nukkye: “Regarding the North American teams, I don’t feel like they are a challenge”

Our website had the chance to submit a few questions to Zygimantas "nukkye" Chmieliauskas, who was recently crowned the First Strike Europe champion. 

Heretics decided to build an european roster around Christian "loWel" Garcia and so far they’ve won all of the tournaments they signed up for.

The duelist from Heretics spoke to us about a few subjects like his transition to Valorant, the importance of the small iberian cups they attended, their path on First Strike and the influence of their backstage staff in the teams’ success.

Fraglíder: First of all thank you very much for accepting this interview. You had your stint in TF2 and spent some good time with The Imperial and HellRaisers, where you even won a DreamHack back in 2018. So we want to start by asking you – where does the switch to VALORANT come from and what aspects of the game grabbed your attention?

Nukkye: I like that it’s a brand new game and from the start developers cared about it a lot. You can see it in how they interact and listen to the community or pro players’ feedback.That’s a really important thing to me since I know the game is going to have consistent updates and won’t get stale like Counter-Strike did for me, after playing the same maps and playing with the same guns the entire time in the last 8 years. VALORANT brings a lot of “freshness” and it’s a never ending learning cycle.

Fraglíder: You weren’t a common sight at the top level of VALORANT in Europe prior to joining Heretics, so how did you come about joining them? Did anything stand out in Heretics’ offer that made you accept it instead of others, if there were any?

Nukkye: Well I can thank my Agency, Prodigy, and its CEO, Jerôme Coupez. He told me that loWel was creating a lineup to compete at the top and reach the Tier1, so I messaged Christian and it started from there. I had a month long trial on all sorts of agents without any experience (2 weeks of playtime in total) and they took a risk on me and that’s pretty much it.
 

Fraglíder: There was little to no european competition between the Ignition Series and First Strike apart from GLX Elite, which was played during your roster’s formation. Were the iberian competitions you attended (LVP Genesis Cups) key in your success and were they also a tool to work out some kinks in your team’s playstyle?

Nukkye: Of course we wanted to win everything we signed up for, but at the same time those small Cups were used as a way to fix the problems or mistakes we didn’t see during practice games. They were also important to see what we needed, any work regarding our mentality and stressful situations during the official games.

Fraglíder: Between the final of LVP Genesis Viento and the first qualifier for First Strike, you stopped competing for a week and you did some changes with loWel going back to Sage and niesoW picking up Sova. How important was to get this time to practice and how confident were you with these changes before First Strike?

Nukkye: During that week it was kinda stressful to a point but at the same time I always had this thought in the back of my head that “no matter what agent we switch to, we are going to dominate because I believe in the players that surround me”. That being said, I believe that it was a good change and one of the reasons why we played so well.
 

Fraglíder: Unfortunately you lost on the final Bo1 of the first qualifier against NiP. What is your opinion on the format of the qualifiers, how hard did this loss hit the team mentally and how important was it for your trajectory towards winning the whole tournament?

Nukkye: Honestly when I saw the format, the fact that other regions were playing BO3 while we were playing BO1 made me quite mad and upset, because in a BO1 if you or a teammate makes a small mistake the result of the game can easily turn around and you end up losing the match. That’s what happened with us in the BO1 against NiP, they had a solid lineup and I like them as players but if it was a BO3 we would have won without any problems. At the same time that loss was a eye opener to our lineup exposing some small issues, that we managed to fix during that “vacant” week of not playing any officials and just practice and figure out team composition which led loWel back on Sage and nieSoW onto Sova.

Fraglíder: Coming into the First Strike Main Event did you have the feeling of being the underdogs? We feel many didn’t give you the credit you deserved and most people surely expected Liquid, and later G2, to cruise past you and maybe into the finals but you outshone them all beautifully.

Nukkye: I did feel that way but I looked at it in a positive way because all of the big names like G2, FPX or Liquid had a lot more pressure, compared to us, since they were the favourites to win the whole thing and it was our first big tournament. I mean I didn’t consider us the favorites either because at that point we had no experience competing against the top European teams and we just played Iberian tournaments which is mainly Spanish, Portuguese teams and a few mix teams, so everyone thought that we can only win “against teams of that level”.
 

Fraglíder: Touching on the subject of G2 – they were the clear favorites coming into First Strike but we all know what happened. Now that they (and FPX) have changes underway, do you think it can give you an advantage for the Champions Tour 2021 since you’re keeping the current lineup?

Nukkye: It’s good for us but at the same time, as long as you keep 3 or 4 players of your core I think it does not affect that much.

Fraglíder: You are on a nice winning streak, where you’ve won all the tournaments you attended. Your team is stacked with talent, but we would like to know more about the importance of Tanizhq and Noel Garberi [Performance Coach] in keeping the team focused and performing at your maximum.

Nukkye: I would love for the developers to add a proper spectator slot soon, so Tanizhq himself would feel more useful. Tanizhq did most of the anti-strating and the homework regarding opponents and what they do, but I would have also loved to have him on the server with us mid game, to help us figure out some things that we missed or didn’t pay attention, and as for Noel he helped us quite a lot regarding communication and mentality aspects in and out of the game. We wouldn’t have done it without these 2.

Fraglíder: We’re yet to see an international VALORANT LAN tournament but Riot has exactly that planned for the end of 2021 with the VALORANT Champions Tour. Where do you expect your strongest opponents? Europe and North America have already thrown jabs at each other but the Asian scene has been relatively quiet.

Nukkye: Out of all of them I want to play against Vision Strikers. I have seen quite a few games from them and I like their thought out playstyle, would be interesting to see how we do against them. Regarding the North American teams, I don’t feel like they are a challenge, because it reminds me exactly of NA Counter-Strike, when I faced them back in my CS days. It feels like a public game with some comms and people running around and doing whatever they want.

Fraglíder: Thank you for answering our questions, we wish you a happy 2021!

Nukkye: Likewise!