They struggled in the many events they competed in throughout 2024, getting eliminated at 9-12th place from both IEM Cologne 2024 and ESL Pro League Season 20, bombing out almost last place at BetBoom Dacha Belgrade Season 2 and BLAST Fall Showdown and much more. They did also come close to winning some events but couldn’t close it out, such as securing 3-4th place at IEM Rio 2024. Now, at Elisa Masters Espoo 2024, it seems that the team has finally found its stride.
What did NertZ say?
In an interview with HLTV after day 2 of the event, Guy "NertZ" Iluz also talked about what improvements HEROIC have implemented to bring them this far.
When asked about how much it means to him making it to the playoffs given the tough year the team has had, NertZ said
From the start of the year for us, it's to build confidence against the best opponents in the world. We already beat NAVI when they were Major winners, but what was important in Rio was that we beat G2, we beat Vitality after — an impressive game —, and we should have closed the game against NAVI. We just showed to ourselves that what we're doing in practice, we can implement in officials. That's very important for us, for the future.
When asked about what problems the team identified and improved on to make it this far, NertZ said
It's more complicated than people think because Heroic played a certain way, we in ENCE played a certain way, and kyxsan in Apex played in some way. For us, it was very hard at the start. The communication in the game, some people think [something] was basic for them, other people think [something] else was basic for them.
It was really hard for us to bridge the gap and talk about everything we needed to talk about, the small details. When we got Abdul [degster] we played a lot, we practiced a lot, and I feel like this practice and this time together helped us a lot. It didn't help at all when degster had visa issues, but I'd say now we're safe, and we don't have any background noise. I hope we'll keep like that.
When asked about the team’s roadmap towards the upcoming RMR, NertZ said
To win this event, and after this we have another tournament online with good teams there. If we qualify, we'll have good points for 2025 because it's a huge prize pool. Maybe we'll bootcamp before the RMR, we'll probably stay in China the whole time after the RMR if we qualify for the Major. We'll bootcamp in China, so it will be more than one month away from home. This is the road to the Major for us
When asked about the team’s mentality going forward, NertZ said
I would say that, for me at least, I felt like at the start everything was good, but during the start of the year, we felt like something was missing because we had a lot of talks. No matter if we won or lost a game, we had talks for at least two hours. It was a crazy time for us, and after it, we said, 'F**k it, we don't need to overcomplicate it or overthink the situation we have.' That's what helped us the most. Less talks, more play, and that's it. That's what helped us. That's a big part of why we're clicking right now.
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