"I'd say a 10 just because I constantly had a read of what they were going to do, and I was constantly in the right spots." - Leaf on his performance

VALORANT esports is truly a gift that keeps on giving as day 2 of VCT 2023 - Americas League’s week 5 produced yet another entertaining matchup between two premier NA teams: Sentinels and Cloud9. With a record of 2-3 going into the matchup, Sentinels were looking to improve their record for a better chance at a Playoff spot, whereas Cloud9 was looking to improve their seeding on the table and come toe-to-toe with LOUD.

Cloud9 have had a magnificent event so far, despite the surprising roster changes made just week before its commencement. Following today’s matchup, they now boast a 5-1 record with a guaranteed spot at Playoffs. After improving their chances of a potential Masters Tokyo qualification, Nathan "leaf" Orf sat down with THESPIKE.GG in a post-game interview expressing his thoughts on the game, personal performance and factors to improve on for next week.

Leaf expressed confidence in the roster

THESPIKE.GG: As soon as the result became apparent, what were your immediate thoughts? How did you guys react on the win?

Leaf: Overall, like most of our matches, it's just keeping calm, even if stuff's going our way. It was the same way today as it was, you know, against FURIA, against NRG. You know, obviously, like we can get hype and stuff like that, we can be energetic, but we just need to be careful and just maintain calm because things can go south very hard.

THESPIKE.GG: Cloud9 lost Pistol, eco and then even bonus on Lotus, but then came back so strong. What changed in that round or what changed to give you such a big push and momentum?

Leaf: I think we kind of realized how they're going to play the map. So like after that first round, even in the fourth round that we won, we kind of anticipated what they were going to do. We just were better and more aggressive on punishing them for it. And then after that, they just kind of repeated the same thing and didn't really change a lot. It's a hard map to change stuff on and I think that we capitalized on our info the best that we could.

THESPIKE.GG: What do you think gave you the advantage over Sentinels? Because after the roster change and bringing on Marved, they seem to be looking much stronger than ever and seem like they were like, like competent enough to take you out this week. What do you think kept them grounded?

Leaf: Honestly, I think it's just a lack of practice and map pool depth. I think it's very hard for them because the maps require a lot of reps on them. You need as many scrims as possible especially now that Bind is back too, it's hard. Like most teams haven't even played a Bind scrim. If they have, it's been like two or three. So it's like the majority of these teams like just need more time and it kind of sucks that they didn't have enough time before our match.

**THESPIKE.GG: How about the time your roster has had? How well has your practice or your scrims been and how has the success been so immediate? **

Leaf: I mean this week in scrims we got completely owned but overall, I mean we just have comps that make sense for us on most maps and even if they don't, having four people on comfort agent is the way to go. Apart from that, I just think that we also have a lot of cool game plans around what we're doing. So, like we definitely have our own stuff that helps us and ultimately gives us a one-up on other teams.

THESPIKE.GG: How do you feel about Cloud9's current position on the table and how it stacks up against the rest of the league?

Leaf: I definitely think that our biggest competition now is NRG because they looked really good against 100 Thieves. Domestic matches are a bit different because in my opinion you know the players, so you know the playstyle they have whereas when you're playing against teams that you've never played against, you're never going to expect what their players are going to do.

THESPIKE.GG: I mean you guys won the match right but still on Fracture there was a slip up. What do you think went wrong in that instance and how do you think you could fix it for coming in the upcoming matches?

Leaf: I don't think anything necessarily went wrong. It was just more so that they had more things going right. We tried playing post-plant two times and one of the times they won by 0.1 seconds and then the other time I think we lost by like two when they had Killjoy. So, their ults kind of just won them those individual rounds and then obviously we lost the pistol which just gives them an automatic two rounds. I do think though that = we slipped up one round but overall, I think we did fine.

THESPIKE.GG: If you were to rate your individual performance today overall on both rounds combined on a scale of 1 to 10 what would you give yourself and why?

Leaf: I'd say a 10 just because I constantly had a read of what they were going to do, and I was constantly in the right spots. I never felt like I was caught off guard today. Even if I shot people or had good aim, I feel like majority of the time I wasn’t exposed as much and consequently didn’t die a lot.

Make sure to check out our VCT 2023 Hub for all the information about the VALORANT events this year.

Featured image courtesy of Riot Games.