How to fix The Juggernaut

On paper, Complexity is a team full of skill. With a roster stacked with two top 20 players, a former major winner, and a top Danish fragger, they should be regularly finishing high in big name tournaments. Yet for the last 5 top tier competitions the Dallas based org have not been meeting expectations, acting more as a simple speedbump that higher ranked teams must surpass in order to make deep runs. Below is a table of their last 6 main tournament finishes, showing these middling results.

Tournament	Placement	Lost to
IEM Cologne	13th-16th	Virtus.Pro (2-1)
BLAST Spring Finals	5th-6th	G2 (2-1)
IEM Summer	7th-8th	Gambit (2-1)
Flashpoint 3	10th	Sprout (2-0)
ESL Pro League S13	5th-6th	NiP (2-1)
IEM World Championship	17th-20th	Mousesports (2-1)

All is not lost though. Complexity could still become The Juggernaut that their CEO Jason Lake aspires them to be. With a few simple tactical and roster changes, I believe that they could once again return to being a top 10 squad again, all while helping develop top NA talent and testing the limits of CSGO’s newest map.

Step 1: Get rid of RUSH and get some new NA life in the team.

This is an unfortunate but necessary move for Complexity to move ahead of their competition. Regularly RUSH is the team’s bottom player, a far cry from his time with Optic Gaming in 2016 and the 2018 ELEAGUE Boston Major performances with Cloud9. He’s Complexity’s oldest player both in terms of career and age, and it is beginning to show on the server, with his experience mattering less as his fellow teammates play more LAN events. Unfortunately for the NA legend he is the weakest link on the team and realistically should be the first to go.

RUSH has been preforming below expectations, with his worse rating to date of 0.88

However, that poises a question, who should replace him? There are a handful of European talents from farm teams like Sprout or HAVU that could be a nice upgrade, but I have a better idea. There is plenty of other NA talent that is eager to prove themselves in a tier-1 org, such as Jonji or FaNg. Many NA players could really catch a break and given the lack of NA tier-1 teams with roster slots open, this would be great for elevating the currently sleepy region. It is time for Complexity to ditch the star from 2016 CSGO for someone who is playing 2021 CSGO, and that person to ditch is sadly RUSH

 

Step 2: Get a better map pool.

Complexity’s second issue is that their map pool frankly sucks. That is not to say that they are not good on their favorite picks, just that they share map pools with the greatest teams in the world right now, meaning they must be better than the best on their map picks, something that you cannot always count on. Below is a table of the top 5 teams current maps picks and perma-bans along with Complexity’s for comparison.

Rank	Team	Map Pick 1	Map Pick 2	Perma-Ban
1	Gambit	Vertigo	Mirage	Nuke
2	Na’Vi	Dust2	Mirage	Vertigo
3	G2	Inferno	Mirage	Overpass
4	Heroic	Nuke	Mirage	Dust2
5	NiP	Ancient	Mirage	Vertigo
11	Complexity	Mirage	Nuke/Vertigo	Inferno

Notice a trend? Complexity’s top map pick is Mirage with 23 times played in the last three months, but it is also a favorite of every top 5 team right now. Complexity is good on the map with a 60%-win rate, but they will constantly find it difficult to move past top 5 teams in tournaments if they have to play them on maps they’re good at too. Moreover 3 of the top 5 teams perma-ban Complexity’s second map picks of Nuke and Vertigo, which even further restricts how deep their playing pool can be against them.

Complexity has been in a slight slump lately, with less then stellar tournament preformances.

Complexity needs to look into getting a new series of maps they can dominate opponents on if they wish to beat the top 5. Ancient, Overpass, even Inferno could be viable options if the team is willing to spend this coming month break retooling and retraining their team into being experts on those maps, but they need to take a deeper look into their current set of maps if they wish to become an even greater team.

Complexity is a team full of potential that needs to be unleashed again. K0nfig, blameF, poizon, and jks are all top talents for their regions and have all the hallmarks of a solid team. With just a few adjustments to their roster and map pool, the sky could be the limit for them with LAN’s and fan-packed arena’s coming back. Ditch RUSH for new NA talent and build a new map pool, and I believe the results will start to come in The Juggernaut.