dycha initiates role shift: "It's disgusting when we lose matches because of me"

After a tough Major, dycha tells HLTV how he and ENCE are planning to get their 2024 back on track.

2024 has been tough for Paweł "⁠dycha⁠" Dycha. ENCE's fragmentation at the back end of 2023 left him as the last man standing.

Having been a key part of the fifth-best team of last year, dycha was now on an island. Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer took the core and ranking points to Falcons. Star rifler Guy "⁠NertZ⁠" Iluz and Eetu "⁠sAw⁠" Saha left for HEROIC. ENCE were forced to scramble, having just 48 hours to find three new players.

9INE's core came in, fellow Poles, and a dream honeymoon resulted in a playoff finish at IEM Katowice. Playing in Spodek was a dream come true for dycha.

Listen to the full media day interview on Soundcloud here.

But after the dream came the rude awakening. ENCE bombed out of the Major with a 1-3 record in the Opening Stage, with dycha on a 0.72 rating — his lowest-rated LAN event to date.

"I was in a place where I didn't even know if I want to play CS anymore, to be honest," reflects dycha at ESL Pro League's media day. "It was disgusting. It's disgusting when we are losing matches because of me."

In all the rush to scramble a roster together for the RMR and Copenhagen Major cycle, roles were left by the way-side. dycha, used to being a supportive third star under Snappi, was pushed into star spots and expected to take more initiative.

"I had to change the position on every single map. I didn't have any of my old roles, and this was a big challenge. I didn't expect to have to change everything."

When you map ENCE onto 9INE, dycha was essentially replacing Kamil "⁠KEi⁠" Pietkun, their super aggressive spacetaker. In terms of positions, dycha was still lurking on T side but there was a vacuum of aggression in the new lineup.

"It was like a full 180. I had to go sometimes from not doing anything, because there was NertZ and Maden who played even more aggressive than me, to being the only one who was super aggressive."

"It was not not the easiest period of my career, you know, it went from being up for a long time to being in a super low, in such a short time as well."

dycha was at a breaking point. After the disastrous Major, he told the team change was necessary.

"We had a team talk and I said 'guys this role is not really fitting me. You cannot expect me to play that aggressive because I'm not gonna learn it in two or three months. We can keep playing this system, but then you can destroy the player, you can destroy the team, because this, this was not, as you can see, this was not fitting us.'"

And they listened. In ENCE's recent games, he has returned to his 2023 CT positions on "95%" of the maps.

He's back as an anchor on B on Vertigo and A on Anubis, and also departed Connector for Short on Mirage. It is a rare case of a player preferring what are on paper more difficult positions.

"I don't feel like I'm even close to be a star player in the team. Maybe people from outside can say something else but if you ask me about my opinion, I'm not a superstar player and I never was."

He continued, "If for example, they will go Anubis on A I need to kill one or two at least that's my job. I'm, not thinking like a superstar, like 'I need to save the round. I need to retake, I need to do 30 kills.' No, I don't have this feeling."

"I would rather have a job on the server. I'm that player who is doing some job, but he's not really shown anywhere. I feel like this role is fitting me much better than trying to be a superstar, going for frags everywhere, because, you need to have [that] role from the start."

The structure is also changing to fit dycha's needs, and, in practice at least, it's working: "We have better comms, we have better CT, we have better T side, and I feel like everything is more stricter, which was the thing that we missed a lot, to be honest, in the past."

Style was always going to be difficult to pin down, with four competing schools of thought at work simultaneously: Lukas "⁠gla1ve⁠" Rossander, Jakub "⁠kuben⁠" Gurczyński, the 9INE core, and that of dycha himself from the old Snappi system. Previously the quietest part of that stylistic battle, dycha is now having more say.

"Now we went back to the style where I'm calling something on T, what I want to play. Like in Outside, when I was saying, for example, on Nuke, I want to do this, this, and this, and then Snappi was writing these rounds and he was calling them.

"And right now I'm doing the same with gla1ve. For example, on Nuke, I'm calling two or three or even four rounds which I want to play Outside. This is fitting me and also gla1ve and the team more than the previous style we played."

To get out of his slump, dycha is also working more individually with gla1ve and kuben, as well as a mental coach, and is already feeling far more "comfortable."

That did not translate into results at the online Skyesports Masters (7-8th finish) and Thunderpick World Championship qualifiers (5-8th) or fragging (0.56 KPR, 70.3 ADR since the Major) for dycha but with time the 26-year-old clearly believes he can settle back into his groove as a more supportive element.

Where questions linger is how, without a roster change, ENCE can solve their lack of an aggressive star. In dycha's own words, the team "are missing someone who was playing like NertZ in our old ENCE."

As dycha shifts roles to get away from that limelight, more pressure will be heaped onto Kacper "⁠Kylar⁠" Walukiewicz — whose stock has risen under the wing of gla1ve — to fill the void but questions over firepower remain. Ironically, it is a similar problem to that of Falcons, who are also struggling without a rifler like NertZ to build around.

ENCE have a good test of the new roles and system ahead, as the second highest-ranked team of EPL Group C on paper behind MOUZ but expecting tough competition from the likes of FURIA, Liquid, GamerLegion, and Monte for a playoff berth.

"Our team goal is for sure to go to the playoffs but we would prefer to show that we are better than we showed before in any other events. I know that this group is not really packed, I would say there is only MOUZ who is like the favorite of this group for sure to go out, but I feel like we are one of the strongest in this group. If we will prove that I will be super happy."

dycha was hung out to dry by his former ENCE teammates at the turn of the year but there is still plenty of time to get his 2024 back on track. His climb must begin now, back in his preferred roles and with a beatable group ahead of him.

But make no mistake. ENCE's honeymoon is over. Roster changes at the end of the season are still likely, now they have a new core ahead of the next Major cycle.

Even long-standing members like dycha may not be safe. But, he was not one of the best third stars of 2023 by accident. Getting more out of limited resources is a strength that many teams could use. Now, he needs to prove that ENCE are one of them.

Date	Matches
ESL Pro League Season 19
30/04/2024	ENCE 13:45 GamerLegion	Match