Stat check: How will flameZ fit into Vitality?

January 19, 2024 hobby Tips

He didn’t try to qualify for FPL, believing he couldn’t because of a bad PC, but Roey “⁠ZENCER⁠” Kimhi’s words and advice became a zenith to unlocking flameZ’s potential. FlameZ secures seventh place in his debut appearance on the Top 20 Players of the Year list by 1xBet and SkinClub thanks to an impressive stat sheet in the toughest environments.

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ZywOo

In terms of fitting within the existing team structure, flameZ seemed confident about his ability to fill the roles left by Peter “⁠dupreeh⁠” Rasmussen. “On T side I fit because Vitality need a guy that runs and doesn’t give a single fuck and sacrifices, and I think I fit that background pretty well,” he said. “I feel comfortable playing aggressively and giving my teammates the feeling that someone is sacrificing for them, especially in a team with someone that can close any 1vs4 round or 1vs3, or 1vs2 like ZywOo. FlameZ chose to join Vitality and reunite with Lotan “⁠Spinx⁠” Giladi for the first time since 2020, when they both played in the same FPL/FPL-C circles and coincided in mix-teams such as Tikitakan and Elites. The move was one of the highest-profile transfers in the off-season, teaming up the Israeli rifler not only with his countryman, but also Mathieu “⁠ZywOo⁠” Herbaut.

“I expected more to play whatever we can to get in form, and play those big tournaments like last Major was with Apeks, Monte, 9INE,” he explained.
“They come in with like 500 or 200 officials in a year and come up against a team that has like 40 so, of course, they are going to be prepared. That’s the best practice you can wish for, to play officials at this amount.”
Days after being crowned the 2023 Team of the Year at the HLTV Awards Show, Dan “⁠apEX⁠” Madesclaire’s troops made their way to Copenhagen for BLAST Spring Groups and locked in a spot at the Spring Final.
Focus in Israel soon turned to international competition and on making a name for yourself in FPL, but flameZ was still under 16 and ineligible to compete in qualifiers for most big events.
“Krabeni deserves a shoutout as well, I feel like they will be super good as a duo. But I was also very happy to play with both of them individually and was super impressed.”
His only negative map (0.90 rating) came in the decider against G2 in the semi-final, which Vitality lost in overtime to bow out of the Spring Final in 3-4th place.

How to Apply “flameZ” Crosshair

“But I love niko so I was convinced and very happy with this decision. It starts off and it was so shaky, it did not feel stable at all, and Pro League was just a shit show for us. And although the kills flameZ got were more impactful than most, leading to round wins 70.5% of the time (2nd) and multi-kills 83% of the time (6th), he had the lowest fragging output of players in the top 20 (0.68 KPR). He was also not very impressive in round wins overall with a 0.92 KPRW and a kill in only 57.8% of round wins, again the lowest of all players in the top 20. “We expected and felt like we played well at the time, but we were not able to close this close match against them. This best-of-three was also tough for us back then with the veto, but EF proved to be very lethal against any team. He was among the contenders for the MVP award but was pipped by teammate ZywOo, who wasn’t quite as consistent as flameZ throughout the event but stepped up when it mattered most in the playoffs to consign his teammate to an EVP instead.
“In the end, I think everybody felt bad, a lot of players felt burnout and it just wasn’t fun to play as it was before in the other part of the year in 2022. Overall in 2023, the last part of OG was not full of good memories for me.” “Overall, in 2022, when degster came in and we had NEOFRAG and F1KU, I think we made the semi-finals in all the BLAST tournaments like the Spring Final and World Final. That is according to Sebastien “⁠KRL⁠” Perez, who has reported that Spinx is expected to leave Vitality in 2025 after both sides “expressed mutual interest in parting ways.” The French insider was also the first to report flameZ’s contract extension. The announcement of the Israeli’s contract extension came just two days before the start of Vitality’s campaign in the Perfect World Shanghai Major Europe RMR A, where the team will fight for one of seven spots at the Major on offer.
FlameZ added that the experience in Cologne was his favorite moment of the year, emphasizing his appreciation of the team environment and how hard Vitality fought for the title. “It felt like we were a really solid family, and lifting the trophy is super nice obviously but the journey there was extremely unforgettable.” “In my opinion, there is no wrong in losing if you are learning and feel that there is progress,” he says about what was going wrong for Vitality around this point. “We lacked closing some of the close games back then, and working on that helped us acquire the trophy in Cologne.”

Stat check: How will flameZ fit into Vitality?

FlameZ recorded a 0.78 rating in a 0-2 loss to Spirit, but even with a stand-in Vitality recovered by defeating Liquid and MOUZ to reach the semi-final before toppling to G2. FlameZ was back to his best at the BLAST Spring Final with a 1.16 rating across 12 maps, but it was only good enough for a 3-4th finish. He tallied his second-highest-rated map of the year against FaZe in the quarter-finals (2.32) and was Vitality’s best performer in the semis against Spirit, ending the series with a 1.22 rating. With that lineup, flameZ qualified for his first Major, playing in the Challengers Stage of IEM Rio 2022 and falling just short of advancing to the top-16 after losing to Vitality in a three-map series. OG were far from title contenders, however, with flameZ and degster often relied upon for any upset wins, and one of their only notable playoff appearances came at BLAST World Final 2022 with a run to the semis over HEROIC and Vitality.

Team Vitality

OG barely missed out on qualifying for PGL Major Stockholm, the first after the pandemic, and exited in groups at IEM Winter to end the year on a sour note. Aleksib was traded for Nemanja “⁠nexa⁠” Isaković at the start of 2022, but a last-place exit at IEM Katowice and failing to qualify for PGL Major Antwerp brought about more changes with Maciej “⁠F1KU⁠” Miklas, Adam “⁠NEOFRAG⁠” Zouhar, and Abdul “⁠degster⁠” Gasanov joining mid-way through the year. FlameZ took part in a few small tournaments early on, but soon gained motivation to step out of his older brother’s shadow after he was taunted online. Join our Discord community to discuss CS2 utility strategies, share experiences, and get the latest updates with fellow players. Despite a year with only one trophy, albeit at the prestigious IEM Cologne, flameZ says there isn’t a specific moment or memory that he would rather forget. “The Major obviously is a hard tournament, but the challenge of being together for a month with a not-so-optimal relationship was tough on many. In the end, we gave our best, and if you do that you can’t judge yourself.”

FLAMEZ CHICKEN INC

The 20-year-old then confessed that joining a tier-one team such as OG did not exactly match his assumptions. “I expected more to play whatever we can to get in form, and play those big tournaments like last Major was with Apeks, Monte, 9INE,” he explained. “They come in with like 500 or 200 officials in a year and come up against a team that has like 40 so, of course, they are going to be prepared. That’s the best practice you can wish for, to play officials at this amount.” Shahar “⁠flameZ⁠” Shushan and Vitality have agreed to extend the Israeli player’s contract until the end of 2027, the organization announced Friday. Stay tuned to our Top 20 Players of 2024 ranking and learn more about how the players were selected in our introduction article. Seventh was as high as he could go, though, as the group above outperformed flameZ in most ways, both award-wise and statistically.

In OG, Nemanja “⁠nexa⁠” Isaković, Nikolaj “⁠niko⁠” Kristensen, and Adam “⁠NEOFRAG⁠” Zouhar were on map control in defaults but because those spread out defaults were so rare, it is unlikely flameZ will be too uncomfortable slotting into Vitality’s pack with apEX and Mathieu “⁠ZywOo⁠” Herbaut.
FlameZ secures seventh place in his debut appearance on the Top 20 players of the year list thanks to an impressive stat sheet in the toughest competitions and against the best teams.
FlameZ took part in a few small tournaments early on, but soon gained motivation to step out of his older brother’s shadow after he was taunted online.
“But I love niko so I was convinced and very happy with this decision. It starts off and it was so shaky, it did not feel stable at all, and Pro League was just a shit show for us.
Vitality played BLAST World Final with Audric “⁠JACKZ⁠” Jug as a stand-in for mezii, who took time away after becoming a father, and the event in Singapore started in predictably poor fashion.
FlameZ mustered 1.10 and 1.20 ratings in those efforts, showing he could perform against the best European teams, and slowly OG inched up the world rankings.

That changed when Uniquestars, Israel’s best team, lost to MVP PK at IeSF World Championship — to the surprise of players in Israel who did not know any of the other teams at the event – and after Noah “⁠buue⁠” Nethanel Türnpu became the first Israeli player to qualify for FPL in December 2017. Despite our talk of flameZ as an entry fragger so far, there is not much overlap between he and dupreeh on his default positions on T side. It must be something that he enjoys, and that can only have made him an appealing prospect for Vitality to pick up. A lot of aggressive players in the current meta are solo space takers, using their timings to find kills for themselves rather than for their teammates. Whether that is personal preference or OG’s style doesn’t really matter; either prove that he is willing to sacrifice himself for the win. “Then 2023 we started out with Katowice and BLAST. It was very close to getting playoffs at Katowice and with BLAST we were very close to qualifying for Washington,” he began.
At the turn of Flamez the year, four players in HLTV’s Top 20 Players of 2020 list named flameZ as their Bold Prediction — a projection that took four years to come true. Four months into 2021, flameZ got called up to OG to replace Issa “⁠ISSAA⁠” Murad, getting the opportunity to consistently test his abilities against top international opposition. He spent seven months competing for the British organization in online tournaments as the coronavirus pandemic kept teams away from LAN, and his performances soon drew the interest of other organizations as the return to offline play drew near. “On the other hand, it got better with time, we always had good chemistry in the game, shared similar ideas, and also he has always been very creative so playing next to him was easy to adapt to as rifler.”