Mathieu ‘ZywOo’ Herbaut is a known entity within the Counter-Strike scene as an AWPer that statistically has no equal across the past few months; he’s statistically the best player in the game, and has more often than not dragged the French team Vitality through tournaments that some posit they would otherwise have almost-instantly lost.
Yesterday Vitality matched up against Fnatic, and the AWPer once again dusted off his rifle to show the world why he’s such a blisteringly hot commodity right now within the professional scene of the esport.
Across three maps, ZywOo attained a rating of 1.75 out of 2; the highest in recent history within the European region, and Fnatic weren’t necessarily offering him the statistics.
The French AWPer, that actually prefers to rifle, recorded 79 kills (with 33 headshots) across the three maps with 40 deaths, making his differential +39 at 115.9 average damage per round. Meaning per round, he was averaging at least one kill with additional damage on top of that.
ZywOo was often relegated to sitting a bit further back and allowing his teammates to gain information that the star would then use to discern his angles; Fnatic left the series with 38 first kills, while Vitality had only 31.
This has made the French team a bit sinister in recent match-ups, explaining why they found themselves at the #1 seed in the world during a time where many are struggling against the woes of online CS with latency and disconnects.
Teams not only need to be able to shut down the entry plays from riflers from Vitality, but also then be able to shut down the consequential effects from the star AWPer working with the data gleaned from the entries. A nasty one-two punch that many teams have struggled against as of late.
Still, Vitality has dropped from #1 to #4 as Astralis has regained the #1 seed after Vitality dropped a string of losses that were difficult to watch; clean sweeps were given up to FaZe, mousesports, and Complexity in the past month while Vitality consistently looked flustered and hesitant in every call made.
There is a world where Vitality regains the upper hand in the seedings, and it could very well be in this precise timeline; NaVi ahs proven that having a singular impeccable AWPer can make a team a nightmare to handle, and if Vitality can wrest control on retakes and come out ahead a few more times on entry frags, the team would be quite fearsome indeed.
For now, however, Vitality will have to make do with having one of the best AWPers the game has even seen.
