How Overwatch background distinguishes FaZe’s VALORANT team, for better or worse

August 10, 2021

by Jessica Scharnagle

FaZe Clan have had an interesting run through the VALORANT Champions Tour so far with one appearance in the first Masters event, and an impressive run through Stage 3 Challengers 2. They'll start their Challengers Playoffs run Wednesday against 100 Thieves with their sights set on Masters: Berlin.

FaZe are an interesting team, not because of Andrej “babybay” Francisty’s crazy Jett plays or Corey “Corey” Nigra’s master call-outs, but because four out of the five players on FaZe came from the Overwatch League.

Learn more about Nerd Street’s Summer Championships!

Nerd Street caught up with a few members of FaZe to see what they thought was the key to success and if their Overwatch backgrounds aided them in their success.

“It has its gives and takes. I wouldn’t say it was too much of a disadvantage,” Corey said. “I would say what we didn’t understand going into it was the macro play of the game -- the positioning, the rotations, the inner clock you have on certain players, and where they could or couldn’t be.”

FaZe Clan’s VALORANT roster sets them apart from other teams

The large majority of VALORANT players originally hailed from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. There have been a few players that came from other games, but FaZe currently have the most Overwatch players on their team, with the only exception being Hunter “BabyJ” Schline who came from professional Halo. He’s currently filling in for Jimmy “Marved” Nguyen who is on loan with Team Envy.

Counter-Strike is a game that relies heavily on a lot of the core elements of VALORANT, but one of the biggest missing components is the skills that each character in VALORANT has at their disposal.

“I think Counter-Strike players really underrated ability usage early on. And I think in Counter-Strike, it was more passive holding defaults. We started a trend of playing aggressive, and using abilities like to push the space of the areas we wanted to take. I felt like we had an early-on lead, and then other teams realized that was a really good way to play the game,” Shane “Rawkus” Flaherty said.

Corey played for the Overwatch League's Washington Justice before making the switch to VALORANT. Photo credit: Nerd Street

The downsides of coming straight from Overwatch to VALORANT for FaZe

On the other hand, FaZe weren’t able to capitalize on the early beta gameplay VALORANT offered to its players. Because they were committed to the OWL, and were busy grinding Overwatch while others were already getting a head start in VALORANT, it was a barrier that no other team experienced.

“Not being able to grind VALORANT while I was in the Overwatch League was a disadvantage,“ babybay said. “It's like, everybody was able to play in all of the opening tournaments for VALORANT in the beta so there's a lot of chemistry and momentum that a lot of teams were able to gain in that period of time. Whereas we were kind of just, ‘oh, here's the team and like, get in there.’ We went straight from being an OWL team to competing in pro tournaments as FaZe.

In addition to not being able to grind the game from the start, Rawkus mentioned that some teams are still difficult for them to play due to their difference in playstyle.

“Some CS:GO teams are very easy for us to play against,” Rawkus said. “Some are really hard. It just really depends on how they want to play the game of VALORANT because the game isn't CS:GO or Overwatch, it’s just VALORANT.

“So that's why I like VALORANT. It's a completely different game, but it has similarities to both styles. So I think it just really depends on how that team wants to play against us, and I think we figured out a lot of teams’ playstyles and tendencies that it doesn't really matter how they play anymore, and I think we’re showing that on our path right now,” Rawkus said.

Rawkus played for the Overwatch League's Houston Outlaws before joining FaZe's VALORANT team. Photo credit: Overwatch League

The advantages of OWL experience outweigh the disadvantages

Regardless of their late entrance into the professional VALORANT scene, Rawkus, Corey and babybay were in agreement that coming from Overwatch gave them a unique set of skills that benefited them more than any other team.

“Coming from Overwatch, using the abilities and having a good grasp of what abilities do or what they are capable of, and kind of being able to thread them into pushes or takes or just small micro transactions definitely gives us a greater advantage for sure,” Corey said. “I do recall coming to the game and seeing people use their abilities in a very poor manner. And I'm like, ‘I don't know if I'd ever use it like that.’ But something that we still use nowadays is we know how to use our abilities to the best of our advantage. So we keep that rolling for sure.”

FaZe are one of the most aggressive teams in the VALORANT competitive scene right now, and a lot of that stems from their Overwatch roots. Overwatch is much more chaotic and fast-paced, whereas VALORANT has a very different style of play, but when FaZe comes into the match with that faster pace, it forces teams to either adapt or accept defeat.

It wasn’t always that way for FaZe. They had to adapt and learn new skills that they weren’t using in Overwatch. Holding angles and thinking more about strategy is something that the ex-Overwatch pros had to learn.

“In Overwatch, it's only tracking for the most part. I mean, obviously, you still hold some angles. But if you were to stop moving in Overwatch, you would pretty much die. And it seems like in [VALORANT], you have to stop moving sometimes, right? You can't always be moving. Sometimes you just focus on your crosshair. So you know, focusing on that crosshair not [getting distracted] was really hard for me to learn,” babybay said.

The 2021 VALORANT Champions Tour is into its third and final stage, so FaZe have done well to adjust to the change of pace from Overwatch to VALORANT. Although they didn’t have an appearance at Masters: Reykjavík, they’ve had time to figure out what went wrong and fix it for Stage 3. They are still fighting for a spot at Masters: Berlin, and they’ve been on a roll lately.

What makes FaZe so exciting to watch is their quick playstyle, and their ability to move quickly and to thrive in chaotic situations. As Corey himself put it, “we thrive in the chaos. We love the chaos.”

Lead photo credit: Overwatch League