How Neityu fits quite neatly into FaZe in karrigan's absence

Former ENCE rifler Neityu is standing in for FaZe in karrigan’s stead, after the IGL apparently gave little notice to the team before his shock move to Falcons.

The departure of the IGL at least seemed to take Twistzz by shock, and SPUNJ also suggested that karrigan surprised not just us, but FaZe, with his departure.

Nevertheless, this article is not really about that, but how Neityu can deputise for FaZe and why he might be a better pick-up than you realise.

Unsurprisingly, Neityu is not a one-to-one replacement for karrigan. He’s more of a second star-cum-support, a la flameZ or mezii, with a strange mix of roles that vaguely equate to a second star type player. However, he is commonly used in anchor style spots, and FaZe are crying out for a solid anchor player. He’s a straight swap on Mirage as a B Anchor, which is nice, while on Dust 2 he would slot in normally on B, where jcobbb currently is, and A on Anubis, where jcobbb also currently is.

We know jcobbb has struggled in these positions, and maybe he’s just not meant to be an anchor at this level. From what little we saw of him before FaZe, he wasn’t really that type of player, and if Neityu gets his normal roles maybe we can see jcobbb get a bit more room on the CT side.

Some of the other spots are not so pretty, though. On Nuke, he isn’t getting frozen’s Ramp spot and he isn’t taking his Ancient A Anchor spot either. karrigan played Outside and Cave respectively, and neither of those are traditional anchor spots. However, Neityu models as quite an aggressive CT side player, more so than karrigan, and maybe some more enterprising positions will allow him to flourish. Alternatively, he can go full anchor and take jcobbb’s roles on those two maps and free up the Pole to hopefully show why FaZe have so much faith in him.

jcobbb has routinely been the most sacrificed player in top level CS, and we feel a bit sorry for him.

If he wants to slot in for karrigan on the T side, he might need to throw some more utility, but otherwise he’s quite a good fit. He’s happy to lurk or entry depending on the state of the round, and is rarely the trader even on ENCE. He actually is quite ‘supportive’ in that sense on the T side, hence the mezii/flameZ comparison earlier.

The only thing is, while he seems like a decent fit stylistically, we’re not sure how much good this is going to his reputation. He’s likely to be thrown to the wolves a little bit in very tough positions on a likely dysfunctional team with a new IGL.

He is, however, a straighter shooter than karrigan. Most players are, in fairness. His duel swing, albeit in limited sample size, is a ludicrous +229% swing over karrigan. We don’t think the difference will be that stark, given the difference in level, a new team, the small sample and adapting to a new style of play and probably some new roles, but we’d be surprised if wasn’t a noticeably better fragger.

The issue here is going to be Twistzz, and how he uses him, as he’s obviously unlikely to be as good an IGL as karrigan. But FaZe needed changes, no matter how drastic, and maybe a pretty useful one has landed in their lap.

Who knows - maybe karrigan was the issue all along, and Neityu is going to fix everything.