Today my contract with Team Liquid has officially ended. I will talk a bit about the history of the roster and how this lineup came to be. As well as what I plan to do in the future.



I joined this team replacing Rush because mosbeck and Rush did not get along at all and I was known as more of a fragger back then instead of a leader so they saw me as the optimal replacement since I was playing really well at the time. When it was RONIN5 and the original roster was mosbeck, hades, wabbit, juv3nile and I. I came into a team that was falling apart on the inside which had players wanting to cut each other almost every week.



First to go almost 2-3 weeks after I had joined was hades. I had not played with hades for very long but it seemed to be a topic they had been talking about even before I had joined the roster. Being the new guy on the team I didn't really know him well enough or have much of a say in the decision other then sending a message to the admin to confirm a mutiny of the roster. Hades replacement would end up being monte.



Our roster at this point is now mosbeck, wabbit, juv3nile, monte and I. Not long after we picked up monte (roughly 3-4 days) we decided that mosbeck really isn't working within the team and most of the problems center around him, not that he wasn't getting kills but he was emotionally draining the team and always wanted a player gone if we lost a match or 2. Mosbeck's replacement would end up being NAF.



Now finally our roster has a little extended period of time to finish out ESEA Season 16 with wabbit, juv3nile, monte, NAF and I. We end up finishing the season tied for 4th with compLexity but end up losing the tie breaker to them in rounds and end up missing the lan.



Now is the start of Season 17, we become LunatiK as their first CSGO team ever. wabbit ends up quitting csgo and monte ends up leaving to play with another team. This is where we end up getting FugLy and ShahZam. At the time people thought FugLy was a blatant cheater and ShahZam was really disliked by the community at the time. NAF, juv3 and I talked and felt the risk was worth it and we ended up settling on these two players for the whole season.



Our roster is now juv3nile, NAF, FugLy, ShahZam and I. We end up placing 2nd online for both CEVO and ESEA and almost end up qualifying for the FACEIT lan finals but ended up losing to iBP in a d2 match that went to 3-4 OT's. We also almost qualified for ESL ONE Cologne but lost to iBP in the final of the online qualifier as well for that.



We end up going now to the CEVO-P Season 5 LAN Finals and we do brutally. It's pretty much NAF and Fugly's first lan ever and it's also my first lan ever that isn't a local lan. So we end up coming last at CEVO lan and decide that we need to change something after missing 2 events online and failing at this lan.



So now we decide to replace juv3nile after CEVO lan and pickup nitr0. None of us really knew him well but I knew him through some 10 mans and we saw him on a51 playing really well. So we decide to pick him up and the only matches we got to play with nitr0 was the John Wick $20,000 CS:GO Invitational. We ended up winning this online event beating ex-MouseSpaz(CLG) in the finals 2-0 and were looking our best right before ESEA lan s17 finals.



About 1-2 weeks after we win the John Wick tournament nitr0 gets the offer to go to the major with iBP along with desi. So we had a limited amount of time before ESEA lan to find a 5th. We end up picking up anger for the lan since we needed a rifler and he had the most experience out of anyone we could have picked up at the time.



So we go to ESEA lan with NAF, FugLy, Shahzam, anger and I. We lose two close matches to Titan to start the lan off which gave us some confidence given we got destroyed at CEVO lan not too long ago. The next day we end up beating eLevate 2-1, Cloud9 2-0 and then end up losing to iBP 2-0 16-13 and 16-12 to finish 4th.



After this really good result from such a young and unproven team teams with more money and pull start to take notice to your key players. We had already lost nitr0 to iBP and now we would lose Shahzam to Cloud9. When this happened we really didn't know what to do since the xgames qualifiers were starting and we didn't even have a set 5 yet.



The only two options we had at the time was JDM and adreN. We saw JDM as more of a direct replacement for Shahzam because of his awping style but we saw more value in adreN with his experience and wanted to see how he could improve the team overall rather then just getting someone who could awp.



So now I was put in a weird situation with NAF because now nitr0 doesn't have a team and he worked so well with us before he left and he just did insanely good at ESEA lan so now I have to make room for him again. Now granted anger did have a bad ESEA lan and on top of that he was the newest member to the team initially but NAF, nitr0 and I viewed the situation like adreN was only joining the team because of anger since adreN didn't know any of us at the time.



So this is where nitr0, NAF and I decided to replace FugLy for a day to get the anger and adreN package even though we wanted FugLy but we saw more value in adreN at the time. We ended up failing in the xgames qualifier with this lineup and I pmd FugLy instantly saying i'll make things right.



So without even including adreN in the conversation nitr0, NAF and I decided that FugLy has way too much potential and we decided that we would rather keep him and we would just hope adreN would stay and if adreN really had to have anger on the team we would just get JDM if he left.



Now the roster is NAF, Fugly, nitr0, adreN and I. With this lineup we ended up with a ton of sub-par results. We beat CLG at xgames but lost to fnatic and LDLC. We went to Clutchcon and ended up placing 3/4th. Then we went to the ESL Katowice Offline Qualifier and ended up losing to flipside 16-14 and also lost to CPH Wolves 16-10 both on mirage.



After all of these results mixed with online results as well things just weren't working like they used to. NAF lost motivation over time after we were Denial and the team just wasn't working like it had in the past. adreN and I shared a lot of the calling for the first couple of months switching back and forth and after we missed ESEA lan we decided that we just needed one person calling because there was too much confusion caused by the system we had created.



So for the FACEIT online season I was the caller during freezetime and did most mid gaming granted adreN still did voice his opinions and called mid game at times but the roles were a lot more well defined. The focus on me being the main IGL was to take more weight off adreN so he could focus on being the primary awp.



So after this change we get off to a really strong start in FACEIT and everyone on the team is playing well. The team still felt overall though that NAF was not putting the time in that was needed and they wanted someone who was a little more vocal and had a greater hunger to win. On a side note though I always told NAF he is easily a top 5 player in NA if he put his all into the game and focused on fixing the negative things about him.



Anyways we pick up Elige now because he was destroying for eLevate and we heard he was a lot more vocal and also just talking to him seemed like he had more of a drive to win. We end up finishing tied for 1st in FACEIT with eLevate both with 8-2 records. Our only losses were 1 to eLevate on nuke and 1 match to c9 on cache.



So now becomes the time where there's a ton of rumors about Hiko trying to steal players for a "super team" which was actually true as he wanted to make a team with adreN, nitr0 and FugLy. Any rumors about me trying to prevent this team from being made or refusing to go to FACEIT lan were all a lie as I didn't know the full truth until the day before Hiko told everyone about it on stream anyways.



So now after all of this happened before FACEIT lan there was a lot of uncertainty in my mind about where I stood on the team. After Denial I stopped DM'ing and aim mapping as much and I felt I focused too much on watching demos and learning how other teams played rather then just improving my own game like I had in the past. I didn't play overly bad in FACEIT online as I only went negative in the two matches we lost but I just didn't feel comfortable in the roles I was put in on CT side and T side.



I feel my faults near the end were compromising to much and losing leadership in how I felt the team needed to be ran also just not playing as well individually was a problem as well.



I think flowsick is a good addition to the team as he has a lot more experience then I do as he can bring that experience to the younger players around him. I wish nitr0, fugly, elige, adren and flowsick the best of luck in the future.



As for me this was a really good experience for me and I am looking to focus on improving myself individually now rather then focusing on watching hours of demos a day and use that time to DM, kz, and aim map more.

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