dastan: "I hope the win will help the guys to be more confident"
It's been a long road for dastan and Jame to get back to the top of tier one Counter-Strike, but after announcing themselves to the world at the StarLadder Budapest Major, the duo are champions for the first time since the IEM Rio Major.
PARIVISION won the
final of BLAST Bounty Season 1 2026 in dominant fashion, shutting down Falcons with a 3-0 scoreline thanks to impressive performances from nota, zweih, and xiELO.
After the game, we caught up with dastan to discuss the meteoric rise, the end of VP, and how the team can become a consistent threat in 2026.
"I didn't expect it, so I don't want to be too overconfident"
It's only the second real tier one event for PARIVISION, and you've lifted the trophy. How does it feel?
I didn't expect it, so I don't want to be too overconfident. We need to be stable. Even in these matches, we had more control, but we lost a lot of bad situations. I hope the win will help the guys to be more confident, because this feeling is amazing. Tomorrow, though, is a new tournament. There are a lot of tournaments in the year, so I'm happy that one day I can be happy.
You always play with a lot of respect for the opponents, so take us through the final. Did you expect a 3-0?
No, I didn't expect it. I expected it would be a hard, hard match, and even during Inferno, I thought that, if we've won 2-0, we can lose 0-2, so we had to play for everything.
When I say that, it's not that I don't believe we can win, I understand that we had a 30/40% chance, so after this, I hope we can be more consistent. When you play against superstars like donk and m0NESY, it will always be hard, so it's important to have that consistency.
zweih has been really solid since joining, what has he added to the roster that might've been missing before?
I think he's a very calm guy, when he speaks and in-game. I still see some plays that he needs to improve on, so in the future, he will be much stronger. We need more time to work with him and help him in these moments, like on Inferno, he can be alive in more situations and stop taking some disadvantaged duels.
Given everything that happened towards the end of VP with both you and Jame, did you feel like it would take longer to get back to this level?
We've had one year, but this system is very hard, and we made a very fast rise. We had some changes, and now we've played a tier one event, so know it will all help us to become stable. That's all I'm thinking about.
How much did the run in Budapest help in giving the younger players in this roster the experience needed to perform in these playoffs?
The Major is the biggest tournament, and it always will be, so when you can play there with confidence, it makes every other tournament easier. It's the highest-pressure moment, so with the young guys playing with more wins than losses, it will help them in the long-term in terms of their mindset. If you lose too much in your career, then long-term, it is hard on your mental health.
When you were on VP, the team was always dangerous but inconsistent in making deep runs. What do you need to do differently now to make sure you get that consistency?
I was separated from Jame for half a year, and I think we both went and improved our vision. We also know one player should help Jame more now, because he's in front of him with a rifle, so we will make our players watch a lot of NiKo demos to learn how to do that.
[Editor's note: NiKo then arrived to jokingly say, "Stop watching my demos."]
