Counter-Strike is a fickle game, just ask NIP, fnatic, or Astralis. One minute you’re on top of the world, with a lineup that looks like it might never be beaten, and the next you’re in a position so dire that people begin to question how you were ever good in the first place.

As I said on a recent episode of Overtime on Inferno, it feels like there are a number of dead teams already at this stage of the year, or at least far more than there were at the same stage last year.

Now, that doesn’t mean all of those teams are in free fall. If you take a look at last week’s Deep Dive, you’ll notice that I was actually positive about a number of those teams.

Those teams, although not phoenix clubs in the same sense that you might refer to a football (that’s soccer, Americans) team, are the Counter-Strike equivalent. A team that can break through their ceilings with a change or two and take the next step on the ladder.

These teams, though, are not that.

The teams we’ll look at today are instead teams that I just don’t see an easy fix for, and who I expect will continue to struggle even if they were to make changes tomorrow.

As displayed by PARIVSION and FUT already, 2026 is going to be a big shakeup year for the top level of Counter-Strike - and these are the teams that will be suffering as a result.

The end of the Renaissance

Four years ago, French CS looked to be on its knees. Vitality, the last bastion of a once great CS nation, had decided to go international, and the best team outside of them was a rather uninspiring HEET roster featuring bodyy, Lucky, afro, Djoko, and Ex3rcice.

Although they had shown flashes of a breakthrough, it was a roster no one really believed in - at least, not enough for them to be signed to an org for longer than they were known as “DBL Poney” or simply, “Looking 4 Org”.

Until 3DMAX, that is.

Since joining 3DMAX, though, the Frenchmen have become a staple in tier one CS. They haven’t achieved much, but they’ve become gatekeepers of sorts, replacing BIG as the team you have to be able to beat before you’re ready to start contending with the big boys.

A necessary evil that, regrettably, just so happens to be French.

They’ve made - or at least tried to make - improvements over time. Maka’s gave them solid leadership for a while, and bodyy’s raised the floor of the team. Graviti was meant to come in and be a young star that would push the team to even greater things, but he never consistently found the same level of impact in tier one and now finds himself pushed to IGLing at the ripe old age of 22.

Which, although it began promisingly at EPL S22 and EWC, now seems to be falling flat on its face.

Honestly, I never hated this change. The team said they felt like they didn’t want to make a roster move, and Maka being freed from the shackles of leadership could’ve been like a new player itself, especially when you factor in what he told HLTV after the change:

Sadly, as I already said, the move hasn’t really pushed 3DMAX to the next level. Once a team I would frequently - and begrudgingly - call for upset wins over the teams ahead of them, they’re now a team I expect will even lose to teams below them.

And so far in 2026, that’s been the case.

At the time of writing, they’re now on a six-series loss streak across multiple events and qualifiers, and were also upset by Inner Circle in the opening round of BLAST Bounty.

It feels like 3DMAX, who have now been together as a five for a full year, are in need of fresh blood, a fresh face to reinvigorate them, but there’s no easy answer as to who that could be.

Neityu is the most obvious shout, but who does he replace on the team? No one has been fragging particularly well for a while now, so there really isn’t an obvious choice.

Is it Graviti, and bodyy or Maka take up IGLing? Longevity says no.

Is it Ex3rcice? Lucky? Maybe, to either of them.

But what if the problem isn’t the players? What if the problem is that the scene has now fully adapted to their playstyle, and it’s actually the fact that they haven’t been able to adapt that’s causing the issue? Would a new player - especially a French one - change that?

I have my doubts.

Maybe then, it means that 3DMAX are the next team that has to follow in the footsteps of FURIA - importing two stars from elsewhere while still retaining their domestic soul. Maybe that really is the only way, because I don’t consider 3DMAX to be similar to Aurora, who many of you might also (wrongly) be expecting to see in this article.

The difference with Aurora, though, is simple: they just have a higher ceiling. They also, as many people have realised by now, just overachieved for a while as other rosters were still finding their feet. Now that has happened, they’ve slipped to their rightful place - a potentially dangerous team that will make playoffs if other results go their way, not the consistent playoff contender they once appeared to be.

It’s this difference that will see Aurora justifiably remain Turkish, while 3DMAX will continue to drown in their national identity.

FaZe down, ass up

FaZe...

FaZe, FaZe, FaZe, FaZe, FaZe… How truly awful you are right now.

Right now, if not for Virtus.pro, FaZe would be the sorriest side in all of Counter-Strike. A shadow of their former selves, FaZe have lost their identity, and the run in Budapest seemed to trick them into believing this roster had any kind of future.

Spoiler alert: It didn’t, but I tried to tell you that during the run, and you all told me I was wrong.

Let’s not f-ck about here, 2026 has been horrible so far for karrigan and his team. So horrible, in fact, that I now don’t see any other option for FaZe other than signing an entire new core to the organisation.

Seriously, outside of Twistzz and frozen, what is the point in anyone on this roster anymore?

broky makes ultimate look good, and actually paying attention to jcobbb and his tendencies reveals all you need to know about his chances of ever improving in tier one. If you watch their event documentaries, it’s also becoming abundantly clear that karrigan’s leadership is once again strained, too.

Last place in BLAST Bounty. 9th-12th in IEM Krakow. 12th-14th in PGL Cluj-Napoca. These are the types of results you expect from a team just making the step up to tier one, not a FaZe team that consists of two of the greatest riflers in the world, and arguably the greatest IGL to ever play CS.

But that’s just the reality of FaZe in 2026. The idea of a comfortable victory is now lost to this team. Even those wins that you expect to be easy, like a match against BC.Game, is now a scrappy 2-1 victory in which you see both the potential of FaZe and the sheer lack of hope this roster has to offer.

That brings us back to the idea of a new core, which, let me tell you, is out of the question. You might think of FaZe as this wealthy American org, but they aren’t that. The fact that broky and jcobbb are on this team should tell you all you need to know there.

When you then consider the reported fee that BC.Game paid for the SAW core, you’ll realise how ludicrous the notion of FaZe doing something similar is.

The more worrying thing is that quality individual signings also feel like an impossibility for FaZe right now. In part because they already made a mistake in signing jcobbb, but also because they took too long to sign other names like Chr1zN, and because they don’t have the money to act when it’s already too late.

In all honesty, it’s actually outrageous that it’s got to this point. I’m going to keep using this as a way to back up these kinds of points for a while, but try and Senzu both currently play for Passion UA.

Are we really going to pretend neither of these players would benefit FaZe? Are we really going to keep pretending that FaZe have any chance with this roster? Keep pretending that they’ll magically make a turnaround that will actually stick this time rather than going right the way back down the sh-tter?

No, we’re not. Because it’s time to be realistic. And if you’re still struggling to accept reality out of some nostalgic sense of affection for this team, let me tell you what that reality looks like:

karrigan needs to retire, and he should have done so years ago. jcobbb needs to go back to tier two. And broky? Well, at this point broky can just f-ck off.

A paiNful era

Eight months ago, paiN seemed like they’d finally made the next step. Armed with dav1deuS and dgt, they didn’t just make the Major playoffs, they upset FURIA to make the semis, and we all thought that meant they were finally ready to consistently challenge FalleN and co. for the title of “best in the Americas”.

Oh, how we were wrong.

To be honest, that’s kind of on all of us. Especially me, because I’d already had aizyesque telling me for months that paiN are never to be trusted. He was right, of course, because paiN will never fail to let you down when it feels like they’re finally starting to impress again.

Only now, I’m not sure that “again” will be coming anytime soon.

Unfortunately for paiN, their roster seems to have just gone back in time. Once home to a couple of imports, those imports may not have worked out, but the idea behind them was something we could get behind. It was an idea formed in the same place that FURIA and MIBR’s rosters were, the place where the Brazilian teams had accepted that the all-Brazil dream was dead.

If they had then gone into the winter off-season and recruited Europeans like their compatriots, maybe we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Unlike MIBR, they didn’t even have to fill the hard spots like IGL or AWPer, but instead they chose to return to their homeland, and that saw them end up with piriajr and vsm.

Now I get that both of those players were impressive domestically in 2025, and I also get that piriajr is young enough and has had few enough opportunities to warrant giving him a crack, but lads, it’s 2026. Have we learned nothing?

vsm just isn’t good enough - and never really has been - and so far, it doesn’t seem that piriajr will be either.

paiN’s struggles sum up the wider issue with Brazilian CS. The reason as to why FURIA and MIBR looked elsewhere in the first place - building a Brazilian roster capable of truly competing is just borderline impossible.

They do have nice building blocks. biguzera is a capable IGL, and nqz is about as good as a Brazilian AWPer will get. But sadly, that’s about it for positives on paiN right now.

And yes, I’m aware you all love snow because he’s got a babyface and he’s loud and has a squeaky voice that makes you go “N’aww, bless him”, but let’s be real here, he’s rubbish. Like, actually terrible. Sorry.

They’re building blocks that make you want to see them united with the other solid Brazilian players. The likes of latto, insani, and dumau, but given what we know about buyouts in Brazil, that’s just not going to happen.

So, with paiN now regressing as a roster and with a string of tough international events ahead of them, the only real question I have is how far their fall will be.

And it’s sad, really, because it really did feel like paiN were a team that could’ve been mentioned in last week’s deep dive. They were close to greatness, to taking that next step, and so too were Legacy. You could even say MIBR were, too, but that’s just Brazilian CS.

They’re their own worst enemy, and unless everyone’s contracts magically expire on the same day, that’s not going to change anytime soon.