NRG’s FNS spoke to the media in a pre-tournament press conference ahead of VCT LOCK//IN.
The start of the competitive Valorant year is less than 24 hours away. 32 of the world's best teams will compete at the VCT LOCK//IN event in Sao Paulo. One of the teams looking to make an instant splash is NRG. NRG's FNS spoke to the media in a pre-tournament press conference.
How are NRG's new players adapting?
NRG on paper has put together one of the stronger rosters heading into the 2023 VCT season. The roster consists of the OpTic Gaming core of Austin "crashies" Roberts, Victor "Victor" Wong, and of course FNS.
Following the departure of Jaccob "yay" Whiteaker to Cloud9, NRG needed to bring in extreme firepower, Ardis “ardiis” Svarenieks was seen as the perfect player to fill that role. The final piece to the NRG puzzle is the only surviving member from the previous roster, Sam "s0m" Oh.
With the OpTic Gaming performing at an extremely high level in the 2022 season, there is already an immense amount of pressure being set on the NRG roster. Results are expected out of a team that's core attended multiple international events, reaching grand-finals and even winning a Masters title.
FNS spoke about his newly formed NRG roster to kick off the press conference: "I think they're adapting pretty well overall, it's been a pretty smooth transition. Obviously, we made two big changes and also adding thwifo helps a lot as well.
"Both Sam (s0m) and ardiis have done a pretty good job of adapting to the way we like to play. We've also taken some ideas from their previous teams and what they like to do as well."
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FNS speaks on yay and ardiis comparisons
There is no doubt how special the OpTic Gaming roster was. Once yay joined the roster, everything fell into place for the Greenwall. OpTic would extend the success of Envy, attending every international tournament in 2022. Although they had reached the pinnacle which was the Champions grand final, the biggest achievement for the NA squad was lifting the Masters Reykjavik trophy.
'El Diablo' was a special player for OpTic Gaming with many touting yay as the best player in the world for 2022. FNS and the rest of the OpTic Gaming roster worked in tandem to create space for yay to 'pop off, and now it will be the turn for NRG to replicate that winning formula with ardiis.
When asked if ardiis can surpass the ceiling of yay, FNS spoke fondly of his new teammate while acknowledging how yay made the team function.
"If I didn't think that then we wouldn't have ardiis, he's definitely really good. It just kind of depends on the opponents we face, our teamwork, and how well we're able to set him up as well. I think a lot of Jake's (yay) success last year was a lot of ridiculous mechanical skills on his part, but we were also sort of able to set him up really well. So we have to do our part to make sure that ardiis does the same thing if not better."
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