FaZe Clan reinstates rain for ESL Pro League Season 22

Håvard “rain” Nygaard is back on FaZe Clan’s active lineup until the conclusion of ESL Pro League Season 22, the organization announced on October 4. He’ll take Jakub “jcobbb” Pietruszewski’s place throughout the tournament.

Rain had been on FaZe’s bench since September 29, after he lost his spot to Russel “Twistzz” Van Dulken. Turns out, however, that FaZe needed rain to be able to play at ESL Pro League Seaosn 22.

When FaZe removed rain, they no longer had three out of the five players that were featured on the July 7 invite. At that time, FaZe were playing with rain, Finn “karrigan” Andersen, David “frozen” Čerňanský, Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski, and Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev. Both EliGE and s1mple had already left FaZe before rain.

According to the ESL Pro Tour rulebook, teams must retain at least three out of the five players from when they received the invite.

Teams invited based on the Valve Regional Standings must retain at least three out of the five core players listed in the VRS on the Invite Date.

Once a participant plays for the first time in a qualifier, their lineup has to contain a majority of that first lineup until the end of the main event, throughout all qualifiers and stages of the event. This also implies that an organisation that tried and failed to qualify with one team is not allowed to sign a new team to still take part in the event.

The above lineup restriction also applies for participants that were invited to the event or a later stage of the qualifiers, in that case the default lineup of the participant at the time of the invitation or a specific lineup named in context with the invitation is relevant. Invited participants are considered the same as if they had played throughout the entire qualifier process up until the stage that they have been invited to.

Unfortunately for FaZe, the team and ESL figured this out too late, and they had to forfeit their ESL Pro League Season 22 Stage 2 opening match against G2 this Saturday, October 4. With the forfeit, they’re in the 0-1 pool of the Swiss group.

But, rain will fly for Stockholm so FaZe can play the remainder of ESL Pro League Season 22. FaZe confirmed that jcobbb will return to the active lineup for the CS Asia Championships 2025 later this month.

FaZe will play their first ESL Pro League Season 22 match tomorrow, October 3.

Feature image credit: © ESL