French legend and Skin.Club analyst Richard “shox” Papillon doesn’t see Vitality’s recent drop-off as the end of their era – he sees it as a necessary correction. The defeats to FURIA and Falcons, the shaky maps, the dip in form around their stars: all of it, in his eyes, is precisely the kind of shock that can either break a contender or sharpen it into a two-time Major champion in the same year.
The state of Vitality before the Major
Vitality arrive at this Major in a fascinating place. On one hand, they are still the benchmark team of the season: a dominant first half of the year, a packed trophy cabinet, and a system built around one of the greatest players in the world. On the other hand, the magic clearly faded in Chengdu and at BLAST, where they were punished twice by FURIA and even smashed by Falcons, a team they’d usually beat in the past.
For shox, those defeats might actually be Vitality’s biggest hidden advantage. Their collapse in Chengdu and the BLAST Rivals finals forced the team to face their flaws head-on rather than cruising on momentum. When a team wins “too much for too long”, it actually becomes harder to reinvent itself; winning can blur your problems. Losing, on the other hand, brutally clarifies what went wrong and what exactly you need to work on. In that sense, it is often easier to find real solutions from defeat than from victory.
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Shox sees that timing as almost ideal rather than tragic:
“I think that it was actually like a perfect timing for Vitality to lose the last two events because then it definitely shows where they need to work for the Major.”
Vitality’s last official match was on November 15, which means that instead of stumbling straight into the Major, they get a rare buffer of a couple of weeks. That’s time not only to fix the issues exposed by FURIA and Falcons, but also to cook up the classic Major essentials: one, two, maybe three brand-new tactics and mid-round ideas that have never been shown on stage before.
“And also it will give them some time to implement some new things, you know, because when you come into the Major, you always have to get like one, two, three really new tactics that you never showed before. I think that, honestly, it’s Vitality’s best chance to get the second Major victory.”
So yes, Vitality are bruised. But they are bruised at the right moment, with just enough runway to rebuild before it really matters.
ZywOo is still the axis – but he can’t carry this alone
Any conversation about Vitality still starts with ZywOo. Even in a world where donk exists and the “world’s best” debate is more crowded than ever, one fact is stubbornly consistent: whenever Vitality win a tournament, ZywOo is almost always clutching the MVP medal. He is still the gravitational centre of this roster.
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But that’s exactly why their problems go beyond him. Shox’s point is that Vitality’s real ceiling is defined not by ZywOo, but by the four players around him. The project only looks truly dominant when the rest of the core – especially names like flameZ and Mezii – are in form. The moment one or two of them dip, the entire team suddenly looks human. We’ve already seen that at recent events where Mezii, in particular, lagged behind the level he showed earlier in the year.
“So basically, Vitality’s success depends on the individual form because we have to remember that yes, they won a lot of trophies and they did a fantastic first half of the year, but they also did it because all the players were really in shape individually. This is the only weakness I can find right now.”
The upside is that Vitality have an in-game leader built for this kind of crisis. apEX has lived through more meta shifts and roster eras than most active players. Shox’s confidence in him is clear:
“I have known apEX for a long time, and I know that when you lose two times in a row while you have been winning like all year, it’s a perfect time to shift your mind. He is gonna work twice as hard because he knows what to fix, how to fix.”
In other words: the team still has its MVP-level superstar, but to win another Major, that star needs a core that is firing alongside him – and a leader who can turn this rough patch into fuel instead of doubt.
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The map pool experiment: Ancient, Train, and Nuke under the microscope
If form is the first concern, the map pool is the second – and this is where the FURIA series becomes crucial.
At the last event, one decision stood out above all: Vitality chose to field Ancient against FURIA. On paper, that’s strange, because FURIA normally bans Ancient. Instead of forcing the Brazilian team away from their permaban, Vitality left Ancient in and played it on stage for the first time. It’s hard to see that as anything other than a deliberate experiment before the Major: a controlled stress test to see whether Ancient could be part of their long-term playbook.
Shox clearly read it that way:
“I got the feeling that they were testing the waters before the Major, because I know Ropz said in an interview that they actually practised the map and they tried some stuff. So it was not like a pure gamble. I think it was a perfect time for them to actually test the map.”
The problem is that the experiment didn’t convince anyone. Watching that game, it was obvious neither side looked fully at home. Even with some practice, Vitality’s level on Ancient was a tier below teams that truly specialise on the map. As a surprise pocket pick, it lacked bite; as a stable long-term option, it looked fragile.
Worse still, time invested into Ancient appears to have come at a cost elsewhere. Some of Vitality’s traditional pillars look eroded. Right now, Train is hovering around a 37.5% win rate – a brutal statistic for a team entering a Major as one of the supposed best in the world. Nuke, historically one of their comfort maps, sits at roughly 50%. That doesn’t inspire fear; it screams coinflip. Even Overpass, once a proud tactical playground, has looked middling.
“I just hope they forget about Ancient and that they actually work more on the other maps. These maps can definitely be in the best-of-three series. If you want to go far into the Major, you really have to get a really nice map pool. Oh, you have to get lucky with a veto, you know.”
From an analyst’s perspective, the conclusion is simple: those two to three weeks between BLAST and the Major must be used to grind these maps back into shape. Train and Nuke can’t stay at those numbers if Vitality want to go deep; if they don’t react now, these cracks will become fault lines in playoffs.
“So yeah, hopefully I would say they practised these maps to improve their map pool because they had like two or three weeks between the last event and the Major because they definitely need to do it. Otherwise, they will have some trouble.”
The opposition: who can realistically knock Vitality out?
Even if Vitality fix their form and tighten their map pool, the bracket won’t be kind. Beyond familiar roadblocks like FURIA and Falcons, shox highlights MOUZ and G2 as the most dangerous threats.
MOUZ feel like a team on the verge of finally breaking through against Vitality. The last time they met, Vitality did win – but it was an absolute war, a series where every map was fought down to the wire. From an analyst’s seat, that’s the kind of series that lives in players’ heads. MOUZ walked away not just with a loss, but with a clear sense that they’re close – and that the gap is shrinking. It’s easy to imagine the Major being the moment where they finally flip that result in a high-stakes match.
“And every time MOUZ is playing Vitality, even if they’re losing, they are not losing a lot. MOUZ won a lot of experience against Vitality, and the Major can be a good time for MOUZ to actually beat Vitality in an important match.”
Then there’s G2, the eternal wildcard. On paper, they’re stacked with firepower; at their peak, almost every player on that roster is capable of taking over a server. The issue has always been synchronisation – they rarely all hit that level in the same tournament. But if they do sync up at this Major, they instantly become one of the few lineups with enough raw aim and clutch power to blow even a structured team like Vitality out of the water.
“Another trouble team for Vitality is G2 because I think G2 got really like insane individualities. Each player has a lot of firepower. The problem is that G2 haven’t been able to unlock the best individual performance at the same time. I’m just saying that if all the individualities in G2 pop off simultaneously, they could beat Vitality because they have the level for it.”
In short, Vitality won’t just be fighting their own demons; they’ll be walking through a minefield of opponents with the tools to punish any weakness.
What Vitality must do to win their second Major
From shox’s perspective, Vitality are still absolutely capable of winning another Major this year, but only if they treat their recent slump as a wake-up call rather than a sign of decline. The losses to FURIA and Falcons have to become a clear tactical and psychological blueprint: what broke, how they were punished, and how those situations are avoided or reversed on the biggest stage.
That means using the prep window to sharpen apEX’s calling, stabilise the team emotionally, and reignite the whole core around ZywOo so that Mezii, flameZ and the rest are once again playing close to their peak rather than oscillating in form.
At the same time, the map pool can’t remain in this half-fixed, half-experimental state. Vitality either need a fully reworked Ancient they genuinely trust, or they must park it and restore their traditional strengths on Train, Nuke, and Overpass to a level worthy of a title favourite.
Only with a stable, confident veto and a lineup where four players – not just one superstar – are firing can they realistically navigate a bracket that may include peak versions of MOUZ, G2, FURIA, and Falcons. If they manage to pull all that together, the rough end to the season won’t be remembered as the start of a fall, but as the necessary shock that set up a second Major crown.
