Fnatic Vonethil: “You should never be afraid of being vocal”

We had the honor to hold an interview with Oliver “Vonethil” Lager, a professional Overwatch player from Sweden who is currently playing for one of world’s biggest esports organizations, Fnatic. -We had a small introduction about you, but could you tell me a bit more about yourself? Vonethil: “Sure, I currently play Overwatch it’s like my full time job, so I’m doing that as much as I can and then on the same time I am helping a person who’s running a podcast with Overwatch in Sweden. Outside playing, I don’t get that much time to do things but when I find time I try to spend it as much as possible with friends and family.” -Does your BattleTag have any special meaning or significance? How did you come up with it? Vonethil: “Oh, I think I came up with my name when I was thirteen or something, so I’ve been having my in-game name for as long as I can remember honestly, so like specific meaning, I don’t think so.” -We know you played Heroes of the Storm at a very high level before, so how did you pick up Overwatch and what do you like most about it? Vonethil: “So, it was like a friend from HotS that I played a lot with, and he told me that he would quit HotS and wait for Overwatch, so I kept playing HotS for a while, but Overwatch interested me so much more and it looked so fun because it was like a combination of an FPS and a MOBA. I always liked FPS games, but I had never played them competitively before, so when I got invited, which I got very early, I think like the second day of beta, I decided to try it and after that I was stuck, I knew that this game was for me.” -How did the opportunity to join Fnatic come? How do you feel playing for such a huge organization? Vonethil: “I think I was trialing for TeamLiquid at the time but then IDDQD asked me if I was interested in starting up a new line-up with him. I really wanted to play with him, so I said yes and I quit my trial in Team Liquid and then joined him. Then we picked up the nubris guys and then we had conversations with Fnatic, I think for two months, before we decided we wanted to go with each other. About how it feels, it’s a lot to live up to but I like that because it makes me pressure myself to perform even better.” -Who is your favorite hero? Do you enjoy the current meta? Vonethil: “The new patch hit and the supports now are all over the place, right now I’m playing Ana, Symmetra, Mercy, Lucio, so it’s not like before when you were force to play Lucio all the time. So, I really enjoy the new meta but I think it’s a bit early to say because nothing is really set in stone yet. I think the game will be very interesting with this new patch.” -You are in charge of making some changes in Overwatch. What would you change? Vonethil: “Ana probably right now. I am playing a lot of Ana, actually she’s probably my favorite hero right now, but her ulti is way too strong, it’s so easy to get her ulti up and you can get so much value with that ulti, like you can get Ana’s ulti up before any other ulti and it’s really hard to counter it.” -You had a great run at the ESL Overwatch Atlantic Showdown about 2 weeks ago. How was the overall experience in a big event like this and how did that affect you? Vonethil: “It was really nice to meet all of the other players from the other teams, from both of regions. And it’s always fun to play on stage, like I always get to rush going up on the stage and playing because you are always trying to pressure yourself to perform even better than you’ve ever done before. It always makes me want to push harder and on how it affected me after, it was probably that I realized that I really wanna do this. I really wanna win, but we got out in semi-finals. However, I’d really wanna be in the grand final and win it, so it makes me more serious about the nextLAN which is now ELEAGUE. I really wanna try to take that LAN.” -What are your goals for Overwatch this year and maybe the first months of the upcoming year, both as a team and as a player? Vonethil: “Obviously, winning as many offline tournaments as possible, but a long-term goal would be probably trying to become the best team internationally, we haven’t played that many Asian teams so far, so I don’t know how good they are but short-term I would say like focusing on the offline tournaments that are coming up and long-term it’s probably trying to be the number one team and consistently trying to be that team.” -Do you have any advice or thoughts you’d like to share with your fans or other aspiring competitive players? Vonethil: “You should never be afraid of being vocal. This game relies a lot on combining ulties and such, so it’s always important that you talk with your teammates. Let’s say if you’re playing a Tracer and you have a Pulse Bomb and you have a teammate who has Graviton up, it’s really important that you two communicate and combine those ulties because you can probably wipe the whole enemy team by using only two ulties. That’s only because you’ve been vocal. If you really wanna improve as a player, it’s really important that you play as a team, like you can’t really improve that much by spamming ranked and so on, you need to be scrimming other teams, you need to be working together and that’s how you get the best practice possible. It’s obviously important that you play the game but it’s also really important that you watch VOD’s and so on and you see which mistakes you’re doing and you try to improve on them, you can’t just play the game and expect to become a better player because you have to have that all-around work of the game if you really want to improve. Sorecord VODs, watch them through and try to improve as much as possible.” -Okay, I think we can wrap it up. Any final shoutouts? Vonethil: “I obviously wanna thank Fnaticand all our sponsors.” What are your thoughts on the interview with Vonethil? Let us know in the comments below or by tweeting us – @GAMURScom.