Team Ranking: June 2016

With the ninth CS:GO Major having finished its eventful first day in Cologne, Germany some time ago, it might seem a little strange to see a monthly update to our CS:GO rankings published during the event.

However, as it is indeed the turn of the month, we have decided to go ahead with the monthly ranking update and detail movements of teams up and down the ladder of CS:GO.

And to be fair, we did see three offline events conclude during the month of June which significantly impacted the rankings: the ESL One Cologne Main Qualifier in Katowice, DreamHack ZOWIE Open Summer, and the ECS Season 1 Finals. In addition, ELEAGUE continued its group stages.

As a reminder for ELEAGUE, since we are treating it as an ongoing season, results in the prestigious $1.4 million event are only counted in the "Form" section until the event will end in late July.

To summarise the ranking for new readers:

Our team ranking is based on teams' achievements over the past year (with severe decay in points throughout each month), recent form over the last 2 months, and performance at offline events in the last 3 months.

Each team is required to have a three-man core in order to retain their points and online results are included but have minimal effect (only affecting 'Form') at the top of the table and mainly serve to put new teams on the map.

We will always have a special page where you will be able to find the latest, weekly version of our ranking.

Here is the current top 30 table as of July 5th, 2016, which goes more in-depth into the way points are distributed. You can see the lineup for each team by hovering over their name in the table.

Please note that the +/- gain on this table differs from our weekly rankings page, and is in relation to the ranking update of May 2016.

Top 30 Team Ranking Powered by EGB.com

Rank	Team	Achievements	Form	LANs	Total points	+/-
1.	SK	500	164	300	964	-
2.	G2	256	200	278	734	+3
3.	fnatic	358	86	183	627	-
4.	Ninjas in Pyjamas	227	96	273	596	-
5.	Natus Vincere	337	71	188	596	-3
6.	Envy	145	70	125	340	+2
7.	Astralis	212	64	44	320	-1
8.	Virtus.pro	147	77	96	320	-1
9.	Immortals	126	67	119	312	-
10.	GODSENT	74	44	113	231	+3
11.	Liquid	112	30	88	230	-1
12.	TSM	64	51	112	227	+11
13.	MOUZ	77	55	77	209	-1
14.	Dignitas	82	48	60	190	-
15.	Cloud9	62	67	60	189	+1
16.	OpTic	54	64	70	188	-1
17.	FaZe	52	77	32	161	+1
18.	TYLOO	29	32	54	115	-1
19.	HellRaisers	43	39	26	108	-8
20.	Gambit	26	36	39	101	+10
21.	X	24	31	32	87	-2
22.	Kinguin	20	35	31	86	-1
23.	FlipSid3	24	38	22	84	+4
24.	Orbit	26	35	13	74	-2
25.	Epsilon	13	34	23	70	+1
26.	CLG	35	24	6	65	-6
27.	ENCE	10	31	19	60	-3
28.	Renegades	9	30	4	43	-3
29.	Selfless	8	14	6	28	+2
30.	Splyce	7	19	2	28	-1

*Hover over each team name for the full lineup.

We will now discuss the recent performances of the top fifteen teams, however you should note that this month's write-up will be of a more diagnostic tone, with less emphasis on ornate writing and pithy captions, as I believe that the Major overshadows some of the usual importance attached to such a ranking.

1. SK

Player	Age	Rating
Marcelo "⁠coldzera⁠" David	21	1.26
Gabriel "⁠FalleN⁠" Toledo	25	1.16
Fernando "⁠fer⁠" Alvarenga	24	1.15
Lincoln "⁠fnx⁠" Lau	26	1.12
Epitacio "⁠TACO⁠" de Melo	21	0.95

At the beginning of the month, this Brazilian super team were still known as Luminosity, despite reports already surfacing at the end of May that the players had signed contracts with the SK Gaming organisation.

The true state of affairs has a way or getting out to the wider public sooner or later and we eventually learned that SK and Luminosity had reached an agreement and the Brazilians would don the Germany organisation's jerseys at the beginning of July and thus represent SK at the Cologne Major.

Like much of the current top teams, the Brazilians have only been competing in offline events lately, due to much of the remaining online super leagues being off-season. And thus their only competition in June was the $765,000 ECS Season 1 Finals in London.

Although FalleN and his teammates did not look as dominant as they had in earlier months in the beginning stages of the tournament (winning close 16-12 games against NiP and Liquid), they did eventually move past TSM in the semfinals and finally fell to G2 with a 0-2 score to close out the event in second place.

That grand finals match said a lot about G2's raw skill when the French-Belgian team were on point but it also possibly presaged a weaker SK team coming into the Major. At the current time of this article being written, the Brazilians got their revenge in their day one opener against G2, winning 16-11 on Cobblestone.

Despite losing the 1,000 point ceiling in our ranking, they are still by far the best in the world.

2. G2

Player	Age	Rating
Adil "⁠ScreaM⁠" Benrlitom	22	1.20
Richard "⁠shox⁠" Papillon	24	1.18
Cédric "⁠RpK⁠" Guipouy	26	1.04
Alexandre "⁠bodyy⁠" Pianaro	19	0.96
Edouard "⁠SmithZz⁠" Dubourdeaux	27	0.92

The fastest rising team in the Top 10 lately is easily G2, especially when you consider that they were ranked #15 in the world in our April Monthly Ranking.

The first jump occurred due to their surprise second place finish the month before at the $512,000 ESL Pro League Season 3 Finals, and G2 kicked off their June campaign with ELEAGUE Group B games, which saw them go a dominant 6-0 in the seeding portion (including two convincing victories over rivals NiP).

Despite actually losing the televised final of their group (putting them into the Last Chance Qualifier), shox and his team were on the road again and this time to Katowice, Poland, to try to qualify for the Major as they had finished in 9-12th place at MLG Columbus.

After easily bringing down TyLoo and HellRaisers in best-of-ones, G2 struggled more than expected as they were crushed by mousesports (16-1) and lost to Gambit (16-10) before finally scraping through to the Major after defeating Cloud9 (16-8).

The final jump to second place in the world is due to their victory at the ECS Season 1 Finals. The United Kingdom seems to bode well for these players as they again played a phenomental tournament in London (particularly ScreaM) and, after an opening loss to Liquid, they rolled through NiP, Liquid, fnatic, and Luminosity (only giving a map up to Liquid in the group decider) to win the $765,000 event.

Is this the beginning of a new elite (i.e. top five) team? Unfortunately for G2, they have a high chance of falling back down to earth as an opening loss at the Major to SK will now have them cross roads with fnatic in the Group D elimination match. A 13-16th place finish at the Major bodes traumatically for either team.

3. fnatic

Player	Age	Rating
Olof "⁠olofmeister⁠" Kajbjer	24	1.19
Robin "⁠flusha⁠" Rönnquist	22	1.08
Dennis "⁠dennis⁠" Edman	25	1.03
Jesper "⁠JW⁠" Wecksell	21	1.01
Freddy "⁠KRIMZ⁠" Johansson	22	0.93

fnatic retain their spot as third best team in the world and they also kicked off their June with an announcement that brought a smile to many: the return of team star olofmeister to active duty following an arm injury.

The full five man roster debuted in Group D of ELEAGUE in Atlanta, where they went a strong 5-1 in the group stage (only losing 16-8 to FaZe on Mirage after 16-0'ing then on Cobblestone) and won their semifinals and group final to qualify for the playoffs of the $1.4 million event. olofmeister had an extremely solid event and he holds a 1.30 rating as of now in ELEAGUE.

Their second event of the month was the ECS Season 1 Finals and it can be argued that while we saw some clear shakiness in the team compared to the days of yore, they still held their own and managed to finish a decent 3-4th place.

fnatic made a clear path to the semifinals of the event by defeating Cloud9 and TSM, but both North American teams put up a hell of a fight with the Swedes only winning 16-13 and 16-14 respectively. The team were then downed convincingly in the semfinal (including a 2-16 loss on their map pick Overpass) by event winners G2.

As they just lost their Group D opener to FaZe 14-16, fnatic are in a conundrum as they will have to face G2 in their group's elimination match at the Major. While this may seem a tad silly in terms of seeding for two world class teams, it means one of these two giants will take a big hit in the ranking come the end of July.

4. NiP

Player	Age	Rating
Patrik "⁠f0rest⁠" Lindberg	28	1.10
Christopher "⁠GeT_RiGhT⁠" Alesund	26	1.08
Jacob "⁠pyth⁠" Mourujärvi	22	1.00
Richard "⁠Xizt⁠" Landström	25	0.98
Adam "⁠friberg⁠" Friberg	24	0.91

NiP retain their fourth place spot in the world, despite some troubling results to the latter end of June.

They came into focus early in the month in ELEAGUE Group B where, despite losing both group seeding games to G2, the Swedes trounced their French-Belgian rivals 2-0 in the Group B final and thus directly qualified for the playoffs.

Next up for NiP was the local (to them at least) and somewhat lesser scale DreamHack Summer event and GeT_RiGhT and his team opened with a 16-9 win against Epsilon, then surprisingly lost to GODSENT (8-16) in the group winners' match before taking down Epsilon 2-0 in the decider, edging out elite rivals Astralis 2-1 in the semifinal, and finally falling to Immortals (0-2) in the grand finals.

The Brazilian menace struck back at the ECS Season 1 Finals for NiP as they lost their opening match 12-16 to Luminosity. They were then soundly beaten by G2 (0-2) to finish in 7-8th place at the $765,000 event and thus ended their month on a slightly downward tone.

With NiP currently heading into the Group B winners' match against Na`Vi in the ongoing Major, it remains to be seen whether the team can hold onto their elite form of the past two months.

5. Null element Natus Vincere

Player	Age	Rating
Ladislav "⁠GuardiaN⁠" Kovács	24	1.15
Ioann "⁠Edward⁠" Sukhariev	28	1.08
Denis "⁠seized⁠" Kostin	21	1.08
Egor "⁠flamie⁠" Vasilyev	19	1.07
Danylo "⁠Zeus⁠" Teslenko	28	0.93

Natus Vincere had a very quiet June, which explains a lot of their three spot drop to fifth place in our monthly ranking as old results from early 2016 continue to expire in the Events section and the Form section is quite bare for a top five team. Technically however, they are tied in points with fourth place NiP but I gave them fifth due to the fact of dropping spots.

At the beginning of the month, the Ukrainian-Russian-Slovak elite team lost a showmatch to Virtus.pro in an offline environment, though this had little impact and is only being mentioned as a reminder of Na`Vi's activity in June.

Their only other showing was for Group F of ELEAGUE, where Na`Vi went 4-2 in the group stage (and did grab the first seed), losing games to Echo Fox (11-16 on Dust2) and mousesports (6-16 on Mirage). GuardiaN and his team then ran through Echo Fox in the semifinal and FlipSid3 in the group final to qualify for the ELEAGUE playoffs.

6. EnVyUs

Player	Age	Rating
Kenny "⁠kennyS⁠" Schrub	21	1.08
Vincent "⁠Happy⁠" Schopenhauer	24	1.03
Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire	23	0.97
Nathan "⁠NBK-⁠" Schmitt	22	0.95
Timothée "⁠DEVIL⁠" Démolon	21	0.85

Partially thanks to Astralis' recent collapse, EnVyUs manage to edge out their two competitors for sixth place in the ranking: the aforementioned Danish team and Virtus.pro. 

The French team started off June with a 3-1 record at the ESL One Cologne Main Qualifier, beating Immortals, Splyce, and Cloud9 and only losing to Gambit on their way to qualifying for the ESL One Cologne Major.

We then saw a very strong EnVyUs taking part in the final group of ELEAGUE, Group F, as they went 5-1 in the seeding stage (only losing an overtime match to Virtus.pro on Mirage). They then dispatched with compLexity and Virtus.pro in the group bracket to qualify for the ELEAGUE playoffs.

Two big factors in these recent wins were kennyS putting up numbers and the much maligned DEVIL having a strong performance while also leading the team. Unfortunately, nV find themselves in a bit of a Major pickle after having lost their Group C opening match to Liquid and must now take on mousesports in the group elimination match.

7. Astralis

Player	Age	Rating
Nicolai "⁠device⁠" Reedtz	20	1.22
Markus "⁠Kjaerbye⁠" Kjærbye	18	1.16
Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen	23	1.09
Andreas "⁠Xyp9x⁠" Højsleth	20	0.98
Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen	26	0.90

Technically speaking, you could say Astralis are tied with Virtus.pro in terms of points this month but I'm going to give the front seat to the Danes as they held the higher ranking last month and also drop one spot like their Polish rivals.

The beginning of June actually looked good for Astralis as they competed in Group C of ELEAGUE and went 5-1 in the group seeding portion (only losing once to the former SK roster). In the end, they won their group final 2-1 over CLG and were booked for the playoffs of ELEAGUE.

The return of dark days came with DreamHack Summer where, following easy victories over ENCE and the former SK team, Astralis lost the semifinal to NiP and were thus again humbled in the semifinals of an event.

The $765,000 ECS Season 1 Finals brought even more ignominy as Astralis were taken down by two North American teams outside of the top ten, TSM and Cloud9, and finished in 7-8th place at the event. These are dark days indeed although the Danes are so far off to a good start in the Major (where they are playing with stand-in Lukas "⁠gla1ve⁠" Rossander).

8. Virtus.pro

Player	Age	Rating
Janusz "⁠Snax⁠" Pogorzelski	23	1.06
Paweł "⁠byali⁠" Bieliński	22	1.03
Wiktor "⁠TaZ⁠" Wojtas	30	0.97
Jarosław "⁠pashaBiceps⁠" Jarząbkowski	28	0.97
Filip "⁠NEO⁠" Kubski	29	0.92

Technically holding the same amount of points as Astralis, and only twenty points behind sixth place EnVyUs, and eight points in front of ninth place Immortals, the Poles of Virtus.pro find themselves in a packed landscape as teams battle to reach top five.

The Poles actually had a very quiet June, which partially explains their slight drop in points. They won that aforementioned Adrenaline Cup showmatch against Na`Vi in Moscow in early June and then competed at ELEAGUE Group F at the end of the month.

At ELEAGUE, Virtus.pro went 4-2 (losing maps to Gambit and nV) and ultimately fell to the French team in the group final and are thus in the Last Chance Qualifier of the event. They do have a strong looking Major campaign so far as they outfoxed mousesports 16-10 to make the winners' match of Group C.

9. Immortals

Player	Age	Rating
Henrique "⁠HEN1⁠" Teles	20	1.09
Ricardo "⁠boltz⁠" Prass	19	1.08
João "⁠felps⁠" Vasconcellos	19	1.07
Lucas "⁠LUCAS1⁠" Teles	20	1.02
Gustavo "⁠SHOOWTiME⁠" Gonçalves	19	0.91

There's something about this Brazilian team and Majors that just doesn't mesh. Perhaps it's the fact that this team is truly so young, that they have had a meteoric rise from near irrelevance in the past few months, and that they must no doubt feel a ton of mental pressure when trying to qualify for Majors.

In any case, June began with disappointment for these Brazilian hotshots, as they flopped out of the Cologne Major qualifier despite being considered one of the stronger teams attending. They lost to EnVyUs and TyLoo, defeated Empire, and were then defeated by FlipSid3 to finish the qualifier in 12-14th place.

The Immortals disregarded this letdown and were soon on their way to Jönköping for DreamHack Open Summer, an event with a significantly smaller $100,000 on the line but which packed the likes of NiP and Astralis regardless.

After a setback opening loss to the former SK team (13-16 on Train) that made many think that this team were just a one-hit wonder, Immortals revved their engine up and soon eliminated ENCE in their group (2-0), advanced to the semifinals over ex-SK (2-1), took down GODSENT in the semifinals (2-1), and stunned the world with a 2-0 victory over NiP in the grand finals.

Perhaps another interesting way to think about Immortals is this: they were one of only two teams to hoist a trophy in June, the other being G2 who won the ECS Season 1 Finals.

10. GODSENT

Player	Age	Rating
Andreas "⁠znajder⁠" Lindberg	23	1.14
Simon "⁠twist⁠" Eliasson	21	1.09
Jonas "⁠Lekr0⁠" Olofsson	23	1.03
Mathias "⁠pauf⁠" Köhler	19	0.95
Markus "⁠pronax⁠" Wallsten	25	0.86

Despite GODSENT not even managing to qualify for the Cologne Major Qualifier (a 5-6th place finish in the latest European Minor) and being a team who are very much outside of the circuit of the other top ten teams, they manage to advance one spot in our ranking thanks to a strong 3-4th place run at DreamHack Open Summer.

Although they are doubtless going to lose this spot come the end of July, GODSENT again proved to us that they were a team who could do damage (much like they previously did at DreamHack Masters Malmö 2016) as they surprisingly topped Group B of the $100,000 event with wins over HellRaisers and NiP. In the semifinals, they were stopped by Immortals but we were again left wondering about this team's true potential.

Now if only they could attend more events...

11. Liquid

Player	Age	Rating
Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev	18	1.11
Spencer "⁠Hiko⁠" Martin	26	1.06
Nick "⁠nitr0⁠" Cannella	20	1.03
Jonathan "⁠EliGE⁠" Jablonowski	18	1.03
Josh "⁠jdm64⁠" Marzano	26	0.99

Liquid's 0-6 run and semifinals elimination at ELEAGUE with Kenneth "⁠koosta⁠" Suen and Eric "⁠adreN⁠" Hoag, despite happening in late May, set the stage for this team's changes in early June: bringing in CLG AWPer jdm64 and also signing Dane Jacob "⁠Pimp⁠" Winneche to the lineup (who will join up with the team after the Major in mid-July).

To fill the gap for the ECS Season 1 Finals and the Cologne Major, Liquid thus enlisted old teammate and enfant terrible s1mple to play out the two events with them.

At the ECS Season 1 Finals, Liquid took down event winners G2 16-6 on Cobblestone in their opening match, then lost to Luminosity 12-16 on Train in the winners' match, and were edged out by G2 in the decider match as well to finish in 5-6th place.

Despite this lacklustre finish, the team have an insane amount of firepower now and showed some of that in London (and they even considered that event a trial-run, in their own words). They are bound to regain top ten after the Cologne Major, as they have already eked out a 16-7 defeat of EnVyUs in their opening match and look poised to make the playoffs.

12. TSM

Player	Age	Rating
Russel "⁠Twistzz⁠" Van Dulken	16	1.11
Hunter "⁠SicK⁠" Mims	17	1.03
Timothy "⁠autimatic⁠" Ta	19	1.02
Kory "⁠SEMPHIS⁠" Friesen	27	0.96
Pujan "⁠FNS⁠" Mehta	24	0.92

The greatest gains, as SEMPHIS might say, made by a team in June were by Team SoloMid, who jumped a precipitous eleven spots to twelfth place (and who sit literally four points outside of the top ten).

Despite a 0-6 group stage and semifinals loss at ELEAGUE Group D, SEMPHIS's team picked up eleven or more rounds in five of those group losses and also took a map off fnatic (Mirage) in the semifinal, all while using Casper "⁠cadiaN⁠" Møller as a stand-in because Twistzz could not play due to age laws in Georgia.

After this promising showing, TSM showed us one better at the ECS Season 1 Finals where against all odds they managed to finish in 3-4th place, above the likes of NiP, Astralis, Cloud9, and Liquid. They did so via an upset defeat of Astralis (16-12), a nail-biting group winners' match loss to fnatic (14-16), taking down Cloud9 2-0 in the decider match, and finally losing 0-2 to Luminosity in the semifinal.

A lot of what has people excited about this team are Twistzz and SicK, 16 and 17 year old players respectively who yet somehow play with a level of calm and maturity that much older players often lack.

13. mousesports

Player	Age	Rating
Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač	19	1.14
Chris "⁠chrisJ⁠" de Jong	26	1.06
Johannes "⁠nex⁠" Maget	24	1.06
Denis "⁠denis⁠" Howell	21	0.95
Timo "⁠Spiidi⁠" Richter	20	0.93

mousesports continue to prove that they are a team who deserve to attend the Majors and they again powered through another Major qualifier in 2016, putting in a 3-0 run in Katowice, Poland that included defeating Fluffy Gangsters, Cloud9, and G2 to be among the first to qualify for ESL One Cologne.

NiKo and his team looked equally strong in ELEAGUE's Group E, at least in the group seeding stage, as they went 4-2 and took second seed and only lost a map apiece to Na`Vi and FlipSid3.

That unfathomable mouz ability to lose temper and completely crumble was back with a vengeance in the semifinal however, as FlipSid3 (who were third seed) took down mousesports 2-0 and left the team in the dust. Luckily for mouz, they managed to amass enough points in the group stage to be invited back to the Last Chance Qualifier and are thus not done with ELEAGUE.

It's hard to tell if mouz can improve their current problems in the near future. Currently down a game at ESL One Cologne, they are on a collision course with EnVyUs to determine who exits the Major in 13-16th place.

14. dignitas

Player	Age	Rating
Kristian "⁠k0nfig⁠" Wienecke	19	1.08
René "⁠cajunb⁠" Borg	26	1.04
Ruben "⁠RUBINO⁠" Villarroel	22	1.03
Jesper "⁠TENZKI⁠" Plougmann	22	0.99
Mathias "⁠MSL⁠" Lauridsen	21	0.86

dignitas had a pretty poor June but the team's ability to qualify for the Cologne Major has managed to save them from falling any further. They went 3-2 in the Major Qualifier, losing to FaZe and HellRaisers, and defeating Empire, TyLoo, and Renegades to make it to the ninth CS:GO Major (something they failed to do for Columbus).

With cajunb as their new fifth, the team also traveled to Atlanta for ELEAGUE Group D and had a 2-4 group stage record for third seed (losses to fnatic and FaZe and wins over TSM). Despite taking a map off FaZe, they lost in the semifinals and became the first European team out of ELEAGUE in 15-18th place or below (they have since been joined by Gambit).

15. Cloud9

Player	Age	Rating
Jake "⁠Stewie2K⁠" Yip	18	1.12
Mike "⁠shroud⁠" Grzesiek	22	1.10
Tyler "⁠Skadoodle⁠" Latham	22	1.05
Jordan "⁠n0thing⁠" Gilbert	25	1.03
Alec "⁠Slemmy⁠" White	25	0.83

Cloud9 had a strange June. They failed to qualify for the Cologne Major which marked n0thing's departure from the "All Majors attendance" club, but they struggled the whole way in Katowice, winning close games over TyLoo and Empire and losing close games to mousesports and EnVyUs before finally being eliminated by G2.

At the ECS Season 1 Finals, Cloud9 played a close game against fnatic (13-16) before defeating Astralis 2-0 in their group elimination match. They however fell to TSM 0-2 in the decider and had to contend with a 5-6th place exit.

Cloud9 aren't attending the Major but they do have a spot to the Last Chance Qualifier of ELEAGUE and I think the team will do damage here, call it a hunch. In any case, they edged out OpTic by one point for 15th place in our June ranking.

You can also see which teams round up the Top 20 over at our dedicated team ranking page.

July 2016 is of course first dedicated to the $1 million Major in Cologne, Germany, which is currently ongoing. The remainder of the month will see the $1.4 ELEAGUE Season 1 conclude and, after these two mega-events, we are sure to have a better picture of the new order of CS:GO teams.

stich writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter