Welcome back to the Team Beyond Power Rankings! The second week of the HCS Pro League certainly had some surprising results, which made it even more difficult for our power rankers to make sense of it all. Nevertheless, we’ve tried our best and are here to present our tenth installment of our Power Rankings series. Lets jump right into it with a look at how this week’s and last week’s top eight vote receivers performed against each other and then with a look at the personal and aggregate power rankings.

#1 Counter-Logic Gaming | SnakeBite, Royal 2, Frosty, Lethul

Trending: — | Record: 4-0-0 (22-2)

When the HCS settings refresh went live, we talked about how teams would have a chance to prevent CLG from creating such a wide gap between them and the rest of the field this time around if teams put in the time and effort to practice, learn, and perfect their gameplay on the new weapon layouts. In the three weeks prior to the refresh, CLG posted a 85.4% map win percentage and in the two weeks following the settings refresh, CLG’s map percentage dipped a little down to 80.9%. In the past two weeks (during which the other teams have decided not to prevent the gap from widening), CLG has posted a map win percentage of 94% (47-3). Needless to say, everyone is most certainly playing for 2nd.

#2 Renegades | Ninja, Commonly, Victory X, Penguin

Trending: — | Record: 2-1-0 (16-3)

Although Renegades find themselves at the #2 spot again, they may begin to fall down the ranks sometime in the near future if they fail to get more practice in. In the past two weeks, they’ve only played five series as a team against the rest of the top eight, and four of those series were mandatory Pro League series. If this schtick sounds somewhat familiar, it’s because we harped on Evil Geniuses for the same lack of practice before they began their recent descent down the power rankings (more on that later).

#3 Team EnVyUs | Mikwen, Pistola, eL Town, Rayne

Trending: ▲2 | Record: 4-1-0 (23-10)

Last week we touched on Team EnVyUs’s recent inability to break out of their awkward better-than-average-but-not-top-tier status in the HCS, and said that nV would “have a chance to right that ship on Thursday in their match against Renegades”. They did exactly that with a 3-2 Pro League win against Renegades, and added on scrimmage wins against Liquid (8-6) and Allegiance (9-2) as well as securing a 3-0 sweep of OpTic Gaming in their other Pro League match of last week.

#4 Enigma6 | Huke, bubu dubu, Cratos, Shooter

Trending: — | Record: 2-1-0 (11-4)

Returning at the #4 spot is Enigma6, who for the third straight week has suffered a rather key loss that prevents them from moving up the power rankings. Three weeks ago, E6 lost to nV (0-3) in the first round of the Pro League Preview Tournament. Two weeks ago, Enigma6 lost a Pro League match against Renegades (1-3). This past week, Enigma6 got swept by the previously #8 ranked Allegiance. Nevertheless, many still consider Enigma6 to be the team that is most likely to take a series off of CLG if it were to ever happen, and they’ll have a chance to do exactly that on Friday night in their second Pro League match of the week.

#5 Team Allegiance | Contra, PreDevonator, Ryanoob, Goofy

Trending: ▲3 | Record: 1-3-0 (5-18)

Despite a 1-3-0 record, Allegiance moves up three spots in the power ranking to the #5 spot. Team Allegiance started off the week with some unimpressive scrimmages against nV (2-9) and OpTic (0-5), but remedied that with a very impressive 3-0 sweep of #4 ranked Enigma6 in their first Pro League match of the week. Allegiance was unable to roll that momentum into their Friday Pro League match against CLG, in which they got swept rather quickly. In the upcoming third week of the HCS Pro League, Allegiance will have a chance to cement themselves ahead of those currently ranked below them when they face off against EG (Thursday) and OpTic (Friday).

#6 Evil Geniuses | Snipedown, Roy, Lunchbox, Suspector

Trending: ▼3 | Record: 0-3-1 (10-17)

Last week, we said that “it would be entirely unsurprising if Evil Geniuses were to begin a slow descent down the power rankings over the next couple of weeks”. A week later, Evil Geniuses have slid down three spots down to the #6 spot. The same team that took gold at the X-Games several months ago started the week off with a scrimmage loss against the recently unimpressive Team Liquid (4-5). EG then followed it up with two 0-3 losses to CLG and Enigma6 in the Pro League, and then finished their week off by splitting games evenly in a scrimmage against eLevate (6-6) who currently are not in the Pro League and finished fourth in the most recent Challenger tournament. EG has a chance to bounce back this week in the Pro League when they face off against #3 ranked EnVyUs and #5 ranked Allegiance, but suffering two more losses this week might as well be an early nail in the coffin for this team’s Pro League Season Final aspirations.

#7 OpTic Gaming | Maniac, Ace, Str8 Sick, aPG

Trending: — | Record: 2-3-0 (13-27)

In the next week, OpTic Gaming has the most realistic opportunity to gain a lot of ground in the Pro League and our own Power Rankings if they can secure wins on both nights. OpTic will first get a chance at #2 ranked Renegades on Thursday, who they have proven that they could beat in the past (4-2 in the Burbank online qualifier and 3-2 at the Burbank Pro League LAN qualifier). Then OpTic will have a chance at #5 ranked Allegiance on Friday night, who they’ve recently swept in a short scrimmage (5-0). If OpTic can walk away with two wins this week, they may find themselves around fifth place of both the Pro League standings and our own Power Rankings.

#8 Team Liquid | Spartan, Stellur, Eco, Assault

Trending: ▼2 | Record: 1-6-0 (16-28)

Team Liquid currently sits as the only team in the HCS Pro League without a series win (while also posting a very demoralizing 2-12 map count). However, Liquid do have a realistic chance to start making some noise in the Pro League in the coming week. On Thursday, Spartan and friends will face off against Team EnVyUs, who they’ve had some relatively close scrimmages with in the past few week (6-8, 4-6, 5-7). Liquid will then face off against Enigma6 on Friday, who they’ve also had some close scrimmages with lately (2-4, 6-8).

That wraps it up for the tenth installment of the Team Beyond Power Rankings. Which teams do you think should be ranked higher? Which ones should be ranked lower? As always, if you would like to discuss our power rankings make sure to head over to our forums!

Photos courtesy of David “Sandman” Doran; make sure to give David a follow on Twitter!

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What are the power rankings based on?

The Team Beyond Power Rankings are intended to reflect how the power rankers believe the top eight teams in the world would stack up against each other in a LAN environment, given every team’s performance in the past week in scrimmages, online tournaments, and LAN events. Imagine the power rankings being our way of answering the commonly asked question in sports, “If the playoffs started today, how would teams do?”.

Why do you include online scrimmage results in your data?

We believe that any available metric that allows the power rankers to evaluate a team’s recent performance is useful. However, the power rankers do put much more weight on LAN event and online tournament results, with obviously the former being the most heavily weighted and the latter being the second most.

Why do the power rankings only use the most recent week of data?

The power rankings being weekly allows us to strike a balance that allows them to be persistent and intriguing as opposed to overabundant and meaningless. However, although the data that is used is weekly, general trends over time are considered such as a particular coach consistently contributing to better performance on LAN or general LAN performance trends (both good and bad) by particular players.

Why did you guys give ________ the #__ spot?

Sometimes the power rankings can yield somewhat surprising results. Often you will find vast differences in opinion amongst the power rankers, and variance can lead to a lower aggregate score compared to a team that receives a consistent ranking around the middle. Also, the nature of power rankings can be rather subjective despite their dependence on raw data. Different people can interpret the same data very differently, which can lead to a lot of variance.

How does the aggregate scoring work?

For each power ranking, teams are awarded points based on the rank they receive. #1 is worth 8 points, #2 is worth 7 points, #3 is worth 6 points, etc. After all the rankings have been submitted, each teams’ points are aggregated into a total, and those totals determine the final top eight ranks. For example, if a team receives a #2, #2, #3, and #4 ranking they would receive 25 points (7 + 7 + 6 + 5).