magixx: "MOUZ are still among the top three teams in the world"
While teams like Vitality and MOUZ had a shaky start to Stage 3 of the BLAST.tv Austin Major, the reigning champions in Spirit looked locked in, cruising to a playoff spot with a 3-0 record.
Ahead of the beginning of playoffs, Boris "magixx" Vorobyev spoke to Dust2.us about the team's stellar form and the upcoming match against MOUZ. He also addressed comments made by the team's IGL Leonid "chopper" Vishnyakov regarding their bootcamp schedule.
You can watch the full interview below on YouTube, or read the full transcription underneath. All questions and answers were slightly edited for clarity.
How are you feeling about the team's run so far?
It’s fine. We haven’t lost a map, but the opposition wasn’t like the top tier teams, excluding the match against NAVI. And in the NAVI match it was only difficult on one map. So pretty fine, pretty convincing.
So Spirit has only played one best-of-three since PGL Astana almost a month ago. Does that concern you at all?
No, I don’t think you can be not ready for best-of-three’s, best-of-five’s, best-of-one’s. Even if you’re playing from home or in bootcamp you’re playing games one after another, so you can have like 4-6 maps in a row during practice. So it’s not an issue. The only real thing might be that the crowd games can be kind of different. But if you get used to it in the first couple of minutes of the match, it’s going to be easier.
Do you like playing in front of big crowds or do you prefer the studio environment?
Playing online is the worst thing possible, for me personally. The studio gameplay and being in front of a crowd for playoffs is kind of the same for me. Sometimes I can get some extra energy, I can feel something, but that doesn’t happen too often. Usually it’s the same.
You mentioned practice earlier, and a comment made by chopper that the team doesn’t do boot camps received some scrutiny. What are your thoughts on the decision to maybe not have as many bootcamps as other tier one teams?
Well, basically, it’s not his decision. The decision is being made by the people who are standing over the players. And basically if it does fit the team, if the bootcamps are not the best way for this specific roster to grow or get better or just to get ready for a tournament, then this is the way. And it is what it is.
Do you think the reaction to his comments from the press and the public was an overreaction?
Well, I think we should understand that if he’s just saying something on a stream, the reaction will go one way and not so many views are going to get attached to it. But if some people over on Twitter are saying "oh that’s bullshit" or whatever, of course it’s going to get some negative criticism. Or if someone who is popular says "yeah if it’s working for them and it fits the team, it’s a great decision," the comments will say it’s a great decision. So you know, you can react how you want.
Spirit can claim to have the most individual firepower of any single team right now. Does that give you a sense of confidence heading into the playoffs?
I don’t think that firepower is a thing to be compared to the others when you’re at a tier one tournament. There’s a lot of decent players, decent aimers, and everyone has great firepower on average. You cannot really rely on it. If you have it, that’s cool, it may help you sometimes. And the firepower brought by donk is even better, but we don’t really count on firepower.
You’ll be taking on MOUZ in the opening series, who’ve looked a little shaky at this event. How do you feel about that matchup?
I think that they are still among the top three teams in the world. They have great individuals and playstyle, and they have everything [they need] to play well, but the start was difficult for them so that’s why they looked shaky. We’ve seen their best-of-three’s, which were also shaky, but the main thing is they made it past the third stage. So they’ve had some time to reset and they might bring out some better form because they’ve been bootcamping before the tournament and practicing a lot.
