After every Major the CS:GO pro scene enters into a period of changes for teams that underperformed on the big stage, teams that couldn’t qualify and sometimes even teams that did well and are want to work towards being champions.

This transitory period is filled with rumours of player swaps, players being benched and acquiring rosters and this time is no different, so let’s analyze what we can expect from teams that are going under changes.

Alongside rumours we must also add teams that already confirmed changes, in this case, North.

We will be using the HLTV Ratings to analyze players individually as it’s the best way to rate the pro players for the moment: you can check how it works here.

Misfits interested in South American Roster; OpTic and Gambit might be looking for new players

After the Misfits ended the ELEAGUE Major Boston in 19th – 21th place, they have been reevaluate contracts for ‘Sean Gares’, ‘ShazaM’ and the rest of the team and are now showing an interest in acquiring the ex-Gale Force South American players.

This move is pretty interesting, but we can’t see those players providing the placings and qualifications that their previous roster had, so unless they over-perform under a new banner, Misfits won’t be able to regain their major spot.

On the other hand we have OpTic Gaming which has been indicating a move since late 2017 having ‘HS’ as the possible player to be replaced. This looks highly impossible as the player they were looking to acquire is now in talks with Mousesports as we will see below in this article.

Also there has been rumours that their coach is looking for a North American team as he is the only member of the team that is a North American resident and this surely cause some scheduling problems.

Dennis Joining Mousesports

Dennis has been praised as one of the most skilled players with pistols in-game, an impactful player, especially in eco rounds or pistol rounds back in the day as a Fnatic player.

After the Swedish giant changed their roster last year and transferred Dennis to GODSENT for a short period the player is benched, and his last big tournament was back in BLAST Pro Series as a stand-in for Astralis (important to note, he was a stand-in for Mousesports in his last tournament appearance).

Mousesports acquiring Swedish player Dennis “dennis” Edman’ and replacing ‘STYKO’

Will this change be for the best?

We do believe so!

STYKO has proved to be a great support player but it’s clear that he’s unable keep up with the level that the organization wants to reach, having a negative rating 2.0 in the last four events, only getting positives in events with most teams from below than top 10. Dennis, on the other hand has been hitting some great ratings and his overall statistics overshadow those of Styko. Below you can see a comparison from HLTV:

And the best part of it is that this roster move adds a lot of flexibility in the team. It will allow oskar to be aggressive as he wants and install backbones to support any downfall of aggressive plays . Ropz and SuNNy should also be positively affected by dennis. So far the move is a rumour and there’s speculation of more teams trying to acquire dennis but its appears that Mouz is ahead of every other organization in terms of negotiations.

North adding Mertz and Gade and benching CajunB and k0nfig

This was a controversial move – CajunB was always criticised as an awper for not being able to reach a top-level performance, but we need to remember that he was primarily a rifler that was imposed by karrigan and MSL the awper role.

In fact, as we previously talked about How to Fix North – removing ‘aizy’ who hasn’t been able to show impact in the game, CajunB in a support role and adding a proper awper would be a great move.

However, CajunB is replaced by Mertz who was a player from the North Academy and got promoted to the main team.

.@mertzCS replaces @cajunbCS on Team North. We would like to thank René for his efforts and wish him the best of luck moving forward. Read more: https://t.co/yTbTuz2BDP pic.twitter.com/TrybRpwFKm — North (@TheNorthIsHere) January 29, 2018

Having a proper awper that has previous experience playing with the team coach and ‘valde’ is a great move, but getting ‘aizy’ won’t fix the lack of impact that the roster currently has. That is not the only change coming to North, sources have reported to Dust2.dk, HLTV and other insiders that ‘k0nfig’, the main star of the team who entered in a slump is also going to be benched.

This took everyone by surprise! It’s not confirmed yet who’s decision it was to bench K0nfig, the player himself or the organisation. But what we know that ‘gade’ also from North Academy is coming in.

K0nfig has been in a slump period since the team won their first trophy at Dreamhack Open Montreal last year, posting 7 negative ratings in his last 10 matches. The player himself has acknowledged that he entered into a bad phase, but it still was a surprising move from North. Just like CajunB and mertz, it’s hard to compare k0nfig and gade since they have been playing with a completely different competition, but gade was the second-best player, only behind mertz when the Academy team played at Dreamhack Winter, that had teams like Mousesports and Natus Vincere competing there.

Will these two changes be for the best?

It’s hard to say! We do believe that adding a proper awper can bring a really positive outcome for North but removing their star can surely bring some insecurity, especially if the new players don’t mix very well with MSL systems from the start.

We’ll see North playing with mertz this weekend at the IEM Katowice Europe Qualifier, but we don’t know if ‘gade’ will be included or if we will need to wait another week to see him in action.

An Old Friend Return to EnVyUs

After theEnVyUs roster swap in early 2017, the team never achieved what they set out to do.

According to rumors, k1oshima will be replacing xms and this is great but they cannot count on this element alone to make EnVyUs a competitive team in top tier. We do believe that the biggest problem with the team is the lack of a capable awper as SIXER, the actual player in the role hasn’t been able to fulfil his duties when it comes to playing against teams of a higher tier like Renegades. And the problem in replacing him is that there isn’t a French awper on the level that EnVyUs needs available in the moment – the promising youngster ‘ZywOo’ declined an offer to play for the team since he is still a student.

We do believe that the European roster will bring some improvements with k1oshima but won’t be able to progress as much as they want until they find a viable replacement for their current awper.

100Thieves Add Felps

It’s been reported by Brazilian sources close to the players of the 100Thieves organization, that they have been eyeing up ex-SK player ‘felps’ (that just reached the semi-finals at the Major with ‘FalleN’ team) to replace misbehaving ‘kNg’.

The young player is sure a promising one on the Brazilian scene and his removal of SK was more because of a role conflict than anything else, so the player is a great candidate for 100T. Not only does he already has experience playing with the current members of the organization so having him playing his native role could do wonders to the team.

So we do believe that while we still need to see what this team will be able to achieve under ‘bit1’ leadership we don’t have doubts that felps will be a great addition to their roster.

FaZe Clan might be going under changes

Reported by important personalities Richard Lewis and Thorin – there has been having internal problems in FaZe Clan

Conflicts provoked after the major where the team couldn’t achieve a win to secure the title therefore it would come as no surprise if there are announcements of upcoming changes. Of course, we recommend taking this with a pinch of salt, but we wouldn’t be surprised if the organization start searching for a new in-game leader as the problems seem to lie with the actual leadership coming from ‘karrigan’.

Unfortunately, we don’t have any other reports so far however it’s possible the organization might give karrigan a new opportunity to prove himself.

So, which of these teams are you most excited to watch after the roster changes? Tell us!