Mar 24, 2018

In Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, map specific considerations are still too often overlooked by casual observers. To provide a better baseline for these discussions, this article will name and rank the best teams in the world on each specific map. A team’s map prowess will be weighed in accordance with the criteria listed here.

This ranking will evaluate the last 100 days of play, from December 8th 2017 to March 18th 2018. As the ESL Pro League Season 5 finals started on December 5th and ended on the 10th all results from that tournament will be counted in an attempt at fairness. Also, given the amount of games and level of competition at WESG World Finals 2017, some teams’ map record will be inflated this edition. Please note that the sum quality of wins, not quantity alone, is primary feature being assessed here.

Inferno As professional play arrived full-fledged in 2018, Inferno alongside Mirage remains at the very top of the mapool in terms of popularity and importance. Among the top teams who play Inferno, five stand out in terms of accomplishments, Liquid (7-3), Cloud9 (11-5), Na’Vi (9-3), FaZe (9-6), and Fnatic (9-5). Cloud9 has the most wins and Na’Vi has the best win rate (75%), but if you look at the amount of wins each one of these five has over the remaining four a different story emerges. In interplay, FaZe has five wins, Fnatic has four, Na’Vi has three, Cloud9 has two, and Liquid has one. I’ve decided to rank the teams in line with this record, with the exception of FaZe-Fnatic. With Fnatic’s three wins over FaZe and slightly better record, I think they deserve the top spot. Fnatic FaZe Na’VI Cloud9

Mirage Mirage, like, Inferno remains very popular at the moment, and, also like Inferno, has five teams whose accomplishment loom large over the rest of the scene: Liquid (8-6), Cloud9 (10-5), Fnatic (11-4), mousesports (12-5), and FaZe (14-2). Looking at the interplay between these five specifically, however, is not as instructive this time around. FaZe has seven wins, Liquid and Fnatic have three, while mousesports and Cloud9 have two. FaZe gets the obvious nod for the top spot, and I think Liquid’s lesser record and winrate take them out the running, but it’s very close among the remaining three. Cloud9 looks like the best candidate for the number four spot given their weaker record and zero wins over FaZe, mousesports, or Fnatic. There is almost nothing separating mousesports from Fnatic, but some of mousesports’ wins (AVANGAR, Renegades, Vega Squadron, Space Soldiers, Virtus.pro) don’t quite stand up to the average level of Fnatic’s opponents. FaZe Fnatic Mousesports Cloud9

Overpass Overpass continues to shine as a specialist map, where some teams heavily succeed and others flounder. Like Mirage, FaZe stands out as the obvious world leader with nearly twice as many LAN wins in the last 100 day as any other team. However, below FaZe, there are three teams with four wins and a decent win rate: Astralis (4-1), Liquid (4-1), and Na’Vi (4-2). Cloud9 also stands out with 5 wins, but their four losses more or less take them out of the conversation. With wins over Liquid and FaZe, Na’Vi seems like the clear silver medalist, and Astralis has a win in the head to head versus Liquid, which puts all of our ducks in order for this map. FaZe Na’VI Astralis Liquid

Cache Cache is almost always near the bottom of the map pool only above Nuke, but in the last 100 days we’ve seen a noticeable uptick in Cache’s importance. FaZe, the best team in the world, is picking and playing it regularly, while the major winner and the number two team in the world according to HLTV’s current rankings, Cloud9, has had Cache picked against many times thanks to their perceived weakness on the map. FaZe earn their fourth and final top-4 placing on Cache with a 7-2 record which, for the third time, makes the number one team in the world on this map. SK, despite their troubles elsewhere, earns the number two spot, while another slumbering giant, G2, comes in at number three. FaZe SK Gaming G2

Train Train still gets a fair bit of play though its days as one of the most popular maps in the scene (2016-2017) is becoming an increasingly distant memory. Accordingly, it’s perhaps not a coincidence that it is the first and only map on this list who top-four is completely free of the old guard of 2017 (SK, FaZe, Astralis, G2). Instead we see three members more of the new guard (Cloud9, Liquid, Na’Vi, Fnatic, mousesports) featured prominently. Mousesports with a better win rate and head-to-head wins gets the gold by wide margin followed by C9 and Na’Vi. While Cloud9’s eight wins might look very impressive initially, four of those came from far weaker opponents than we’d typically see in top-level international tournaments (SZ Absolute, The Onliners, GODSENT, MAX). C9’s win over mousesports only barely keeps them above the CIS team. Mousesports Cloud9 Na’VI

Cobblestone Cobblestone seems like the definition of hit or map in the current competitive milieu. Looking at the top-ten teams in the world as ranked by HLTV, only four have more than one win on the map: G2 (3-1), Liquid (4-1), SK (6-2), and Fnatic (6-2). Looking at record alone, it seems that SK and Fnatic should obviously be competing for the number one spot followed by Liquid and G2 respectively. However, both team’s records are pretty padded by wins versus weak competition. SK took two Cobblestone wins over Torqued and MVP PK at CS_Summit 2, while Fnatic has done the same with wins over Luminosity and The Onliners. I think Liquid actually has a better claim to the top spot given their two wins over SK Gaming. Team Liquid SK Gaming Fnatic G2

Nuke Despite the recent makeover, Nuke stubbornly remains at the very bottom of the map pool in terms of play rate. However, unlike the last two editions of my map by map rankings which featured G2 and mousesports in the leading positions, we have a new competitor on Nuke: Astralis. Either because of their recent roster move or the map remork, Astralis have been more prone to play on the power plant recently, grabbing three wins and zero losses. Now, they join mousesports as the only other team on the leaderboard as G2 has only played one game on the Nuke in the past 100 days. Mousesports Astralis