EliGE excited about new patch: “It was a good enough shakeup that Valve did”

Liquid have secured back-to-back top four finishes after reaching the semi-finals at the BLAST Fall Final. They did so with a 2-1 victory over Natus Vincere in the BLAST Premier World Final quarter-finals, punching their ticket to the stage matches at the Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi, UAE.

An upbeat Jonathan “⁠EliGE⁠” Jablonowski took some time after Liquid‘s victory to break down some of the key elements in the victory over Natus Vincere, especially after suffering a comeback loss on Ancient that forced a decider map. The 25-year-old also spoke about the exciting times that lie in early 2023 as a new meta is developing around the inclusion of Anubis into the map pool alongside the M4A1-S nerf.

Going into the match against NAVI, did you think it was an even pairing?

Honestly, we felt really comfortable. We have a really good read against them, it’s just one of those teams that we know their whole playbook and what they’re comfortable doing. The only unknowns were like Mirage, for example, where we didn’t know exactly where npl was going to play. But we figured it out in like round two, we figured out exactly where everyone was going in the first half, so it wasn’t that hard because we knew they were just going to pluck him into the structure.

npl didn’t play all of the same positions as sdy, so you had to figure that out on the fly, right?

Yeah, on Mirage it was different, he was playing connector, electronic moved for him. On T-side he was playing underpass, and b1t moved for him. So they did change it up for him.

A tricky moment in the series was Ancient, you had a great T-side but couldn’t hold it down on the oft-favored CT. What happened there? And in the context of the new patch, do you think that had anything to do with it?

I don’t think it has anything to do with the patch. I personally feel like we had control of that game, we had a really nice T-side, we won the pistol round on the CT side, and everything looked really good for us. We also had the read on them for the entire half, we understood when they were going fast mid and we understood their pacing of the round, we just weren’t winning in the micro details of holding the hits.

Like we understood that they were going on the sides — A pops, B pops —, or exactly when they were going fast mid. We just failed in those moments to hold down the sites and play well. Some of the times we weren’t even getting a chance for an optimal retake, so it just got really difficult. They played the micro for those rounds really well.

How did you focus on Mirage and not let the Ancient comeback get you down?

As soon as we stepped outside daps was pretty much like, ‘let’s just not talk about it at all, just focus on Mirage.’ So we went over our game plan for Mirage and how we wanted to play. Everyone got back to their seats and we started making some jokes. I said, ‘If you just think about it in reverse, we started on the CT side and got dominated, but we almost came back on T side so that’s a pretty good game guys, we almost came back.’ I just reframed it to get some laughs.

Everyone was in a good mood, you could even see it on the cameras, we were smiling before Mirage. We didn’t get devastated and I think that was the biggest thing. daps also reiterated before we started to not let bad comms, a bad mentality, plague this third map. It’s our best map, the map we were also thinking of picking, so we just had to refocus. That made the difference for us to keep up our comms and to stay composed for the third map after such a bad loss.

You’re in the semis now, you’ll get to play in the arena. When I spoke with YEKINDAR the other day he said you guys maybe aren’t quite a championship team yet. Do you agree with that or do you think you can be?

Our expectations rose really fast when we first got YEKINDAR because of how well we played in the first couple of tournaments, but we ended up just falling further and further behind after tournaments in which we didn’t have enough time to reinvent our game. More and more mistakes began to pile up and we haven’t been able to fix them quick enough, so it’s been really hard for us. We’re a team that can beat any team, you can see this here, I think we’ve been playing well overall, but you can also see the moments where we can lose to anyone.

I think that in YEKINDAR’s perspective, and in our perspective and in mine, that there’s many things for us to fix. But that’s also a good thing because for how well we’ve been playing, we still have so much to work on. When the list isn’t so long then we’re going to think that we’re actually championship level and championship ready, but for right now there’s just too much on that list for us to confidently win tournaments.

In every match-up we have confidence that we can win and that it’s up to us on the day to make sure that we have good communication, that we’re not starting too slow on the first map — which we do a lot, unfortunately —, and that we have good teamwork and not mess up the micro. I think our macro and game plan has been super good, we’ve understood and we know how to play against a lot of these teams. We’ve been playing well, we’re just failing in the late rounds right now.

I’ve heard this a lot, lately, teams saying they can beat anybody, but can also lose to anybody. What do you make of this moment in time since there’s no real dominant order right now and we’re in a bit of a limbo?

There have been a lot of times in CS when everyone thinks that we all have the same things and have it all figured out. We’re at that point where everyone has very similar strat books, we’re playing similar timings, and we have a similar understanding of the meta. With how CT-sided the game has been and with how the map pool hasn’t changed in a long time, everyone has the same understanding right now and it’s up to individuals, the teamwork on that day, and on how people are feeling. That’s why it’s so back-and-forth at these tournaments.

I personally attribute that to the map pool not changing in a long time and I think that with Anubis we’ll see someone come out the winner. Everyone’s map pool is going to change now, there’s the three maps that people don’t play a lot: Ancient, Vertigo, and now Anubis — because it’s new, but I think people are excited to play it. There’s not that many protocols and the understanding of the map is not set, so there’s a lot more possibilities and a lot more for people to work on.

I think that now, with the A1 nerf, the Ts are going to have way more opportunities. People were just getting beamed down from long range with four body hits before. The A4 is also very strong, just not as strong as the A1 was with the four body hits. I think we’ll see someone come out ahead, and I hope that’s us of course. We’re going to be putting in a lot of work and we know the things we need to do to rise in the first six months of next year.

Right now there’s been so many tournaments in a row, the schedule has been super jam packed and I know it’s been hard for teams to find enough practice. Especially for this tournament, specifically, where any team that wasn’t at BLAST but plays at a high level is on vacation. So it’s been pretty tough to find scrims on Anubis, that’s why some teams are either super confident from the couple of scrims they’ve had or they kind of want to avoid it. Just having so many tournaments in a row, with teams not changing enough and everyone having similar meta understandings, that’s what’s leading to this back-and-forth nature.
 
What’s the key going to be for someone to rise to the top after the new year while everything is being figured out?

First of all, whoever does really well on Anubis or can shift around their map pool to be comfortable with at least four to five maps is going to be pretty dominant. Teams getting more T-side rounds is also going to be pretty crucial. If you’re going to be a CT-sided team that can still get a ton of rounds up there, that’s going to be super strong for you. Maybe teams that have double AWPs will be stronger because they can’t rely on riflers just beaming everyone down with the A1.

It’s kind of undetermined how things are going to play out, it’s really exciting. It was a good enough shakeup that Valve did, but I wish we didn’t have Anubis so fast because I don’t think many teams have been able to really dive deep into it. Everyone is kind of on the cusp of understand it a bit better than the other teams, so it’s just going to come down to that hard work of who is actually going to be able to figure it out and if you’re going to have a good understanding of your T-side or CT-side and really have that edge.

The fundamentals for a lot of teams are really, really good. There are so many good riflers, so many really good AWPers, so just having good fundamentals and a better understanding than other teams coming into the new year, that’s going to determine the best team next year.

Do you think it’s a moment for the big brains? For the players who like nerding out with the new map, as well as analysts and coaches. Is that behind-the-scenes work where it’s at right now?

100%. A lot of the teams right now are doing every little thing they can like getting analysts and people who understand data science to get any little edge. From optimizing buys to figuring out the optimal percentages for teams to hit certain sites. Everyone’s doing this stuff, so there’s a lot of little things that people have been and are going to keep adjusting. Now that we have a brand new map in the pool it’s just setting everything to ground zero because there aren’t certain protocols.

You can carry around the fundamentals, but sometimes you have to experience things even though you know them. You have to know what to do in that moment, but you also have to have the reps so it becomes second nature. When you understand the fundamentals, it’s one thing to apply it to a map and have to think about it and then do it, while on other maps it’s second nature and you don’t have to think about it.

Every team is going to have to apply this to any new map, whether they want to go with Anubis or start playing their permaban. That’s one of the main things that everyone is going to have to be playing around with. It’s really fun that there’s a huge laundry list of things that you have to do on that map now compared to the very little small refinements on all of the other maps.