How Rating 3.0 Impacts the Top 10 Teams

How Rating 3.0 Impacts the Top 10 Teams

HLTV recently unveiled Rating 3.0, their latest performance metric designed to better reflect player impact in CS2. This update aims to balance various contributions—killing, damage, survival, trading, and more—into a more equitable score than before. The aim: reward supportive and impactful plays more fairly.

Vitality

Vitality's players generally saw slight downgrades under the new system. As a team that often wins rounds decisively and faces many anti-eco scenarios, their players' contributions were regularized. However, flameZ (Shahar Shushan) and mezii (William Merriman) bucked this trend—Rating 3.0 rewards their tendency to trade deaths or use less costly weaponry. Still, even elite performers like ZywOo experienced slight drops due to normalization aimed at bringing extremely high ratings closer to the average.

Spirit

Similarly, Spirit’s high round-winning rates and frequent anti-eco situations led to damping of top scores. Donk (Danil Kryshkovets) saw his rating come in closer to 1.00 despite being one of their strongest players. In contrast, zont1x (Myroslav Plakhotia) benefited—his precise, low-error style is rewarded under the new “Swing” component.

MOUZ

Often viewed as a team of fraggers, MOUZ showcased one of the most dramatic rating shifts:

Jimpphat (Jimi Salo), known for clutch support plays, gained +0.03 in rating.

xertioN (Dorian Berman), as an entry fragger, dropped -0.05—Swing penalizes risk-taking high-variance roles

Context on Rating 3.0

Rating 3.0 expands on the earlier versions (1.0, 2.0, and 2.1) by introducing new subcomponents—like KAST (Kill/Assist/Survival/Traded) and ADR (Average Damage per Round). It also rebalances Impact to account for clutches, opening kills, and multi-kill potential, while downplaying passive saving.

Previously, Rating 2.1 (introduced in late 2024) had already rebalanced sub-ratings and adjusted saving contributions, but Rating 3.0 goes further by integrating Round Swing—a measure of a player's direct influence per round.

Community and Broader Reaction

Discussion on HLTV forums reveals mixed reactions. One user remarked on the new Swing metric:

“roundswing is just a fake stat… it represent[s] the influence of the player”

On Spirit’s early exit from the Esports World Cup, sentiment hinted at both on-field and analytic challenges. One comment captured the mood:

“Spirit devastated by the launching of rating 3.0. Their 2-event era is over!”

Another pointed out:

“Cooper: rating 3.0 would have been brutal for the Spirit players. HLTV showed mercy.”

These reactions illustrate how the recalibrated metrics are already influencing narratives around team performance.

Summary

Vitality: Ratings normalized; flameZ and mezii benefit from trading/low-cost play.

Spirit: Donk’s rating dips toward baseline; zont1x gains from high-consistency play.

MOUZ: Jimpphat rewarded for clutch reliability; xertioN penalized for swing-heavy entry death risk.

What changed: Rating 3.0 standardizes performance, introduces KAST, ADR, Swing, and value adjustments for supports and fraggers.

Community response: Some skepticism about new metrics’ fairness, mixed fan sentiment around recently underperforming teams.