ImAPet: "It is hard when so many people want to give ideas from their past teams"

We caught up with the coach of OpTic Gaming to get his thoughts on the difference between coaching in EU and NA, and how he thinks his team is faring.

ImAPet has been working with friberg to change up the roles on OpTic

We had a chance to talk to OpTic's coach Chet "ImAPet" Singh just before the start of ESL Pro League Finals about the differences between his new and old rosters, and had him explain some of OpTic's recent issues going into the event.

ALSO READ SK to semi-finals over Misfits; OpTic to playoffs after cruising past NRG

Earlier today, OpTic secured their position in the event's playoffs with a crushing victory over NRG. The European mixture will next take on the Swedes of Fnatic in the quarterfinals, to see which side will win the privilege of facing FaZe.

What has changed for you as a coach with this new roster? Are you more involved in-game than you were with the North American roster?

As a coach with the European roster I have to correct less stupid mistakes—obviously they still happen, but it is a lot less frequent than it was in previous teams. I think I am just as active in-game but in a different way: being really involved in tactics to go over, how we approach maps, and getting involved in fixing communication (which friberg contributes a lot towards as well). For matches I try to watch a few demos to get an understanding how the enemy team play. I don’t have to help the team take a lot of initiative early round as much because the players are already very proactive, and if they aren’t then we have very in-depth conversations after each map on how we can fix that issue. Once we have conversations like this, when it is match time I can focus less on if people are being proactive or not, and instead focus on what the enemy is doing so when it comes time to adapting I can make a better read in a timeout or freeze time to help Friberg. In practice it will be a lot easier to tell what exactly went wrong in a certain mid round situation since now I have more attention to that. Friberg and I also put a lot of time into what we want the team identity to be and what things we want to do to put our players in the best positions possible. Everything is still a work in progress but overall I’m satisfied with the change to a European roster.

How did this roster come to fruition? Did you have any input in who OpTic picked up during the August shuffle, and if so who were some potential players that you considered?

I was in a really weird spot when Tarik and RUSH left. The team now is completely different from what I signed up for when I was asked to coach OpTic. I could’ve joined a new NA team, but I thought about it a lot and this EU lineup has the most potential to win something even if we don’t compete in only NA qualifiers/leagues. Friberg was someone I looked into when we had the NA squad, but I think mixwell played a huge role in talking to players like Allu and Magisk. The only other players we considered was like dennis and lowel who are pretty good options as well but unfortunately due to some reasons they were unable to join. I am happy with the way things turned out.

Your tenure with the old lineup was rather short - what was it like joining the team only to have it ripped apart so soon? Do you think if you had more time to find a fifth you could’ve created a winning roster?

It was very short but I enjoyed it a lot, the challenges in front of me were similar to the European roster—we have to work a lot on creating an identity for ourselves and talking about map control. We were close to signing FNX at one point during the time RUSH and Tarik were there. If I had more time to get a fifth, I’m confident that even that lineup would’ve been a winning roster.

The old OpTic roster almost signed fnx

What are some of the major differences you’ve noted between your new European roster and the North American squad?

The major difference is the way people communicate with each other: almost all the time there is something being said to another teammate which can be a good or bad thing depending on the situation. The communication wasn’t terrible in the NA lineup but this one is definitely better. Also, it feels like people are a bit better at giving constructive feedback in this team to each other and there are better post game discussions, but I didn’t really get a chance to do too much of that in the NA roster.

There were several roster changes during the August player break. Since then we’ve seen FaZe dominate, Cloud9 pick up tournament wins, and Liquid contend for titles. What changes, if any, do you think need to happen to give North America that final push to become a top 3 team? How do you think teams like FaZe can be countered?

I think NAF is a key player that a team like Cloud9 or Liquid could use. He plays clutch situations very smart and gets a lot of first kills on CT side. He controls his bomb site really well and creates a lot of space for his teammates and that is something I don’t think we see too much from other NA players. I think teams like FaZe you have to play with your balls out, if you try to play a very standard default style CS of course they know how to play around them, but if you are doing some ‘balls deep’ plays and contact stuff they have to respect that the rest of the game instead of expecting a default style which will get them out of their comfort zone.

OpTic’s full European roster is one of the first to compete in North America for a season of ESL Pro League – how do you think this has improved or changed the dynamic of the way teams in NA play?

I feel that our presence in NA hasn’t helped improve or changed the dynamic of the way teams in NA play. We have not practiced too much vs NA teams, we used a lot of our officials as practice since we had non-stop matches so I don’t think the practice environment has changed either. Some teams definitely have improved by importing players or changing rosters like NRG or LG but it has nothing to do with our presence in ESL Pro League.

OpTic failed to make it to the Major's Main Qualifier

Expanding on that, OpTic had to play through the EU Minor circuit this time around. How do you feel the experiences differ between the European and North American minors? Any ideas for how the system could be improved?

I think the experience is pretty much the same. The only thing that can be improved is expanding the actual Major with more teams so there are more spots in the Major Qualifier since the scene is more and more competitive than it once was when the Majors were first created. As far as the actual minor system goes, I think the Asia Minor should only have one slot because I don’t think the past Asia Minors have produced a single team that has made it to the Majors—which in my opinion justifies not giving 2 slots to the main Major Qualifier.

Rank S is a popular playground for North American pros late at night — what are your thoughts on the platform, especially compared to FPL where some players from OpTic play when they’re at home? What improvements do you think could be made to hone the talents of upcoming players?

The platform is terrible, no one takes it seriously and it doesn’t feel like the most competitive environment from my perspective. When I watch it feels like people only put in 50% of the effort that they would in a team environment. I’m not expecting 100% all the time in Rank S, but if people put in effort close to what they did in a team setting then it would be much better. For now it is just a troll environment for anyone not in the top 5 of Rank S. I’m not too sure of the details regarding FPL as a platform to comment on that. The improvements can’t come from ESEA, it has to come from the NA players. When they take it more seriously the upcoming talents will get more constructive feedback and be more ready to join a team setting. Until then it is just a harder pug server for upcoming talents.

Results have been mixed for your new team, most notably finishing third at the European Minor - out of the running for a spot at the Major Qualifier. Conversely, you secured first in the ESL Pro League North America. Overall how has the team been taking these results?

I think we’re all pretty disappointed with how things have been in our results. We came into the European Minor with a lot of confidence in our map pool and our individual play but fell short when it mattered the most. Although we made it out of groups in IEM Oakland we aren’t satisfied being a team that will only make it out of groups and do nothing in the playoffs, so we decided the next best thing to do is reevaluate our roles which we’ve all been pretty uncomfortable in from my perspective.

When the EU team initially came to NA to play in the EPL spot, some players were vocally against the move. Has there been any change in this attitude from the North American players?

I think some NA players still don’t want us here. It seems whenever we try to reschedule or ask for a slightly better server we just get a giant middle finger from certain teams, it is hard to tell if people like us.

mixwell has long been vocal about being homesick for Spain, it seems like with the move from the Chicago OpTic house he does not plan to return, and at least one other player has said they do not plan to move to the US full-time. The team currently holds both EPL and ECS spots in North America - is anything set in stone regarding where OpTic will be playing next season, both in terms of region and leagues?

Nothing is set in stone but I think he meant he is just not going to Chicago cause we don’t have a house there anymore. We will need to talk more about the topic and see where the other leagues stand.

mixwell will pick up the AWP once again

The recent episode of Vision mentioned that there would be role changes going forward, including mixwell assuming primary AWPing duties. What was the rationale/thought process behind these changes?

We are having some communication issues on some bomb sites and a lot of role issues where people are uncomfortable; for example, HS is uncomfortable lurking so we are moving him to an entry position and the only person who is willing to do the lurker position is allu. Also, in my opinion mixwell is scary to play against when he has AWP so all these changes work out really well and once we change his role to AWP then allu can change his role to lurk and HS can change to entry so it was like a domino effect of role changes. Only Magisk and Friberg will keep their roles.

Also in that same episode of Vision, OpTic owner H3CZ mentioned that the team had not been learning from their mistakes and he didn’t want to “beat a dead horse” if things were not working. What have some of the struggles been with assembling this team of players who have never played with each other before?

The biggest struggle is that it is hard when so many people want to give ideas from their past teams. This means that sometimes we are not on the same page when we are playing, so we end up over complicating our rotations or not synergizing when someone wants to make a play to make space — ending with us losing the round because we are overthinking too much.

You have EPL Finals and ECS Finals coming up before the end of the year. What are your expectations for these events? Can you reveal your thoughts on the draft strategy for EPL?

I’m not really sure what we should expect at the moment. We are undergoing a lot of changes in our roles and haven’t played any officials with them yet, so these two LANs will be a big testing ground to see if it was worth doing all these changes. I want to win both events obviously but to set a more realistic goal we can aim for top 4. As for the draft for the EPL group, I don’t know what to say — I was confused when fnatic put SK in our group first. I think our group is more doable than what I originally planned and thought out for what it would be.

This interview has been edited for clarity.