Soham "valens" Chowdhury is a former CS:GO pro who is currently the coach for Cloud9. Before the start of the ESL Pro League Season 5 LAN Final, valens spoke to theScore esports about the changes he's brought to the C9 lineup and leadership in CS.

First off, I wanted to talk a little bit about your split from Team SoloMid, a squad that went on to join Misfits, but you ended up coaching Cloud9. How much of a factor was long-time teammate Timothy "autimatic" Ta in that decision? What were the other factors?

Tim was a huge factor, having played with him for the last two years and seeing him progress both as a player and person.

I also considered whether I would be able to help a team that was struggling with leadership and structured practice. After having a few conversations with different players on Cloud9, it became clear that this was a team that both wanted the help of a coach and also needed it.

C9 has been pretty hot and cold in 2017 so far. At one point they’re in the Top 5/10 in the world, then they can’t advance past groups or qualify for certain events. Just recently they won the Subaru Cup over SK Gaming. What brings the team down and what allows them to bounce back?

When I joined the team, our main goals were to become more structured, better teammates and more consistent. Although the results say otherwise when it comes to consistency, I felt like we needed to try a variety of different things to see which change helped us grow the most.

We first tried Stewie [Jake "Stewie2k" Yip] as the in-game leader, then Tim as the IGL and then opted for a combination approach. As a result of these pre-meditated changes, our team not only felt reinvigorated but also eager to put our changes on display.

With the grueling schedule of back-to-back online leagues and LAN events, only time will help us achieve the goals we set out for ourselves — we are definitely on the right path.

What big changes did you bring to Cloud9, or was development smaller and incremental?

From an out-of-game perspective, I came in with some life experience and leadership skills that helped our team learn how to resolve inner-team and self-conflicts in a more constructive way. From an in-game perspective, I added some more variety to our CT sides and focused mainly on how to adjust our setups mid-round, as well as how to identify triggers in real-time in order to take high-percentage team/solo battles.

As one of the most well-respected leaders/coaches in North America, what are your thoughts on the apparent lack of leaders (IGLs, coaches) in the region? Are leaders fostered in the current systems (FPL, ESEA, etc.) and how can this situation be improved?

I appreciate the compliment! I’d like to think that one of the main reasons that I am respected is that I don’t pretend to know it all.

CS:GO is still in its infancy and everyone should constantly have the mindset that they have something more to learn. They might know how to do something well, but there is a way to do it better — we just have to go out there and find it.

I think where our community (both Europe and America) fall short is that most players get to a level where they feel comfortable and then focus on improving their mechanics, but forget to improve on their decision-making process.

Two main ways come to mind for ways to improve this situation:

Get rid of individual stats, but focus on win/loss as the main stat (or other team-oriented stats). Being able to pick roles before queuing up for a pug or scrim would allow us to derive stats such as “who are the best entries that create space for their team?” and “who are the best IGLs that help their teams win?” so up-and-coming players feel like them putting their effort into being more well-rounded will be rewarded.

How’s the bootcamp for the ESL Pro League Finals going so far? Any major changes in gameplan (no need for specifics), anything new to the team’s regiment?

We focused on tightening up our decision-making to cater toward the playstyles of our group. Instead of anti-stratting, we implemented specific plays and triggers that we look for when playing against specific teams.

chill night with my girlfriend before heading to the bootcamp with the team pic.twitter.com/L0iAIpdAH4 — SC (@valensCS) May 23, 2017

What are your thoughts on how Valve has been attempting to balance the game by apparently trying to make every gun viable, is this possible? Should more changes have been made in the recent patch?

Valve is doing some good things to make the game more exciting every round. They've forced teams to change their playstyle, to optimize their strats, to minimize deaths to SMGs and pistols instead of forcing the other team to save.

I don’t think it’s particularly good or bad, but I come from the school of philosophy that thinks that if we play man-up and better-buy situations properly (together), we should almost always win.

You’re a engineer at Google, does that side of your life intersect with your CS life in anyway? Developing CS tools, or are maybe guys in the office CS fans?

I love working both as an engineer at Google and as a coach. They fulfill different, but equally important, passions of mine. I try to structure both in such that they both develop complementary skills.

CS actually builds my leadership skills as it allows me to work with a variety of different personalities — this positively affects my ability to lead my fellow engineers. On the other hand, working at Google helps me see the world through data and helps me filter out the noise when deciding what issues I should focus on when trying to help C9.

@FNScsgo @valensCS He's still coding cheats for a rainy day — Damian (@daps) April 12, 2017

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.