100 Thieves Nitr0 And Steel Discuss Being Comeback Kings And VALORANT’s Snowball Effect

Like many other top-calibre teams on display at the VALORANT Champions Tour Stage 3 Masters: Berlin, 100 Thieves have a roster built from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and a successful array of players at that.

The CS stalwarts on Thieves’ squad are some of the best players to make the switch to the new FPS, with a range of championship victories in illustrious careers. Now, they’re mixing it up in the epitome of VALORANT, a proving to be masters of the mind games.

100 Thieves set a date with destiny for NA, after mounting a colossal comeback against one of EMEA’s brightest prodigy. Having been staring defeat in the face at the quarterfinal stages against Acend, the calm influencers of the group rallied the troops and overcame a 4-10 deficit and take the game 14-12.

With an evident knack of coming back from behind, 100 Thieves’ Joshua "Steel" Nissan and Nicholas "nitr0" Cannella discussed how they aim to stop giving themselves a mountain to climb, and how slow starts maybe something that stems from old Counter-Strike habits.

Steel said, "Obviously it’s not something we go out and do and purpose – these slow starts. I don’t know what it is specifically, it's hard to diagnose it specifically because it happens so frequently.

"We do a number of things before the game like be physically well and do mental warm ups, but there isn’t something that clicks until a certain in-game moment. That could be something that we can’t stimulate."

Whilst their comeback-ability has been second to none so far, Steel continued to say "If there is a way, and we’re searching for it, we’ll definitely try to figure it and implement that for our next games."

Having both come from Counter-Strike backgrounds, Nitr0 and Steel continued to say they’re still adapting to the game, especially in the opening instances.

I feel like much of it has to do with losing pistol rounds,” said nitr0, “and then following pistols is anti-eco and it snowballs. So that’s something we’ll have to work on, for sure."

Steel continued, “This game is first to 13, with the pistol rounds and anti-economy, it’s very easy to snowball away. One good read, one good clutch, one important round early on will secure you another round early on and then an eco-round, and then they get to stagger their ultimates.

“It becomes so much harder in this game, compared to Counter-Strike like we’re used to, to reset the enemy. But with a dart that gives you wallhacks, basically, where you can see enemies through walls, have laser beams flying around, and flying daggers at everyone, that sways the results of the game drastically.”

100 Thieves will now face Envy in the semi-finals, with a destined EU vs NA Grand Final beckoning.