Going into the game FaZe were favourites, most people expecting a 2-0. Despite this Team Dignitas have been boot camping and practising hard and we could see a new level from them going into this tournament. In all honesty I do not think many people were overly hopeful of that from Dignitas especially with the continued rise that FaZe was on. FaZe are still not proven at LAN meanwhile Dignitas are proven bad on LAN. It will be interesting to see what the two week bootcamp can do to Dignitas' chances. Lijang Tower, King's Row and Gilbraltar were the maps.

Lijang Tower

The first round starts as many expected with ShaDowBurn slaying everyone in sight, taking it all the way to 99% capture time without reply. Eventually a six stack of ults helped Dignitas reclaim three quarters of the point but some solid delaying by FCTFCTN allowed the re-spawns to come in and before you knew it FaZe had a one round lead.

Round two was exactly the same, a quick take of point from FaZe followed by complete dominance. FaZe shut them out at the choke and wouldn't let them back in. While ShaDowBurn had been the stand-out player, great back up DPS from TwoEasy and all around team focus-fire gave Dignitas no chance.

Round three and finally Dignitas get their first capture time in the match thanks to some nice Zarya work from ToxikeN. Dignitas repel the first FaZe attack and force them all the way back to spawn and win another fight. Dignitas brought it all the way back to a respectable 88% before FaZe could break through, but break through they did. FaZe take it all the way to 99% and then Dignitas finally look like they arrived in Atlanta. A quality re-push to take control followed up by a good gravitation surge by ToxikeN to seal the round victory.

Round four was much more even, but despite numlocked getting the better of ShaDowBurn and TwoEasy more times than we saw all map it was not enough and FaZe claim the victory.

Through the first map Dignitas struggled to contain ShaDowBurnand TwoEasy. Also, you saw throughout that Forsak3n on Zenyatta added much more to the team than Draceus on Ana. FaZe pounced on every discorded target while the Nano-Boosts for Dignitas were ineffective, not promising especially given how the Ana Nano-Boost has so characterised this event so far. Dignitas never really adjusted to FaZe's hero comp in any meaningful way and looked thoroughly outclassed the entire map.

King's Row

Hybrid requires a different set of skills than king of the hill but going into this Dignitas will be feeling the pressure not just because they lost the first map but the fashion in which they were beaten.

It started with a solid effort from Dignitas on their opening defence before losing the first point. ShaDowBurn on Hanzo starts to open up the streets phase combined with TwoEasy and Rawkus snowballing Nano-Boosts and Death Blossoms. In the final section of the map Dignitas looked solid, great ult management meant they were not at ult disadvantage until the final minute of FaZe's attack. FaZe capitalise with a team wipe but the re-spawning Dignitas resisted a Blizzard and Graviton Surge well and held strong just before the final check point.

All Dignitas needed to do is complete the map to stay in this opening match. Dignitas suffered none of the opening points issue FaZe encountered and quickly got it all the way to the penultimate check point. With 5 minutes to finish the last stage Dignitas bait out several FaZe ults brilliantly, wipe them and take it almost all the way to the end. FaZe throw enough ults at it to stabilise but this leaves 3 minutes and mere inches to go for Dignitas and they don't even need all of them. A great response from Dignitas, they played all stages of their King's Row attack so well and deserved the map victory.

Watchpoint: Gibraltar

Dignitas looked much more convincing on the payloads sections of King's Row than they did on any KOTH point. And they continued that on Gibraltar, with FaZe holding passive on the first checkpoint it allowed Dignitas to take this after winning the first fight. Then during the hangar stage we saw some big mistakes from FaZe. ShaDowBurn, the star of the first map, got caught out of position, TwoEasy threw away a Death Blossom for nothing. Allowing Dignitas to roll through the hangar and take a big ult advantage into the final stretch. Some minor delays were created by FaZe, but nowhere near enough. Dignitas complete the map with 3:41 to spare.

FaZe's attack gets off to a good start but some carelessness towards the end allows BromaS to get two frags with the Dead Eye and this allows Dignitas to re-take control of the first checkpoint. FaZe eventually capture the first point but it takes pretty much their whole allotted time. An effective Dragon Blade from the one and only ShaDowBurn allowed FaZe to move quickly through hangar stage but once again they get stalled out just before the checkpoint again. One final attempt for FaZe and they lead with ShaDowBurn who gets Nano-Boosted in with Dragon Blade but some terminally sick moves from art1er buy his team time to clean him up and Dignitas hold, taking the series.

What a result for a Dignitas team that has been starved of success for a long time, the boot camp clearly seems to be paying off. While there were some good individual moments and performances from the entire Dignitas roster, the way they played off each other and clearly had a collected idea of what the team was attempting to do in that moment was the most impressive element. Dignitas move on to the winners game to face off against NiP. Meanwhile FaZe have a lot to look at and think about after not just the result but the way they fell apart as the game went on and will be playing REUNITED next.