nexa is gone, but that's not enough if G2 want to be a true contender

Oh, HooXi. We’re sorry in advance for this one.

But it’s not our fault that the only event your team managed to win thus far in 2024 happened without you even being on the same continent as them. 

Still, despite missing that event due to your sister’s wedding and the team achieving without you, you (at least for now) seem to be holding on to your spot on G2, but we’re just not sure that’s the most competitive decision from the German organisation.

Don’t get us wrong, nexa was a bigger issue. A poor anchor player whose lack of individual ability meant that you had to weaken your map pool by moving away from Mirage, he offered very little to the team, at least on the face value of you having a hidden impact through the role of in-game leader. 

However, if your team is going to have the best result of their season without that presumed impact… are you really doing much at all?

The firepower issue

With nexa gone and malbsMd set to soon join the team, G2 are already doing their best to address some of the biggest problems they’ve faced so far in 2024.

Compared to teams like FaZe, Spirit, and even Vitality, G2’s firepower was very obviously struggling. nexa wasn’t an IGL, but he was performing as poorly as you would expect an IGL to, and this meant he had far less impact than jks in the same spot on the roster.

When you add this to the very clear firepower issue that has been present in the team ever since HooXi joined, G2 simply couldn’t compete against the aforementioned teams. At least not without m0NESY or NiKo playing to the absolute best of their ability. 

To make matters worse, huNter has also dropped off from the level he has shown in previous years, so even if malbsMd can come in and shine, G2 may still struggle to match their rivals on a consistent basis. 

No easy fix

This is an issue that isn’t going to be easy to fix, at least if G2 hopes to bring in a new IGL. 

There are deceptively few top tier IGLs in CS, and even fewer that wouldn’t hurt the CT setups of the team due to the supportive IGL meta. Even fewer still if you want one that would be happy to step into the same space as HooXi is happy to occupy. 

If you don’t want to disrupt CT sides, that means names like siuhy, Aleksib, and tabseN are all out - not that it would be too realistic to expect them to join, anyway. If you want a more traditional IGL, you can immediately rule out karrigan for obvious reasons, while other names such as kyxsan and JT are probably prized assets their teams would not be willing to part with.

There’s Snappi, but again that feels realistic, and also MAJ3R, but now it’s clear we’re already in barrel-scraping territory. 

Oh, and Snax, and while it would be fun to see him link back up with TaZ, we can’t imagine the result would be that great as we’re not entirely convinced Snax is the great mind behind GamerLegion over head coach, ash.

All of this is to say that G2’s hopes to find an IGL befitting of playing for a contender team are slim unless they’re happy to pay a lot of money, in which case someone like kyxsan or JT could be the perfect solution.

With that being unlikely given that the fee for malbsMd can’t have been small, what can G2 do?

The perfect solution

G2’s win at IEM Dallas came with NiKo IGLing, and while this was once a frightening prospect thanks to his time in the role with FaZe, the NiKo we see now is a very different man from the one he was back then - he’s more mature, more composed, battle-hardened, if you will. 

He also recently told Dust2.us that he will one day become an IGL again, so that shows he’s at least willing to take up the mantle of captain full-time. 

Now, we realise he may have been talking more in the future tense during that interview, but we’ve already looked at the fact that G2 will struggle to find a better solution. So if it’s a necessity within the present tense, who should G2 pick up to complete their roster?

With NiKo likely to not want to compromise his own roles or space even as an IGL, the team would lack a supportive small-site anchor, and there’s one man who has already said he would love to return to those roles after occupying them during the most successful stint of his career. 

Of course, we’re talking about Perfecto, the former NAVI player who would be perfect to transform G2 and turn them into a contender once again. 

Perfecto is one of the best players of all time in the roles G2 require, with only sjuush, NAF, and Xyp9x being worth mentioning in the same sentence as him. Not only that, but he’s also Russian, which would surely be a favourable factor for keeping m0NESY around when it eventually comes time to discuss contract renewal with their star man. 

In Perfecto, G2 wouldn’t just get another incredibly strong and intelligent individual, but they would also get an individual capable of helping them open their map pool up to any possibility. The team has sorely missed Mirage, and Perfecto could turn their B site into a fortress. 

With a team consisting of Perfecto, malbsMd, huNter-, m0NESY, and NiKo, G2 would have enough firepower to negate any potential performance dip from NiKo as he took up more responsibility on the team. Even better yet, they’d have enough firepower to match any team in the world, and that’s the most important factor if they hope to be a contender.