Five things we learned from Fissure Playground 3

Fissure Playground 3 has come and gone, and Legacy has cemented its name in China.

But it won’t be the only team leaving Suzhou with learnings. Some teams, like FaZe, will leave feeling a lot worse about themselves. FaZe came into this event as a potential favorite, only to get thrown out in the group stage. Alliance will largely be happy with what it achieved at this event, even if it didn’t lead to an event win.

So, to put our thoughts in order and take away as much as we can, here are five things we learned from Fissure Playground 3:

#1: Legacy’s Chinese magic

Look, we’ve talked about this already, and so has everyone else, so we’ll keep it brief.

But we can’t skip over it either. Because this Legacy team is becoming a real headline for us to monitor. In our post-event recap, we called it a supercharged PARIVISION. That’s because, in many ways, it’s filling the same gatekeeper role while winning much more consistently than Jame’s fluke merchants.

It’s a real shame Legacy failed to perform at BLAST Porto, because that’s the only black mark on its record, and the only event it’s attended with “name value.”

That’s a bit of a lazy analysis tool, but it does matter. If you don’t play well in front of a sold-out arena, winning events in front of empty crowds does very little for you. The good news: Legacy will be attending a lot more events this year. It’s got the VRS points to have its pick of the invites.

It’s going to be interesting seeing Legacy at EPL, PGL, and IEM Beij— oh… wait a minute.

#2: FaZe-ing a reality check

Not everything is great in FaZe land, despite a good start to the season.

Its first event results were good improvements on what we had seen from it since the Budapest Major. Top four finishes at Bounty and XPL, plus a solid performance at EWC, sent FaZe up the VRS ranks, which has done a lot for its prospects. But those events were built on performances from Twistzz, JBOEN, and frozen.

We all assumed that’d continue, but Fissure has thrown a spanner in the works.

The only person who played at their usual level across the two series was Twistzz, who has the highest rating of the three. frozen was basically anonymous throughout the event, which is becoming a real concern, as his performances at the last few events haven’t been at his usual standard either. Meanwhile, JBOEN was actively hurting the team at this event; some of his decisions were what we’d expected when he first joined FaZe. Especially one round on Nuke where he gets an opening from hut before randomly repeeking into an awful angle.

Obviously it’s not time to panic yet, as this is a blip in a larger sample size of progression.

But this is both a concerning regression and a massive waste for FaZe. This event was its one shot this month to play relevant Counter-Strike; its next event is Stake Ranked Episode 4 in October, followed by IEM Beijing in November. We’ll likely see some more invites, but this is a major missed opportunity for a team that needs reps and, ideally, a trophy this season.

Let’s just hope JBOEN doesn’t go the way of ultimate, because his best games are incredible TV.

#3: Astralis, what is the point?

What we learned about Astralis is that we have no idea why it’s even bothering.

We’re prefacing that with a disclaimer that we're being facetious; we know it’s a team competing like everyone else. But by god, it might as well rebrand to NIP with the way it’s ruined its legacy. This roster appears to have no future, or even really a present, for that matter.

Going international to sign ryu, who has so far been largely a failure, might be one of the worst aura gambles of all time.

On a personal level, I spoke to a journalist I won’t name who said Astralis was broke, and ryu put up good numbers in these roles in tier 2. Which raises the question: why sign someone “good” against worse opposition when you need someone exceptional to properly translate? Because, as this event has shown, as soon as things got tough, he put up sub-1.0 ratings, and when playing against a team like 5star, he decided to farm with no production.

It’d be one thing if those performances led to a win, but Astralis lost to the #127th-ranked VRS team despite him getting kills.

Which is where I turn my attention to jabbi. For a guy who notably stabbed his best-ever IGL in the back and stalled his career, he’s surprisingly bad. There’s no doubt he’s talented; we all saw what he did on Heroic, and he pops up with some great games for Astralis, but meltdowns always follow. If jabbi could consistently be good, this team might have a chance, even with an IGL who strives for double-digit kills each game. Instead, it has the worst of most worlds: a mediocre AWPer, bad support, an unreliable second star, a low-fragging IGL, and finally Staehr.

Someone, please save Staehr.

In conclusion, what we learned from Astralis is that this team just isn't very good, and it needs to change to be interesting.

#4: Mongolian changing of the guard, sort of

Where The MongolZ failed, the aforementioned 5star shone.

There’s something wrong with The MongolZ. One by one, the players who created its run that cemented its fan-favorite underdog status are leaving. First, Senzu left his home camp, saying he wanted to try an international team. Then, mzinho followed, which isn’t all too surprising. They’ve been childhood friends, so the BC Game opportunity would’ve been a no-brainer: reunite with your bestie and play with the GOAT. But it’s getting more complicated now, as Techno’s spot is beginning to look insecure.

The exact reason is unknown, but he didn’t attend Fissure; cobrazera did—ironically, the players whose benching apparently prompted mzinho to leave.

There are some rumors that could fill the empty space, but those are best left for an editorial later this week, so keep an eye on that. What we can say now is that this roster variant did not work. The MongolZ got bounced by MIBR, and even worse, 5star, its little brother’s little brother. That team was ranked as Mongolia’s fourth-best team before this event, and it beat the big dog in a 2:0 sweep.

Big credit to 5star here. It also beat Astralis, as we mentioned in #3, and did so while looking like a good team. In all honesty, we have no idea who they are or what their stories are. But if they can beat teams of this quality on LAN, we hope to see them more often. Mongolia seems able to produce immense talent.

Maybe one of them can save The MongolZ.

#5: Alliance is Sweden’s last hope

Right around the time of a fully non-Swedish “Swedish Derby,” Alliance decides to give its country hope.

The Swedes played a very respectable group stage, beating FaZe 2:0 with some great individual performances, and knocking TYLOO and magic out of the lower bracket. Sure, they did lose to Legacy, but we already established Legacy has some black magic in China, so it doesn’t count. With that in mind, this is exactly what Alliance needed: another solid event that keeps its VRS in competitive standing and lets it pick and choose events.

For a tier 2 team, it’s doing really well.

The problem is, it’s not much more than a tier 2 team right now. Which isn’t a real critique; it doesn’t expect to be, and it’s being well managed for what it is. But it’s a little sad that the best team Sweden has right now is a well-run tier 2 organization with fairly little room for growth. There needs to be a classic Swedish shuffle, where the talent all goes onto one team and… probably ends up being like, 15th best in the world? But it’d be good to see, at least. There’s some real talent in Sweden, just spread out.

In any case, this point’s real learning is that we’re sad Swedish CS is so depressing, and that we hope Alliance continues to improve so we can see it have a revival.

With that said, those were five things we’ve learned from Fissure Playground 3; we hope to have filled you in on all the findings from Suzhou.

We’ll see you next Monday for our StarLadder edition. It’ll be a doozy.