EnVy's apEX: We still have issues that need fixing

For a while, EnVyUs was the best Counter-Strike team in the world, taking the win at the DreamHack Cluj-Napoca Major. But they've been in freefall ever since, and made history at MLG Columbus by being the first ever defending Major champions not to make it to the playoff stage at the next Major.

The team did much better at this past week's DreamHack Masters Malmö, where they made it to the semifinals. With the addition of DEVIL to the roster and strong results in Sweden, we asked the team's Dan "apEX" Madesclaire whether their game is finally working again.

They still have a long road ahead of them, apEX says. "We had a really hard time for six months. But even if we're playing a good tournament at the moment, our issues are not fixed. We just need more time."

Dropping kioShiMa from the team and replacing him with DEVIL was a step in the right direction, but there's still much to do, apEX says.

"We have a few problems," he says. "The first one was when we kicked kioShiMa, he was one of the problems. He was not the problem as everyone said, but he was one of the problems because he didn't work that much. We asked him to work more and he didn't. That's why we picked DEVIL who is a really great worker.

"But yeah, if we want to be good again we have to fix many things, like DEVIL's role. Because it's changed, he was a lurker in LDLC White and now he needs to be a support player, we want him as a support player."

apEX points to bad individual performances among all the team members as another issue. They still have high ambitions, though. "we have to play more and be hungry as we were before. Our main goal is to be the best team in the world for a while, not for two or three months. And there are more things to fix, but they're the main ones."