1 Jun 22

Interviews

Haam

EMUHLEET Shares How to Learn From Event Performances

We talked to the seasoned leader of our VALORANT squad, EMUHLEET, about the work on and off stage that makes a top team.

There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that being a pro gamer isn’t a cakewalk, but what exactly goes into making a superstar team? To help answer that, I talked to a long-time champion and seasoned veteran of our VALORANT squad, Emmalee “EMUHLEET” Garrido, about what she and the coach do with their team to make sure they dominate the competition.

Hey EMUHLEET! I actually have some questions about the work that goes into your team behind the scenes, specifically after a major tournament. For starters, how important is changing up your strat book after an event?

EMUHLEET: Oh, that's one of the things that I think is so exciting about VALORANT, is that the meta is constantly changing a lot faster than it ever would in Counter-Strike. So, you essentially have to constantly start changing your comp and your strats, just because Riot is constantly changing the agents and changing the meta. We put a lot of hours into that.

I would say our coach mostly does the work on that, just because he's very, very creative and also just very smart in general on how to create strats and the best comp for us. So, he and I really work on that a lot before events and just essentially are finding agents that work with our team and what they're most comfortable with too.


Does your placement/performance in said event affect how much you change? Do you change up more if you placed lower or played worse?

EMUHLEET: I think with any team, if they do poorly, I would hope that they would change some things. So, for us, it's not necessarily if we did bad in one game, we're thinking, “Oh, our comp is bad? Let's change it!”, It's more, so what could we have done better? How can we fix this? How can we utilize our agents in the best possible way?


A lot of players complain, especially earlier during Masters 1, that teams don’t really get time to change up their strats before the next event. Do you think that is a problem for Game Changers or do you guys feel like you have plenty of time to work on strats in between events?

EMUHLEET: I was talking about that with my team, actually for the VCT main event, how it really is such a long event, you're playing every week. And you really don’t get a lot of time to work on things between. I personally don't like that because I feel like it's not going to get the best gameplay that we could've seen. It's just probably really difficult on the players. And also just watching that event itself. Going into VCT Game Changers initially, that wasn't an issue. However, if we're looking at the calendar, our next Game Changers is going to be two months away. So essentially, we only have eight weeks to change whatever we need to change up so that we're not going to get anti-stratted.

So, I do feel like the tournament drags on a bit too long, but again, I am just really blessed that we have these tournaments in general. I just think that there needs to be a minor tweak of how long the events are and how long the breaks are in between two.


You guys placed 3rd in your last Game Changers tourney. Do you guys think you are going to change up your plays a lot, just keep doing what has been working decently well, or somewhere in between?

EMUHLEET: I think it's speaking for all of my teammates here, getting third is not good enough. We have won first back-to-back many times in Counter-Strike, that's our goal here going into VALORANT. So, getting third is just a loss for us.

After the loss, we all agreed to put in extra work within the team and also individually to improve ourselves, to try and get the win. And we were feeling really good going into this Game Changers. I just take every day one by one. I don't want to say that we had to change too much. It's just a matter of focusing on those little details that will just take us to the next level


As individual players, what do you and the girls do to make sure you are ready for the next event?

EMUHLEET: So as the team captain, I create our schedule. I want to make sure that everybody's putting in a little bit of extra work on their own time, you know, just relating to traditional sports; You're going to see Christian Ronaldo practicing on his own and not just with the team. So, a lot more goes into it than just team practice.

We team practice about seven and eight hours a day, five days a week. I require everyone to put in at least two hours of their own time. And this can mean, watching a pro match, finding something that you see to bring to the team, aim training on aim labs or within the game, and death matching. Anything that goes into work into the game is good in my eyes.

We also have a little form that we fill out to make sure that everybody's writing down something that can be presentable to the team that's useful. And it just kind of gets a lot of ideas flowing and it's really fun to do.


When is the best time to experiment with new patches/additions or trying out new comps? Should you avoid experimenting before a big event?

EMUHLEET: Don't necessarily avoid changing or experimenting before a big event, because if there’s a huge change in a new patch, and you have to play on that version in the tournament, that could be game changing. For example, we still see some teams that are playing with Astra after her nerf, where on some maps she's not as useful as on this new patch, which might actually hurt some teams. So, I would say experimenting before a big event is totally fine.


Sometimes, the strats and ideas you came up with are just not working during an event. An example would come to mind with Sentinels moving away from picking Ascent after losing to V1 during Challengers Finals. Has that ever happened with Dignitas, and if so, what do you do in that situation, do you guys have backup plans if an approach does not work as you expected, or do you guys just stick it out and hope for the best?

EMUHLEET: When we come into a tournament, we come in strong and fully confident with our map pool and our strategy. So, if something isn't working well, we need to find out the solution of why it isn’t, instead of avoiding it and not playing it anymore. That's why after a tournament, we go back to our Airbnb, and all sit around and the coach will watch the VODs with us. And we'll write down notes of what to fix. So, I really do believe that getting down to the root of the problem is better than just avoiding it.


I’d like to thank EMUHLEET for sitting down with me and giving us the inside look on how the team works between events! Be sure to follow her on her socials:

Twitter
Instagram
Twitch

Related articles