Interview with HEET’s coach “elemeNt”

Yoann: Hello everyone, today and with elemeNt, coach of HEET!

elemeNt: Hey, my name is Adil, and I'm the head coach from HEET Gaming. My job is to bring the team to the top level. We have the common goal to reach the Ascension to get to the franchise league.

Yoann: That’s good. When and how did you get into esports?

elemeNt: Oh, I started really young. I played Warcraft 3 and was professional at this game, after that, I switched to CSGO. After 11 years in the game, I switched to Valorant to become a coach, I translate my experience with the young player.

Yoann: What's your job as a Valorant coach? How can you help your players?

elemeNt: My job is to organize everything about the team. About the game plan, the players individually, every weakness and strength, and learning to adapt during a game.

It can be the positioning, communication, the macro strategies. There can be a lot of things, and my job is to fix everything. 

Yoann: How do you prepare your players to play against opponents?

elemeNt: Generally, we have a meeting 2 hours before. We analyze, discuss strategies, and prepare the players to react properly.

Yoann: Which playstyle is the hardest to anti-strat in your opinion?

elemeNt: Sometimes it can be difficult to play against a team with no coach, you can get caught off guard by some plays. But generally in between fast and slow is annoying to play against, as you need to adapt quickly.

But anyway, we prepare the players to adapt against every style, if we lose it's because we didn't know how to adapt correctly at the time and miss our game, unfortunately, it can happen on a bad day, but it's rare because I am here to get the players back on track during the time out and call for an adaptation that will unlock the situation.

Yoann: How important is it to have a great team environment, and how do you build chemistry in the team?

elemeNt: Oh, it's easy. We have a team office, sometimes we can have activities together. I'm trying to do a lot of different exercises. 

Sometimes you see teams on boot camp, where the coach organizes escape games. 

On my side, I am adapting to the personality of my players, as they need to enjoy it to get better chemistry together.

Yoann: What's your preparation routine before matches?

elemeNt: Generally, two hours before we analyze. After that we discuss and we exercise. Sometimes we listen to music for concentration. Every player has his own routine. But we have to release the stress before the game, we can scream “One, two, three, feel the HEET!”.

Yoann: Let’s talk about Valorant now, how do you feel about the brand new map Lotus?

elemeNt: It's not a bad map, but it's a little bit complicated. We haven’t started working on it yet. So maybe after some time, I will enjoy it more. For now, it’s really difficult to say, but I feel like you have a lot of strategic possibilities. 

Yoann: Do you think Harbor will be playable in pro play?

elemeNt: Oh, yeah it's possible. But for me, the issue is that you don't have anything to stop a push on defense. Brimstone has a molly, Omen has a flash, and Viper has smoke and mollies to delay. He has potential on the attack side, but from my point of view, I feel like it’s really easy to adapt against Harbor, he needs a rework.

Maybe we will see him in a VCT game as a surprise pick, but I think it would be a one-shot composition, after analysis, it will be complicated to make it work again.

I don't think it would be the right choice for the moment, I think you can have something better for more firepower. It's my point of view right now.

Yoann: What would you change to Valorant if you were a developer? 

elemeNt: Maybe the run and gun, it’s annoying sometimes. Also, add a replay system because as a coach, I really need it! 

Yoann: Which team would you like to play in the near future? It can be from any region.

elemeNt: The team I want to fight would be NAVI. They are really strong, it’s hard to play against them.

Yoann: What are your predictions on the event coming up in Brazil?

elemeNt: To be honest, I see NRG, maybe NAVI, KOI also look very good too. I hope KCorp will do great as well, but we will see, for the moment, it’s hard to tell.

Yoann: Even after this event, it will be complicated to analyze because some teams will be out after one match.

elemeNt: Yeah, this is really annoying, you can’t make mistakes, you only have one chance to go through. But it's the rules, and we need to respect it.

We will see some surprises I think.

Yoann: It will be very good to watch I'm sure!

elemeNt: Oh yeah, for sure. Because every team will go 100% from the start.

Yoann: What are your short and long-term ambitions with HEET?

elemeNt: Our only ambition is to join the franchise league. Nothing else. Our objective is not to win only one split and say, Oh yeah, we won.

We don't care about that. The real goal is the franchise. 

Yoann: That's very good! Is there anything else you wanted to add to this interview?

elemeNt: I want to say thank you to HEET to keep on supporting us. Thank you to my teammate Cizza, he’s my right arm, he’s a young guy from the UK working with me for two years now!

Yoann: Okay. Thank you for the interview and best of luck in the future! I hope we will see you in the franchise league soon!

elemeNt: Thank you, I hope too!