ESL Pro League Season 13 Group B Favorites

Group B of ESL Pro League Season 13 has begun and we’ve already seen some very good games. In this article I’m going to take a close look at the 6 teams from Group B and analyze their chances.

Day 1 Results

The first competitive day of ESL Pro League Season 13 Group B ended with one upset and two expected results.

ENCE managed to beat mousesports (2 – 1), clearly proving that karrigan’s former team is on the ropes and will almost certainly get eliminated at the end of this stage.

G2 defeated NiP in a close game. The first map, Inferno, ended with a score of 16 – 11 while the second map, Mirage, needed extra time to finish. The score was 22 – 19. To be honest, I expected G2 to do much better against NiP, simply because their lineup is formidable while NiP is playing with one of their academy players. If they struggled here, imagine what will happen against the likes of Vitality and FaZe Clan.

Vitality defeated FaZe in their first match of this group, even though karrigan’s team took the first map with a very dominant score (16 – 5). It’s not clear whether it was overconfidence on FaZe’s part or simply skill and map mastery on Vitality’s part that led to this comeback. One thing is certain: Vitality ultimately won and is the big favorite to win this group. However, keep in mind that FaZe lost at decent scores on Dust II (10 – 16) and Overpass (12 – 16). This means they are extremely good and will likely defeat all of the remaining opponents in the next 5 days.

Favorites

These are the favorites of ESL Pro League Season 13 Group B, ranked from best to worst.

Vitality

It’s going to be very hard for Vitality to lose in Group B. They already defeated FaZe Clan, which is probably the second-best competitor in this group, and have some very easy matches going forward, with the exception of the next one, against G2.

Vitality has the best player in the world in its roster and that’s going to boost everyone’s morale. If ZywOo plays his usual game, victory is guaranteed. And if RpK or shox get a good day as well, few teams in the world can stand against them.

FaZe Clan

FaZe has a formidable roster right now. Their only real internal challenge is communication, simply because they have 5 players from 5 different countries. But just look at these names: rain, broky, coldzera, Twistzz, and karrigan. The weakest one is broky, and he’s exceptional.

Even though they eventually won, Vitality struggled against FaZe. And that’s a clear sign that everyone else will struggle as well. I expect FaZe to finish 2^nd here, with a score of 4 wins and 1 loss or 3 wins and 2 losses.

G2 Esports

The third best team is G2 Esports. But it’s not going to be easy for them to qualify. As you probably know, kennyS was removed from the active roster around 10 days ago and since then, G2 has been competing with AmaNEk. He’s not a bad player, but the roster has definitely been weakened by this move. It takes months to achieve fluency after a lineup change and I don’t think G2 Esports has had enough time to fully adapt to the situation. Most likely, this team will lose against Vitality and FaZe.

NiP

Like G2, NiP is competing with a weakened roster and we’ve already seen the consequences in their first match of the tournament. In this group, they can definitely beat ENCE and mousesports, but I don’t think they can win against anyone else.

ENCE

ENCE had a terrible series of defeats prior to this tournament, even against tier 2 and tier 3 competitors. And based on that, I’m pretty sure they won’t do very well here, even though they won their first match against mousesports. The problem with this opponent is that it recently lost its IGL and is in disarray at the moment. In effect, ENCE defeated the weakest team in Group B of ESL Pro League Season 13. The next 4 matches are going to be much harder.

mousesports

For reasons that I already clarified above, mousesports is likely to finish this group with a score of 0 W – 5 L or 1 W – 4 L. Don’t expect anything and you won’t be disappointed.

 

Photo credit: IEM|Helena-Kristiansson