Team Ranking: July 2016

The dust has finally settled on the top shelves of competitive CS:GO as all of the namebrand tournaments have concluded come the end of July. The month of August will see a fairly ubiquitous lull spread across the scene as teams will no doubt engage in roster changes and players will take their respective vacations.

It is also time for our monthly ranking update of CS:GO teams and this ranking should hold steady for quite some time, especially when considering the fact that August will not see many of the teams in the Top 20 have a chance to compete and/or improve their prospects.

July was the month of the two million dollar tournaments: the $1 million ESL One Cologne 2016 Major (CS:GO's ninth Major to date) and the $1.4 million ELEAGUE Season 1. In this sense, it was a fitting cap to a first half of the year, as the scene's biggest teams vied for dominance and previously unimaginable first place cheques.

With the action having concluded, and with SK having won the ESL One Cologne Major and Virtus.pro taking home gold from ELEAGUE Season 1, we now have a complete ranking picture for the month of 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.

And 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 August 1st, 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 June 2016.

Top 30 Team Ranking Powered by EGB.com

Rank	Team	Achievements	Form	LANs	Total points	+/-
1.	SK	500	168	300	968	-
2.	fnatic	368	194	214	776	+1
3.	Virtus.pro	279	200	197	676	+5
4.	Natus Vincere	302	118	118	538	+1
5.	G2	194	128	169	491	-3
6.	Astralis	193	98	65	356	+1
7.	NiP	193	53	90	336	-3
8.	mousesports	109	148	73	330	+5
9.	Liquid	151	107	52	310	+2
10.	Envy	121	117	47	285	-4
11.	FaZe	62	149	44	255	+6
12.	FlipSid3	65	92	54	211	+11
13.	Cloud9	70	82	55	207	+2
14.	Gambit	63	71	62	196	+6
15.	Immortals	69	93	31	193	-6
16.	TSM	46	48	74	168	-4
17.	OpTic	46	59	43	148	-1
18.	GODSENT	51	63	32	146	-8
19.	Dignitas	56	64	16	136	-5
20.	Epsilon	14	69	17	100	+5
21.	X	8	73	11	92	-
22.	TYLOO	22	52	13	87	-4
23.	HellRaisers	29	34	15	78	-4
24.	Renegades	16	50	6	72	+4
25.	Kinguin	14	26	23	63	-3
26.	Echo Fox	4	45	9	58	+16
27.	MK	17	29	8	54	-3
28.	ENCE	7	31	12	50	-1
29.	NRG	8	25	6	39	+4
30.	ALTERNATE aTTaX	2	37	0	39	+5

*Hover over each team name for the full lineup.

We will now discuss the recent performances of the top fifteen teams, generally centering around their performances at the Cologne Major and in ELEAGUE (assuming they attended as one in the top fifteen attended neither).

1. SK

Player	Age	Rating
Marcelo "coldzera" David	21	1.26
Gabriel "FalleN" Toledo	25	1.19
Fernando "fer" Alvarenga	24	1.12
Lincoln "fnx" Lau	26	1.11
Epitacio "TACO" de Melo	21	0.96

Now that the world is used to seeing this team go under the SK name, the reality remains that they are by far the world's best CS:GO team and are back-to-back Major champions in 2016 and also hold first place finishes this year at the ESL Pro League Season 3 Finals and DreamHack Austin (in addition to three second place finishes).

SK started July much as thirteen of the fifteen teams in this write-up started the month, namely by attending the ESL One Cologne 2016 Major. As many may have predicted considering the Brazilian's strong form, they went on to win the Major and only lost a map to Virtus.pro (17-19 on Cobblestone) in the semifinal in the process of doing so.

With coldzera putting in another Major MVP performance which continued the trend of thinking of the Brazilian player as the game's current best, the Brazilians generally had smooth sailing although they had to deal with a nasty piece of news during the middle of the Major that saw them disqualified from ELEAGUE.

We have not heavily penalised SK for what is technically a 23-24th place finish in the $1.4 million league (in fact the only setback was SK not receiving points from the league which also meant that the league's worth deflated in value slightly due to two less teams in contention) and thus the Brazilians remain comfortably cemented on the highest perch of the CS:GO scene.

2. fnatic

Player	Age	Rating
Olof "olofmeister" Kajbjer	24	1.14
Robin "flusha" Rönnquist	22	1.11
Dennis "dennis" Edman	25	1.07
Jesper "JW" Wecksell	21	1.00
Freddy "KRIMZ" Johansson	22	0.99

Although fnatic lost their second place spot due to the supremacy of G2 last month, their 3-4th place at ESL One Cologne and 2nd place at ELEAGUE Season 1 again move them back to the familiar territory of being just one step behind the Brazilians for world's best team.

However, despite such an exalted spot on the ranking, this team are often involved in upcoming roster rumours and in general their wins look less confident and their losses look more brutal and seem to take a toll on a team used to dominating the scene.

For example, fnatic looked set in stone on their way to another Major grand final in Cologne but they were then humbled by a Aleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev and Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski-powered Liquid effort that saw the Swedish heavyweights lose two maps 13-16 and bow out in the semifinals (still a step above their 5-8th place Columbus effort).

ELEAGUE had a similar character to it: fnatic swept aside EnVyUs and Na`Vi in the quarter-finals and semifinals respectively but were then capsized by a very strong Virtus.pro in the grand final. And thus the Swedes may hold second place but it is a very brittle second place indeed.

3. Virtus.pro

Player	Age	Rating
Janusz "Snax" Pogorzelski	23	1.15
Paweł "byali" Bieliński	22	1.06
Wiktor "TaZ" Wojtas	30	1.03
Filip "NEO" Kubski	29	0.99
Jarosław "pashaBiceps" Jarząbkowski	28	0.99

The greatest success story of July is no doubt Virtus.pro, with the Poles yet again defying the gravitational forces of roster instability and ageing in CS:GO to prove that they can still contend for the premium titles, and even win them.

The Cologne Major gave us an inkling of what was to come at ELEAGUE with Virtus.pro trumping their group and then putting down a fairly scrappy Astralis team to advance to the quarter-finals against SK. In these semifinals, the Polish team distinguished themselves by taking a map off of SK on Cobblestone in overtime, becoming the only team to beat the Brazilians on a map in Cologne.

Virtus.pro then had to go the long road in ELEAGUE via the Last Chance Qualifier as they had lost the Group F final to EnVyUs and that road turned out to be one easily traveled as the Poles took down Gambit and Renegades to qualify for the playoffs (although surprisingly the former team took them to overtime on one map and the latter team to double overtime).

By now gathering a dangerous level of momentum and steam, Virtus.pro swept NiP 2-0 in their quarter-final game (which was widely considered to be the trickiest of the four quarter-finals to predict), and then 2-0'd mousesports and fnatic in the semifinals and grand final with both series being fairly one-sided contests.

With this extraordinary run, VP secured themselves not only their second first place finish in 2016 (the first being the SL i-League Invitational) but also their largest first place prize victory in CS:GO, with $390,000 going to the ELEAGUE Season 1 winner.

4. Natus Vincere

Player	Age	Rating
Ladislav "GuardiaN" Kovács	25	1.14
Ioann "Edward" Sukhariev	28	1.13
Denis "seized" Kostin	21	1.05
Egor "flamie" Vasilyev	19	1.01
Danylo "Zeus" Teslenko	28	0.91

Na`Vi's dreams of winning a Major were yet again thwarted at ESL One Cologne, and yet again by a team from the Western hemisphere. Whereas Columbus saw Luminosity (now SK) blow out the CIS region's best team in the grand final, this time around it was a Yankee team with a little bit of Ukrainian mercenary work that eliminated Na`Vi in 5-8th place at the Cologne Major.

Na`Vi then nearly suffered from American team, PTSD-like flashbacks during the quarter-final of ELEAGUE Season 1 as Cloud9 almost took a best-of-three off of them and they were promptly dispatched by fnatic in the semifinals 0-2 to finish in 3-4th place in the league.

A lot of the post season roster rumours swirl around Na`Vi and it will be interesting to see if the CIS region team will indeed act on the impulses to perhaps bring a little more stability and/or firepower into their team or attempt to ride out the maelstrom and try their chances later on in the year to win a Major.

5. G2

Player	Age	Rating
Adil "ScreaM" Benrlitom	22	1.20
Richard "shox" Papillon	24	1.18
Cédric "RpK" Guipouy	26	1.05
Alexandre "bodyy" Pianaro	19	0.96
Edouard "SmithZz" Dubourdeaux	27	0.94

Previously celebrated as the second best team in the world in our June ranking thanks to their dominant ECS Season 1 finals performance, G2 were unable to make their previous magic work in July and were the team to get the unfortunate end of the stick in the Cologne Group of Death.

shox & co. lost their Group D opening match to SK 11-16 and then were narrowly defeated by fnatic 13-16 in a merciless elimination match that could have easily provided the fuel for a legendary best-of-three match had it happened in the playoffs.

Having to content with this 13-16th place exit was no doubt hard for G2, but tough times continued during the ELEAGUE Last Chance Qualifier as the French-Belgian team played an immensely long series against mousesports where Nikola "NiKo" Kovač simply transcended the bounds of what it meant to play Counter-Strike. Obviously this loss, and G2's 11-14th place finish at ELEAGUE, will have an asterisk placed next to them as the team had to play with Simon "Fuks" Florysiak (who struggled) as a replacement for RpK.

6. Astralis

Player	Age	Rating
Nicolai "device" Reedtz	20	1.21
Markus "Kjaerbye" Kjærbye	18	1.15
Peter "dupreeh" Rasmussen	23	1.11
Andreas "Xyp9x" Højsleth	20	0.96
Finn "karrigan" Andersen	26	0.88

Disaster struck Astralis at the Major as, following their opening victory over dignitas and Group A winners' match loss to Gambit, teammate dupreeh was forced to miss the rest of the Major due to an appendix infection.

Already playing with stand-in Lukas "gla1ve" Rossander in lieu of Kjaerbye due to Valve's Minor rules, Astralis were forced to use coach Danny "zonic" Sørensen for their group decider match against Danish rivals dignitas, in a game which Astralis very narrowly won and thus cemented Legends status.

Oddly enough, despite their struggles against dignitas, Astralis took Virtus.pro through the lone mile during the Cologne quarter-finals as the team managed to take both maps into overtime despite the clear struggles of zonic. Team star device meanwhile was in a finer form than we have long seen him as he seemed to be playing with the energy and vengeance of the ghost of dupreeh behind him.

Unfortunately, such spiritedness completely left the Danes by the time their ELEAGUE playoffs match rolled around and, despite being reunited with their full lineup including dupreeh and Kjaerbye, they were completely drubbed by mousesports and out of the league in 5-8th place. July thus showed that Astralis had become more of a quarter-finals than a semifinals team, although extenuating circumstances clearly cast a question mark over the Major.

7. NiP

Player	Age	Rating
Patrik "f0rest" Lindberg	28	1.08
Christopher "GeT_RiGhT" Alesund	26	1.03
Jacob "pyth" Mourujärvi	22	0.98
Richard "Xizt" Landström	25	0.96
Adam "friberg" Friberg	24	0.87

NiP's slide in form continued in July (following an already paltry June that last saw them exit early on in the ECS Season 1 finals) and the Ninjas made history for themselves in a bad way at the Cologne Major as they failed to break through groups and become Legends for the first time ever in the organisation's career.

As they were convincingly outplayed by FlipSid3 in the Group B decider match, some of this shocking defeat rests on the laurels of FlipSid3's preparation against the Ninjas, but it would not be a stretch to say that NiP's post-Malmö victory momentum has almost completely vanished by now.

NiP barely even rose a finger against Virtus.pro in the ELEAGUE playoffs quarter-finals as well, and the team who had thrilled us by upsetting top-dogs G2 in the Group B final were suddenly out of the event in 5-8th place with a mere whimper.

The road will not get easier for NiP in the coming months as their failure to make it into the Cologne playoffs means that this team will have to contend with a very hungry playing field in order to make it into the next Major later on this year.

8. mousesports

Player	Age	Rating
Nikola "NiKo" Kovač	19	1.14
Chris "chrisJ" de Jong	26	1.03
Johannes "nex" Maget	24	0.96
Denis "denis" Howell	21	0.93
Timo "Spiidi" Richter	20	0.90

mousesports are a team who have long known suffering as results just barely elude this lineup and that tendency at first seemed confirmed to continue in July as they yet again went out in 9-12th place at a CS:GO Major (losing the Group C decider match to Liquid).

But NiKo and his toils soon transmuted into a record high level placing for this team at ELEAGUE. mousesports came into the Last Chance Qualifier (as they had imploded to FlipSid3 back during the Group E semifinal in June) and they prevailed through one of the hardest bracket paths to qualify for the playoffs.

This path included beating the then-second best team in the world G2 in a three map thriller (which featured a triple overtime on the second map and an overtime on the third map) and then also edging out FaZe in the semifinal (in a game where mousesports came back from being eight points down on Cache to win in overtime). 

The German-Dutch-Bosnian team topped this all off by dismantling a dazed-looking Astralis in the actual quarter-finals of the league's playoffs and they finally lost in a convincing 0-2 defeat to Virtus.pro to finish in 3-4th place the prestigious league.

9. Liquid

Player	Age	Rating
Spencer "Hiko" Martin	26	1.05
Jacob "Pimp" Winneche	21	1.03
Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski	19	1.00
Nick "nitr0" Cannella	20	1.00
Josh "jdm64" Marzano	26	0.98

America's hope made the finals of a Major but have also had to reckon with their 17-22nd place finish at ELEAGUE coming into effect (which applies for three-fifths of this lineup) as well as the loss of s1mple. This mixed effect thus brings them down to ninth place in the monthly ranking.

The Cologne Major was like a dream come true for Hiko and his team as they played their last huzzah with Ukrainian star s1mple (who simply shone throughout the tournament), and managed to survive a fairly tough group by taking down both EnVyUs in their opening match and mousesports 2-0 in the decider match (they lost to VP in the winners' match).

Liquid's playoffs run at Cologne was even more electrifying as they edged out Na`Vi 2-1 in the quarter-finals against expectations and then did one better by 2-0'ing fnatic, with both teams having long been in our top five ranking. Only in the grand final against SK did the 'Murica train seemingly run out of steam as the Brazilians had their way with Liquid.

Aside from SK who were disqualified from ELEAGUE, Liquid are the only other team in the Top 10 who did not return to Atlanta after the Major to play in Turner's $1.4 million season as they had bombed out of Group A with only losses with their previous lineup back in May. This stumble, in addition to s1mple having now departed from the active lineup, act as setbacks to Liquid rising in the ranking.

10. EnVyUs

Player	Age	Rating
Kenny "kennyS" Schrub	21	1.12
Vincent "Happy" Schopenhauer	24	1.01
Dan "apEX" Madesclaire	23	0.97
Nathan "NBK-" Schmitt	22	0.95
Timothée "DEVIL" Démolon	21	0.90

Any vestige of EnVyUs' strong run during Group F of ELEAGUE in late June was completely wiped away this past month as the French team played four offline maps in total and lost all four soundly.

Already having been humiliated at MLG Columbus via their 13-16th place exit, this team stacked with previous Major winners had yet again to contend with a 13-16th place Major blowout at ESL One Cologne following losses to Liquid and mousesports.

nV's strong Group F victory meant that they were automatically in to the ELEAGUE playoffs, but the Frenchmen put up a scant fight against fnatic in the quarter-finals and were thus out in 5-8th place. With their 3-4th place DreamHack Masters Malmö finish having aged enough to degrade in value, EnVyUs are likely to fall further and are also widely linked with roster changes outside of this fact.

11. FaZe

Player	Age	Rating
Håvard "rain" Nygaard	21	1.15
Philip "aizy" Aistrup	20	1.05
Ricardo "fox" Pacheco	29	0.98
Joakim "jkaem" Myrbostad	22	0.97
Fabien "kioShiMa" Fiey	22	0.95

The struggles of FaZe continued in July as, despite being a team that has shown an ephemeral ability to hit quite a high skill ceiling at times, they finished in 9-12th place at ESL One Cologne and 9-10th place at ELEAGUE Season 1.

Cologne at first started on a strong foot as a aizy-led effort saw the European clique defeat fnatic 16-14 in their opening Group of Death match. However, FaZe did not have the same level of discipline when it came to taking on SK and they quickly lost the group winners' match and found themselves facing off against fnatic again in the best-of-three decider. Here, the Swedes took full vengeance and pummeled FaZe 2-0 to knock them out of the Major and deny them Legends status.

FaZe then came into the ELEAGUE Season 1 Last Chance Qualifier and struggled mightily against CLG in the quarter-finals, an ominous portent as CLG were playing with an outbound Tarik "tarik" Celik and Faruk "pita" Pita and still managed to take the third map to double overtime. Things turned even worse against mousesports, where the third map of Cache saw FaZe possess a commanding lead (14-6 at on point) only to lose in overtime and fail to qualify for the ELEAGUE playoffs.

12. FlipSid3

Player	Age	Rating
Georgi "WorldEdit" Yaskin	24	1.13
Yegor "markeloff" Markelov	28	0.98
Jan "wayLander" Rahkonen	22	0.97
Andrey "B1ad3" Gorodenskiy	29	0.82
Oleksandr "Shara" Hordieyev	23	0.80

FlipSid3's greatest achievement in July was no doubt their historic ascension to Legends status at the Cologne Major, in a group where many would have doubted their ability to do so.

B1ad3's team lost their opening match to Na`Vi, promptly eliminated OpTic in the elimination match, and then played a legendary best-of-three against NiP (which included flattening the Ninjas on Cache) that saw the Ukrainian-Russian-Finn team eliminate an outfit whose core had made the playoffs at every single Major to date.

FlipSid3 did lose to Major champions SK 0-2 in the quarter-finals but they did have the added distinction of taking the Brazilians to overtime on one of the maps (Nuke), becoming one of the closer teams to take a map off of the juggernauts at the Major (something which only Virtus.pro managed to do in the semifinals).

Such an impressive run was rather deflated at the ELEAGUE Last Chance Qualifier where FlipSid3 were quickly blown out of the water by the relatively unproven Renegades (taking two 5-16 losses in their best-of-three) to finish in 11-14th place in that league.

13. Cloud9

Player	Age	Rating
Jake "Stewie2K" Yip	18	1.10
Mike "shroud" Grzesiek	22	1.07
Tyler "Skadoodle" Latham	23	1.07
Jordan "n0thing" Gilbert	25	1.03
Alec "Slemmy" White	25	0.82

Like the state of the Pax Americana, Cloud9 seem a little faded from their glory days of 2015 and they have had to learn to play second fiddle to North America's new hope: Team Liquid (as well as losing to other upstarts from the region such as TSM).

n0thing did not attend ESL One Cologne as they went 2-3 at the Cologne Major qualifier (which included playing a number of close games that could have gone either way).

Cloud9's first order in July was therefore to cement their status as one of North America's best teams by winning the online iBP Summer Invitational (although neither Liquid nor CLG competed). This included a notable revenge win over TSM who had defeated Slemmy & co. back at the ECS Season 1 Finals in June.

Cloud9 then came into the ELEAGUE Season 1 playoffs as they had been relegated into the final eight due to taking SK's Group A spot (and thus skipping the Last Chance Qualifier). We actually saw the team give a good account of themselves and nearly defeat Na`Vi in the quarter-finals as the third map went all thirty round with Na`Vi barely edging out the win.

With reports breaking in late July that the team may replace leader Slemmy (and/or relegate him to a coaching role), it is likely that Cloud9 will seek to bolster their firepower ahead of the second half of 2016.

14. Gambit

Player	Age	Rating
Dauren "AdreN" Kystaubayev	26	1.07
Rustem "mou" Telepov	24	1.06
Mihail "Dosia" Stolyarov	28	0.91
Ivan "spaze" Obrezhan	19	0.87
Dmitry "hooch" Bogdanov	29	0.81

Gambit achieve the Top Fifteen thanks to their memorable ascension to Legends status as a result of their 5-8th place finish at the Cologne Major. The Russian-Kazakh team took advantage of a group full of ailing teams and defeated CLG and a crippled Astralis to top their Major group.

Gambit were promptly flattened by fnatic in the Major quarter-finals and they then jetted off to Atlanta, Georgia for the ELEAGUE Last Chance Qualifier where they lost immediately to Virtus.pro 0-2 (although their Dust2 match did go into overtime) and finished 11-14th place in the $1.4 million league.

In some sense, Gambit have made the Top Fifteen purely via their 5-8th place Cologne finish and in other places they have shown us a very disjointed team that is still struggling to find consistency and suffering from the notorious "volatile CIS team" problem.

But in any case, Dosia, AdreN, & co. have yet again proven that they can still hang with the game's greats and catch many teams off guard.

15. Immortals

Player	Age	Rating
Henrique "HEN1" Teles	21	1.10
Ricardo "boltz" Prass	19	1.07
João "felps" Vasconcellos	19	1.06
Lucas "LUCAS1" Teles	21	1.04
Wilton "zews" Prado	28	-

Immortals have the strange distinction of having competed in neither the ESL One Cologne Major (they failed to qualify as a result of going 1-3 at the Cologne Major Qualifier back in June) and ELEAGUE Season 1 (the reasons for their omission while representing Tempo Storm have been hinted at in an interview with Tempo's owner).

Thus, the DreamHack Summer winners take a strong fall this month to fifteenth place, as they previously managed for quite some time to hang within the Top 10 (off the back of their CEVO Gfinity Season 9 and DreamHack Summer wins).

The only change that the team underwent this month was removing Gustavo "SHOOWTiME" Gonçalves from their lineup and bringing on board SK's coach zews, with the 28-year-old being quite the elder to his youngish teammates and no doubt bringing a plethora of experience with him.

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

August 2016 will be a very quiet month for teams in the Top 20 as it is officially the off-season. Thus our ranking update by the end of the next month should be a fairly quiet one with minimal movements up and down. If you are hungry for CS:GO action in the coming month, you can find a few upcoming regional tournaments listed here.

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