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Nuke’s polarising position in competitive CS:GO
No one seemed happy about Nuke’s return other than NiP, but does it deserve the hate?
By Chris Higgins
5 min readPublished on
Nuke’s love-hate pro relationship continues
Nuke’s love-hate pro relationship continues© Valve
When the newly revamped Nuke was released back into the wild in April, many in the pro scene weren’t happy. A good deal of that hate was collateral from the confusing, though possibly necessary, act of removing Inferno from the competitive Active Duty rotation. But almost immediately, after checking out what the shiny new map looked like, and more important played like, pros were not on board.
Changes to the yard catwalk, the vents, the accessibility of heaven, it all screamed a full-on switch to Terrorist-favoured play, which is highly out of character for a balanced CS:GO map. But almost four months on, with tournament appearances under its belt, how has the new Nuke fared in pros' eyes? And is it as one-sided as they think?
Probably most surprisingly, worries of an extremely T-sided map have been completely unfounded as Nuke’s win-split over the past four months since its re-release have resulted in the most CT-sided map in active rotation. With a 56.71 percent CT win rate, Nuke beats out even the next most obviously CT-favoured map, Train, by a solid 2.5 percent. This reversal of expectations is actually a lot closer to Nuke’s true nature than the CT stats would have you believe.
Nuke is a map that provides the greatest potential for upsets and reversals of fortune. Ninjas in Pyjamas, though famed for their complete dominance on this one map, actually perform best here because they take advantage of this property.
NiP’s chance of turning around a round after giving away the first kill averages at 28.57 percent across every other map in active rotation, with only Overpass falling greater than 0.5 percent away from that mean. But on Nuke, the undisputed masters find a win 34.7 percent of the time they lose someone first. That’s an unprecedented anomaly, but goes a long way to explaining how their approach to the map works while other teams fail.
Welcome the much cleaner new de_Nuke
Welcome the much cleaner new de_Nuke© Valve
In contrast, EnVyUs have had a difficult start to 2016 and despite some internal struggles – notably with the departure of Fabien ‘Kioshima’ Fiey – it’s no stretch to suggest the rotation of Nuke and Inferno could also play a part.
Anyone who recalls EnVyUs’s Major-winning season, culminating with the trophy at DreamHack Cluj-Napoca, will know Inferno was their best map. Perhaps best shown by another DreamHack win around the same time in London with a memorable deagle ace from Vincent ‘Happy’ Schopenhauer.
Happy, despite what his handle suggests, was not best enthused by the move to swap out his best map for his team’s collective worst. “As EnVyUs, it’s a terrible nerf to our team, because Inferno was one of our best maps, the one we practised the most, and it definitely makes us think about our map pool,” he told TopMid at the time of Nuke’s reintroduction. “The remake doesn’t suit me very well, so I don’t really like it.”
EnVyUs have only played eight professional matches on Nuke, four before the refresh and four after. Though their win-rate has risen from 25 percent before to 50 percent after, that’s still a massive hole left in their repertoire compared to the 61.9 percent win-rate of 84 matches on Inferno.
For teams that have chosen to invest time into practising Nuke, results have been mixed. For SK Gaming, rather than risk Nuke becoming a mandatory veto and allowing through other unfavourable maps for them, such as Cobblestone, they’ve put in the hours and found some success. Most obviously in this clip against Liquid, where a well-rehearsed triple-boost let Gabriel ‘FalleN’ Toledo check the sniper nest in heaven from relative safety.
However, more recently the Brazilian world champs suffered a significant upset on the map as the Australian Renegades took a 16-12 win in the ESL Pro League last week.
Though the 16-0 Renegades served up directly afterwards on Dust, and the subsequent outbursts by Marcelo ‘coldzera’ David, suggest their current stand-in may have something to do with the performance. But Renegades’ win proves the unpredictability of Nuke’s general gameflow is a massive tool to be exploited by the right teams.
In addition to the complex layout of the map and large open areas, mind games begin even before teams have loaded in on the server. While it's a much-hated map choice outside of NiP, its very presence in the pool alters the veto stage as teams use it as a free space, often accepting that neither side wants to play until the only remaining alternative offers a more one-sided advantage.
The other option is to veto immediately and risk a more obviously worse map making its way to the final choice, neither of which are easy decisions to make.
For this reason, and many of the more practical in-game ones above, teams are far more likely to hate Nuke than to love it. But there’s certainly no such thing as a middle ground.
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