.pro at crucial moments in Kraków. Especially so in situations when, having planted the bomb, the team was in a 2v2 situation, or was even outnumbering the opponent. Here, for example, the CT spawn was not pushed or covered by a player or a smoke — even though, given the late timing, attacks were to be expected from that direction.
pashaBiceps commented on the same episode after the game against North: “We have the advantage, but we play like silvers, because we have a bomb planted, 5v5, and we don't push CT, we don't push Z, we don't push connector, it's like our shoes have 100 kg weights on them. We needed to do something on the map, but we stayed and waited for kills. This is a good lesson for the future.”
Author: Gleb Chernyavskiy