Twistzz : Even in our Grand Slam run, we knew there were issues

FaZe player Russell "Twistz" Van Dulken in an interview with Dot Esports said that he feels much better in the current team than in Liquid. According to the Canadian, this is due to the trust of captain Finn "karrigan" Andersen, who allows him to take a more active part in the discussion of strategies.

“Even in our Grand Slam run, we knew there were issues, but we couldn’t identify what the problems were because everything we did worked,” Twistzz told Dot Esports. “We would win off individual skill quite a bit, and at the time, I don’t think anyone could challenge us. But after the player break, once people caught up and the meta shifted, the problems we knew were there appeared a lot more. People were scared of change, I think. They still felt like what we were doing was working.”

“I remember around the last event of the year, I was trying to express to the team that I felt my role was becoming useless,” Twistzz said. “Everyone knows how I play this support lurker role, and the only way I can change my playstyle is if the team adjusts its playstyle, so what I’m doing isn’t so obvious. It was hard to express that to the team, even now how I just explained it, there was no way I could have expressed it like that to my team because I couldn’t find the words. I couldn’t ask them to help me find a way to make things better and I didn’t know how to be more selfish. I was used to giving up my spots I was comfortable in.”

“If I wanted double AWP or to AWP on CT, it was something nitr0 was willing to try out. But later on, we stopped having that mindset to try new things, and I felt whatever I recommended was kind of neglected. My opinion wasn’t valued, and I felt they didn’t have confidence in what I was saying. Especially after nitr0 stepped down, I didn’t have much to say, and I felt if I did have something to say it wasn’t going to be heard. And if there’s not that mutual respect, you kind of lose confidence individually. That’s why I felt like my time in Liquid came to an end.”

“So far I’ve felt my impact has been felt a lot more with FaZe than it was with Liquid. My voice is definitely heard more and karrigan really values my opinion. In FaZe, I’m a much better individual player, and my potential is much higher here than it was in Liquid. I’m still evolving and talking a lot more, and that’s crazy because before my job was just to headshot things, but now I help dictate the pace of the game and help karrigan call mid-round. 

“If karrigan presents a strat, I can explain why I think something else can be better because of X, Y, and Z, and he will really value that. [He] knows how to utilize the players he has. He feels I do well in chaotic situations, so he puts me in spots to either create chaos or get good timing on a player. Nitr0 was pretty much the same way. In 2018, he would put me in a lot of entry and AWPing spots. Karrigan’s pretty much the same way. He can help set me up more so I can help the team more.”

Origin: dotesports.com