EPICENTER 2018 saw the return of FaZe to Championship form. This was a notable international tournament as many of the best teams in the world were in attendance. In the case of FaZe, they were able to defeat everyone of note here: ENCE, NiP, Liquid, and Na`Vi. This was an incredible run as this is their first championship together since ESL Belo Horizonte. In terms of the actual five man lineup with Olof “olofmeister” Kajbjer, this specific lineup hasn’t been to a finals since IEM Katowice earlier this year in March 2018. The last time the olofmeister lineup won a tournament was at the end of 2017 against Mouz in the ECS Season 4 Finals. Not only that, but FaZe did it in a style reminiscent to their breakout performances at ELeague 2017 and ESL New York where they ran over the competition like a raging bull. It was an encore the likes of which, we haven’t seen from them in over a year. So was it a honeymoon phase due to the recent role changes or is it a resurrection of the FaZe Clan?

So the first question we have to ask ourselves is what changed for FaZe Clan from this tournament compared to their previous outings? In their last four outings, FaZe were eliminated in either the group stages or the first round of playoffs. First there were two explicit role changes. Nikola “NiKo” Kovac took the in-game leadership role from Finn “karrigan” Andersen. This change in turn caused three things to happen simultaneously.

First, NiKo has changed the style of the FaZe tactics. The Karrigan system had the FaZe players running defaults and trying to create isolated duels to create openings and make a read off of that. Then they’d change it up either with executes or fakes. In the current FaZe team, they’ve reverted to a much more execution fast-paced tempo. They generally call faster rounds now and they change up with slower paced defaults. This has caused the fundamental strengths of the team to rely more on the power of their trading and explosive skill rather than their individual dueling skill and map pressure.

Secondly, they have changed up roles on the T-side. With karrigan no longer leading, he is playing more onto the wings. This has allowed him to use his intelligence to create impactful lurk plays and his individual impact has gone up as a result. On top of that, he is one of the early adopters of both the Krieg and AUG, both of which he ha started to use to great effect.

Third is the mental shift in the team. Every time a team does a shuffling of rosters, there is a kind of mental reset. In this case there were two resets. They had changed roles in the team and they had changed the tactical style on the T-side. In general, mental shifts often see rises in from across individual players. I believe this effect has had varying positive effects across the roster. Among the five, Ladislav “GuardiaN” Kovacs looked far better at EPICENTER than he did in the last few months. Karrigan plays a better individual game after the role change and everyone else seems to have slightly improved.

Additionally, the last patch that changed the economy is probably in FaZe’s favor. One of the reasons fast-tempo execute based styles generally weren’t working as the primary tactical style of top teams is because top CT-sides have consistently been able to get the economy they need to afford the utility and weapons to stop those pushes and punish them before they start. For instance, if five players rush B aps to only be stopped by a molly and smoke on the other side, they will have to wait out the smoke. In the meantime, any amount of players could be pushing all of the map control they lost and they are in a terrible situation. Their plan is telegraphed, but if they go back they can run into traps.

However with the last patch, the CT-side economy is even more brittle than before. Even should the CT-side win the pistol round and convert the second fairly cleanly, the Ts will get a better buy in the third with how the new economy works. At the same time, the weaker weaponry is held over from the second round that the CTs won. The grind down economics of the game start faster in the new economy which allows for these fast style executes to have more success than they previously did.

On top of that, when you go on the CT-side, teams have to be able to win the scrappy low force buys if they want to hold the Ts at bay. The FaZe lineup is tailor made for that kind of style as every player on this roster can pull out individual plays that can reset or grind down the T-side economy on those types of rounds.

One final thing to note is that this is the first event where FaZe prepared for the tournament with NiKo as the in-game leader. They only used him as a stopgap for the Major when people were losing confidence. So for all of the other competitors out there, they had yet to grasp what kind of style, roles, or changes the FaZe team were going to come with.

So for FaZe, all of these changes created the perfect opportunity for them to win the tournament. While they looked shaky and off during the group stages, they were able to rally back and stomp their way through the playoffs.

So the question is can it last? Is this a honeymoon effect because of all of the changes or can this be a resurrection for the team? There are two historical precedents that we can look to. The first and most famous is Virtus.Pro. The original Polish lineup that had: Filip “NEO” Kubski, Jaroslaw “pasha” Jarzabkowski, Pawel “byali” Bielinski, Janusz “Snax” Pogorzelski, and Wiktor “TaZ” Wojtas. They were famous for going through years of slumps and rises again and again. The reason they were able to do it was because they constantly reinvented themselves by changing roles, learning new maps, and innovating their games. If FaZe are following that example, it would be a resurrection.

The other example is Liquid. The iteration that had: Nicholas “nitr0” Cannella, Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski, Russel “Twistzz” Van Dulken, Joshua “jdm64” Marzano, and Peter “stanislaw” Jarguz. That iteration lasted through the majority of 2017. In that lineup, they had hit a wall after their first five months of playing together and they looked to be on an imminent player shuffle after being eliminated in the Major Qualifiers at PGL Krakow Major. After that loss, they decided to do multiple role changes. Nitr0 went to in-game leading and stanislaw became the lurker. They then got to the finals of two international tournaments: ESG Mykonos and ESL New York 2017. However they couldn’t keep up that pace as the changed roles couldn’t fix the fundamental problems in that particular lineup and they eventually had to change.

So which path is FaZe on, Virtus.Pro or Team Liquid of 2017, a resurrection or a brief honeymoon? There is no way to know either way as the FaZe case is unique compared to either the Virtus.Pro or Liquid side. FaZe is a team that has far more individual skill than either of those teams, so the conditions for them to come back to a top level are likely to be different as well. In the case of Virtus.Pro, they were a team that relied on their teamplay, tactics, and grit to get them back out of the ditch time and time again. In the case of Liquid, it ended up failing because they didn’t have the right mix of players and had internal issues that eventually made them find new players.

In FaZe’s case, I think their conditions are based on the form of their individual players. While they don’t need to have all five players go off like they did this event, I do think that FaZe need both primary stars of NiKo and GuardiaN. If GuardiaN is back in form, that is a huge boon for the FaZe side that could get them on the right track immediately. If Karrigan continues this form and if the economic meta continues to play out the way it has, I can see a world in which FaZe do make a comeback. Not as the best team in the world, but competing against the likes of FaZe or Liquid. However, I can also see a world in which they fall like Liquid did. As FaZe play more events, other top teams will slowly be able to break them down. Teams like Astralis and Liquid, have shown that they get stronger with better preparation. If FaZe cannot keep pace with them, then they will be right back where they started. So while this was a great victory for FaZe, it is only the first step to making their comeback. In the coming months, they will have to prove that this wasn’t just a honeymoon phase, but a true resurrection the likes of which we haven’t seen since Virtus.Pro still roamed the earth.

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