welcome-banner
All News
article-headline
Heroes8 years agoGosu "GosuGamers" Gamers

Team Liquid: "We never realized how lucky we were, everything clicked perfectly with the brothers"

Team Liquid is one of the most recognizable names in European Heroes, but after their trip to China for WCA, the team lost two of their strongest members, Lucifron and Vortix. Now, Joaquim "Lowell' Fitas and Christoph "Cris" Gowitzke are left to pick up the pieces with a new roster and new hopes of once again being the most winning team in Europe. This weekend, their sights are set on IEM Katowice and we had the chance to sit down and talk with Lowell and Cris about the team and it's future.



Are you guys ready for this weekend considering the patch just hit?

Cris: Yes, personally I'm so ready for it. The patch didn't change too much except Rehgar got nerfed, but people already practiced with enough Rehgar so it's not that big of a deal. I think everyone is going to be fine.

Lowell: Same here. Like it didn't impact too much what I play or what we're going to play against so it's fine.

So even as a melee assassin it didn't change much?

Lowell: It's not that bad, but of course it's horrible to play on a patch week but it's manageable.

You just finished boot camp in Utrecht, did you focus on any special strategies or just playing more as a team?

Lowell: We mostly worked on communication. We have been having some communication issues for maybe the past few weeks or month and it helped us a lot with that. That's literally the main, well only, problem we've ever had so we feel like we've improved on it. For this tournament what we hope is that it's going to be enough to qualify us for Korea and from there we have, by ourselves, one more month to fix the problem completely.

And why did those problems happen? Was it a new player?

Lowell: Because after WCA the brothers decided-

Ahh that's when it was

Lowell: Yeah it's just like... when you find new people... You know I don't know, we never realized how lucky we were, everything just clicked perfectly with the brothers and now there is a lot of work to get there again.

But you're confident you'll be able to work on it?

Cris: Yeah.

Lowell: In this game you can do it with anyone as long as people want to work together.

Do you think that because you went on the bootcamp and played so intensively before the event that it will help a lot versus teams that didn't get to do that?

Cris: Yes of course, being together, playing for six straight hours together, talking about it, not being on teamspeak, everyone being around each other helps a lot.

I don't compare ourselves to the old roster at all because what they did, in the current scene, is impossible to do. You cannot dominate eight months in a row.

 

Do you notice improved timings in play, stuff like that or is it just general confidence?

Cris: Just general confidence I would say. You don't know if you play better or not, you don't seem to realize it, but it's good for the mental aspect so you're more confident going into it because everyone knows you're on the same page.

Lowell: And literally you know we spent the past week breathing the game. From waking up to sleep that's the main thing on your mind for everyone and that's the big difference.

Speaking of that, do you ever think that a team house for you would be an option for you because you already have something like that in Utrecht?

Cris: Yeah something like that I would consider, but we'd need someone that helps us like we'd have our manager with us and she'd cook for us, and help us out with a lot of stuff. If you don't have that person in your house then it's not going work out, but if you have someone that helps you out consistently then yeah I would actually move there. If they said you could move there right now then yeah I'd consider it, it's a good option.

In this game you can do it with anyone as long as people want to work together.

 

And you were in a team house before, probably didn't have the best experience there.

Lowell: Yeah but as he said, already in this team it's different. I think even without anyone we could make it work because everyone seems relatively independent. Everyone is either living or has lived on their own so it would be manageable but personally I wouldn't want to ever do that again without someone in house to do stuff or organize stuff.

Team Liquid was here last year but with a completely different roster, do you feel like you have to somehow represent Team Liquid again and maybe make up for them not qualifying last year? And how do you feel at home at Team Liquid as an organization?

Cris: It kind of feels like we have the pressure on us, if only just because we played that Team Liquid. Personally I don't feel the pressure that much but I notice it. I don't want it to affect me so I try to ignore it most of the time because we are a completely new team, we are not any of the old Team Liquid. So we are completely different and I just try to not let it get in my head if we don't perform like 'oh the old Team Liquid was better' and stuff.

Lowell: For me it's not a thing about roster or anything. As he said, I don't compare ourselves to the old roster at all because what they did, in the current scene, is impossible to do. You cannot dominate eight months in a row. Currently it's impossible so there's not even a point in comparing. Regarding the organization, it's not even pressure. I'm not sure how Cris feels about it but especially after bootcamp, they took so good care of us, it's more like you want to win for them as well.
It's not like 'oh god I'm Team Liquid what happens if I don't win?'. It's more like 'I'm Team Liquid, they're so nice to us, I want to win for myself, for my teammates, and for my organization

So Lowell you are known for playing melee assassins, do you think we'll see a lot of different melee assassins this event?

Lowell: I think pretty much every melee assassin is viable and playable, right now. So even if someone goes Butcher I wouldn't be surprised.

With all the buffs to his 'Lamb to the Slaughter' maybe?

Lowell: No no no no it doesn't really matter. What I mean by that is in the current meta there's less stuns, etcetera, so I feel like you can literally play anything if you are creative enough.

We didn't see Kerrigan for NA, but you feel like she can be played?

Lowell: I think she's playable, I think that all melee assassins are playable right now. Except I'm forgetting one that's like really really bad but then he's not even coming to my mind.

Are you scared of what will happen after Xul is added to the game? The new hero is supposed to very anti-melee assassin.

Lowell: I don't know, I didn't get to play him. I played against him some in Hero League, he's susceptible to burst so there's that. I guess that's going to work against him. He feels, I don't know if godlike is the word but he feels really really good. I mean if we get the melee Li-Ming I'm not going to complain.

This weekend is going to be a lot closer than the NA weekend I believe, even though the NA weekend was already very close. Are you excited for your group and the teams in it?

Cris: We have the easiest group, but it means we get the harder semi-finals. So our qualification for Korea is going to be way harder than getting out of groups. Obviously first we have to get out of groups, which we should do, but yeah we will see. Maybe Reason Gaming will surprise everyone, I haven't played them in a long time. Maybe they've got something unorthodox and they will surprise us.

If you were to make it to Korea, that would be your first opportunity to play international teams as this roster. Are you excited for going to Korea? What teams would you like to face there?

Lowell: I mean Sake from MVP Black invited us for fried chicken so I mean, you can't say no to that right?

Now you have to go.

Both: Yeah.

Lowell: For me personally mostly it's MVP Black because after WCA I remained in contact with mostly Sake and he's like a really nice guy. Yeah MVP Black because I've remained friends with them.

Cris: Yeah I want to face MVP again as well it was a lot of fun.

And what about NA? More for Cloud9 or more for Naventic?

Cris: I want to play Cloud9. We didn't get to play against them at WCA.

Lowell: I want to play both. I want to play one in groups and one in playoffs.

Any final shout outs?

Lowell: Shout outs to any who's been supporting us. Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, any where really it means a lot. And sincerely to all the Team Liquid staff because this past weekend has been awesome and they took care of us like we're their babies. Literally we were just getting up and playing and it was great, they gave us great conditions and I hope we can show it here.

Cris: Same, shout outs to Team Liquid as well for sponsoring us. And to everyone who watches my stream, that follows me, and supports me.

Follow @GosugamersHotS for all the European Spring Regional updates!

All Esports

Entertainment

GosuBattles

Account