Welcome back to the Team Beyond HCS Power Rankings! The first week of the HCS Pro League has concluded and we’re here to digest the results and rank the teams after this inaugural week or Pro League action. Right off the bat, let’s take a look at how all power ranking vote receivers from last week performed against each other this week:

Now let’s take a look at how our four power rankers interpreted those teams’ performances:

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

Trending: — | Record: 5-0-0 (25-1)

When you play less and win more (percentage wise), it’s probably a sign that the gap between you and the field is growing. Granted, four of CLG’s five series last week were against the previously #6, #7, and #8 ranked teams, but dominance is dominance and CLG certainly displayed it last week. CLG started off the power ranking period with a 4-0 sweep of EG in the finals of the Pro League Preview Tournament, and then proceeded to 3-1 OpTic Gaming and 3-0 Team Liquid in their Pro League matches. On Thursday, CLG will have another chance to put their dominance over EG on display in their Week 2 Day 1 Pro League match, so keep an eye out for that.

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

Trending: ▲2 | Record: 2-0-0 (6-3)

Performances like the one of Renegades this week can be very difficult to judge when it comes to power rankings. On one hand, Renegades had a perfect series record this week, all of their matches were of relative high importance, and they beat Enigma6 who were ranked directly above them last week. On the other, they played two series and a total of nine games all week. Nevertheless, Renegades have moved up two spots in the power rankings and sit pretty at #2.

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

Trending: ▼1 | Record: 2-2-0 (8-12)

At this rate, it would be entirely unsurprising if Evil Geniuses were to begin a slow descent down the power rankings over the next couple of weeks. These days, EG very rarely plays other than when they have to. In the past two weeks, the team has played only six series as a team, with five of those being either part of the Pro League Preview Tournament or the Pro League itself. Their only “extracurricular” practice was a single scrimmage against Team Liquid, which they lost rather handily (2-7).

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

Trending: ▼1 | Record: 4-1-0 (28-11)

Although Enigma6 slips down to #4 this week, they only fell short of the #3 spot by a total of two aggregate power ranking points. Although they were able to avenge their loss to nV two weeks ago by beating them in their Pro League match last Friday (3-2), they lost a key series in rather convincing fashion to Renegades. E6 will have a chance to right their wrong in this week’s Pro League action, as they face off against #3 ranked Evil Geniuses on Friday.

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

Trending: — | Record: 2-1-0 (11-7)

Team EnVyUs currently sits in this awkward spot where they are very clearly better than the perennial #6-#8 teams (Liquid, OpTic, Allegiance, eLevate) but cannot break into #2-#4 bubble. In the past five weeks, nV has a combined 1-8 record against Renegades, Enigma6, and Evil Geniuses, with a total map record of just 37-71 (34.3%) against those teams. However, EnVyUs will have a chance to right that ship on Thursday in their match against Renegades, which will surely be one of the more exciting and important Pro League matches this week.

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

Trending: — | Record: 1-6-0 (16-28)

A 1-6-0 record might look bad at first glance but out of those six series losses, four were decided by a one or two game margin and two were against CLG. Also, despite a short scrimmage loss to OpTic (2-3), Liquid currently sits above the Greenwall in the power rankings and will hope to at least maintain that relative hierarchy when they face off against them on Thursday in the Pro League. If Team Liquid can get through OpTic, they can look to really gain some traction in the Pro League standings and in our power rankings if they can steal a series from newly #2 ranked Renegades.

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

Trending: NEW | Record: 2-3-0 (12-25)

After Naded announced his stepping down from the OpTic Gaming roster on Tuesday, the team was left with two days to find a fill-in fourth before their first Pro League match on Thursday. OpTic quickly settled in with former Team Liquid member aPG, and took a short scrimmage against Liquid (3-2) on Wednesday night. On the opening day of the Pro League, OpTic had the task of facing off against CLG and expectations were realistically low. After going down 0-2, OpTic stormed back with a Rig Strongholds win and handed CLG’s first and only map loss of the week before dropping the series 1-3. All in all, only time will tell if this new OpTic roster will be better and more consistent than its previous iterations or if it will fall under the same problematic trends (spotty practice frequency, inconsistent tournament performances, etc.).

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

Trending: ▼1 | Record: 0-4-0 (4-22)

Allegiance’s record certainly looks brutal this week, especially with the fact that they’ve only won four maps total against the rest of the top 8 teams. Despite that, they did show some sign of life in their Pro League match against Renegades, in which they were able to take it all the way to game five before getting trounced 18-50 in Truth Slayer to end the series. Allegiance does currently sit 6th in the Pro League standings but they only edge out OpTic and Liquid by one map, and their upcoming matches against #1 ranked CLG and #4 ranked Enigma6 will probably do little favors to their Pro League record and standing.

That wraps it up for this week’s Team Beyond HCS Power Rankings! Did you agree or disagree with our takes of the top eight teams’ performances? 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).