FlameZ, who had become one of the hottest prospects in Counter-Strike thanks to his performances on OG, now steps into one of the best teams in the world where he can hopefully realize his full potential. After the game, we caught up with flameZ to discuss that revenge story, JACKZ’s level at World Final, and how important this momentum can be to Vitality doing even more damage at the event. Stay tuned to our Top 20 Players of 2024 ranking and learn more about how the players were selected in our introduction article. Seventh was as high as he could go, though, as the group above outperformed flameZ in most ways, both award-wise and statistically. Considering the names around him and especially above, the aforementioned awards were not the strongest, as he was never in MVP contention other than in Cologne. “The Major obviously is a hard tournament, but the challenge of being together for a month with a not-so-optimal relationship was tough on many. In the end, we gave our best, and if you do that you can’t judge yourself.”
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- The move to Endpoint offered flameZ his first true shot at regular tier-two competition, and with them he won ESEA MDL Season 35 Europe (averaging a 1.25 rating over 29 maps) and qualified for his first season of ESL Pro League.
- FlameZ mustered 1.10 and 1.20 ratings in those efforts, showing he could perform against the best European teams, and slowly OG inched up the world rankings.
- FlameZ missed out on an EVP again in Dallas, where Vitality came up short in the title decider to a G2 who completed a fairytale run to the trophy with Jake “Stewie2K” Yip as a stand-in.
- “The coach, the players, the CEO, everybody in this project made me feel like I could be myself and just grind with them, finish practice and stay in TeamSpeak until late at night playing FACEIT every day.
- FlameZ missed out on a VP or EVP mention for the second time this year with a 0.99 rating, but wasted no time in entering a renaissance at BLAST Fall Final where he had his best event of the year.
His consistent showings against the best teams, 1.25 playoff rating, 1.02 KPRW, and 99.5 ADRW sealed the case for his second EVP of the year, but Vitality still went into the tournament break without lifting a piece of silverware. FlameZ found immediate success upon his move, making it to the semi-final of IEM Cologne in only his second event with the team and lifting a trophy at Gamers8 immediately afterward, where he was also named an EVP with a 1.12 rating. The roster led by Aleksi “Aleksib” Virolainen immediately made an impression, finishing as runners-up at IEM Summer and reaching the semi-final of ESL Pro League Season 14. FlameZ mustered 1.10 and 1.20 ratings in those efforts, showing he could perform against the best European teams, and slowly OG inched up the world rankings. At the turn of the year, four players in HLTV’s Top 20 Players of 2020 list named flameZ as their Bold Prediction — a projection that took four years to come true. Four months into 2021, flameZ got called up to OG to replace Issa “ISSAA” Murad, getting the opportunity to consistently test his abilities against top international opposition.
- “I’m early on in my career and I’m very glad to have such a big trophy to my name with many more years to accomplish more.
- A loss to Eternal Fire in the Elimination Stage’s opener — where ZywOo was the only one who finished positive for Vitality — could have spelled doom for the reigning Major champions, but flameZ and Spinx took the reins to help charge past The MongolZ, Imperial, and Complexity to reach the playoffs.
- With that lineup, flameZ qualified for his first Major, playing in the Challengers Stage of IEM Rio 2022 and falling just short of advancing to the top-16 after losing to Vitality in a three-map series.
- “I just know we didn’t push ourselves and just expected to win. It was something big for us that we worked on a lot in the end, just giving energy no matter the opponent.”
- “Then when the new roster came around with F1KU, NEOFRAG, and so on, it became a grind together and I was very committed.”
- His only negative map (0.90 rating) came in the decider against G2 in the semi-final, which Vitality lost in overtime to bow out of the Spring Final in 3-4th place.
Why was flameZ the 7th best player of 2024?
Seeing Lotan “Spinx” Giladi and Guy “anarkez” Trachtman compete in cups featured on HLTV and having the chance to qualify for FPL-C — where Israeli players could break out internationally — offered an extra level of motivation. It became too hard for flameZ to juggle school, team practice, and pick-up games, and five months in, he stepped back from Finest to focus entirely on qualifying for FPL-C. FlameZ was Vitality’s third-best player with a 1.24 rating in the Elimination Stage, just 0.01 below Spinx, and he carried that through into the playoffs with a team-leading 1.54 rating on Nuke for a 1-0 start to the series. He was the only one to go positive on Vitality (1.22 rating) in an 8-13 defeat on Mirage, but dropped off on the decider (0.68) as FaZe stole away the victory and brought Vitality’s season to a dismal end. Vitality played BLAST World Final with Audric “JACKZ” Jug as a stand-in for mezii, who took time away after becoming a father, and the event in Singapore started in predictably poor fashion.
However, now six months into his tenure with the team and with three trophies already added to their cabinet, every question has been left answered. That is according to Sebastien “KRL” Perez, who has reported that Spinx is expected to leave Vitality in 2025 after both sides “expressed mutual interest in parting ways.” The French insider was also the first to report flameZ’s contract extension. The announcement of the Israeli’s contract extension came just two days before the start of Vitality’s campaign in the Perfect World Shanghai Major Europe RMR A, where the team will fight for one of seven spots at the Major on offer. Shahar “flameZ” Shushan and Vitality have agreed to extend the Israeli player’s contract until the end of 2027, the organization announced Friday. BLIX got the chance to sit down with flameZ following his move, discussing his thoughts on his time on OG, as well as what it’s like to replace someone like dupreeh.
Team Vitality
Freshly crowned IEM Melbourne 2025 champions, winners of the prestigious ESL Grand Slam, and riding an incredible 21-series win streak – it’s Team Vitality! A young star who continues to impress at every event he attends, he and mezii have reinvigorated this Vitality team and will possibly be the main reasons as to why they stay at the very top for a long time coming. “Krabeni deserves a shoutout as well, I feel like they will be super good as a duo. But I was also very happy to play with both of them individually and was super impressed.” The duo have been on NAVI’s academy roster since October 2023 and put up impressive numbers in 2024, with makazze averaging a 1.19 rating (1.34 impact) over 189 maps and Krabeni averaging a 1.10 rating (1.17 impact) over 203 maps. FlameZ recovered to a 1.08 average (1.14 playoffs), which was good enough for another VP mention before the team traveled to Shanghai for the Europe RMR. FlameZ missed out on a VP or EVP mention for the second time this year with a 0.99 rating, but wasted no time in entering a renaissance at BLAST Fall Final where he had his best event of the year.
flameZ CSGO In Game Settings
The ESL Grand Slam is an incredibly rare achievement, with Vitality’s triumph at IEM Melbourne marking only the eighth instance of a team accomplishing this feat. We asked flameZ about the pressure the team faced in this grand final, knowing the Grand Slam was within their grasp. This gold sticker was autographed by professional player Shahar Hai Shoshan playing for Vitality at the BLAST.tv Austin 2025 CS2 Major Championship.
Shahar “flameZ” Shushan
Join our Discord community to discuss CS2 utility strategies, share experiences, and get the latest updates with fellow players. Finally, we observed on the player cameras the intense emotions of Team Vitality’s captain, apEX, throughout the series. We asked flameZ to shed some light on what was being communicated within the team during those highly charged moments.
And although the kills flameZ got were more impactful than most, leading to round wins 70.5% of the time (2nd) and multi-kills 83% of the time (6th), he had the lowest fragging output of players in the top 20 (0.68 KPR). He was also not very impressive in round wins overall with a 0.92 KPRW and a kill in only 57.8% of round wins, again the lowest of all players in the top 20. Winning Cologne could have marked a new period of success for Vitality after a difficult start to the year, but any momentum they hoped to ride off of the victory was brought to a grinding halt after they were cast out in the quarter-finals of ESL Pro League Season 20 by Eternal Fire. “In my opinion, there is no wrong in losing if you are learning and feel that there is progress,” he says about what was going wrong for Vitality around this point.
Наклейка FlameZ (металлическая) Остин-2025
“On the other hand, it got better with time, we always had good chemistry in the game, shared similar ideas, and also he has always been very creative so playing next to him was easy to adapt to as rifler.” “At the start, it was tough because he was way older than me and sometimes things got personal in the game with common team issues,” he says. Known for his aggressive play, pinpoint aim, and sharp utility usage, he helped Vitality win IEM Cologne 2024 and Flamez multiple BLAST events.