- FaZe has recently been struggling a bit in the competitive CS:GO season
- The team had a few very close victories
- FaZe needs “5 percent more of everything,” FaZe’s in-game leader says
Although FaZe Clan has had a successful first half of the competitive CS:GO year, the team has lately been showing signs of weakening.
FaZe Is Showing Performance Issues
FaZe Clan’s CS:GO team had a very successful early year, winning many world-class events such as EM Katowice, ESL Pro League Season 15, and IEM Cologne. The team’s winning match against NaVi at the PGL Antwerp Major even broke CS:GO viewership records. However, it seems that the team was not able to replicate the same success later in the year.
Last week during the ESL Pro League Season 16 playoffs the international FaZe Clan roster showed some worrying signs. The team narrowly picked up a victory against Complexity and were almost 0-2’d in the round of 12 only to be dismantled by Cloud9 in the quarterfinals.
The team barely had time to rest and train more as they are currently participating in the IEM Rio Major Europe Regional Major Ranking (RMR) tournament. FaZe is currently 2-0 in the competition and one win away from securing a spot in the Brazilian Major, but their matches so far have also been too close for comfort. The team only beat GamerLegion after four overtimes in the opening round. FaZe also took down Fnatic, but that was in large part due to Helvijs “broky” Saukants’ quick actions, rather than a coherent team strategy.
Karrigan Talks About the Recent Matches
The drop in the quality of gameplay has obviously not eluded in-game leader Finn “karrigan” Andersen. In a recent interview for HLTV, karrigan talked about the recent trend, saying that the team needs just a bit more of everything to get back to its previous level.
“I think our main problem so far this season, the last one and a half months, is that we basically need 5% more of everything,” the player said. “5% team play is lacking, 5% individual level, and also how we react and maybe also some confidence.”
Karrigan pointed out that the recent match against GamerLegion illustrates this. “We were watching the GamerLegion game and there was no big takeaway of what the issue was, and when you're in that situation you just have to go with instincts in the round instead of overthinking situations.”
The lack of “no big takeaway” is illustrative of the fact that FaZe does not have one specific big problem, but rather a ton of small issues that the team needs to work on to regain its top competitive edge. “Some of that has been the main issue, that we haven't really recovered those 5% of everything we are lacking right now, but mentality-wise we are at 100%,” karrigan concluded.
