In a stunning turn of events, Team Vitality emerged victorious at DreamHack Atlanta – their first LAN success as an organisation and as a five-man squad.
This team is built around ZywOo, a young, up-and-coming talent who had yet to experience the big stage prior to this event, but one who had routinely been the source of praise from other players during their pick-up games.
Known as a primary AWPer (sniper) with the ability to perform well with a rifle, ZywOo’s progression was one of the things to track heading into the event.
Surrounding ZywOo are a host of veteran players in RpK, apEX, Happy and NBK, with the latter picking up the in-game leading duties.
The question for this group of savvy veterans was whether or not Happy could function without being the in-game leader, while focusing on his lurk-centric gameplay.
Vitality stumble
The opening game in Group B was a difficult ask for Vitality, as they went up against one of the favourites for the event, Ghost Gaming, and came away with a narrow 16-12 loss on Cache.
However, Vitality were able to quickly bounce back and sweep the rest of the group, with 2-0 wins over both a Fragsters squad with HS as an emergency stand-in, and Rogue, who still look to be adjusting to life without cadiaN.
Vitality duly moved into the semi-finals where they would face another expected top performer in compLexity Gaming.
Powers of recovery
Things looked rough early on for Vitality, as they dropped their map pick of Dust II, one notoriously good for French teams in the past, losing 16-12. Yet they rebounded in perhaps the most unexpected way – with back-to-back clean victories on Train (16-6) and Nuke (16-8), overwhelmingly due to the play of young phenom ZywOo, who had back-to-back 31-kill performances.
All of a sudden, things appeared to be lining up for this new squad, with Ghost being upset on the other side of the bracket by Luminosity Gaming, leading to a surprising pairing in the final.
The grand final, unfortunately for spectators, was an absolute stomp, with Vitality crushing their opponents on both Mirage (16-4) and Overpass (16-6) to claim their first championship.
ZywOo, apEX shine
While ZywOo had yet another standout performance, it was apEX who led the way for Team Vitality, securing a shocking 49/25 kills/death ratio over the two maps to lead the way for his squad.
This is a huge confidence-booster moving forward for a squad who had previously looked fairly mediocre online. While the upset of Ghost Gaming does leave a bit to be desired in terms of Vitality proving themselves, the showing by ZywOo was more than encouraging.
His consistency, versatility, aim and composure in the largest matches of his career to date bodes well for the future of this squad.
Star search
Finding a second consistent star is what could be the stumbling block for Vitality’s momentum moving forward – as it is for many other top teams at present.
apEX’s style generally leads to very polarising figures, with NBK and RpK probably being the players who will need to step up if this squad is to find long-term success.
As for the here and now, this was a solid title for Vitality to claim, especially since it could net them more invites or chances at closed qualifiers down the line. DreamHack Atlanta may well have been a turning point for this squad.
