They were a team of highly-skilled individual players built to win - instead, though, they have been freefalling for quite some time now
By bringing together the best players around under one banner, many of us thought EnVyUs were destined to reach near-untouchable status within the competitive CS:GO scene.
Titans of the competitive gaming scene… they were a team built to win.
Unfortunately they have been freefalling for quite some time now instead. After a prolonged bad spell, they’ve announced a new line-up to try and turn the tide.
Team LDLC.com White player Timothée ‘DEVIL’ Démolon has replaced Fabien ‘kioShiMa’ Fiey, just weeks before the MLG Columbus.
The news follows the aftermath of disappointing performances at IEM Season X World Championship Katowice and ESL Expo Barcelona.
Barcelona initially looked promising – EnVyUs managed to take down the almighty Fnatic 16-10 during the opening series, but their hope was short-lived.
After one more victory over gBots eSports Club, they were eliminated after losing to both Fnatic and Astralis.
But IEM Katowice saw an even worse performance, and the team didn’t even manage to clear the group stages.
Not only that, they failed to defeat even the underdogs of the group, E-Frag.net Esports Club. To add salt to the wound, kioShiMa had the lowest player rating of the tournament, at 0.87.
It wasn’t always like this.
In contrast to their recent unmotivated performances, we saw EnVyUs take the title in November last year for the final major of 2015, DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca.
The victory came after their last roster change, when they brought in apEX and ‘kennyS’. After this dizzying high, their performances have been hot and cold to say the least.
Even after bringing in coach ‘Mathieu Maniac’ Quiquerez to improve their strategy, the only victory they’ve managed this year has been the Global eSports Cup Finals.
Could another player roster shake up have the same effect as last year – or will it just enforce a boom and bust cycle?
And what exactly is the problem with EnvyUs anyway?
After all, they have a talented team of skilled players who have proven themselves many times before. How did they find themselves in such a slump?
Nathan ‘NBK’ Schmitt recently admitted that some of their players weren’t performing to their full potential. It does look as though the team doesn’t gel, and a sense of comradery seems absent.
Couple that with a shallow map pool and a focus on skills rather than game tactics and you have a recipe for an unstable team.
Last year EnVyUs could boast pretty incredible win rates on their favourite four maps – Cobble (9/10), Cache (7/8), Inferno (10/12) and Mirage (5/7) – despite being weak on the remaining ones.
However, after their run of successes, other teams managed to exploit their map pool weakness and they even started losing on their top three.
The team’s tactics aren’t helping either, particularly their economic strategy.
Too often the players will force buy instead of accepting an eco-round and when pitted against a team at maximum economy the results are often brutal. Round after round is lost, with no economic gain to use later on.
In other words, EnVyUs are proof that highly-skilled individual players alone can’t carry a team. No matter how good you are, you need a good strategy and good team play and spirit.
So will adding DEVIL to the line-up make a difference? It’s certainly true that kioShiMa needed to go.
Though a talented player in his own right, the team never had a strategy to put him in scenarios where he could make that critical impact.
DEVIL himself is an up-and-coming player from France. NBK described him as a great all-rounder and a hard worker, which seems to be just what they need given the lacklustre attitude the teams been suffering with.
With many perceiving them to be lacking in motivation, drive and teamwork, it makes sense to bring on someone visibly hard-working and with a skill set that can be used to support the rest of the team.
It’s important to remember that DEVIL is inexperienced on the international scene – there’s a lot of added pressure to factor into his initial performance. How will he fare at his first important tournament?
EnVyUs will play CounterLogicGaming on 29 March in the MLG Columbus.
They’re currently fourth favourites at 9/1 for the tournament – naturally with powerhouses Fnatic most popular at 4/5.
What’s more, you can count on us to have the best odds, markets and specials to keep things interesting when the tournament starts in earnest.
