FaZe Quiz and Xizt Gamble

FaZe Clan is the strongest CS:GO team today. Their results prove this. At the start of 2018 they had: 2nd place at the IEM World Championship, 2nd place at Eleague Boston Major and 4th place at Starladder i – League Stareries season 4. At the end of 2017 they achieved: won Esports Championship Series season 4, 2nd place in ESL Pro League season 6, 3rd in BLAST, 2nd in IEM Oakland, 2017 ELeague Champion and 2017 ESL New York Champion. If we look at the results for the past 6 months, no one can compare. comparable to them. SK’s form has declined since entering 2018 and there is no other team with stable results to compare with them. Despite such success, FaZe still has a problem. They want to do more, they want to be champions all the time rather than constantly getting 2, but when you look at the roster few think they need any change but the feeling they need to change. This is the puzzle of FaZe.

FaZe’s huge and extremely strong potential lineup

To understand the origin of the puzzle, we need to look at the following 4 tournaments: IEM Oakland 2017, Eleague Major Boston, Starladder Kiev and IEM WC. Let’s skip the ESL PL season 6 finals as they face an SK that has always performed exceptionally well against FaZe. For the remaining 4 tournaments, FaZe is the top team in all 4 tournaments. Three FaZe tournaments reached the finals and lost. The last tournament they lost was in the semi-finals. When we consider these four results separately, it is even more confusing.

First at IEM Oakland. In this tournament NiP has been in rare form, so rare that the roster can’t reach this level anymore and they had a roster change in 2018. If you look at their map pool, NiP has the best. good post to overthrow FaZE. They could win Cobblestone, Train and Cache to beat FaZe at that point, but the surest win for NiP is at Cobblestone. The match ended with NiP winning 3-2 and FaZe had no way to win in the 3 maps above. In this match, FaZe revealed his T-side weakness and it must be said that Finn “karrigan” Andersen was a captain but was unable to make good decisions on the T-side maps Train and Cache.

FaZe lost the championship to NiP

The issue once again surfaced at the Eleague Boston Major final when they faced C9. Cloud 9 have been in brilliant form in the tournament and their T-side was pretty weak on Overpass and had problems on map 3. Karrigan can be easily blamed because he has a history of being a regular. pressured into the big moments, but maybe that’s because the team really fell apart at Overpass. No one played well. If we talk about the factor that really does not show its ability, it is not a matter of T-side, it is the two stars Harvard “rain” Nygaard and especially Nikola “NiKo” Kovac. Rain can be forgiven for having to play in the difficult entry fragger position, but NiKo is the team’s superstar player and only really did well in the second half of the map. T-side was also an issue. The game was about the final phase of inferno when karrigan couldn’t adapt in time to Cloud 9’s CT-side play.

It’s a pity for karrigan and his teammates to lose the Major championship title

At Starladder Kiev things were even more disappointing. FaZe met Na`Vi in the semi-finals and this time the team really broke down. They won the first map but failed to show anything for the next 2 maps. When it comes to individual performance, this is one of the worst we’ve seen from Ladislav “GuardiaN” Kovacs, usually a regular FaZe player in situations like these. . It is also a rare occasion when Na`Vi is more than just a one-man army of Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev. But even so, we’d still like to see more resistance from FaZe because they were supposed to win the tournament.

Finally we come to the ESL WC. This time FaZe meets Fnatic in the bo5 final. All maps are pretty good for FaZe and if we look at the individual, Fnatic’s best map might be Mirage, Cobblestone and Inferno. FaZe can cope with their power and they always ban Cobblestone. The match was supposed to be light, but again FaZe failed. When looking at the whole match, Overpass is a remarkable map. Overpass is a map where FaZe played well and they made a name for themselves with CT-side in this map. The team did its job on the T-side and got 7 rounds and it should have been a light win. But again no one on the team shined.

When we see it all through this lens, the only stabilizing factor is the team’s breakdown in high-pressure situations. T-side is a problem but with it comes the instability of the players. GuardiaN always shines, except when facing Na`Vi. NiKo disappears sometimes, but if we look at his whole career he has been more successful in the finals. Rain had a poor performance at ESL WC but he was sick at the time. Sometimes they play the T-side well, sometimes the CT-side is extremely bad. With so many questions and so much information, it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what the problem is. Even when we consider individual performance and positions, there’s no way to answer the question of why the team fell apart.

Karrigan is a great captain and also has quite good personal skills compared to his peers in the same position. He has the best picks and bans in the world. Sometimes his decisions on the T-side don’t work out, but he adapts, learns and changes. Most visible and he swapped places with Olof “Olofmeister” Kajbjer at Inferno map when they switched to T-side so karrigan could read what was happening at Banana and get the necessary information about CT-side how active/passive is playing. His control style and ability to motivate superstar players make him an invaluable piece in a multinational team of superstars.

NiKo and Rain are the other two key components of this lineup. The two of them were the best players in the world from 2017 to 2018. Rain hit another level as the recruiting rounds made his position turn somewhat more aggressive. NiKo is one of the best players in the world and the superstar FaZe needs to fight for championships. But at key moments they disappeared and no one seems to know why it happened.

Olofmeister and GuardiaN play around the main lineup. Olofmeister can now play as a full support or as an entry fragger. He has performed brilliantly in both positions and the question of how he can fit into this squad is gone. He used to be a clutch player when he was at Fnatic and at the moment you can also see it happening in FaZe rosters (like the ELeague Boston Major) and other times he seems like like overwhelmed. GuardiaN is FaZe’s most consistent player in high-pressure situations and he’s currently the best AWPer in the world. While he did not show much in Na`Vi’s lineup.

So no one person is really a big deal and can be easily replaced. So what about the lineup as a team? As a team they have improved over time. They expanded the map pool, they refreshed and changed their positions and tactics when something wasn’t working and there were no internal issues as far as we know. So there’s no problem at all.

Not to mention that in the 4 tournaments we took as an example above, their opponents played at a different level than they normally play. IEM Oakland was NiP’s only major win in 2017 and it was the only time they’ve reached that level of competition. The Eleague Boston Major had a great Cloud 9 performance and in the tournament that followed, Cloud 9 couldn’t reach that level anymore. Na`Vi has s1mple and just because he’s the best player in the world doesn’t mean he can keep repeating his performances. At ESL WC we have Fnatic with Robin “flusha” Ronnquist of 2015 as he put on a stunning display to save Fnatic from a final defeat. Even at their most recent tournament V4, they lost to Virtus.Pro in the semifinals where not a single FaZe star performed well while the Virtus.Pro stars did.

After spending months trying to overcome this problem, FaZe finally decided to change, or rather they had to. Olofmeister was absent due to personal issues that forced the team to find another 5th player to replace. And to replace him, Richard “Xizt” Landstrom was recruited. Personally, Xizt is a downgrade compared to Olofmeister in terms of playing style. But what they do hope is that he brings a better structure to the squad and becomes a side decision maker behind Karrigan. Furthermore, he has clutches in moments of high pressure (but so does Olofmeister).

Olofmeister is suspended due to personal issues

When we look at FaZe’s performance and opponents, it’s easy to see how they collapse when under pressure. The problem is that there is no stability in them choke. It changes between players at different times with no explanation for it. At the same time we have to admit that their opponents shine magically against them. But that can’t be the reason they lost, but it’s also part of the puzzle.

The more they look at FaZe, the more confusing their problem becomes. There was a mix of underwhelming displays and stellar performances by their opponents in these losses. If you look at the team as a whole, something needs to be changed. If you look at the individual, nothing needs to change. That is the puzzle of FaZe and Xizt is the gamble. We’ve seen what FaZe can do with their superstar roster and now we’ll see what happens when they add a support, a second decision maker, though. The shape has changed but the goal remains the same, to be the best team in the world, to win tournaments regularly. If they can’t, then maybe we’ll have another roster change.