[EXCLUSIVE] 100 Thieves Zikz’s opponent of choice at Masters Shanghai “I would definitely like to play against Paper Rex again”

Valorant

15 May

Ganesh Jadhav

The VCT Americas Split 1 concluded on Sunday with 100 Thieves dominating G2 Esports to lift the trophy. Following the win, Strafe had an opportunity to interview 100 Thieves' Head Coach Anthony "Zikz" Gray.

In an exlcusive 1 on 1 interview, Zikz talks about their win over G2 Esports, the team's improvements and philosophy and VALORANT Masters Shanghai.

[Interviewer] How are you?

Feeling good, feeling good for sure.

[Interviewer] Congratulations on the win, congratulations on the first seed and on the Shanghai qualification. Amazing game from you guys. Can you reflect on the game, especially on the first map where you guys went down significantly and then came back from that big deficit and eventually won the game, won the first map?

Yeah, so I'll say in terms of our Bind, we started out kind of slow. I mean, to give context, we took an off day yesterday. G2 obviously has been playing nonstop for the last five days.

So in my head, I did kind of expect that they would come out a bit hotter and that we would have to kind of like adjust into things and kind of get our groove back a bit, like adjust to playing on stage again. We took a full day off. Like we didn't even talk as a team.

We didn't do anything. We just made sure that we had as much of a reset as possible. And on the first map, yeah, we started slow.

After the first half, I had a really good understanding of what gaps there were in our fundamentals and what would be the difference-maker in terms of making sure our communication would be perfect going into the second half. And we had a very clear picture of how this team plays their attack. So we were pretty confident that our defense was going to bring it back going into that second half.

But yeah, after the first half, I definitely was a bit shook because I was, you know, thinking maybe it's going to be a harder day than I thought.

But yeah, throughout the next two maps, Breeze had a bit of a slow start as well, but we were able to bring it back, which was good. We had a really good understanding of what we needed to adjust and we adjusted perfectly to it.

And our attack went extremely well. Pretty much our game plan going into it was that, I mean, I won't go into too many details, but we knew that they would be weak to A-splits and we just tried to look to A-split as much as we could.

[Interviewer] In our previous interview during the pre-season, you talked about how you want the team to perform well and end up on top of the table eventually. But you are already the VCT Americas Champions. Did you expect the trophy to come this soon?

I'll tell you for sure. I did not expect us to win the whole thing, but the mindset I always have is, I just want us to play good Valorant and I push us in a direction that's going to make us play the best Valorant possible in the way that I see it in terms of our identity. And that won't always look the same compared to other teams.

Like, we have a more unorthodox style or a different philosophy on certain topics, but it's the way that we want to play the game and it's the way that we best, we best, like, play as a team. So it's important that we stick to that and whatever results happen, happen. And I think that everybody on my team really did embrace that, that it's more about just making sure we're improving every single day rather than worrying about, you know, like, let's, we have to win this match no matter what so we can make Shanghai or like adding any additional pressure.

We made it a lot about like, like, I don't care how close we are to winning, how close we are to losing. Like, we just need to make sure that we're playing good Valorant and then understanding like when we're not playing good Valorant, what the issue is and like how we can adjust back into it. And I think that throughout this entire tournament, we definitely showed that.

We had a lot of moments where we were down and came back and it was, it was just incredible to watch the entire time. Obviously, you know, we have timeouts and adjustments to make to help aid in it. But I just want to say that, you know, the players just played insane the entire tournament.

They had a great individual form. I think that was a big contributor to why we came away with the win over G2 today. Yeah.

[Interviewer] 100 Thieves right now look better than ever, Especially the core of Asuna, Bang and Cryo look really consistent and strong. The same players looked a bit lost last year, what do you think has changed since, is this you and Boostio? What has been working really well?

Yeah, I mean, ever since my career in League, I had a pretty clear understanding of how I want to build a team. And that the most important thing is that people are one, comfortable. And two, that you play to your identity.

Like no matter what. Because it's like I want Cryo to be doing things that Cryo wants to do. I want Bang to be aggressive if he wants to be aggressive.

I don't want to pull these players back at all. I want to find ways that when it makes sense that we play with teamwork. And when it doesn't make sense and we need to be more aggressive, take risks that they feel comfortable doing so.

So a lot of the time, we don't even review a lot of mistakes that happen. Because that, you know, might deter people from making plays that, you know, they want to make or that they feel is going to win us a round. And that's a really important mindset to have.

Because I think there's a lot of teams that are really worried about making mistakes. And it lowers the amount of pressure that they put on teams. Whereas we're a team that's playing a very high pressure game.

And we want to make sure that we always play high pressure whenever we can. Make sure that the enemy team doesn't feel like they have any space to breathe. And that's part of identity.

Something that everybody on our team is super comfortable making sure happens. And that did take some time. Because I'll be honest, like during scrims, we were really tunnel visioned on our own plays initially when we started with this approach.

People were always kind of making their own play. And then like, if it's like too much of a 50-50 fight, then it's like, okay, like, let's show you how you can coordinate with someone else in the area. And then how we can make that look better.

And then we just kept going through these scenarios. And we reviewed and re-reviewed and re-reviewed. So many scenarios of us in team fights and micro fights.

And how we could better set someone up. Even small things like someone shooting their gun to set up Sean to go through the smoke. In our last match, we closed out our match.

Just small details like that. And our players having the intuition and aggression in their head to go for plays like this is the reason why we're such a good team.

[Interviewer] You previously talked about how the team had a slow start today in the finals. It would be similar for you in Shanghai. Since you are playing the Swiss stage directly, you’d play teams who’d be going via the Swiss stage and coming in really hot. Given a choice, what would you prefer as a coach, time to prepare or playing the extra stage?

I do think that coming in hot through Swiss is like a good trajectory to take for sure.

I mean, the bye and the fact that you get to choose your opponent potentially, if you're, you know, not pretty much like the fourth team that's picked. It is definitely a big advantage in terms of you get to understand like, I guess, you get to watch them play, you can anti a little bit.

But when it comes to the raw, like, we won't know how audio is on stage. We won't know how hot it is. There's so many details that come to stage play that you don't really think about if you're not already playing on the stage. So just those little details do matter a lot in terms of getting you comfortable.

And there will probably be some level of us warming up into our match. But that's expected. And I mean, we're here, you know, we're gonna have the bye whether we want it or not.

But I mean, honestly, I'm down for either way. The most important to me was honestly the champs points.

[Interviewer] What are your thoughts on the Viper nerfs? Do you think they would impact the meta as much?

I'll speak generally on the topic. I do think that Viper is going to be as strong as before. I think the change to the molly:

Yeah, it's like you kind of lose like a luxury molly, I'll call it. But when it comes down to it, you know, 6.5 seconds of stopping power is still incredibly strong. It's like nobody's going to go through that.

So you just have to really be greedy with the timing of your Viper molly. And it'll be good. I mean, obviously, two mollies is pretty OP.

And the gas change is a slight change. But honestly, when it comes to cross map util, she's unmatched. Viper is really strong for that.

And with the current map pull as well, I just don't see Viper leaving the meta on every single map. Maybe on some maps where it's a bit more luxurious. But overall, I don't see a large, large shift. Maybe on some maps.

[Interviewer] Any team you’d want to face in Shanghai?

I haven't seen the recent form of any of the other regions outside of the Paper Rex game. I would definitely like to play against Paper Rex again. I feel like they're a team that is very fun to play against.

They're just a very high skill ceiling team. They have a clear vision of how they want to play the game. And they are very good at swarming you, which is something that we imitate at times in our gameplay. So I'd like to see how we fight fire with fire.

[Interviewer] Thank you so much for your time.

100 Thieves will next play the VALORANT Masters Shanghai Playoffs starting 30th May. Stay tuned on Strafe for more information on the tournament.

Featured Image Credits: Photo by Tina Jo/Riot Games

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