messioso: "The biggest Inferno adjustment was swapping floppy and Grim's positions"

Complexity came out of the gates storming at Katowice. Despite coming into the tournament as just one of many teams in the Play-Ins, the North American squad pushed through and qualified for the main tournament in style.

Following that, it was a tough road ahead to the Spodek, and Complexity nearly made it all the way there. A third-map loss to Outsiders meant Complexity wouldn't see the Polish crowd, but it was still an overperformance from the American side.

After the successful tournament, Complexity's General Manager, Graham "messioso" Pitt, took to Complexity's Discord to answer questions from fans in an Ask Me Anything-style thread. He answered questions ranging from topics like food opinions to map pools. Below, we have curated the most relevant questions and answers to Complexity's CS:GO team, but to see all of messioso's responses, join Complexity's Discord.

What improvements did you make between the end of last season and Katowice, to make the team look so far improved?

The biggest change has been our approach to practice and game planning. I can't get too much into the game planning, as in, how we prepare for a specific opponent and what win conditions we set ourselves for the series, as that information could be exploited by future opponents, but suffice to say we've changed how we're doing it.

On the practice side, we've added a lot more theory to our practice days. Talking about how we want to play the game and building our system in more detail. I don't think we can necessarily sustain 10+ hours a day long term, so it's something that we will need to assess moving forward - but at the same time, our practice days in Europe are so valuable that it's essential we get the most out of them.

How do you deal with the spread of locations, with Anton, you and hallzerk being from EU, whilst the rest are SouthAfrica/NA with the headquarters being in NA, but the matches mostly in EU.

Weirdly this is actually something that isn't too much of a burden on us, simply because of the way the CS ecosystem is so heavily focused on Europe right now. Realistically we don't actually spend any time in NA doing anything significant. The time the guys have in NA is usually their weeks off from practice and competition so it's not that important that we're all located together.

It's good to note that Anton, T.c and I can in theory all do our jobs on high ping. So unless there is a LAN we don't actually need to be anywhere specific. That mostly applies to online-CS in the US, whether it's practice or qualifiers. Typically T.c would be in the US but due to being South African, he sometimes has to head home to either sort his US visa or his Schengen(EU) visas.

hallzerk on the other hand is a bit different as he (typically) requires low ping. What we've realized is that it doesn't really matter for a night or two of NA prac, or things like cash cups or other events that don't have any real significance - ultimately it's just a financial drain with no real upside. For qualifiers we will have him fly out and be on low ping.

So I guess this breaks down to:

• LAN/Tournaments + EU Bootcamps - All 5 players and T.c will always be together at these. I always attend tournaments but I don't typically go to bootcamps and we're working on getting Anton to more tournaments.

• Qualifiers - All 5 players are in NA, T.c/Anton/Graham flexible to be anywhere and just have a late night

• Prac/Cash Cups etc - hallzerk likely at home playing late into the night, T.c/Anton/Graham flexible to be anywhere and just have a late night

How did you know hallzerk was the perfect fit for the team?

Trick question! It's impossible to know if a player will be a perfect fit. We're dealing with such fine margins in CS, a single roster change is a 20% overhaul of your roster and there is no flexibility.

But to perhaps give you a more concise answer of how we got to hallzerk - He was someone that I had done a great amount of work following in 2019/20 when I was with North and trying to transition that roster from Danish to a Nordic (Norwegian, Swedish, Danish) team. When it came around to late 2021 with Complexity and we were figuring out what we would do with the end of the Juggernaut roster, he was a candidate for a future AWP role then and we took another look at him then too.

When we made the decision to actively find a replacement for junior, he was again right at the top of the list for me. By this time he had been released from Dignitas, so I was able to talk to many of his former (and my former) teammates like Lekr0 and friberg, along with both pita and Vendetta his coaches. This gave us a great picture of what he was like as a person as well as a teammate/player. From there we invited him to trial with us while we were in Europe after we were knocked out of IEM Cologne. It's worth noting that we trialed many players that week and did similar levels of research into those too.

After that we spent the summer break talking to him and his agency, we wanted to understand where he was in his life, whether he was ready to be committed to the life of being on an NA team. We determined he was ready, he had the full support of his family and agency and we got the deal done.

Thoughts on NA CS:GO progression at the start of the year?

Positive! Easy to say that now after our IEM Katowice performance, but it wasn't unexpected. Liquid are performing as expected too. I actually think the only surprise is EG falling a bit below my expectations - I really like their project and how they're trying to rebuild themselves. I hope they can get things together for the RMR Qualifier and then their EPL group.

Do you think the showing at Katowice is promising for the future?

Very promising. We went toe to toe with every strong opponent we had. Always easy to look back on games and say we should have done this or could have done that - but there are definitely rounds and maps that we felt we could have won that we didn't and that's on us to figure out. Now it's about building on top of this foundation and proving it wasn't a fluke.

What adjustments did the squad make to improve Inferno?

The biggest Inferno specific adjustment was definitely swapping floppy and Grim's CT positions over. It took a little while to figure out - certainly our first games at BLAST we hadn't quite got it right yet - but the guys are a lot more comfortable with their new positions now. I think especially on banana, JT and Grim have a great synergy and understanding of how they want to play that position together. It can still be a bit disjointed at time, but they'll only get more comfortable the more they play it.

It's also good to remember that we've adjusted a lot about how we prepare for our matches across all maps and that definitely trickles down into helping our Inferno too. I'm just happy that our most obvious weak point in our map pool isn't quite as obvious now!

It seems Coach T.c has such a calming presence and positive outlook. What is being discussed in those heated / stressful timeouts?

T.c is the definition of calm for sure. He's an extremely smart man - did you know he's an actual doctor of surgery? - and he knows how and when to use his voice for both positive and negative interactions. He's all smiles when you see him most of the time but he definitely also knows how to get serious. I can't comment too much on the in-game timeouts as I can't hear those - but in those 5 minutes we have between maps he hones in very fast on the key aspects that went/right wrong and tries to ask questions that lead the players to the answers themselves as to how we want to approach the next game. Everyone on the team has a huge amount of trust and respect for T.c and that definitely allows him to both be the supportive figure and at the same time push buttons to get the most out of people.

In your time managing the Complexity CS:GO roster, what has been the most difficult obstacle you have had to overcome & how did you overcome it?

Definitely the breakup of the Juggernaut roster at the end of 2021 - it's not easy to let people go, there is a human side to all of this and even though I didn't spend too long with the players on that team, I know that both they and the COL staff valued the time they had together a lot. So ensuring that everyone had a good exit and was able to move on with their careers was both tough to do, but great that we could do it. Seeing k0nfig and blameF over at Astralis, es3tag jumping straight to NiP and jks FINALLY getting his move to G2 was really important for us.

Following on from that - replacing the Juggernaut! Starting to build a roster, or at least a plan for a roster, from scratch. So many opportunities to go through and decipher what kind of CS team we wanted to work with was a very stressful few months for everyone involved. But I think we made the right decision.

Are the team’s map choices on each match based mostly on what they think is their best map or the opponent’s weakest map?

Somewhere in between. I think it's less about picking a specific map that we think we are the best on, but ensuring we get the best 3 maps overall that can win us the series. Sometimes that means picking a slightly weaker map for ourselves if it means that maybe our best map ends up as the 3rd map or something.

It can really depend on the opponent and the map pool they have. Just look at our recent match vs Outsiders last night - we probably had our best 3 maps because of how their map pool lined up with ours.

Do you think coaching and management have role overlap or is it much more separate now?

I think it's a lot more separate now and I think that's for the best for the most part. I remember having to brief zonic on things when he went to events with Astralis because we didn't send a manager with them. Sitting there thinking, this is the GOAT coach and he shouldn't have to be worrying about shuttles, schedules and the like.

I'm very happy we have a distinction between the two roles now because it allows everyone to focus on the most important aspects of their roles. There definitely can be overlap, some team managers are also performance coaches for example and I think that's a great opportunity for the teams that have them - but that's a performance coach taking over manager duties, right? So it comes down to how much resources a team has - everyone would love to send 5 coaches, a nutritionist, psychologist, physical therapist and a manager to events but it's just not realistic, so it's about using the resources you have available to the best of your capabilities.

Complexity are now en-route to the US where they will prepare for the upcoming IEM Brazil Closed Qualifier.