Heroic showed their class with an absurdly dominant map three to kick FaZe out of the Major.

It was a true masterclass from Heroic, especially on the CT side of Nuke and Mirage, as they put away the previously-immortal FaZe clan with consummate ease.

An overjoyed cadiaN spoke to BLAST.tv: "I think that the team really delivered, we played some good CS, we helped each other. It was not an easy opponent."

More than that, Heroic all had superb individual performances. TeSeS had crazy multikills, cadiaN a nutty collateral on Nuke, stavn had so many, sjuush was a rock on the CT side, and jabbi was constantly deadly on the wide swing.

Photo: Michal Konkol

"It's always hard to judge the individual skill. People don't talk thaaaat much about team philosophy and the way we approach it, but I think at this level you have to shoot hard otherwise it doesn't matter how clever you are."

jabbi put Heroic's dominance down to their positioning, too.

"If you're in a good position, because they're not going as a big group, they go two and two together... you can easily kill two and then you have so much space," he explained.

Surviving the scare

A superb performance from stavn on map one helped Heroic to a giant lead on Nuke, which proved vital.

After losing five of the first six rounds, Heroic won thirteen in a row with stavn being on 25 kills after just 19 rounds - including a pistol round ace to kick off the second half.

It was a game of streaks, though. FaZe hit back with nine rounds of their own, punctuated by a sole Heroic round. FaZe had, once again, seemingly pulled the game back from an impossible position to within one round.

ropz, Twistzz and rain all had impressive moments, but none quite as impressive as broky's combat AWPing trio. He found himself stuck in Trophy, pushing from Ramp, but quickly flipped the script to snipe - or more accurately, barrel-stuff - three Danish on-rushers.

Photo: Michal Konkol

"It got a bit tight, but I always felt like we had them" told jabbi to BLAST.tv. "We were pretty good at getting into the site, but then they'd always do these kind of individual plays."

It was, as the tone of this might suggest, all for naught when jabbi and cadiaN picked off the remaining three FaZe players to convert a man disadvantage situation to close off the nuclear plant for business, 16-14 to Heroic.

"That is the round where we played maybe the worst round! They had so much information, they kill us outside and we just run down and get Secret for free. I don't really know what they were doing, to be honest."

Pressure gets to us all - even FaZe.

The fightback

FaZe, however, are never down and out.

Overpass was Heroic's pick, but it'd be tough to decipher that if you came in blind. FaZe put up a ten round CT side, but quickly raced into a huge lead after the break as Twistzz collected three souls on the pistol, and three more on the conversion when things got a little hairy.

ropz absolutely fried Heroic on both sides of the map, displaying some gorgeous crosshair placement to scythe down two aggressing Heroic players on Monster.

Photo: Michal Konkol

jabbi seemed frustrated by FaZe's aggression on Heroic's T side: "they started to do some pushes on A - the round we were holding from A they pushed Underpass and we couldn't hold him, and the round we were holding Underpass they pushed from A.

Heroic started to string rounds together - bringing it back to 15-12 with some sensational CT holds, not least from TeSeS who put together a stunning sequence of four, but it came to nothing as a cobbled-together half buy popped out onto B and FaZe ran over the mostly-blinded Heroic defence to close out map two.

The close-out

Map three felt like a victory lap for one of the greatest teams in the world.

FaZe's run has been full of massive comebacks, but you can't get away with letting Heroic get that far ahead, no matter how resilient you are. It was a destructive CT side, much like many have had against FaZe already but a touch better. Heroic collected twelve rounds, largely down to the robotic greatness of sjuush.

The oft-underrated rifler held down Connector and A Site time and time again, seemingly never making the wrong decision and executing with his customary composure.

FaZe started what would have been perhaps their best comeback yet, even in an event packed with them, but this was a step too far.

Heroic closed it out with some superb trading on the T side, as has become tradition, as they swept away FaZe 16-6, with an ease no other team has managed.