From Nuke becoming one of the most played maps to Echo Fox needing to try harder...
We take a look at what we’ve learnt from ELEAGUE’s group of death.
Echo Fox need to try harder
Echo Fox were full of hope and optimism after a convincing victory to qualify for ELEAGUE, battering Liquid in a dominant display on Nuke.
However their feel-good factor was cut short as the ruthless Virtus.Pro gave them a reality check with a crushing 16-1 defeat.
To make things worse for the Americans, in the three maps they played and out of a possible 48 rounds they won a grand total of seven.
Going forward they’ll have a better understanding of what it takes to play against tier 1 teams and can learn from their mistakes.
Get_RiGhT turning back time
GeT_RiGhT was by far NiP’s stand out player at ESL Pro League in Brazil and at times showed glimpses of his 2013/14 form.
He went one step further at ELEAGUE and produced one of his finest performances of 2016, ending the group with a rating of 1.30 – the highest of any player so far.
In 2013 and 2014 he was ranked as the world’s best player by HLTV and as we enter the latter stages of 2016 he’s certainly staking a claim to the title for a third time.
Scream and Shox the deadly duo
G2 may have failed to get out of groups but Scream and Shox showed yet again why they’re regarded as two of the most skilled players right now.
The way they both tore apart Echo fox looked like they were smurfing in matchmaking.
Even when they were losing they’re still putting up high numbers against the very best, a feat that not many players can match.
Their HLTV ratings may be boosted by playing Echo Fox twice but if the rest of G2 step up the French are capable of competing with the world’s best.
Virtus.Pro first gear from the get go
Fly to Atlanta… Play two maps… Fly back home… The quickest LAN group stage Virtus.Pro has ever played.
They swiftly dispatched the ever trying Echo Fox and followed that up with a convincing win vs NiP.
Being slow starters seems to be a thing of the past for the Polish side as they dropped just a single round in the first map.
At any given time Byali, Snax and Neo are all capable of god-like performances and with Taz and Pasha picking up the pieces they’re a team looking strong enough to win IEM Oakland without breaking sweat.
Nuke is becoming more popular
Every team played Nuke at least once during ELEAGUE’s group B and it was played a total of three times out of the seven maps.
Where previously it was an insta-ban for teams, many teams look to strengthen their map pool’s by turning to Nuke.
Currently Nuke is NiP’s go to map where they look unbeatable and it’s definitely a map we can expect to be played a lot at the next Major in Atlanta.
