paTiTek: “My second-place curse is still coming from Heretics”

With little outside expectations for the roster heading into Kickoff, Team Liquid stunned their critics to sweep Team Heretics in the lower bracket final. But beating Team Vitality’s superteam proved a step too far for Liquid who, despite starting the grand final 2-0, were eventually on the receiving end of a reverse sweep. Following the tough loss, we spoke to Patryk “paTiTek” Fabrowski for an interview.

Hotspawn: While I’m sure the loss is disappointing, how proud are you of you and your team to have reached today’s final having been mostly written off before the season started?

paTiTek: Yeah, of course. Everyone was putting us D-tier. It’s the second year in a row where they put my team in D-tier; last year it was Heretics and the same s*** happened basically that happened right now in Liquid. But going back to the question about being proud, I’m extremely proud of the boys and myself actually as well, because we did an insane job coming from the lower bracket all the way up to the grand final. I think you need to have a resilience for that, and I think you need to have players that will uphold certain standards.

Even though you might face a game, for example, that FUT game that we lost 2-0, I think that game we learned a lot and I think from that game onwards we are just getting better with each and every BO3 that we played.

But yeah, it sucks to lose, right? My second-place curse is still coming from Heretics as well. But what can you do? Today we got reverse sweeped but I’m looking at it in a way that it’s good that we lost right now because we have a lot of VOD material, we have a lot of things to learn, a lot of things to fix. So I’d rather have it be losing and getting reverse swept in Kickoff rather than in Bangkok.

Obviously it sucks to lose. But yeah, we’re just going to learn and this loss – it’s going to make us even better for Bangkok. So I’m looking forward to to the to the next tournament.

Lee Jones: You guys won the opening two maps quite convincingly.

Why do you think you were so dominant at that point?

paTiTek:  I think it was just our good maps, we are confident on Split and Haven. Actually we’re confident on every map that we played in that BO5, I think the veto was in our favour. But I think those two maps we just approached it in a different way than the later maps. I think we just went with the super confidence, but not overly confident. Being calm and collected, as my coach likes to say, and that’s why it looked like we were in full control up until the third map.

What do you think caused that change from map three onwards then?

paTiTek: I think the turning point was Lotus because this is the map that we don’t play. And the comp that we are playing right now, because we kind of prepared it right, but we fully winged it in a way. So it’s easy to manipulate the rotations and base gameplay on Lotus with the comp they had against our comp. It worked on Heretics because it was just a surprise factor, I would say. But they did the VOD review, they prepared for the Lotus and I think Lotus gave them confidence because they just steamrolled us basically. And that gave them the confidence to go into the 4th and the 5th map.

Was it at all bittersweet knocking Heretics out in the lower bracket final given that they still have the same five players you worked with last year?

paTiTek: Yeah, it was bittersweet. In my perfect world I wanted them to qualify by beating Vitality and then we beat Vitality in the lower final and we are both in Bangkok. But unfortunately we are not living in a perfect world and someone had to qualify. 

I think they have their own problems which they are struggling with – the fact that they were sick from the beginning of the EMEA Kickoff and they had no time to scrim. So I think that played a huge role in our game against them. We were more warmed up on stage because we came all the way from the lower bracket. We had a lot of games on stage where they just had like two games I think coming up against us.

But yeah, I mean, it was bittersweet. But you know, for me it gave me super confidence because I wanted to prove to them that even though I’m not playing with them, I’m still a good player, a player of a calibre that is making teams qualify to international events. And I think by joining Liquid and qualifying to Bangkok, I think I can confidently say that I’m the main factor of teams qualifying to international events.

Speaking of Bangkok then, who are you looking forward to playing against?

paTiTek: G2. I think they showed a really great level of VALORANT in VCT Americas. And I actually faced them in Shanghai three times in one tournament, where two times we lost a BO3 and then the last BO5 that we played against them we smashed them 3-0.

But they swapped the dualist from icy to jawgemo, I think that gives them a higher level approaching the style that they want to play. I think with icy they were a little bit held back in my opinion, but with jawgemo, like a completely different calibre of a player. And I think they are the best team coming into Bangkok at this moment. So I really want to face them and see how we’re going to play against them; is there going to be a big difference between us or is it going to be actually really close?

I think it’s going to be really close. Obviously, like always, these games are decided by small factors, small margins, but I think it’s gonna be close and I really want to face them to see how it’s gonna play out.

Does your performance today give you more confidence heading to Bangkok?

Lee Jones: You weren’t miles away from a 3-0 against Vitality’s superteam.

paTiTek: Yeah, it gives us a lot of confidence because, as you mentioned, Vitality is a superteam; they were created to win championships. And the fact that we pulled a really good fight against them — could have been at 3-0, could have been 3-1, could have been 3-2, could have been either way — it gives us a lot of confidence.

And as I said earlier, going back to the first questions, a lot of time to fix the mistakes that we had in this BO5 and a lot of time to reapproach certain things and certain visions. Maybe look at certain things from a different angle. But yeah, we are really confident coming into Bangkok, especially after today’s performance because it was not a 3-0 blowout by Vitality against us. 

They could have been winning 2-0 and finished on Lotus like 13-6 or 13-7 and it could have been a devastating loss for us. It still is. But we’re gonna learn from it, and it’s good that it happens now. The earlier the better.

Lee Jones:In an interview with Pedro Romero you ranked TL as A-tier.

What do you need to do at Masters Bangkok to move to S-tier?

paTiTek:  I think make playoffs. At least for me, playoffs is going to put us at A-level because when you make playoffs in international events, that’s when teams go a level higher. And for me, to put us on S-tier, we need to make- I mean, we don’t need to, we can. We don’t need to do anything.

We can make playoffs and we’ll try our best to make playoffs. But yeah, making playoffs is going to put us on S-tier 100%.