EPT
Interview with elevate's daps
Q. Nobody expected you guys to get this far; you’re a pretty new team and you were up against ex-Nihilum and ex-Luminosity. Against ex-Nihilum, were you guys prepared for them at all?
There wasn’t much preparing we could do for ex-Nihilum because they didn’t actually qualify for any of the LANs, so there wasn’t really much we could watch on them at LAN. So we kinda just went off of what we play them online and on scrims. We knew they were good on Inferno and other maps not so much. We knew Cobble was one of our better maps and just got lucky that they picked it.
Q. How about ex-Luminosity? Did you guys prepare for them?
Same kinda deal with them. We know they like Dust 2 a lot--it’s one of their favorite maps. Dust 2 and Cache are the maps they play the most, so we avoided Dust 2--Cache we were fine with--but I think we match up well against the team firepower wise. So I feel like there wasn’t much preparing we needed to do for either team.
Q. Okay. I saw you guys abuse the A site a lot on your Terrorist side (on Mirage), was that something you were planning to do coming in?
Oh, no, there was no plan on it. I noticed that they were doing three towards mid a few times so if we just ran up quick A then we could catch one guy there, trade on him, smoke off their A site after we came out and take the site pretty cleanly.
Q. So, after you left Liquid--
I got cut (laughs).
Q. Right (laughs). You had a little bit of a hiatus. How did you end up joining eLevate?
Well, I had some offers from teams after I got cut, but it wasn’t to the level that I wanted to play at. There weren’t the players on the teams that I wanted to play with or think could succeed. So I waited a full season of ESEA, kinda just played pugs with friends and stuff and played 10-mans and just waited for an opportunity to come up. So eLevate was making some changes. They contacted me, we had a tryout and it’s been working well since.
Q. Did they recruit you knowing that you were going to be the in-game leader?
Yeah. Xp3 was never really a caller. Before, they had Warden on their team and he was their caller. So he kinda just called because no one else could. But Xp3 was always an AWPer, so that’s kind of what our goal is--to make him become more of the star, and let me take over the responsibility.
Q. Yeah, it seems to be working quite well and he’s doing pretty well.
Yeah, he’s performing well.
Q. How about NAF? Did you guys get him because he knew you and had a repertoire with you?
Yeah. So, I found out NAF was getting cut from LG like the night of us picking him up pretty much. It happened really fast. And since me and NAF had a lot of success in the past, I just felt like it was a familiar face and had no question about picking him up ‘cause he’s a really good player.
Q. What’s the story behind aKis? No one seems to know who he is. Where’d he come from?
Well, Xp3 likes to take risks on young talent, so like EliGE was one of the people he picked up before and now he’s on Liquid. So he always likes to get the people who are really good and unknown. aKis is a person who liked to play with the CLG guys for like 5-6 years and he’s always in their Mumble and talking to them all the time. He’s always been good but he never made the step to being pro, but he’s a really good player.
Q. So you guys are trying to groom him now pretty much?
Yeah, this is his first LAN ever.
Q. That’s pretty awesome.
And he’s playing well too.
Q. RUSH had his ins-and-outs with eLevate. He left for Tempo and then went back to eLevate. What was the story behind that?
I’m not 100% sure. I just know that they played really poorly so eLevate came almost last place in CEVO, had a .500 record in ESEA and didn’t have a lot of success with the lineup they had. So RUSH obviously felt that Tempo was the next big thing and needed a change, but I convinced him otherwise and told him to come back with me calling and it’s been working out.
Q. So you guys are doing pretty well and are facing Cloud9 next in a best of three. Can you guys do it?
Our map pool’s pretty small and Cloud9 can pretty much play any map to full potential, so... I’m not going to say we can’t beat them but they are the best team in North America right now and arguably a top three team in the world right now, so it’s not gonna be easy is all I’ll say (laughs).
Q. Do you have any plans going into that match at all?
Yeah, we know what maps we want to get them on, but obviously we haven’t been able to practice all seven maps properly with only two weeks of practice, so it’s gonna be pretty tough.
Q. Is there a specific player on Cloud9 that you’re most scared of at all?
Skadoodle. Skadoodle, when I played him on LAN last time with Denial, he pretty much won them the match. He had like 35 kills or something on Inferno and he just wins games by himself if everyone else is playing poorly, which (Cloud9) haven’t been--they’ve all been playing well. So it’s gonna be really hard.
Q. Well, thanks a lot daps, and good luck!
Thank you.
Interviewer: Souma
CSS: FO-nTTaX
Photos: Dylux
