ropz: "chrisJ has become a really good in-game leader"

Let’s start with your recent performances as a team. mouz has had a lot of success lately, you topped the online part of the ESL Pro League, won the V4 Future Festival, as well as StarLadder Season 4. Obviously a lot of good results, could you elaborate on what were the keys to these successes?

Well this year started off with all of the teams not being in shape and then the spot was there for the taking. I guess stars aligned for us and we won two tournaments in a row. But that’s not our main goal. I mean, of course we want to win tournaments, but our main goal is to build up consistency, and that’s what we’re doing now. We’re getting to playoffs every tournaments and that’s what we really want. We want to be up there all the time, not having big ups and downs. It’s good to win tournaments but it’s always better to be consistent.

What are some of the things you guys tried to implement to maintain your consistency?

I guess our lineup has been the same for almost a year now, that plays a big part in this. We’re not planning on making changes as of now. Obviously we have good results. We just practice when we can. We didn’t have as much practice as of late because the schedule is rough. We have so many online matches, with ECS and ESL, then a lot of LAN tournaments. We’ve had a pretty rough schedule, so we’re just trying to get more practice in during tournaments. It’s just about getting in shape.

This is arguably one of the best iterations of mousesports in CS:GO. Is there something special about the chemistry of the team that really helped you guys click and reach the heights you are at now?

I think the team itself is like, we all as five have a similar goal, we know what we expect from our teammates, and everything just clicks as you said. We feel our roles pretty well. We have a good AWPer, also chrisJ has become a really good in-game leader, he knows how to do stuff on the fly basically.

mouz has been previously dubbed a “budget FaZe”, given the team’s mixture of good European talents. What do you think of that characterization? Do you think it was fair? Given your recent tally of strong results, would you say you’ve caught up to FaZe and the top?

I mean technically it’s fair to say that, because FaZe is, as it is, just five superstar players bought from their contracts and put together. We’re the same but we're just not on the same level as they were, when you look at their past history. It can be a good thing, but it can also be a bad thing. Five superstar players may not simply mesh together instantly. It could take some time. If you have, like in our case, five good players, it could be better when all of us can bring something for the team and make sure that someone else can step up. So it can be a good thing and a good thing.

It’s been a year since you joined the team, and it looks like you’ve played very well, integrated very well, and that you developed into a seasoned pro player. I’d like to get your sense of how did you accomplish that, get to where you are, and your development in general.

The team plays a big part in this, because I pretty much get the roles I want, in every strat, every map kind of. So I get to do my own thing, that’s how I like to play CS, doing my own stuff and work with what I have. This helps me a lot, and I’ve become really consistent at it. In the beginning I had a lot of ups and downs, but now I think I’m playing at a really good, consistent level and that I’ll keep on going.

It seems that at times mouz is a bit vulnerable when everybody isn’t performing at the highest level. How do work on that as a team, to sort of get everyone firing on all cylinders? Are you implementing any tricks to help?

Obviously everyone has to be on the same page. I think that a big part of that is also that everyone has to know what’s going on on the map. For example if we’re doing a strat and someone doesn’t understand even just a small part of it that can really mess up everything. You start to overthink, and that can play a part in not performing good. Everyone just needs to understand each other, everything needs to be worked out before. You go into the match, everyone has to hit their shots, you can have a good day or a bad day and that’s just how it is. Another cause about why our performance is like that is that we need more hours, we tend to play better when we have more, and that’s how it is.


Interviewer: XXTN
Editor: Ragnarork
Photo credit: ESL
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