Welcome back to the Team Beyond HCS Power Rankings. In the past week, the final two spots of the HCS Pro League were determined through the 16 team Last Chance Qualifier, while the already qualified teams began to dabble with the new HCS settings preview.

Across the board, more games were played by more teams compared to last week’s barren desert of meaningful practice and as a result we have a new set of power rankings to present to you. As usual, let’s take a look at how teams fared against each other this week (with a special inclusion of the eight teams that participated in the bracket stage of the Last Chance Qualifier):

Next, let’s take a look at how the four individual power rankers ranked the top eight teams in the world, as well as the aggregate power rankings with each team’s respective total.

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

Trending: — | Record: 5-0-0 (51-12)

Although CLG unsurprisingly remains in the #1 position, this past week has been rather interesting for the team. They spent the large majority of the week scrimmaging some of the other Pro League qualified teams on the Team Arena Summer Preview variants in preparation for the slew of changes slated to come sometime this week. Most interestingly though, they found themselves down 3-6 to Enigma6 before winning the last four to secure a 7-6 scrimmage win. Whether it was just the stars aligning right, the new settings providing a new and fresh environment, or Enigma6 just closing the gap, that closely contested scrimmage will ensure that the first Pro League match between the two teams will definitely be must-watch Halo for any fan.

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

Trending: — | Record: 2-1-0 (25-12)

Evil Geniuses remains at the #2 rank with another moderate week of solid practice. EG started off the week with a scrimmage against CLG on the new preview Arena maps and had CLG on the ropes early on in the series. However, like they always do, CLG finished strong and EG left the scrim with four wins to CLG’s seven. EG finished off their week with a convincing win against Renegades (9-4) as well as a rout of Team EnVyUs (12-1). The refresh to the HCS settings may be the opening EG needs to close the gap between them and CLG, and they’re definitely a team to watch closely in the early stages of the Pro League as a result.

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

Trending: — | Record: 2-1-0 (20-13)

Last week Enigma 6 tied for the #3 rank with the Renegades squad, but this week E6 has convincingly taken the #3 spot by not only defeating Renegades in a scrimmage pretty handily (7-0), but by also taking six games to CLG’s seven in another scrimmage on top of that. If you’ve been keeping track, Enigma6’s 13 game scrimmage performance against CLG is the best by any team in the past few months and definitely provides a small glimmer of hope for those who wish to see CLG’s reign at the top come to an end.

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

Trending: ▼1 | Record: 1-3-0 (19-27)

Renegades continue their very methodical descent down the power rankings one spot at a time and find themselves at #4 this week. Dropping four out of thirteen games to the #2 Evil Geniuses and getting blanked by #3 ranked Enigma6 (0-7) did no favors for the team. On top of that, their loss to Team Liquid (6-7) nearly dropped Renegades another spot in the power rankings, as Renegades was able to collect 19 aggregate points this week to Liquid’s 16. This descent is certainly a cause for concern for what was initially considered a rather promising team, but time is definitely on Renegades’ side for them to turn around their recent mishaps.

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

Trending: NEW! | Record: 5-1-0 (25-26)

After going 2-11-0 in the previous two weeks, Team Liquid has completely turned it around this week with a 5-1-0 record and with their spot in the Pro League secured. Their only loss this week was against CLG (1-13), and their wins were certainly more than impressive. Liquid edged out Renegades (7-6) and nV (5-4) in their first scrimmages of the week, and then blazed through the Last Chance Qualifier with decisive wins over Catastrophe (4-1), OpTic (4-0), and eLevate (4-2). Now that they’ve qualified for the Pro League, their next challenge will be learning the new HCS settings which many of the previously qualified teams have already begun to practice on. Nevertheless, it will certainly be interesting to see if Liquid will be able to carry this momentum into the Pro League.

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

Trending: — | Record: 1-4-0 (20-40)

When you lose 66% of your games during any given week, you would probably expect to drop a little in the power rankings. However, between 23 of those 40 losses being against the #1 and #2 ranked teams as well as some teams doing themselves no favor by not playing much at all, nV find themselves back at the #6 spot for this week.

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

Trending: ▼2 | Record: 1-0-0 (8-2)

Missing: Team Allegiance.

Last Seen: Burbank, California on May 8th.

All jokes aside, Team Allegiance got a single ten game scrimmage in this week against hopeful up-and-coming amateur team and Last Chance Qualifier participant Catastrophe (8-2). Obviously with only one series to their name in the last two weeks, there isn’t much to say about this team at the moment. Regardless, some power rankers remain optimistic of Allegiance’s potential despite the lack of practice (Clicked ranked them #5, Simms #6) while others are very skeptical (Infinity left them off entirely, I personally ranked them #8).

#8 OpTic Gaming | Maniac, Ace, Naded, Str8 Sick

Trending: — | Record: 7-2-0 (44-23)

The guys in green got the job done this past weekend during the Last Chance Qualifier, and were able to nab the final spot in the HCS Pro League. Although their record looks rather out of place for a #8 ranked team, a lot of that can be attributed to their dominance of a lot of top amateur teams between scrimmages and the actual LCQ. It should be noted that OpTic walked away with 7 aggregate power ranking points, and only fell one point short of #7 Allegiance and two points short of #6 EnVyUs.

And that’s a wrap! With the HCS Pro League spots all set, and with Pro League matches not beginning until June 2nd, it may seem at first glance that there isn’t much intriguing Halo to watch this week. However, between our $1000 ASTRO Spartan 4v4 online tournament, the finalizing of the Summer 2016 Season’s HCS settings, and the imminent scrimmages on said settings, there is plenty of exciting and important Halo action to treat your eyes to this week.

As always, f 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.

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, it is important to note that although the power rankings are weekly, the power rankers are encouraged to give the higher ranked teams the benefit of the doubt after a relatively bad week and to err on the side of caution when a lower ranked or unranked team has an outstanding week. Generally speaking, it would take a very convincing performance at a LAN event (either good or bad) for a team rise or drop in the rankings a significant amount.

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).