Dignitas was crowned World Champions in February at IEM Katowice. A month have passed, the squad has finished their ESEA Season and is now preparing for Copenhagen Games 2019. We reached out to Amanda "rain" Smith to know more about their victory in Poland, their ESEA playoffs results, and final thoughts on the season.

Hello Amanda! Your victory at Intel Challenge Katowice is still fresh! How does it feel to be crowned World Champions for the second year in a row?

rain: I’m really happy that we won. We just went in with a positive mindset and everything just worked out! I’m so happy that we were able to prove that we could do it again.





Although you were one of the favourites to win, that does not take away the amount you work you put on prior to the event. How was the preparation getting to IEM?

rain: We had a lot of preparation going into IEM. We were playing in ESEA, so that gave us good practice, but we were also practicing 6+ hours a day, either as a team or on our own as well. We had a bootcamp too, in Philadelphia, at the Sixers Training Complex and that went pretty well.





What do you have say regarding the squad's performance, since the first match until the end of IEM? What impact did the 2 losses had on your next games?

rain: For the first loss in the group stage against Assassins, I think that was mostly a wake-up call for us, just kind of “we need to get our heads in the game, we need to get into the tournament right now”. We were up against them, we let it slide and we couldn’t pull it back, so that was definitely a wake-up call that we needed to give it our all, so that all that practice wouldn’t have been for nothing.





How much impact do EMUHLEET's work as the captain outside of the server and while preparing matches has on the squad?

rain: Usually she and Xp3, our coach, watch some demos, review some notes, go over our previous games, and just talk about strategies and some little changes that we could make. Usually we do that the day before the match, but we can even be doing it 10 minutes before it too. They have a lot of impact, both of them!





How are you working in-game regarding strategies and mid-round calls? Is EMUHLEET delivering all the work or do you share those responsibilities?

rain: EMUHLEET is the IGL, she’s the team captain and the main strat-caller, but regarding mid-round calling it’s more of a team effort. EMUHLEET still does the majority of the calling, but there’re some situations where other people just need to take over.

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Are you trying new approaches to different aspects of your game (calls, practices, positions, etc) so far during this year?

rain: We aren’t trying anything new role wise or swapping out positions, but we are definitely throwing in new strategies and new meta-sort of things – we’re watching all those games from the Major and recent events, so there’s a lot of new information to take out and new things to be doing and figure out. We’re always trying to spice up our gameplay in that kind of way.





You ended up the season on the playoffs of ESEA, losing on the second match. With this placement, you retained your spot at ESEA Main. Are you happy with the end result of the season on its entirety or were you expecting more?

rain: I was definitely expecting more; I was hoping to win for sure. We were playing good by the end of season and coming out of our win at IEM, that was very motivating and positive, but it was just unfortunate on timings with the WESG tournament on China. Me and CAth were gone for about 10 days, it hurt our practice, and we came back jet-lagged, so that didn’t really help. But at the end of the day there are no excuses, we did choke a bit. We just have to come back, practice more and stay positive, and hopefully we’ll make it out of Main in the next season.





One of the most controversial topics in the last few months has been the meta shifting currently happening in game, with the AUG being very dominant in contrast to the M4, with the peak of its use happening in the Major in February, where even the amount of CT rounds won grew on almost all maps with its use. What is opinion on the AUG and its current state?

rain: I like the AUG! I don’t use it a lot personally, just because of the positions that I play. I’m glad that they did raise the price back up to $3300. I haven’t noticed as much in games since change, but it was definitely being over-played way too much! I think that it’s kind of balanced now, it just gives another aspect to the game and I like it!





A lot of players are petitioning Valve to nerf it, arguing the weapon as it is currently having no place in competitive CS. Do you think it should be nerfed more? If yes, how would you nerf it?

rain: They probably could nerf it a little bit still. They could adjust the fire rate, it shoots pretty fast, or even do something with the recoil… no one really uses the Krieg because of the recoil, as it is really hard to control – so maybe changing it in that kind of way could help too. Or maybe even raise the price up even more, an extra $200.





How’s the preparation for Copenhagen Games 2019 going so far?

rain: Our preparation is going good, we just came off of a few days break, we’re just getting back into the groove of things, going over our map-pool again, they just threw in Vertigo, so we’re just kind of playing around that for a little bit and dusting everything off, throwing a few new things in there. We have about two more weeks, we aren’t going to be bootcamping this time, just playing online. We’re also playing in the Winner’s League right now, so that’s going to be good practice, there are some MDL teams in there for us to play against, so that will be good!





I want to thank Amanda for the interview and wish her good luck for Copenhagen Games! Don’t forget to check her on social media:

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