flameZ: I'm a very talkative person, and I can keep the team voice chat lively.

Vitality beat PV 2–0 in yesterday’s EPL S24 playoffs. After the match, flameZ spoke to the media on site about the team’s performance and his own role.

Q: Alright, congratulations. You were insane on Inferno. How did it feel to play that map?

flameZ: Honestly, playing Inferno is a pleasure. Every second we’re communicating, we’re on the same page: “We’re doing this. I’m going here. I’m pushing here.” The comms are really active every second, and as players, we know that when we communicate like that, no one can beat us. It becomes really hard for the other team to win rounds. So I’m super happy, and obviously, individually, mezii and I were hitting headshots with every bullet. There were some jump-shots, some knife kills. It’s always fun.

Q: Is it especially satisfying when they get blasted down to just 50 HP by utility?

flameZ: Yeah, yeah. I told Dan, “I’ll clean up all your low-HP enemies.” He had 14 assists in one half. He had seven kills and I had 16, but I did less damage than him, so his utility damage was so high. He’s so good at that—it’s crazy. Yeah, of course. It makes things much easier.

Q: Overall, it feels like the team is fully recharged and the full five are back together. I mean, maybe apEX has to leave tomorrow—I don't know. But so far, everything's going well?

flameZ: So far, so good. We’re working really well together right now, and we’re looking forward to playing Aurora tomorrow. Obviously, they’re a team we’ve lost to recently, but we also beat them on the same day. We think they’re competitive. They’re a good team. They have some good ideas and strong individual players, so we’re really looking forward to tomorrow’s match. But I think if we bring our A-game, it’ll be very difficult for them to beat us.

Q: When you prepare for an opponent, I know MaT obviously does a lot of work, but how much of it is simply about making sure you’re in A-game form? Because we know that when you’re at your best, no one can stop you.

flameZ: Honestly, I think preparation is really important for bringing out our A-game, but courage is also a big part of it. If every player on the team is really willing to make plays and take action, that’s when we’re playing our A-game. Sometimes we might not be playing that well individually, but we’re very active, and it becomes really hard for the opponent to handle us.

But when it comes to preparation, everyone does their own individual prep as well. Dan, the IGL, MaT, Rémy [XTQZZZ]—they all put a lot of work into preparing. On an individual level, everyone contributes something that gives them confidence going into the match, some ideas of their own. That’s it.

Q: How much have you grown in terms of speaking up more within the team and all that? Because when you first joined, we knew you as the classic entry fragger, right? But now you’re much more vocal.

flameZ: I think I’ve always been aware of communication, but for me, one thing I look to is that sometimes you can get a bit lazy with it. Sometimes I get lazy with my communication, and that’s not something I should... I’m a talkative person. I say a lot, I can talk in-game and keep talking, and it works really well—it keeps the team comms active. The team has told me multiple times that this is what they need from me, so I just need to keep providing it, because it’s so important.

As for what I say, sometimes I’m just throwing out an idea. Sometimes, in the middle of a round, I’ll tell him, “Yo, Dan, we can do this,” just to give him another idea to work with. That’s good. It gets him thinking and feeling the game. Sometimes I’ll say it to the other players, sometimes I’ll tell someone to make a play and not be scared. Those little things... they’ve helped us win a lot of times.