loWel: "We need to have more fixed roles so that everyone knows what to do at every moment"

We sat down with Christian "⁠loWel⁠" Garcia Antoran, whose HellRaisers were knocked out of contention at the ESL Pro League Season 9 Finals by Liquid in a three map nailbiter.

HellRaisers started their run at the ESL Pro League Season 9 Finals in France with a victory over Luminosity, but were then knocked down to the lower bracket by a red-hot MOUZ. Paired up against Liquid, Kyrylo "⁠ANGE1⁠" Karasiow and company were able to push it to the decider, Overpass, but were unable to close it out with a 14-11 lead on the attacking side.

In the interview, loWel talks about the matches they played over the past three days against Luminosity, MOUZ, and Liquid, struggling in online matches, what HellRaisers needs to take the next step forward and how it has been evolving, and what the team is looking forward to in the coming months.

Let's chat a bit about what happened here in Montpellier, you won your first match against Luminosity, but then you had a two-map loss against mousesports...

It went quite well against Luminosity, we started attacking and they had a good CT side, they were able to stop us well on the A site on Mirage, but we got a decent seven rounds, which is not bad. Our CT is better and we were able to win all of the rounds and close out the map. The mid-players were doing well, ANGE1 was doing a good job on short, so the CT side ended up being pretty easy.

Against mousesports it was much harder, they're in such good shape lately. They have good players and this new roster is very motivated. On Mirage we didn't play the close situations and the clutches well, we lost several on the Terrorist side. We were ahead 3-2 but then we lost a 2vs3 and that affected our economy. We lost the half 4-11 and after they won the second pistol round it just snowballed. On Nuke it was a bit harder because we went from losing 2-7 to making it a 6-9 half, but then we won the pistol round and lost against a forcebuy, we won the next round and they won another forcebuy, and then they closed it out 16-8. They were just better than us.

You're out after today, but at least you can say you had a very close series against one of the best teams in the world, Liquid, even having a 30-round decider map. Did you think you'd be so competitive against them?

Personally, I thought it was going to be a really hard team, after all, they're #1 in the ranking right now. We know we have players that have the skill to play these teams individually, and that we can stand up to good teams, but being honest, I didn't think we could beat them. On Vertigo we lost some clutches, and they played better than us. On Inferno we played much better, we won even after losing some of those close situations and clutches and doing some bad after-plant peeks and so on...

On Overpass our biggest mistake was that when we were winning 13-11 we went B and had full map control after killing four players, but instead of going back to A, Twistzz got four kills on B and it was up to oskar to win the 1vs1. Even though he won it, it affected us a lot economically since we lost four weapon, and when we lost the next round everyone had really low money, so we forced, lost the forcebuy, and eventually they turned it around.

It seems like you're having some issues with the T side, finding exactly what you want to do, closing out maps... What do you think you can do to make it better?

I think we need to have more fixed roles so that everyone knows what to do at every moment, the little details, like knowing that when you're entering a site your teammate will have thrown the perfect flash and the guy you're going after is blind. On Overpass, for example, we play really freely, we don't have strong tactics, we basically just say what we're going to do at the beginning of the round, so it would be good to have a bit more structure.

The evolution of the team since its inception, how has it been?

It's strange because we play a lot worse online than we do on LAN, and I'm not sure why. The qualifiers we've been playing, we lost early on against not very known teams, but then we get to LAN and we can show a better side. I'm not sure on how to fix that, I think it's a motivational problem. We have to translate the attitude we have on LAN to online matches. We've been together only three months, which isn't a lot of time, so I think we'll be able to improve ahead of the Major.

Do you have some specific goals you're working on these coming months?

Our main goal is to focus on the Major. We have some qualifiers now, and we'll try to do our best, but we're practicing thinking about the Major, and we're going to work on fixing our mistakes ahead of that, since it's our main goal.

How about the team atmosphere, how is that?

We all get along really well, but being from different countries and so on, everyone has different customs, so it's not like playing with five guys from the same country where you have more in common, everyone has very different personalities, but we all get along well outside of the server.

Have you bootcamped, are you planning one ahead of the Major?

We had one before the ESL Pro League group stage, and we played a small tournament in Kiev, but nothing other than that. As far as the Major we haven't talked about it yet, I'm sure we'll do something, we'll just have to figure out dates and so on, but we haven't talked about it yet.