On November 19, Valve released a CS:GO patch that will significantly impact the pro scene. In addition to the AWP and M4A1-S nerf, the developers also changed the map pool. The last time this happened was more than a year ago, so the event became resonant. Players said goodbye to Dust2 and met Anubis, which had never been in the tournament map pool. The change will undoubtedly change the pro-scene, but who will be affected the most?
BIG
For BIG, the situation after the update is deadlocked. Dust2 was the only map on which the Germans were confident. Over the past three months, BIG never banned Dust2 and actively trained it. Now the team will have to give up their strongest map and start training at one of the locations the Germans have never played.
And in combination with the fact that BIG are now on a hard decline, the patch can send the German team to tier-2. Will BIG be able to get out of this challenging situation? Yes, but only on the condition that the Germans choose a new map for training and prepare it perfectly. And BIG can fulfil this condition because they will not participate in tier-1 tournaments until the end of the year. So the German team will have time to prepare.
Vitality
The European mix is also declining and does not ban Dust2 either. At the same time, if you pay attention to the IEM Rio Major 2022, one of the reasons for Vitality's early exit is the Dust2 permanent ban. If more teams played this map, the result of the European team would be better because Dust2 is the best Vitality map in terms of win rate.
IEM Rio Major 2022 can be considered a demonstration of how Vitality will play in the new meta if they do not adapt to the new map pool. And considering the AWP nerf, Vitality has even more problems because one of the main conditions for the victory of the European team is ZywOo's game.
Outsiders
The champions of IEM Rio Major 2022 are in a more favourable situation than the previous representatives of this list. Even though the club often takes Dust2 as one of its maps, there are better options. However, their permaban was Nuke, and the Outsiders would have to choose one new location: Anubis or Nuke. For the team from Eastern Europe, this will be a huge problem.
Remember how much time it took for the new team to adapt and improve results. Outsiders changed their lineup after PGL Major Antwerp 2022 and showed mediocre results for more than four months, and according to Jame, they were able to prepare a map pool only for IEM Rio Major. Now the team will have to go through this path again, and the Outsiders will clearly not be able to build their era after changing the meta.
NAVI
The new meta for NAVI will also start without problems. The Ukrainian club tried hard to avoid Vertigo after the map pool changes in 2019. And after adding Ancient and removing Train, the team faced a fork in the road and decided to leave Vertigo in a permaban. So now NAVI will again be faced with a choice - to play Anubis or start training Vertigo.
It would seem that the choice is simple, and NAVI will do with Anubis the same way as they did with Ancient. But the latest news says that "Born to Win" trained Vertigo before the IEM Rio Major 2022. However, in any scenario, the best team in Eastern Europe will have to play a new map. Furthermore, the latest rumours about changes in the composition will complicate the situation even more. Also, everything is complicated because Dust2 is the third map regarding the win rate in Natus Vincere. Therefore, NAVI will experience difficulties during tournaments in the new patch.
Spirit
On paper, Dust2 is the worst card for Spirit, but if you look at the permaban of the team from Eastern Europe, it immediately becomes clear that the team will have problems with the transition to the new patch. Spirit bans Inferno in the first stage, and preparing this map on the other tier-1 teams' level is challenging. In addition, many teams played this map for a long time, so it would take a lot of work to beat them.
Therefore, most likely, Spirit will have to start playing Anubis. And playing on a new map is always uncertain because there are no default strategies on the newly added location and no external materials to study. Therefore, tournaments in the latest patch for Spirit will begin with uncertainty.
The new patch will clearly change the meta and balance of forces in the world top. Who will be able to avoid problems and benefit from the update? We will find out in the coming months. The first tournament with Anubis in the map pool will be BLAST Premier World Final 2022.
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