One of the more shocking results of VCT Masters One came out of the lower bracket. Gen.G’s VALORANT roster got into the March Madness spirit, delivering a bracket-busting upset to 100 Thieves. With the loss, 100T’s run at Masters comes to a close with a 5th/6th place finish.
100T are out of Masters, but nitr0 is already looking ahead to the next VCT phase. Image via 100 Thieves.
Following the defeat, 100T player Nicholas “nitr0” Cannella was kind enough to sit down with Hotspawn to discuss his switch to Sage, how Ethan has handled the transition to VALORANT and what the team needs to do to get back on top.
Hotspawn: A tough show for pistol rounds in both your losses. There’s likely no simple answer to this, but how do you win more pistol rounds?
nitr0: I think pistols are, just like in Counter-Strike, really random. I think they’re even more random [in VALORANT] because everyone has Classics and Frenzy’s, and all the [pistols] are really RNG. We’ll have to actually go back and watch and see what went wrong and where our gaps were in the first round.
Hotspawn: A brilliant wall from you late on Icebox to deny a Gen.G plant, how much time have you spent playing her, and how much has that come after Ethan joined?
Nitr0: I started playing Sage right when we made the change. So it’s been like a couple of weeks, maybe four. I’ve been playing her in ranked, just seeing like what walls are beneficial, what walls are kind of grief, what walls make sense for a certain part of the round. The B wall was something I stole from Sentinels; they would wall off the front of the site so you can’t actually get there. You have to break the wall to get the plant. And it was low on the round timer, so I decided to just wall it and make them feel even more pressure. Just good timing, you know?
Hotspawn: Is the plan between now and phase two for you and Ethan to trial various agents?
Nitr0: So now that we’re out, unfortunately, we can talk about our comp and stuff like that. And if we do want to change anything and how we want to approach the game for the next tournament, we have more time to practice and get more set stuff. So it’s going to be good.
Hotspawn: Do you have a preference [of agent or role]?
Nitr0: Whatever I feel like I can have the most impact on, and the opportunity costs of other people not playing that agent. And if I think it would be better on it, then I’ll try to step up and take it. But not too much of a preference right now.
Hotspawn: What’s going to be a primary focus for you guys in the coming weeks? The map pool, individual strats, agent comps?
Nitr0: Probably all of the above, to be honest. We need to rethink all of our stuff, especially the way we practice, so we can practice how we play and stuff like that. It’s been a little unfortunate the last couple of days we’ve had to play against Astra because all the teams are running her. And she’s such a game-changer that it’s kind of weird to play against without her on your team. So we’ve been trying to make the best out of it and see what other teams are doing with her. So that way, we can just steal a lot of it since she’s so new. But yeah, a lot to work on.
Hotspawn: Ethan’s in a good situation coming over from CS, with you, Hiko and steel all having made the switch yourselves. What’s going to be his greatest challenge, and how will you all be able to help?
Nitr0: He’s just going to be playing a lot. I mean, as long as you’re having fun with the game, you’re going to be learning. It seems like he’s having fun, and just competing in this game is fun in general because everything’s so new. You see new stuff every match.
Hotspawn: Is this a sign that the rest of the NA field has stepped up? What does 100T need to do or change to reassert themselves?
Nitr0: Just review our games, fix our stuff, add new stuff, practice more with Ethan, review our comp, stuff like that. Just to make sure we’re constantly improving. In terms of NA stepping up, I don’t think we played to our fullest today, but Gen.G’s pretty good. They played well today.
Hotspawn: Are the strats made with the idea of putting Asuna into playmaking situations?
Nitr0: Yeah, you kind of have to when you have one duelist; you need someone to create space, you know, use the Showstopper. So a lot of our plays are designed around it, just like before when we had dicey; most of our plays were designed around the Jett dash and the trade kills. So now we’re more focused on like the tactical side of things since we’re only running one duelist. I think our defenses have been a lot stronger with the change, and our attacks have been a little bit weaker, maybe, but that’s just stuff that we can improve on.
Hotspawn: Would you consider either you or Ethan taking on the duelist role more often?
Nitr0: If anything, it would be on a map-by-map basis, depending on the situation and how we’re feeling. We still have a lot to talk about, but I’m sure we’ll consider it.
