New Natus Vincere Roster Breaks Into HLTV Top 30

The new Natus Vincere roster have brought the team back into the global top 30, as HLTV’s latest rankings show

HLTV, the go-to CSGO portal, recently published an updated assessment of the finest CSGO teams worldwide. One of the key highlights in the latest rankings is the return of Natus Vincere into the top 30. Notably, NAVI made a departure from their long-standing all-Ukrainian tradition during the off-season and opted to construct a revitalized international roster.

As @C9CSGO drop to #8 after changing two players, @GamerLegion and @TeamLiquidCS climb up in this week’s ranking update

Full rankings: https://t.co/f4mTt4NfaR pic.twitter.com/n22DRilNjx

— HLTV.org (@HLTVorg) July 17, 2023

Fans of the club will not pop open champagne bottles just yet, however, as this marks the lowest HLTV ranking in their history. They had never dropped below 17th in the rankings before. The Intel Grand Slam Season 3 champions ranked 17th in November 2017 following their Group Stage exit from the ESL Pro League Season 6 – Europe.

Image Courtesy: HLTV

According to the ranking released on July 17, 2023, the top 5 CSGO teams were Heroic, Team Vitality, FaZe Clan, G2 Esports, and ENCE. Following closely were GamerLegion, Team Liquid, Cloud9, Apeks, and Virtus.pro, securing their positions within the top 10.

Why Did The New Natus Vincere Roster Drop Out Of The HLTV Top 30?

Natus Vincere were not doing great, given their standards, but their performances were not bad enough to push them out of the HLTV top 30. They could not make it past the Paris Major 2023 Legends Stage, but they made successive semifinal appearances at the IEM Rio 2023, ESL Pro League Season 17, and IEM Katowice 2023.
Natus Vincere lost their position in the HLTV top 30 as they decided to make a significant squad overhaul. They only held on to Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyljev and Valerij “b1t” Vakhovsjkyj from their old roster and bid farewell to Denis “electroNic” Sharipov, Ilya “Perfecto” Zalutskiy, and Andrij “npl” Kukharsjkyj. They brought in Aleksi “Aleksib” Virolainen from NIP, Ilya “Perfecto” Zalutskiy from Apeks, and Ivan “iM” Mihai from GamerLegion to make the first international quintet in their history. The team, therefore, had to start from scratch and work their way back into the HLTV rankings.
NAVI are currently participating in BLAST Premier Fall Groups 2023. They are set to take on German side BIG in the Lower Bracket Final.