With OpTic Gaming set to face off against FaZe Clan tonight for a spot in the ELEAGUE Season 2 finals, theScore esports caught up with rifler Will "RUSH" Wierzba to talk coaching changes, map picks and the team's group stage elimination at DreamHack Winter 2016.

First off, I wanted to go back to DreamHack Winter 2016. You guys unfortunately got knocked out of the tournament from the group stage, which was unexpected because you, Cloud9 and Team Dignitas were expected to win the tournament, but all three of you guys were eliminated. Why was this the case for you guys?

The first thing for us was we underestimated Gambit. We didn't [think of] them as a team that would have a good showing; I didn't think they would be a winner of the tournament for sure. We underestimated them, didn't do enough preparation for them and they basically capitalized on that on one of our best maps.

And in term of what else happened in the tournament is that, it sucked that Cloud9 lost to Renegades, because then we had to face each other in the decider. Historically, Cloud9 does better than us in the domestic matches so they pretty much destroyed us, which isn't really good for us, but I think it also kind of attested to, not an excuse, but we've been traveling a lot, so we're kind of like almost exhausted, y'know? So, I would take DreamHack Winter almost as practice for the bigger tournaments, it's like this and ECS, a Major qualifier.

The other thing that happened since the Majors, you've actually dropped Devilwalk as your coach, but you guys haven't picked up another coach. Is this a conscious decision or is it just more that you guys haven't found a coach to replace him?

Devilwalk wasn't really our coach-coach, he was more of like a trial thing to see how things went, and like, he had other ventures he might have pursued, and it's kind of why we went our separate ways.

Because we thought he was gonna go coach a different team, I can't say who, but we thought he was going to do that. But [it] ended up that he didn't do that, so like, we lost him basically and it's not a big deal. He was a good guy and a decent coach, but we looked into getting other coaches recently and we haven't had that many good options.

So like, we want to make sure if we get a coach it's like a really good fit for us, so I think what we're going to start doing is trialing coaches and see how they work for us. Maybe even, I'm not sure we're going to do this, but maybe fly them out to the house and see how they can help us. But I'm not sure. We'll see what happens I guess with that.

Is it something you guys are pursuing before the Major? Or is this something that you'd want to concentrate on after the Major?

Mostly likely...I don't know. I feel like there's a lot of time, like there's still two months about, maybe a little less until the Major. So I feel like if we could get a coach before that would be better, but if not then definitely after. We definitely want to get a coach though, it's on our plate for sure.

And more in the traditional sense of a coach rather than an analyst?

Yeah, [we] definitely want a coach for like everything including in-game and out of game, like the mental state of us. Because we do have a problem with, like, we get kind of down sometimes when we're losing. So we definitely need someone to bring us up, cause we're pretty quiet guys and we don't really [get] that hyped. So, we definitely need someone to pick us up when we're down.

And I talked to daps a little while ago, and I know he's not on the team anymore, but he was a pretty quiet guy. How does stanislaw affect the leadership dynamic?

Well, here's the thing with that,daps was more of like an emotional quiet. Like he was quiet, but he also got really emotionally invested into the game. So, like, he would sometimes go emo as we'd put it. But, Peter, stanislaw, is more of like a rock. Like, he doesn't really get affected by that. He's pretty much always the same, like there's a meme going around where, like, stanislaw when he's happy, stanislaw when he's sad, stanislaw when he's mad. It's the same [thing] every time because he's always, like, pretty much the same. That's good. It's definitely a good trait for an IGL to have the same composure.

I guess you guys are kind of now looking for someone to help motivate you?

Yeah, exactly. We don't have, like, the biggest motivator we have is pretty much Tarik, which is like, he does what he can, but it's only so much and he's a player. If you have a coach hyping us up, I think it would help tremendously.

Well, you guys ended up taking out mouz 2-0 in the ELEAGUE quarterfinals. What would you say was the big factor in that? My read was actually the map veto. Looking at it, how it played out. I would say you guys had the advantage straight-up from the first two maps, but what was your read?

No, I agree. That's kind of like exactly how we thought the veto would go. We expected Cobble or Train first, and it was Train, which is even better for us. And the second map, we did not expect them to pick Cache, honestly. Like, we thought they were going to pick Dust2 for sure, and they didn't. So it was in our favor again, so the first two maps were in our favor pretty much and I think if it would have went three maps, I'm not sure what would have happened on Dust2 because they're a very strong Dust2 team. But, I'm really happy with where the vetoes went. They went in our way for sure.

I might have an off-read on this, but I feel like FaZe might have a bit of a similar map pool to mouz, at least as far as their strength on Dust2 and I think they're okay on Cache. But what's your game plan going into that matchup?

I'm not like, the one who [puts] the most time into the map pool, [that's] stanislaw, and he knows more about that than me. But I know that we're definitely...I can't say what maps we're going to play, 'cause I don't even know honestly. We've been talking, like, in-and-out, we're not 100 percent sure yet. So I can't really tell you right now what maps we're gonna play, but I can say that FaZe is a team that's kind of like an NA team. Like, they're a lot of aimers, a lot of strong aimers, so it's gonna be tough 'cause those type of teams we struggle against I feel like. We're more against strong structured teams, teams like - I don't want to say European teams - but we are better versus European teams I feel like than really strong NA teams. Like Cloud9 for example, and FaZe is kind of like Cloud9 or teams like that. Like they have really strong individual players. So I guess we're gonna see what we can do versus them, but I think we can win.

There's also the added factor that now they have karrigan to kind of bring that structure to that aiming style. Is that a major concern for you guys?

I mean, before, like, we practiced versus FaZe back in ESL: Cologne, in our boot camp for the Major. And we actually did pretty well versus them in the scrim. I'm not gonna say destroyed them, it was pretty one-sided for us. But that's back when they didn't have any structure, like, they just kind of ran around and did whatever and they got a few round because of their aim. But since they have karrigan, it's a different playstyle for sure, cause he's gonna bring structure to the strong players that they have.

So between SK and Astralis on the other side of the bracket, are you maybe looking forward to facing off against one rather than the other?

Yeah, I think we would prefer to play Astralis. Obviously, we would prepare sufficiently for either one. But I think we would prefer to play Astralis, cause SK is pretty damn good and we have a history of beating Astralis. Granted, a different roster at the time, but I still think we would have a stronger showing versus Astralis.

Okay, going into the offline qualifier for the ELEAGUE Major, in between that, you're at ELEAGUE right now and then ECS finals. Even if you do qualify for the Major, you guys are playing a ton of games. You mentioned before that you guys are maybe getting a little fatigued, but are the rest of the players being affected by that as well?

I think now it might seem like we're fatigued, I feel like DreamHack Winter was kind of like a wake-up call, that even though we have so many events we can't afford to have a bad showing at these big events. So, I don't think the fatigue is going to affect us that much. I think we're gonna be pretty focused these next events including tonight's match, you know ECS and the ELEAGUE Major qualifier, so even though we had a tough showing at DreamHack, it's not a big deal.

So, I've talked to NiP before and they've said they're actually cutting down the number of games. I know that Na`Vi have actually dropped out of a few tournaments because they needed some more time, but it sounds like you guys aren't going to be taking that same approach.

Yeah, I mean, honestly, like, I think all these events, even though I might be a little fatigued, it's good practice for us cause we've had tarik around for like two months. So we want to go to as many of the events as possible and just get better over time with them. Because, like, I think LAN events are the best practice, like the purest form of best practice basically, so more events, more practice, the better we get.

Would you say that grinding events serve, not as a replacement, but a good analogue for structured practice?

I mean, you can't like add new things to your game, but you improve as a team. Like, your team play gets much better, your communication gets much better. So everything like that gets finer-tuned, but in terms of adding new strategies and stuff to your game, you can't really do that on LAN. So you have, like, time to sufficiently prepare beforehand, which isn't always the case cause only a certain amount of events give you a practice room. Like, ELEAGUE's one of the only events that's given us a practice room. So, yeah, it's definitely tough to add new things to your game, but you get better as a team overall by playing in a LAN environment.

One other thing about the offline qualifier, because you played in the offline qualifier for the last Major, is it used the Swiss format. How do you feel about that? There's no confirmation or anything about the format for the ELEAGUE Major, but would you like to see the Swiss format come back?

Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, it favors the more favored team, like, the stronger team to go through it because you have to win three times. But I think it favors us because in the terms of map pool, we have some weak maps -- some pretty weak maps -- we also have some really strong maps and if you veto I think it's three times each, you're down to one of our strong maps every time. So we're gonna be able to play a strong map pretty much every game, so I think it favors us for sure.

You mention your map pool, would you say that you guys are in a good spot with it right now? Or do you think you'd be adding one more map to the rotation?

We definitely need to add one more map, because right now we have a couple of maps against certain teams that we would pretty much have to lose in map, like we would have no chance. Cause like, without going into too much detail, if you do a search you find out we veto Mirage all the time. I think Nuke a decent amount, but still, teams are stronger than us on Nuke. And Dust2 is iffy for us, it's hit or miss. So, like, one of those three maps we definitely have to make one of our strong maps with Train and Cobble and Overpass and stuff like that. We need to add one of those three maps to our map pool to become, I don't know, to compete with the teams that have a strong map pool, like Dignitas, Virtus.pro, cause those teams are both super strong on Nuke and Mirage. So to counter them, we have to get strong on one of those maps.

One of my reads about Nuke when it first came into the map pool was that I thought it was going to be pretty important and it seemed to be the case at least for certain match-ups. Like, there's a matchup with NiP and SK Gaming where SK opened up with a Nuke ban and they ended up, I think, losing 2-1. I forget exactly how the map veto worked out, but do you agree that maybe that Nuke is kind of like a secret weapon for a lot of teams?

Oh yeah, for sure. Nuke's the newest obviously, and like, whoever gets the best on it the fastest is going to be pretty strong coming into tournaments with it because they have that ace up their sleeve that teams have to veto it versus them, or they play it and they get destroyed because the team's so well-prepared on it. So, yeah, it's definitely very important thing to have in your game.