“I had to become more professional. With Endpoint it was the COVID era, we just played online, and I wasn’t professional many times but joining OG and going to bootcamps I had to change for good.” At the turn of 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. “I think if you ask any player in Israel at that time, they all would have wanted to play with NertZ,” flameZ adds. “So it was a big boost to my motivation. He was a big voice in and outside the team, always down to talk about CS, life, or anything else and share his mindset and his view on things. I liked him a lot and still like him a lot, he is a player that I have always wanted to compete with at this high level.”
- FlameZ named NAVI Junior rifler Drin “makazze” Shaqiri as his Bold Prediction, becoming the second player to do so after Helvijs “broky” Saukants, and also gave a nod to makazze’s teammate, Aulon “Krabeni” Fazlija.
- 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.
- He had to step back any time the team wanted to compete in big qualifiers, which at one point caused him to quit playing CS for several months.
- “Before the season started it felt really good, we came with confidence and I was already thinking ahead of time that this was our year as a team, but I’m not sure if it was the pressure or just that our effort didn’t match our expectations.”
- At the turn of 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.
- “We just got mezii and had a staff change and it instantly clicked, we were all hyped and won these back-to-back BLASTs.
- “I feel like there were many [moments or people that changed something for me or my mindset toward going pro],” flameZ says.
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Game Settings
ApEX plays a lot of rotator positions to help his calling, but he has shown a willingness to lose them if the timing is right. Dupreeh has left behind a few rotator spots like A Short on Inferno, and apEX may well move back to B on Mirage to give flameZ Connector. There may be teething issues, but flameZ should be more than comfortable in his role even if his exact spots might change.
EVENTS
He is no superstar statistically speaking, but he has a selflessness that rarely comes with his type of talent. The five-time Major champion is now 30-years-old, ten years older than flameZ, so there is an element of future-proofing to this move. FlameZ has also got more of that unbridled aggression apEX loves in JACKZ, a natural inclination to risk-taking that dupreeh had to manually unlock. “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.” FlameZ missed out on a VP or EVP mention for the second time this year with a 0.99 rating, but wasted no time in entering a renaissance at BLAST Fall Final where he had his best event of the year.
Other CSGO Players
Vitality had little time to recover from that defeat as the Europe RMR for PGL Major Copenhagen approached, but they met that challenge with aplomb. ZywOo put up mind-boggling 2.97 and 2.68 ratings to get his side past GamerLegion and HEROIC in the best-of-one openers, and the team recovered from a loss to Cloud9 in the 2-0 pool by exacting revenge for Katowice over ENCE in two maps (where flameZ averaged a 1.51 rating) to advance to the Major. The young Israeli also played his first international LAN when offline play returned at the Play-in stage for IEM Cologne, where he averaged a 1.01 rating in five maps after a poor series against BIG dragged his numbers down.
Explore gameplay insights, event highlights, and expert commentary as we dive deep into the world of CS2. FlameZ recovered to a 1.08 average (1.14 playoffs), which was good enough for another VP mention before the team traveled to Shanghai for the Europe RMR. FlameZ averaged a 1.33 rating, 1.54 impact, 1.08 KPRW, and 117.2 ADRW over seven maps, but the team missed another shot at a title and flameZ couldn’t ride the individual high of his performance for long. “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. 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.
- “Then when the new roster came around with F1KU, NEOFRAG, and so on, it became a grind together and I was very committed.”
- ApEX plays a lot of rotator positions to help his calling, but he has shown a willingness to lose them if the timing is right.
- Stay tuned to our Top 20 Players of 2024 ranking and learn more about how the players were selected in our introduction article.
- “It was very weird,” flameZ says of how winning two trophies at the end of the year set up expectations coming into 2024.
- “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.
- Join our Discord community to discuss CS2 utility strategies, share experiences, and get the latest updates with fellow players.
- He played at one last Major with them, finishing 12-14th at the Challengers Stage of the BLAST.tv Paris Major, and after IEM Dallas the newly-crowned Paris Major champions Vitality came knocking for his services.
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Vitality extend flameZ contract through 2027
“In Malta I was really demotivated sadly, I had a lot of excuses and wasn’t professional at all,” he explains of his up-and-down performances post-Cologne. “But I was really excited for Denmark. Around this time I feel like a lot of things popped up in the team which was tough for me to handle at the time and made my showing wobbly.” “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.
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Team Vitality
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FlameZ tallied a team-leading 1.40 series rating in exDT’s semi-final win over ShapeShift, but finished as runners-up to Aequus. 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. 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 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. FlameZ regularly played for exDT alongside shushan early in his career, recording his first recorded officials on HLTV with the team at Game In Mako Fest in March 2018.
ZywOo was back to his best in Malta and helped his team romp through the group stage undefeated with a 1.71 rating over six maps, with flameZ’s own efforts good for a 1.19 rating ahead of the playoffs. Despite fulfilling one of his dreams to play alongside NertZ, flameZ’s stint on Finest was short-lived. Seeing Lotan “Spinx” Giladi and Guy “anarkez” Trachtman compete in cups featured on HLTV and having the chance to qualify for FPL-C — where Israeli players could break out internationally — offered an extra level of motivation. It became too hard for flameZ to juggle school, team practice, and pick-up games, and five months in, he stepped back from Finest to focus entirely on qualifying for FPL-C. Local LANs offered flameZ and other youngsters the opportunity to prove themselves, but the Israeli scene remained isolated, focused mostly on forming the best teams to win the few local LANs held each year. That changed when Uniquestars, Israel’s best team, lost to MVP PK at IeSF World Championship — to https://www.flamezzcasino.ca/ 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.
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Stat check: How will flameZ fit into Vitality?
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Winning Cologne could have marked a new period of success for Vitality after a difficult start to the year, but any momentum they hoped to ride off of the victory was brought to a grinding halt after they were cast out in the quarter-finals of ESL Pro League Season 20 by Eternal Fire. FlameZ missed out on an EVP again in Dallas, where Vitality came up short in the title decider to a G2 who completed a fairytale run to the trophy with Jake “Stewie2K” Yip as a stand-in. “The Major was a big struggle with the ZywOo situation, but it showed me a lot of character in him,” flameZ says. “He was really sick and playing badly, but he kept giving energy, hyping us, and doing everything he could. For a player who expects and everybody expects him to do well, it was really nice to see him this way, and it made me believe more in the team.”
