It was fate that Cloud9 and FaZe Clan would go head to head at some point on the Halo World Championship weekend. An elimination bracket fight for top three was an unlikely battleground, but C9 put on a tour de force to put the bubbling rivalry between the two rosters to bed with confidence.
Despite FaZe managing to sneak away with a chaotic Slayer win, C9 sent them home with a 3-1 series score off the back of perfectly strategized objective plays and an electric performance by Bound throughout the best-of-five.
The recently acquired rookie, and C9 as a whole, wanted to prove Renegade made a mistake leaving the team after Kansas City, and they proved it on the most important stage.
The difference in coordination between the two teams was palpable in the objective modes. Despite FaZe walking away with the first round of Oddball in map one, the second round was a 100-0 Cloud9 win and the third round didn’t see much of an improvement from the team in red. A lack of synergy in FaZe’s rotations allowed C9 to hold setups in the alley and tram station on Streets. Teamfights that were going in FaZe’s favor at the start of the match fell into the hands of C9, widening the lead in kills that C9 had to an unreachable amount.
The stats screen consistently betrayed the difference in synergy. 36 kills for Stellur and 33 for Bound in map one was a stunning feat, but even more indicative of C9’s strength as a unit came from Pznguin’s equally impressive 26 assists.
The difference in assists was further apparent in game three—Capture The Flag on Catalyst—where C9’s 4-2 win came thanks to 44 assists between them.
FaZe, in comparison, finished the same game with only 28 total.
The roster’s abilities to fight together didn’t only benefit the kill tallies and individual teamfights. On all four maps, FaZe was consistently the team to get their hands on power-ups and power weapons, but rarely did C9 allow them to gain an advantage from them.
The fourth and final match on Live Fire Strongholds had Renegade successfully take two or three Overshields for FaZe, and each was either immediately burned by multiple C9 members or, in one case, sent off the map along with Renegade by a perfectly-timed Repulsor cast. Renegade met similar resistance in game two as well, taking multiple Active Camos in a tightly contested Slayer game that got next to no value.
C9 was routinely able to catch him on a rotation or trying to gain information, trading out to prevent a FaZe advantage from ever truly manifesting.
By the conclusion of the series, only Spartan on FaZe managed to stay afloat above a 1.0 K/D, leading his team’s damage numbers and their kills with 78 total. However, his performance paled in comparison to those of the C9 members. Bound and Stellur both gave it their all, taking home 1.21 and 1.25 K/D ratios respectively.
Stellur also sat at the top of the leaderboards with 90 kills total, crucial in a win dictated by C9’s convincing teamfight capabilities.
C9’s gauntlet through the elimination bracket now continues with a do-or-die series against Native Red.
After Native Red stunned the Worlds hopefuls with a reverse sweep yesterday, C9 will be looking to exact revenge before meeting the titan of OpTic in the grand finals.
