Esports
In high level competition, players will always have an opponent they’re most afraid of facing. We asked the CS:GO pros who they find offers the toughest challenge.
People will tell you that in order to better yourself in a competitive game, you need to regularly face opponents who are on an equal or higher skill level. Sure, it may be satisfying and cathartic to stomp all over an entire team in a game of Counter-Strike, League or Overwatch in record time, but it’ll do very little to improve yourself as a player – it’ll only emphasise bad habits rather, than encouraging you to learn and develop new strategies.
In the world of esports, there’s rarely an opportunity to play so casually as everyone is always playing at the highest level and pursuing the goal of being the best in the world. It’s also a place where the same teams face each other on a regular basis: whether its in league play or at tournaments. With all this consistent competition, rivalries form, favourites emerge and storylines build between the teams that make it all the more interesting to follow.
So, who would the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive pros say are the teams they’re most afraid to face off against? Who are the ones that always seem to have the upper hand in spite of all the scrimms, practise and study? We caught up with some of the game’s top players to hear their thoughts.
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Perhaps it’ll come as no surprise that a lot of players find FaZe Clan to be the toughest CS:GO opponents. The team racked up multiple first and second place wins throughout 2017 and have already got off to a flying start this year with a win at IEM Sydney.
“I think playing against FaZe is pretty tough just because they're all pretty individually aware,” says Jacky 'Stewie2K' Yip of Cloud9. “It's hard to catch them off-guard, and when you do it's usually miscommunication. Or something they're not aware of – which is very rare.”
His team-mate, Tarik 'tarik' Celik, talks about their struggles with FaZe too: “Apart from the Major final, they've historically always destroyed us. And thankfully we, you know, brought it back in the Major, but it's definitely that team we can't seem to get a grasp of. But I think in the future, if we keep practising and working hard, then our match-ups will be closer.”
The praise for FaZe as one of the most feared teams is piled on by Richard 'shox' Papillon and Nathan 'NBK-' Schmitt of G2 Esports. They say FaZe is a team they simply don’t like playing, especially because they haven’t beaten them in a LAN competition.
On the other hand, there are also players that rate G2 as CS:GO’s toughest competitors. Valdemar 'valde' Bjørn of Team North talks about the struggles the European team has had with them in the past, even though he feels they’ve improved against them recently too.
“We've always struggled a bit against G2, he explains. “They have a quite unorthodox playing style, I would say. And yeah, they just have some unpredictable players that are really good when they get momentum”.
His points are echoed by fellow team-mate Mathias 'MSL' Lauridsen, who says: “I think the worst team for us to play is G2 because when they're really on point, they're extremely hard to play against.”
As with these things, though, it can often come down to a team having a specific read on you rather than just their overall skill level. Top level CS:GO is packed with teams who can cause trouble for their opponents, including big names like Astralis and Team Liquid, but it seems both FaZe and G2 seem to lead the way as the toughest competition according to pros.
