After taking a week off for DreamHack Masters Malmo, the ESL Pro League is back in full force. Teams are still trying to feel each other out, and the standings continued to shuffle during Week 2 in the North American side of the league.
By the far the busiest team of the week was OpTic Gaming (8-2, 24 points), which also had the most controversial week by far. The team was levied a pretty substantial penalty of one major point and 10 percent of any prize winnings after missing the roster submission deadline prior to the season. Despite a roster shuffle and extracurricular drama, the team seems to be performing just fine. OpTic played in a league-high six games this past week and came out with a 4-2 record to grab the first-place spot for the time being. SK Gaming (6-2, 18 points) didn't play this week, but it was still a nice showing for the new OpTic squad, with Emil "Magisk" Reif looking surprisingly comfortable in his new role.
Cloud9 (2-4, 6 points), on the other hand, is still struggling after the addition of the former OpTic members Tarik "tarik" Celik and Will "RUSH" Wierzba. After going just 1-3 in Week 1, C9 had a bit of an up-and-down showing against Immortals this week. Immortals took the first game 16-5 on Inferno, while Cloud9 took the second 16-3 on Train. You could say it was a bit of an inconsistent showing. Tarik, especially, looked mercurial throughout the series, posting a 5/19 KD (kills/deaths) in the loss and a 21/8 KD in the win. Cloud9 is currently sitting in 10th place and will certainly need to make some adjustments soon, or it will watch the other teams run away with the season.
Elsewhere in the league, Misfits (6-2, 18 points), NRG Esports (6-2, 17 points) and Renegades (5-3, 15 points) all had a pretty solid week with 3-1 records. Renegades used a fairly easy schedule of compLexity Gaming (2-4, 6 points) and Luminosity Gaming (4-4, 12 points) to rack up some points and move into the top six, while Misfits and NRG remained steady in the standings.
At the bottom of the group, newcomers Splyce (1-5, 4 points), Ghost Gaming (1-7, 3 points) and Rogue (0-6, 0 points) continue to struggle in the early going of the season. Each team played at least two games this week and came away with no wins to show for it.
OpTic Gaming, SK Gaming, Misfits, NRG Esports, Renegades and Team Liquid are the top six teams after Week 2. Week 3 will be a short one, as most teams will be preoccupied with ESL One: New York. Rogue and Splyce will kick off the week on Tuesday at 7 p.m. ET.