Team Ranking: November 2018
We’ve updated our Global team ranking — powered by EGB.com — for November 2018.
November was quite the busy month, with several “Big Events”, such as IEM Chicago and the ECS Season 6 Finals in Texas taking place alongside smaller-scale LANs, with DreamHack Opens in Atlanta and Jönköping, SuperNova CS:GO Malta and the Toyota Master Bangkok, as well as the conclusion of the online leagues ESL Pro League Season 8 and ECS Season 6.
Astralis further solidified their dominant year with wins in Chicago and Arlington, as they shut out the local heroes Liquid 3-0 in the grand final of the former event after taking down fnatic and MOUZ in the playoffs, and also lifted the trophy after a double-overtime Overpass brawl with a reinvigorated MIBR in the final at the latter tournament. Nicolai "device" Reedtz added to his MVP-count by grabbing the medal at both events, bringing his 2018 tally to six (tied with Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev), and his career total to 11 — a record among MVP recipients.
Liquid rounded off November with a win at SuperNova CS:GO Malta after struggling with grand finals performances, ending a streak of five appearances in tournament deciders without a win.
ENCE ended November on a high note, as the Finnish squad took the title at DreamHack Open Winter, beating teams such as OpTic and G2 on the way, and making quick work of the surprise-finalists Bravado in the end. As for the other medium-sized events in November, Vitality triumphed at their first LAN ever by winning DreamHack Open Atlanta, while the Danes and Swedes in Heroic grabbed the win at Toyota Master Bangkok after a best-of-five marathon match against TYLOO, with the team’s AWP’er, Daniel "mertz" Mertz, nearly reaching 150 kills in the series.
Here's a summary of our 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.
Here is the current top 30 table as of December 3, 2018, which goes more in-depth into how the points are distributed – or you can check our special page, where you will be able to find the latest, weekly version of our ranking. You can see the lineup for each team by hovering over their name in the table.
POINTS
Please note that the +/- gain on this table differs from our weekly rankings page, and it is related to the ranking update of November 5, 2018.
With several big and small events along with the conclusion of this season’s online leagues, the table sees plenty of changes outside the very top. Here are some of the key takeaways from our November update:
NRG close in on the Top 5
Despite losing to their North American rival Liquid in the grand final in Malta, Damian "daps" Steele's troops have moved up two spots to reach No. 6 in our November ranking. NRG began the month with a group stage exit at IEM Chicago following losses to North and the surprise quarter-finalists LDLC, with an impressive 2-1 win over MIBR, in which the young Bulgarian Tsvetelin "CeRq" Dimitrov posted a massive 1.37 rating, proof of how high the team's ceiling is.
Before moving on to the ECS Season 6 Finals, NRG scraped together a few ranking points by ending their ESL Pro League Season 8 online with two 2-0 victories over Renegades and Cloud9. In Arlington, Jacob "FugLy" Medina and co. once again lost to North for another group stage exit, but, just like in Chicago, they showed their true potential with a 2-0 win over Liquid, on the back of an impressive 1.52 rating by the 23-year-old American.
The bouts with Nick "nitr0" Cannella’s men continued at SuperNova CS:GO Malta, with NRG losing the matchup both in the group stage (1-2) and in the grand final (0-2). Liquid seem to be NRG's nemesis, with daps's troops having won every other match in Malta without dropping a map.
Worth noting is that DreamHack Masters Stockholm (in September) no longer influences the LAN portion of the rankings, which severely affects the placements of MOUZ, North and Ninjas in Pyjamas. This, coupled with the solid results over the month, sees NRG reach their highest spot ever at No. 6. Breaking into the top 5 will be hard, though, as NRG’s final event of the year will be the EPL Finals in Odense, where all the teams above them bar FaZe will be present.
Fluctuating French squads
The November update sees two French teams switch places and one new side come into the top 30. Most notably, G2 made big changes by bringing in Lucas "Lucky" Chastang and Audric "JACKZ" Jug to replace Edouard "SmithZz" Dubourdeaux and their Belgian in-game leader, Kévin "Ex6TenZ" Droolans. Apart from Richard "shox" Papillon once again leading the team, a consequence of the move is a drop from 17th to 28th, which is also caused by online losses to Ninjas in Pyjamas, LDLC and HellRaisers prior to the changes and a somewhat poor showing on LAN at DreamHack Open Winter, where they lost a best-of-one to Bravado and a best-of-three series to eventual winners ENCE, with the new line-up.
On the other side of the spectrum, and boasting one of the biggest move ups of the rankings this month, LDLC impressed everyone with a quarter-final run at IEM Chicago, where they beat the higher-placed teams Renegades, North and NRG while taking a map off of Liquid in the quarter-finals. Alex "ALEX" McMeekin’s troops continued their promising month by booking a spot in the closed qualifiers for the European Minor, but then surprisingly couldn’t carry the momentum into DreamHack Open Winter, where they didn’t even win a single map. Despite the abysmal showing in Sweden, LDLC still make a considerable leap in the rankings to reach No. 15.
Entering the top 30 for the first time ever is the Nathan "NBK-" Schmitt-led Vitality, who boast three Major winners and the young superstar Mathieu "ZywOo" Herbaut. After struggling in open qualifier brackets for several weeks, the squad found success by winning DreamHack Open Atlanta after taking down respectable teams such as Fragsters, Rogue and Luminosity, with the 18-year-old débutant extraordinaire reaching a massive 1.49 rating across 10 maps. The week after lifting the trophy in Georgia, Vitality finally qualified for the closed qualifiers for the EU Minor in their fourth attempt, and have now entered the top 30 in the ranking.
fnatic soar after roster changes
With IEM Chicago as the biggest event of the month, fnatic’s impressive run in the Windy City means a big leap ranking-wise, especially since the Swedes had not attended a LAN in October and had not reached the playoffs at either the FACEIT Major or ESL New York.
Chicago was the first event where fnatic fielded their new lineup after replacing William "draken" Sundin and Robin "flusha" Rönnquist with Simon "twist" Eliasson and the young star Ludvig "Brollan" Brolin, with the latter averaging a solid 1.11 rating over nine maps. Richard "Xizt" Landström’s troops began their IEM campaign by beating BIG, eUnited and an otherwise solid-looking Liquid in the group stage, but were stopped by eventual winners Astralis 2-1 in the semi-finals, with the Inferno decider turning into one of the closest and most entertaining maps of the year, ending with a 19-17 overtime win for the Danes.
Following an abysmal 26th ranking in our October update, the reinvigorated Swedish squad have made quite the jump as they now find themselves just outside the top 10. Absent from both the ESL Pro League Season 8 Finals in Odense and BLAST Pro Series Lisbon, the last two big events of the year, fnatic are looking to close 2018 with a win at PLG Grand Slam in Abu Dhabi, where they are the favourites among teams like HellRaisers, AVANGAR and G2.
Na`Vi's #2 spot in danger as the year nears end
Absent from both the ECS Season 6 Finals in Dallas (they did not play in the online league) and SuperNova CS:GO Malta, Natus Vincere missed out on opportunities to gain ranking points. And the only event that they did attend, IEM Chicago, didn’t turn out as expected after s1mple and co. had lifted the trophy at BLAST Pro Series Copenhagen.
The CIS squad finished in last place at the event after unexpectedly losing to local heroes eUnited in the best-of-one opener and subsequently failing to convert two close maps in their 0-2 loss to BIG. Their only other official matches were two losses against the Germans in the final parts of ESL Pro League, which, coupled with the disappointing showing in Chicago, means that Natus Vincere have Liquid breathing down their necks, after the North Americans reached the grand final in Chicago and took home the trophy at SuperNova CS:GO Malta.
With the North Americans eyeing the second spot, Danylo "Zeus" Teslenko's men will have to go far at the EPL finals in Odense, where they are grouped up with three other top 10 teams in NRG, MOUZ and MIBR, and give a great account of themselves in Lisbon in a bid to retain their place in the ranking.
Pujan 'FNS' Mehta
Tomáš 'oskar' Šťastný
Chris 'chrisJ' de Jong
Miikka 'suNny' Kemppi
Martin 'STYKO' Styk
Robin 'ropz' Kool
Ricardo 'Rickeh' Mulholland
Owen 'smooya' Butterfield
Antoine 'to1nou' Pirard
Tsvetelin 'CeRq' Dimitrov
Joakim 'jkaem' Myrbostad
Sean 'Gratisfaction' Kaiwai
Dmitriy 'jR' Chervak
Janko 'YNk' Paunović
Faruk 'pita' Pita
Abay 'HObbit' Khassenov
Bence 'DeadFox' Böröcz
Issa 'ISSAA' Murad
Hansel 'BnTeT' Ferdinand
| 
MrZoldiK
Andr0mega
| 
| 
| 
cyain2029
| 
Alex_GV
| 
p0k1em0n
Yeah_Hentai
| 
cookiesA
Dark_GoNiNjaS
| 
FoxOutOfGlocks
| 
| 
| 
KoksSkirtumas
Kerk
| 
AvailableLucas22
| 
| 
gr1nch
| 
| 
iejesus
| 
alex24
goodyear93
weALLcheat
fAKEs2j
