After securing their first victory against Cloud9 in the
VALORANT VCT Americas Stage 1,
ENVY coach Dakota
"Stunner" MacLeod gave a post-match interview to
Sheep Esports. He discussed the playerâs performance that night and the development of the roster so far, including all the changes made, as well as the importance of Max
"Demon1" Mazanov in preparing for the match against Cloud9.
How are you feeling after this game, and about what did your players show today?
Stunner: âYeah, Iâm feeling really good after that win. I think we showed a lot of resilience in that game. Our mentality was really insane, and I think the playersâ mentality carried us throughout the entire match. We played some rounds a little too slowly and a little skittishly, but we kept the ideas from scrims and carried them over into the official, so thatâs good.
On Split, we saw you get off to a difficult start, but you managed to come back after that. What were you telling the players before game two to help them refocus?
Stunner: We knew Split was going to be a hard map for us, and we knew there was a high chance they would pick it. But I donât think we were too worried about that. We were very confident on Pearl and Haven, and the map veto worked really well in our favor. I think we planned pretty well during the week leading up to this match. So yeah, I didnât say much. They were confident. They felt like their mechanics werenât fully there during the first game, and they said, âWeâve got it in the next one, because they started to warm up. So there really wasnât much to say.
How important are they during a game, and how do you personally manage them? Are they more often used to remind the team about a specific system or game plan, or are they more about calming the players down and helping them refocus?
Stunner: Yeah, timeouts are incredibly important. I think out of the timeouts today, we won almost every single round afterward. Iâm pretty sure. Maybe we lost one because of an eco, but yeah, theyâre really important. There are details that you canât always see as a player on an individual level, and itâs hard to piece the puzzle together as a team when so many things are happening, and then you go straight into the pre-round.
I just try to guide them in the right direction, toward the steps theyâre missing in the round things that we were doing in scrims that were working for us but that we werenât doing in the match. And then sometimes itâs also mental. Maybe we lose a very important round, and you need to pause and say, âHey guys, itâs all good. Weâve got this. Letâs do this instead. Here are our ideas, hereâs what theyâre doing, and here are the adjustments we need to make.â
Demon1 is the new addition to the ENVY roster. Credit: Stefan Wisnoski/Riot Games
The roster has changed a lot between the moment you won Ascension and now. How difficult has it been to rebuild the team while still trying to keep the same level of ambition and competitiveness?
Stunner: I donât think it was too hard. We were set up for it beforehand. We knew that if we won Ascension,
ion (Ayan Rastogi) and
canezerra (Alex Banyasz) werenât going to stay on the roster; that was well known. We had an idea early on of who we wanted. I knew
keznit (Angelo Mori) was a strong candidate when I heard he wasnât getting signed by teams, and I was very surprised about that.
So we went for keznit, and once we picked him up, I just needed to see his level of English and went from there. Then with him, we trialed other people for the Controller role, players like Rossy (Daniel Abedrabbo), and Demon1 (Max Mazanov). In the end, we picked up Rossy. He fit our system well at that time, and from there we kept progressing. It wasnât that difficult a struggle. I think a lot of the guys, especially the veterans, listen to the coach, so itâs very easy to follow a game plan.
Speaking of roster changes, we recently saw a player like Demon1 join the team. What made Demon1 the right player to pick up at that moment?
Stunner: Good question. At that moment, we already knew Max was a high-value player. We knew he was a great player, and we knew what we could get from him based on the previous trials, when we trialed him in the offseason for that last spot. During the trial, he was voicing his concerns and sharing his opinions on how he wants to play the game and where he wants to go. He can give very good direction about what he needs and what the team needs to do in order to win rounds.
I think thatâs really important on this team because sometimes we have too many ideas, and having one guy who can provide a very clear direction on how to get that first kill or how to shut the opponents down is crucial. He really stepped up today. In the prep going into the game, he told us exactly how to beat them right from the start on defense, and we dominated them because of that. Heâs a very vocal guy, and thatâs super important. And obviously, he also has that star power.
On the other hand, we have one of the veterans of this roster, Evan âEggsterâ Grady, whose signature agent was nerfed. How did you manage his transition onto agents like Omen and Phoenix, which we saw today?
Stunner: Yeah, itâs incredibly tough for Eggster. When youâre a Yoru one-trick, and suddenly your main character gets nerfed, itâs a difficult situation. For Eggsterr on his new roles, heâs been playing a lot of the positions he used to play before, just with new agents. For example, if you watch our old Pearl games, he was playing a lot of B, around Pillar and B Long. So we asked ourselves: what positions can we put him in that are very similar, and what characters can we put him on that play those similar positions so the transition is easier? Some of it works.
We saw the Veto last week from us, and then we decided to change it this week. I think heâs transitioning well. Yoru is the hardest character in the game, and itâs not even close. I donât think thereâs any other agent that demands that level of skill to play at a professional level. So in a way, his transition has actually been fairly easy. You go to a character like Phoenix, who is much more straightforward, youâre pretty much just swinging off your flashes. Or on Veto, youâre putting up your Interceptor, throwing it into the sky, pressing a button, and then playing off it. It doesnât change that much.
The goal is to put him in positions heâs already played before and get him comfortable that way. Itâs still a hard transition for sure. Weâre asking a lot of Eggsterr, and I think heâs doing a great job. Heâs doing really well in scrims, and he showed it today on stage. Last week was unfortunate, but I promise you thatâs not his normal performance. He does an amazing job and works very hard every day.
We talked about the agent pool and adapting to meta changes with players like Eggster and Demon1, but Iâd also like to know how you, as a coach, manage the challenge of adapting your players to the meta?
Stunner: Thatâs a tough question. I think the best way I can put it is that we first need to understand what the meta is and what we think the meta is. Then we ask whether those agents actually fit us. Those are the first two questions: what is the meta, and do those agents work for us? If they donât work for us, then we create something new. We can go in an off-meta direction and progress from there. As for fitting people into their roles, itâs also about listening to them. If someone says, âHey, I want to play Chamber todayâ or âI want to try Killjoyâ or âI want to play Phoenixâ, then Iâm going to try to work around them and make that happen. Comfort is king.â