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Week 3 of the VCT 2023: Pacific League began on April 8, 2023. After a rocky start to their VCT 2023 journey, which raised many eyebrows, Paper Rex brought its best against T1, dominating the Korean squad. The series began on Pearl, where the team's latest member, Ilya "something" Petrov, made a stellar VCT debut.
PRX took the map 13-3 before heading to Fracture and clinching a swift 13-6 victory. Today's series put the side back in its rightful place as a force to be reckoned with in the VCT Pacific League.
Paper Rex's d4v41 speaks about win against T1 in VCT 2023: Pacific League and more
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Abhipsito Das from Sportskeeda Esports had the opportunity to speak to Khalish "d4v41" Rusyaidee after their dominating win against T1 on Day 7 of VCT Pacific League.
He spoke about dealing with trolls on social media, shared his thoughts on the revamped Bind, and gushed about how awesome his teammate Jason "f0rsakeN" Susanto is in a multitude of ways.
I have always been curious, what is the idea behind your in-game name?
d4v41: It's just something I got from a streamer of another game. I used to love to watch his streams and I had no idea what to put as my in-game name. I saw him shouting “davai” every time he won a rush or wanted to do something aggressively. “Davai” means “let’s go” in Russian, and since I loved watching him, I put this as my in-game name.
Paper Rex was one of the favorites coming into VCT Pacific, but looked a bit shaky in the first two weeks. Did you go through some of the things that were being discussed on social media platforms like Twitter or Reddit, about PRX's playstyle, and if yes, what effect does it have on you?
d4v41: I personally read all the comments, but I'm not affected by them because I have been playing competitively for a while. I know that whenever you lose a game, people are going to say bad things about you and your team. In reality, they don’t know anything.
So it doesn’t affect me, but it does affect some of our players. I try to console them saying “It’s okay, they don’t know anything, and it's okay to have a bad game.” In general, we have been trying a lot to help us win matches. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t affect me because they are nobodies but trolls on the internet.
Who was calling for the team today in Benkai’s absence and what difference do you feel that makes to the team’s playstyle?
d4v41: Pretty much everyone is calling. Even when Benkai is present, everyone gives their ideas. Sometimes, JJ (“Jinggg”) would call. Now that we are filling “something” for “Benkai”, we always let the Duelists do the early calling. The rest we just play by our ears to do whatever it takes to close the round.
This has always been the way, even when Ben is around. Everyone is free to call. For the first map, Ilya (“something”) was calling a lot of plays with JJ since they were playing Duelists.
Paper Rex seemed to be able to control the pace of the match today with relative ease. What do you think allowed you to do that?
d4v41: I would say that we were more prepared coming into this week and were not really thinking about what the opponent was doing to contest our playstyle. We concentrated on our game rather than thinking about what they were doing and doing what we do in practice and well, it all worked out.
If you had to list out a couple of takeaways from last week’s series in the VCT Pacific League against Team Secret, what would you say?
d4v41: Team Secret has been a tough opponent for us. We've always had close matches since the previous tournaments. Playing against them made us realize that we shouldn’t be too scared to make plays or be hesitant.
In our last match against Team Secret, we got too caught up in trying to play the game perfectly, rather than how comfortable we are playing. Now we are trying to remove those thoughts and just play our game.
You have been one of the highlight players for the squad so far in the VCT Pacific League. Did you feel some of the pressure lifted from your shoulders today and did that help you concentrate more on your utility usage to support the team in any way?
d4v41: Yeah of course. It is always better for everyone to play well than for one person to save the team as it shows that our gameplay and our teamwork are on point. In today’s match, for example, where everyone was hitting their shots. I just need to flash for my Duelists and they would go in and entry.
We don’t have to make all these unnecessary (hero) plays. We played today as a team and our game was so much cleaner than last week when everyone was trying too hard, and it paid off.
How much do you think the surprise factor of having “something” in your lineup on Pearl impacted the result of your VCT Pacific League game against T1?
d4v41: On some maps, (his presence) will definitely make other teams scared of his firepower. Everyone knows how good he is as a player and all he needs to do is transfer that from online matches to LAN matches. We need to use him more and he will keep improving in the LAN matches.
What did you think of f0rsakeN’s first VCT appearance as Killjoy?
d4v41: f0rsakeN is a one-of-a-kind player. He can play pretty much all Agents. Some players can play this Agent and not that one. Not really comparing him to Jinggg, but Jinggg’s Agent-pool is very small.
Technically, if we suddenly want to run him on an Initiator or Sentinel, I don’t think it will work out very well. Maybe in the long run, but f0rsakeN is a player who you could just ask, “Hey, can you play this?” and he will just say “Yes, of course!”. He is someone you can always count on if you need him to fill the shoes.
Bind is expected to return to the map pool later in VCT 2023. Is the team excited about it and what do you think about the changes coming to it?
d4v41: I think I like the changes. The B-teleporter is now so much closer to Showers. The boxes and the back-site of A, I don’t know how to feel about it yet. We will see. If someone on the team is excited to play the new Bind, it is f0rsakeN because he loves to play Yoru on the map.
PRX plays the most formidable opponents in the VCT Pacific league, DRX, next week. What are your expectations from it and who do you think will be the player to look out for in the match-up?
d4v41: The player that we should look out for probably has to be Foxy9 because he has been playing really well in the tournament. It’s going to be a very exciting match. But of course, we want to win against them because of all the times we have lost to them.
We will just play and train like we always do. We want to win because DRX is like our Kryptonite.
