More in this series: COGnitive Gaming (2), Murloc Geniuses, compLexity Gaming, Cloud9, Tempo Storm (2), Furious Gaming, Team Immunity, Relics.

With the Americas Championship mere hours away, the teams are more ready than ever to prove why they deserve to go to Blizzcon. I had the chance to sit down with compLexity (Blinks, Trummel, cattlepillar, hOns, and Jaximus) and talk about how they're planning to show the world why they're a top NA team. They may be confident, but it's tempered by a realistic critique of their own weakness, as well as a deep understanding of the weaknesses of the other teams. 

What differentiates you guys from the other teams?

Jaximus: The biggest thing with us is we are all friends outside of the game.  They don’t seem to really spend time with each other outside of the game, but we play all sorts of games. We play anything that is multiplayer. We like to play H1Z1 and anything else that is fun.

How confident are you going into this tournament?

Blinks: We are super confident going forward. We just really want to play - we got here on Wednesday and now it’s Friday. We want to win and go to BlizzCon.

What is your plan to win?

Blinks: We play so many versatile comps that we like to change it up and have our team composition really open. They can be played many different ways. That is going to surprise people: our diverse hero pool.

Who is the biggest challenge for you in this tournament?

hOns: Cloud9, they have a really strong early game. If we are able to play our early game to match them in our team level, we will be in a good state. Our late game team fighting ability is better than most teams.

What about Tempo Storm?

hOns: I think Murlocs can beat Tempo Storm.

Blinks: Yeah, Tempo Storm looks the weakest they have been since June.

Jaximus: Ever since they lost 6 games to Cloud 9 … something is there. Something is on tilt.

You seem to have a pretty advantageous spot in the bracket?

Jaximus: Yeah, but in order to win this tournament, you can’t dodge anyone. We will always have to play against Cloud9 or Tempo or something like that.

Trummel: We are not going to take it for granted or be complacent because we are being placed against some of the lower seeded teams.

So will you just pick the strongest heroes?

cattlepillar: Overall, the “strongest” heroes still have weaknesses. It is always possible to draft comps around that and you can bait people into overcommitting. Even if they have two of the strongest heroes, it doesn't matter if you have countered their composition.

hOns: Personally, I think Kael’Thas is a crutch for a lot of teams. They rely on chain bombs to win team fights. That is why he gets picks. But the current meta is just- if they pick multiple tanks, if he just gets stunned once and has another warrior that follows up on it, Kael'thas will just die. You have to play Kael’thas safely because he is so squishy, but you can’t do that against double tank. So just pick double tanks. I think he is really overrated.

What about Rexxar?

Blinks: We feel really comfortable with Rexxar. We are not afraid of him and we are not afraid to pick him. I think he has a really great place in the Meta.

Are you worried about any of the foreign teams?

Blinks: It’s hard to get info on the foreign teams, we don’t have many VoDs or matches to see them, but we are trying to get as much information as possible.

Jaximus: We are really only worried about Tempo or Cloud 9- We are kinda worried about COGnitive, but that’s about it.

hOns: Our primary focus is being able to beat one of them.

What is your ban strategy for C9? and Tempo Storm?

Blinks: We want to deny C9 a strong early game, and we want to deny Tempo Storm a strong initiation. 

hOns: If you give C9 a comp they like… you are gonna have a bad time. We experienced that before and they would crush us. Afterwards in interviews they would just say: “yeah they gave us the team that we wanted”. We learned from that. It’s a big lesson.

What is your biggest weakness

Trummel: A lot of the games that we lose, we lose because our draft is terrible. 

cattlepillar: Drafting 100 percent.

Jaximus: We have learned to respect a team always, even if we think we are much better than them.

What do you think Blizzard could do to improve Heroes esports?

Blinks: It would be really nice to have a league format from Blizzard. Consistent games and really seeing Blizzard take the reigns on that. Less 3rd party tournament organizers.

Trummel: Yeah, a league format would help 3rd party tournaments as well. It would allow them to have bigger prize pools.

What has your practice schedule been like the past couple weeks?

Jaximus: I’m a full time student so we pretty much play in the late afternoon. Some days we play 6 hours and some days 10 hours, like every day of the week even.

 compLexity Heroes

Alex "Blinks" Baz
Drew "Trummel" Trummel Ben "cattlepillar" Bunk David "hOns" Honsberger Phillip " Jaximus" Carter

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