Vitality experiment with mid-series substitution in CS:GO – A new trend?

More and more teams have been looking to expand their CS:GO roster to be able to rest players and swap them in when needed. This new way of looking at CS:GO rosters has now reached new heights as Vitality explored a mid-series substitution during the BLAST Premier Fall Series.

For the first time in an official CS match, a non-forced substitute has been put in place. Vitality has decided to possibly outthink their opponents and give Nabil ‘Nivera’ Benrlitom his first playtime with the team. After winning Nuke with a 16-14 score, Vitality swapped out Kévin ‘Misutaaa’ Rabier in favour of Nivera to change the dynamic of the team for Dust 2. However this resulted in a map loss with Nivera top fragging for his team.

🚨 Substitution alert 🚨@Nivera__ will make his first steps in the CS:GO team by replacing @misutaaaCSGO on DUST 2!

✨Good luck to him #BLASTPremier pic.twitter.com/2Wzm3PRASB

— Team Vitality 🐝 (@TeamVitality) October 29, 2020

A new layer of strategy?

Is the sixth player strategy going to be implemented by other teams? It could perhaps have its benefits for the competitive scene. Being able to bring the strengths of certain players into your lesser favoured maps could eliminate certain weaknesses to improve performance. This should make for closer games as more teams could have a broader and stronger map pool. The extended roster of players could also mean that there would be less wear and pressure on players, making it less likely for them to receive a burn-out. 

However not all could be bright with this change. Young prodigies could be bought out by bigger teams, trying to make the strongest roster possible. This sounds like a great step up for some, but this might leave smaller organisations to struggle finding a strong roster to climb the ranks as they do not have the financial means to retain certain players.

Do you applaud this possible six-player era or do you prefer things to remain the same? Join the discussion on social media or our Discord! 

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Image Credit: Team Vitality (Twitter)