Heroic won 4 out of 5 matches in the group stage and took second place in Group C. Kasper cadiaN Moller's team looked very confident and encouraging. NAVI has the opposite situation. Denis electroNic Sharipov's team turned out to be stronger than their opponents only two times out of 5 and entered the championship playoffs from the third line in the Group A standings. The Born to Win sorely lacked the quality of team interactions. As a result of losing to Team EndPoint, Team Vitality and Ninjas in Pajamas. Natus Vincere even changed the seating of the players in an attempt to improve interactions.

Valera and I have many joint positions in which we play, but we were sitting in different parts. So, therefore, now we sat down more or less optimally for our team.

Ilya Perfecto Zalutsky

Heroic and Natus Vincere latest results

As for maps, Heroic prefers to ban Dust2, and Natus Vincere prefers to ban Vertigo. However, everything is not so simple here. Alexander s1mple Kostylev said that the team is starting to play this map, and most likely, we won't see it in NAVI's pick at EPL S16, but maybe one day. The Danes have a 50% win rate on Vertigo, and I wouldn't say it would be best not to play with them on it.

We are studying this [Vertigo] map. [I'm] fine in general, yes, I already know everything about it. [B1ad3] wasn't exactly an opponent. He just always told us that we had to train six cards in time. Very often, we could lose shape on one of the maps. We did not have enough time to prepare all seven. And now, when there is more time, we try to train it a little bit. We understand that, most likely, we will not play it at this tournament, but perhaps one day, sometime.

Alexander s1mple Kostylev

At the same time, I'm sure that Heroic will ban Dust2, as Natus Vincere has a pretty impressive win rate on it - 82%. Overpass and Nuke, in the performance of both teams, look pretty equal. On the Inferno, a significant advantage is on the side of the cadiaN team (71% vs 56%). However, Mirage and Ancient are better performed by the Ukrainian team.

If we turn to the players' individual statistics, both teams' snipers stand out clearly. S1mple has a rating of 6.9, and Martin stavn Lund has a rating of 6.5. The rest of the esports players have fairly equal performance. The conclusion suggests itself that the one whose collective actions will be better will win this meeting. More information about the pre-match statistics can be found here.

ESL Pro League Season 16 runs from August 31 to October 2 in Malta. The teams compete for a prize pool of $835,000. You can follow the schedule and results of the competition here.