We sat down with Flamie to discuss his thoughts on Na’Vi before their quarterfinal versus BIG.

Photo credit: (DreamHack)

Having claimed impressive titles in attendance of the CS:GO Asia Championship and particularly ESL One Cologne Na’Vi were widely regarded as among the top two teams in the world. Unfortunately, shortly following Cologne Flamie and company would suffer defeat to Liquid during ELEAGUE Premier’s semifinal and their round of eight elimination to North at DH Stockholm would call into question their elite level status.

Looking to reassert themselves as a threat for international titles Na’Vi came into FACEIT’s London Major with mixed expectations from the community but still progressing into the playoffs with a 3-1 record. Having only dropped a map to the consensus world’s best in Astralis the CIS team looks in strong form and we sat down with Flamie to discuss his thoughts on Na’Vi before their quarterfinal versus BIG.

How important do you think s1mple’s mobility and aggression is to the success of Na’Vi on the CT side?

s1mple is a very aggressive sniper that is very capable of picking the enemy first and on the Counter-Terrorist side it is very important to have these advantages at the beginning of the round. We say to him that you can do what you want but sometimes Zeus wants to play some passive rounds because everyone predicts that he [s1mple] will do aggressive stuff.

Is s1mple the best player in the world?

Right now he’s definitely one of the best players, maybe even the best, all his statistics and awards show that he is among the best.

A trait of Na’Vi is how quickly you aggress behind entries, do you think it is important to capitalise on advantages like these quickly?

We do not always do so, but I think it happens when we are running a tactic and an opponent is killed we decide that we need to go because we may have already thrown the nades or be in position to execute, but sometimes it is not good because you don’t know what you are going into, they may have more players than expected and if you are anti-eco you should not do so, which is something we are trying to fix.

What does kane bring to the team as a coach?

He is such a nice guys and it is very important to have a coach who is like a friend, he is also watching loads of demos and has a mathematical mind, calling that the enemies will have no money. He is great at working with our IGL in Zeus because they are good friends and played together around 10 years ago and they have the same thoughts about the game.

I think kane is one of the best coaches in the world but you have to be in the team to really understand what he brings. Zeus and kane work together to set up the team, in some practice games kane is calling because Zeus wants to take a break and in pauses it is normally kane who is speaking because he knows a lot about the game and without the coaching restrictions I think he would be the IGL for us.

Electronic has played a great event so far, what do you think his strengths are as a player and how important is he to Na’Vi’s success?

Right now he is playing really good, when he first joined the team our results started to get much better and of course, much of the credit goes to him for this. The main strengths of electronic is that he is not just an aim player he is also a very smart player and when you have both I’m sure you will be a very good.

Touching on your semifinal defeat to Liquid at ELEAGUE Premier, why do you think Na’Vi played poorly in that series and if you play Liquid later in the tournament do you think it will go better?

I think we lost because we had just won Cologne and then went straight to ELEAGUE, after the groups we reached the semifinal as we did not prepare well for Liquid and when we lost to them in Dallas we did not prepare well either. Afterwards, we said that we need to relax more and now we will do as much as we can before playing Liquid, they are definitely a top three team and hope that if we meet them in the final that we will beat them.

In the quaterfinals you are playing BIG, what do think of their play and are you confident going into the match?

BIG are a very tactical team and they have gob b who is a great In Game Leader doing good work with the team. Right now they are the hardest opponent to play against and that is because they play very well tactically and have a very good sniper in smooya who brings firepower to the team, previously they were good tactically but lacked the firepower and know they have great players like tabseN and smooya. They will probably pick Dust2 which is one of our worst maps and we may even start 0-1 but we’ve done some good homework and should play well, maybe even winning Dust2.

Having beaten them in Cologne final, do you think the two series will play out similarly?

Back in Cologne this may have been the first grand final for them, not for gob b but the rest of the team was also very young and in grand finals you play worse than in earlier stages as you feel the pressure. Here for smooya it will be his first time being on a Major stage but it is not a final, BIG have always been improving but also we have been improving and we are better than we were during our victory in Cologne.

Do you think Na’Vi can win the FACEIT Major? Comment below with your thoughts!

[zombify_post]