Complexity Off To A Great Start Despite Gloomy Reflections

In reality, many call this a make-or-break run for the team as Jonathan "⁠EliGE⁠" Jablonowski puts it: “I think that is actually how most of the scene is feeling, honestly. I think a lot of the teams right now feel like they could have done better throughout the year, especially some of the teams that have been more successful than us, where they have had success and then things have hit a downturn. That's also kind of how we feel as well, since we did experience it at the beginning of CS2. Everyone wants that taste of success, and if you haven't had it in a while and you've already tried all the solutions, then I think it's just natural."

Disappointing run this year

Complexity has had a complicated run this year, something that many of its players call disappointing as they fell from being #5 in the world at the start of the year to #15 a couple months later. Back when CS2 launched in 2023, Complexity cemented their #5 spot with accomplishments like reaching the finals at IEM Sydney 2023 and winning ESL Pro League Season 19. However, since then, they have mostly been exiting tournaments from the Group Stages.

The sad part is that Complexity has been trying to make things work this year, hoping to regain that former glory. EliGE describes that effort as follows: "This year we haven't been able to get our footing at all. We've been trying a lot of different things, trying to see, 'Is this the solution?' or 'Is this other thing the solution?' like what should we be focusing on? We've been trying a lot of things that we think are going to be the solution for us and putting in the time, and none of them have really been working. At times its felt really disappointing and frustrating since we're trying all these different things and none of them are working.”

"A couple of times throughout the year we felt that we had found it, that we're working on the right thing, focusing on the right stuff, and it's always just a combination of a lot of things we need to work on. Like Whack-A-Mole, where you fix one thing, another thing pops up, it's another problem, and I think that's pretty normal with any team. It's just been a little bit harder on us since we haven't had any leeway results-wise where things have gone even a little bit better,” he goes into great detail. 

Johnny "⁠JT⁠" Theodosiou, the team’s captain, feels that the team is missing that key component of consistency: “"We're really on and off because sometimes we will lose rounds that we shouldn't even if we're in the lead, like 12-6, 12-7. We have this mental blockage of seeing things go wrong and thinking that everything is over, even if we're winning the match already. We end up playing a lot worse when we start reacting in that way mentally. We've also had a lot of mental struggles this year which I think is obvious to everyone on the outside."

Tiaan "⁠T.c⁠" Coertzen also pitched in to highlight how his team tends to crumble in high-pressure situations, and it all snowballs from there: "We need to realize we're not always going to be able to play a perfect game and everyone is not always going to be in perfect tip-top shape. It's important to keep each other accountable and to expect big things from each other, but we also need to give a little more leeway to each other and allow each other to make mistakes and grow within the team. Having more of that growth environment where we can help each other and where people feel like it's okay to make mistakes."

With such gloomy reflections ahead of the tournament, the team feels it has finally found its stride ahead of the RMR, hoping to turn things around. Michael 'Grim' Wince said in an interview before his match against BESTIA: “At the end of the day we can only keep trying to get better until changes are made. We just need to keep doing what we can do. I don't think there is a timeline or something like that for me, from my perspective, I have to keep trying my best to work on the issues and at the end of the day if something does happen, if something changes, at least I can say I tried my best to work through them to be better as a player and as a teammate.”