NIP had a difficult 2024, and nothing summed that up more than having to go into the RMRs for the Perfect World Shanghai Major with a stand-in.
However, the team fought valiantly, and eventually fell in the 2-2 bracket after losses against G2, HEROIC, and Spirit, two playoff contenders and the eventual winners of the Major.
Since then, NIP have benched maxster, and as the Major playoffs began, we sat down with their coach Xizt to discuss the change and what to expect from the iconic Swedish organisation in 2025.
You recently benched maxster, can you take us through the decision?
When I joined in April, we promoted maxster from the academy team and as a team, we played really well in the first few months, including maxtser. Then we went on the Summer break, and after that we didn't really find our game again.
We then made the change with alex to bring in MisteM, and the thought behind that was that we could shake things up and that MisteM could active maxster again because he had played so well under MisteM in Young Ninjas. We started practicing and things went pretty well, but practice is only practice, it's different to actual tournaments.
maxster then had some health issues, so he couldn't go to Finland for Elisa, so we didn't even get to play any official games with maxster and MisteM.
The decision to bench maxster came after the RMRs. We felt that with the upcoming silly season, there will be a lot of transfers between every team so there will be a lot of prospects out there that we can talk to.
We decided it was the most fair thing for maxster as well, so he can always look for a new home while we look for a replacement.
In a recent livestream you said that the team "lacks firepower", what sort of player will you be looking for to address that?
You can see that the meta has adjusted to having aggressive riflers. Just look at NAVI, they have three really strong riflers, and all of them are quite aggressive.
I think that is the key, so we're looking for someone who wants to make plays and be the star of the team. We really need someone with a big voice that can be a secondary leader on the server.
If that's going to be an experienced player, that's going to be a plus, but there's also young players who could come in with an aura that they want to beat everyone. Just look at some of the players in the Major, like FL4MUS from GamerLegion, he came from no where and now he's screaming as he's beating everyone. Now, I'm not saying we're looking at FL4MUS, but he's a good example of what I mean.
We'll see who we can get our hands on, but experience would be a plus, for sure.
So is going for an experienced player the route you're more likely to go down?
Yeah, in a perfect world it's someone that's not too old and has a lot to give, who has experience playing at tier one LANs.
But, as I said, let's see what is available out there, and we'll take it from there. They just need to have a big voice, be willing to take initiative, and be an aggressive rifler.
At the time of this interview, you're 43rd on Valve's rankings, does that give you concerns about the type of player you might be able to attract?
Yeah, but we've looked at the Valve Ranking since it came out and since it was announced that everyone would go by it. We know that it's very important, but we also know that once you get one good tournament, it's pretty generous and you'll get a lot of points.
I think climbing up the rankings should be fairly easy, so what we want to focus on is getting the best possible roster and player in order to do so.
If we have to go through some qualifiers at the start, sure. But, when people are deciding where they want to go, maybe they will decide a Vitality, or a G2, they have really good players and a high ranking, but we really want to be back at that level in NIP.
I want to win titles, I didn't just join NIP for old time's sake. I want to bring NIP back to the top and everyone here wants to do the same. We'll see what 2025 has in store, but we'll keep working hard to get back there.
You said you think climbing up the rankings should be quite easy, but how will you have to go about it when you're outside of the invite range for tier one tournaments?
A lot of tournaments are going to have qualifiers, and yes, it will be hard to qualify from them, but if you have a good enough team you should be able to do so.
The start might be a little tough, but once you're in, I feel like it will be pretty easy to stay in the invite range.
When do you hope you'll be in the place to be getting consistent invites?
It's hard to say. It could be a couple of months, it could be longer than that. But I think having the best possible roster is more important than points at the start.
Once you go deep in a tournament or win a tournament, like we did at YaLLa Compass like we did before the Summer break, you skyrocket in the rankings. You need one good tournament and then you're in there, so it can be a short amount of time.
Let's talk about the RMR, obviously the result wasn't what you would have hoped for, but were you expecting it due to playing with a stand-in?
To be honest, I think we played pretty well at the RMR. We got a little bit unlucky that we couldn't play with maxster, but I think jocab did an amazing job after coming in on such short notice.
About the tournament itself, we beat everyone we expected to beat, but we just aren't competitive enough to beat a G2 or a Spirit, even HEROIC at this point. All three of those teams made it to the playoffs.
We had to play all three to even qualify for the Major, and the whole system isn't fair. But, at the same time I want to be at the Major only if I think we can win it. I don't want to go there just to get stickers in the game. That's not interesting to me. I don't think we had any business being in the Major and competing for a playoff spot anyway if we can't beat any of those teams to start with.
We have a lot to work on, and it will be key to find consistency in 2025 both in terms of on the server and in our roster. We had a lot of changes and stand-ins throughout 2024, which some say is the NIP curse, but I don't believe in that. I think we just need to do a better job at everything.
For sure, I'm not satisfied with the results at the RMR. We beat the teams we should, but we can't pull off an upset.
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