Nordic Alpha's AverageJonas Interview: "the gap between us and the pro scene shrinks every day"

Jonas "AverageJonas" Navarsete is the captain and main tank of all-Norwegian team Nordic Alpha. Nordic Alpha defeated teams from Iceland and Denmark to secure a spot at the finals of the upcoming King of Nordic Overwatch Cup, and just won the Gigacon Prime LAN event. Alongside teammates Stefan "ONIGOD" Fiskerstrand and Greger "Invision" Herland, AverageJonas represented Team Norway in the European qualifiers for the World Cup.

It’s great to speak with you! Tell me a bit about yourself. What brought you to the game? Is Overwatch your first dance with competitive eSports?

I am 27 years old and I live in Oslo, Norway. For the past year I have been working fulltime creating music and gaming videos on YouTube. I have a Master's Degree in Sports Science, so I am quite familiar with competing and finding strategic solutions, and I think this is an advantage coming into eSports, especially as a leader. I’ve been an active gamer for about 13 years, going in and out of eSports in games like Heroes of Newerth, CS 1.5, DotA, WoW arena PVP, and so on. Until now, I never really had a great opportunity to devote myself fully to competitive eSports.

How did you go about forming Nordic Alpha? What did you look for in other players when you were putting together a roster?

Globe and I played in BX3.EK for quite a while, until we decided to break things off to create our own team. We learned a lot about leadership and how to run a team in BX3, and wanted to try for ourselves. We knew a few people who also weren't completely happy in their current teams, so we discussed the possibility of making our own. Before we knew it, we had ONIGOD, Invision and iPN (who all played on different teams in Norway). We had 5 men ready for quite a while, but finding a sixth guy proved to be harder than we thought. After a few weeks of trials and so on, we decided to reach out to Rikku (the ex-leader of a good European team). He had been on vacation for quite a while, and literally came straight from the airport to trial for us. The trial went really well even though he slaughtered his own gameplay that evening.

My philosophy was that I wanted to have a very democratic team, with no clear "leadership" in-game except for a few decisions that simply have to be made. We played together and quickly realized that this was the perfect gang. We had tons of fun, laughing and spending hours discussing tactics in TeamSpeak during off-hours. It’s also important to emphasize that I noticed quite early the skill potential this team had, with people picking up their roles so quickly. That is why we started focusing on the EU scene instead of the Norwegian scene.

So tell me about your training regimen. Who are your favorite teams to scrim against? What other tools do you use to improve your game?

Our training regimen as of right now includes 30-40 hours per week of Overwatch. We spend hours looking at VODs from tournaments (our own as well as others) to find stuff we might've missed out on, and stuff to improve. I noticed that our hero pool and playstyle often looks like a rusty version of REUNITED's, so I specifically studied them to see what we could do better. I would ask ONIGOD to look at Vallutaja and Invision to look at Kyb, and ask "how can we do the same thing?" Right now we don't have any standard scrim partners, but we particularly enjoyed scrimming against Copenhagen Flames, so I really recommend them as scrim partners.

What’s it like to be on a team that’s just breaking into the pro scene, battling major teams and looking for your signature moment?

It is quite challenging, because right now we are unsigned and we don't know when the right opportunity will hit us. When an organization gives you an offer, it’s really hard to know if it’s a good or a bad one given your current standing. Every week we’ve gotten better results and new offers, so we are trying our best to stay unsigned until we have established knowledge of what a realistic offer contains. It is also extremely thrilling, as we go in almost every EU tournament as underdogs, and every time we pull off an "upset" it feels really good for us. It feels good to play without lots of pressure in general. We are really just a bunch of friends who are having a great time playing the game, and I think that is really important. We are attending events like GigaCon LAN, and DreamHack in November in hopes of getting noticed by an organization that gives us what we are looking for!

You’ve put it out there that you’re looking for an eSports organization to pick Nordic Alpha up. What kind of edge do you bring that sets you apart from other teams contending for a contract?

I think it comes down to three things: motivation, potential, and maturity. Our team makes major leaps skillwise every week we play, and the gap between us and the pro scene shrinks every day. We already spend pretty much all of our time improving in the game, and that is without any backup from an organization. If I was an organization looking for a team roster, I would surely prefer a roster that already acts as a professional team, who literally just needs to put on a different jersey and clantag to be an effective part of their brand.

Changing topics for a moment, you, ONIGOD, and Invision recently represented Norway in the European qualifiers for the Overwatch World Cup. What was it like representing your country?

Representing your country always brings extra feelings to the table. Every player has a little nationalist inside them and would really like to achieve victory on behalf of the nation, so to speak.

Representing your country always brings extra feelings to the table. Every player has a little nationalist inside them and would really like to achieve victory on behalf of the nation, so to speak. I think it is a really cool concept by Blizzard, though I am disappointed that the nomination process seemed to almost exclude support players (though obviously I am happy half my team made it to the National team). I would definitely like to see this happen again next year though!

Did you know Trob, Badger, and Horsee before the World Cup? What was it like to play in a tournament setting alongside three people that aren’t on your regular team?

I actually didn't know any of these guys on beforehand. Badger and Trob play on European teams, and Horsee joined BX3 just a week or two before the qualifiers. The Norwegian scene is evolving quite well, especially thanks to Telenorligaen, which has three divisions of active Overwatch teams competing for prizes. We also have a discord channel where all the active Norwegian teams hang out, talk, and share tips, which really gives it a great community feel. This is why 80% of the teams in the King of Nordic qualifier came from Norway.

I must say I noticed that we didn't click as well with the guys on the national team as on our own team, but it really worked better than expected nonetheless. It was some long weeks trying to keep practice schedules with both Alpha and Team Norway. We made it work somehow, but it did mean less focus on Alpha during this period. I want to show my appreciation to the rest of the members of Alpha for cheering us on and motivating us to practice with Team Norway even though it affected our own team. I really love this gang.

In both the World Cup and on Nordic Alpha, you ran very aggressive dive compositions. What’s your philosophy when it comes to choosing compositions, strategies, and heroes to run?

As both the DPS players came from my team, we had a pretty clear philosophy on how we liked to play already, but we quickly adjusted to something in-between with the rest of the gang. We tried to run some triple tank comps, and even though it wasn't quite our style, it served its purpose. My philosophy as captain for Alpha is always to have my players be comfortable on the hero they play, rather than playing the best lineup in a given situation. If they pick Reaper, for example, you don't necessarily have to switch off Winston, just try to avoid their Reaper instead.

The current meta is very tank friendly. As a tank specialist, has your role or playstyle shifted since the current patch went live?

As you may have noticed, Reinhardt and Winston are my go to guys, and I get to play them even more aggressively in this meta, so it fits me and my team perfect. We have been forced to switch up things a bit though, with Godcomp (Winston/Zarya/Tracer/Genji/Zenyatta/Lucio) being a more situational pick than before. The biggest change was including Ana in our lineup, which we actually just did a few days ago. After reaching the semis in GosuGamers EU #20 without picking Ana once, we noticed that something was missing, even though we were really happy with our results in Gosu.

On the other hand, Pharah has fallen out of the meta recently. ONIGOD won plaudits for his Pharah play against Croatia and France in the World Cup. Can we expect to see that come over to Nordic Alpha?

This brings me back to the topic of comfortable heroes. If there is a situation like on Dorado attack, you see NiP (who literally invented triple tank/triple support) often switch Zappis over to a Pharah just to knock the defenders off the highground, which isn't necessarily the best choice, but it serves its purpose because he plays it that way. I think Pharah is viable in certain situations, but it doesn't necessarily have to be Pharah, just a hero that the player is comfortable on. I don't think we will see her in any starting lineups in the near future though. In the World Cup matches we pretty much picked Pharah because it countered what we expected the other team to play.

Taking a step back, what are your thoughts on the current meta and on competitive Overwatch in general?

Competitive Overwatch is incredibly exciting, with new tournaments showing up every month and the scene growing very rapidly. I am so happy I decided to devote all my resources into building a team and growing alongside with it. The current meta, however, is quite boring. You see few switches, with 4-5 heroes on each side being mirrors. I really enjoyed the start of this patch before the whole triple tank triple support became a thing, because nearly every support, tank, and DPS was viable. But as always, the theorycrafters always find a way to annoy us in the end. Before this meta, I would never have imagined four tanks and two supports being viable, but I guess I was wrong. But hey, keep faith in Blizzard and they will balance it out!

Any last words for your fans?

I want to thank everyone for cheering at us in the World Cup, all the casters for talking so warmly about us, especially me, ONIGOD and Invision, and lastly you as well.

Thank you so much for your time. It was great to get the inside scoop, and best of luck to you and your team as you challenge the ladder. If we want to follow you and Nordic Alpha, where should we go?

As we don't have an Organization yet, our streamed matches will be published on my Facebook group, so feel free to join that. I’m also on Twitch (AverageJonas) and Twitter (@Average_Jonas).

For more competitive Overwatch news, follow @GosuOverwatch.

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