rain: "We still have another gear coming into the playoffs"

"I came into the tournament feeling really confident after the RMR," the 30-year-old added.

FaZe experienced an extended downturn in form after their hot-streak to start CS2 dried up, but in the last couple of months, their trajectory has taken a modest upward swing.

Thus they were considered a dark horse coming into the Major, having slipped behind the likes of Vitality and G2 in the pecking order, but still considered capable of producing their signature magic when the pressure was on, particularly if they got to the playoffs.

Now that a playoff berth has been secured, Håvard "⁠rain⁠" Nygaard agrees FaZe have "another gear" they can find, and admits he has "high hopes" heading into the last playoff campaign of the year.

"As long as we find our form and individuals are hitting hard and we have good days, I think we can go really far."

rain also spoke with HLTV about the tense win over FURIA that confirmed FaZe's place in the playoffs, as well as about FaZe's run so far in Shanghai.

---

rain, congratulations on making it to the playoffs. You were yawning after that game, I don't know if that's still the adrenaline pumping or what's going on.

A little bit of both, it takes a lot of energy to close out these games, also jetlag is a little bit there... A little bit of both.

Were you guys getting worried towards the end? Some crazy rounds went against you guys, the 1v4, then 1v1 on B site in the last two seconds. Tell me about the finish here.

I'm just happy we managed to close that out.

[ropz comes in and says, "I whiffed"]

Whiffed? I don't know what you're talking about.

[ropz: the 1v4]

(laughs) Yeah, I was just watching the 1-on-4 and I was just watching Finn's POV, I saw the bar, when it reached four I was like, 'Yeah, this is over,' (laughs). But I'm happy we closed it out, thank god none of the other rounds went their way.

karrigan is known for his talks when you guys go down badly in a series, did something like that happen after map one? It felt like on Dust2 you were getting up to your old tricks.

He started Inferno with a really hype conversation, we came in really hype and we kinda got smacked. They had really good preparation on Inferno and outplayed us there, so, couldn't do much. Dust2 we had a good gameplan coming into it, we had a pretty strong CT side and we knew our T side is even better.

It was an up and down road to the playoffs. How would you rate your performance in the first stage here?

Not the best at the moment. I think we still have a few days to reset, re-evaluate and figure out what to do for the playoffs, it's just gonna get tougher from here.

We gotta play a bit more calm, I think we got a little bit carried away. We lost to a full Glock eco because we got carried away on Dust2 CT side, and then we almost lost to a USP on the T side because we wanted to go fight the USPs. We have some things where we just have to be more calm and make sure to play the round out and finish it, instead of trying to finish it by ourselves. I feel like we have this problem sometimes and we just gotta cut down on the mistakes.

How are you guys individually? It's always the storyline that you guys come alive under the lights, do you feel that that's still the case with FaZe now after this period you guys have been in, or is there some form to still be found?

No, I think for sure we still have another gear coming into the playoffs. It's just about cutting the mistakes and making the games more easy for us. It should be good.

How confident are you feeling about a deep run?

Yeah, as long as we find our form and individuals are hitting hard and we have good days, I think we can go really far. I have high hopes. I came into the tournament feeling really confident after the RMR, so it's just about keeping the grind going and see how it goes.

Tell me about the Vitality matchup.

It's a hard matchup for us, it's been that for a very long time and I think they are like 20-3 on maps versus us or something. We've got our work cut out for us, and we just gotta do a lot of theory, make sure when match day comes we're prepared and we feel mentally prepared to play them as well