Robin "ropz" Kool has had a quiet few months by his standards, but earned an EVP at StarSeries Fall and has averaged a 1.39 rating in ESL Pro League's group stage.
It's a frightening prospect for any opponent of Vitality in Katowice, with four of their players at or above a 1.29 rating after three matches.
For so long, ropz and company were the dominant team, and as they wait for Dan "apEX" Madesclaire to head home for the birth of his child they know that they must make every tournament count.
Astralis' era ended as much off the server as on it, with skipped events and personal burnout taking its toll. It's something Vitality are mightily aware of.
"You could draw some lines, [to Astralis]," ropz says. "It's maybe similar in this case, but I think the thing is we still feel like, as individuals at least, we have a lot more to give and we're not done with anything.
"We said so many times, we're lucky to have this five, and we will do anything to be good again."
Congratulations. I think it's the first time you've beaten them in basically a year. How did that one feel?
It feels good. Yeah, it was almost an anniversary, so I had to give it to them eventually. But yeah, we've been struggling against them, and I think that's the thing: when you play Vitality, for other teams, they know they're playing against one of the best teams ever, and everyone kind of steps up against us.
So the level of teams against us is always higher, and Falcons always find their prime mode as well. So the individuals always pop off, and yeah, it's just always a hard game against them.
How is it for you playing against karrigan? Because you both know each other's game so well.
It doesn't feel so personal. It doesn't feel like there's something special in the game. It feels like another game, just another one. But obviously, a lot of history between me and karrigan. In the beginning, for the first few games against Falcons, for sure I tried to give some heads-ups, how they like to call, how he likes to react on mid rounds and stuff like that.
But I think in the end, it's really hard to predict some of those things. So you just kind of forget about it and try not to go too deep in the mind game, because I think you can mess up your own game in that sense.
And I wanted to ask you specifically: how is your motivation at the moment? Because with the stand-ins and everything, how are you coping as an individual player with the uncertainty?
For sure, that's a good question. Personally, for me, it's hard to find the same level of motivation when you know, way before, it's been in discussion since the beginning of this year that this was going to happen and we were going to have two tournaments where there's going to be no expectation. We can't expect to do well, and it's hard as a player, and it's a bit demotivating.
And of course you're going to have good times when you give a break for childbirth to apEX and mezii. But on the other side, us the players, we're sacrificing for them to go to the tournaments, and we're also away from our loved ones and stuff like that. So it is hard to do that sacrifice, but I think it's just something we all accept, and as long as things don't go too bad, I think in the end it's just one tournament, and for them it's a very massive moment and it's really important in life to do that. So yeah, so far looking good. So it's not so hard.
Have the team talked about... Because with the Astralis era, it kind of felt like it fell apart for off-the-server reasons, almost. Is that on the top of your mind in terms of keeping motivation, keeping rhythm with stand-ins and things like that? Have you spoken about that at all?
Yeah, we know how the Astralis thing ended. It was obviously players stepping away in different forms and taking breaks and so on. You could draw some lines, it's maybe similar in this case, but I think the thing is we still feel like, as individuals at least, we have a lot more to give and we're not done with anything.
We said so many times, we're lucky to have this five, and we will do anything to be good again. And everyone is showing up, last month at least, and I think it's been going better. We did our semi-final with JL. That was pretty good already. And then now in EPL here, I think we're just looking strong. Yeah.
And final thing I just wanted to ask, because I was speaking to ash the other day and I asked him about this Skybox Edge, the practice demos being able to be downloaded and stuff. And one of the things he said was, 'It's even more respect to Vitality for having this era during all this.' So I wanted to ask you specifically, how have you managed to get over this, and what's your opinion on those practice demos being available?
It's interesting. I think definitely you understand when you have pracs against certain teams, teams share information between each other, so there could be situations where you play a team and you have an opponent coming up and they manage to share information because they're buddies or whatever. So that's something you have to really take care of.
Whenever you come up with a brand-new strat or maybe some really unique grenades which haven't been used before, or some just out-of-the-box things, those spread like wildfire when you play them once in practice, because the opponent has that demo and then everyone looks at it from that specific practice game, and they will just adapt, and it's going to continue to the next practices and next practices. So it is definitely hard. Nothing is hidden nowadays.
I think since CS2 released, obviously in CSGO... And I think people think that it's something that's been always like that, and it wasn't always like that, because in CSGO you couldn't see that kind of information from a POV demo, and that's the thing where the POV demo now reveals everything in CS2. And yeah, you have to elevate your strategy in terms of what you show in practice or what you play, because it can be no surprise to anyone what you do next.
Robin 'ropz' KoolPast 3 months
Dan 'apEX' MadesclairePast 3 months
Vitality
Robin 'ropz' Kool
Dan 'apEX' Madesclaire
Mathieu 'ZywOo' Herbaut
Shahar 'flameZ' Shushan
William 'mezii' Merriman
Rémy 'XTQZZZ' Quoniam
Astralis
Rasmus 'HooXi' Nielsen
Love 'phzy' Smidebrant
Jakob 'jabbi' Nygaard
Victor 'Staehr' Staehr
Gytis 'ryu' Glušauskas
Filip 'NEO' Kubski