BLAST.tv Major: Austin 2025 Results. The Vitality Era – Who Could Stop Them? Austin Major Item Investments and Thoughts on Future Roster Changes
The third CS2 Major has come to an end, and despite a fairly predictable outcome, it still left more questions than answers. Yes, Vitality has officially cemented their status as one of the best teams in CS history, but it’s obvious that other top teams don’t want to accept this result. Teams are expecting serious changes, as without them, their chances of winning trophies will go from minimal to zero. In this article, we’ll also discuss investments in items from this Major and prepare you for the discount period.
The Vitality Era Has Officially Begun
First, let’s pay respect to the winners who arrived with favorite status and said in every interview that they weren’t even considering any other result. Such self-confidence is often punished, but in this situation, these guys weren’t even fazed by 20,000 people cheering for their defeat. Honestly, it’s hard to remember similar situations in CS history, except for the Rio Major, but there fans were more supporting their own rather than rooting against a specific team.
Vitality had a fairly serious bracket with no easy opponents, but now apEX’s team possesses that aura where after a series of successful rounds, opponents start to fear them. This was especially felt in matches against MOUZ and The MongolZ, who were brutally brought down to earth after winning a map. Everyone was finally convinced that existing means are insufficient to fight these robots, and new ones need to be invented. This should become the main task for the next 2-3 weeks until IEM Cologne 2025.
Which Teams Will Make Changes?
First and foremost, everyone is already openly talking about kyousuke’s transfer to Falcons, and undoubtedly, this looks very promising at the moment. This transfer is noted by Vitality players themselves in various interviews, so we can check off the first contender for ZywOo and company’s throne.
Active rumors have also spread around Team Spirit. We’ve already analyzed their case in more detail, so we invite you to read about it.
Next comes the best team of 2024, which didn’t reach a single grand final after nine last year. You no longer expect any miracle from their play, and it seems B1ad3 has squeezed the maximum out of this roster. Who to remove? Most likely the intrigue will revolve around the trio of w0nderful, iM, and Aleksib, but the captain holds onto his slot more confidently than the sniper and Romanian rifler. Who to take in their place? Returning to a Ukrainian roster clearly won’t work, so they’ll have to turn to the international market, but it’s hard to name even approximate candidates yet. Perhaps GamerLegion will again come under fire and say goodbye to their stars, or maybe Spirit will be chosen and give a chance to very promising youth from NAVI Junior, who are terrorizing the tier-3 scene.
What about s1mple? Should we expect a legendary comeback to the black and yellow jersey? More likely not than yes. It would be ideal for Sasha to continue working in the current FaZe roster, which would benefit all parties. Freezing s1mple on the bench for the remaining six months of his contract equals missing an opportunity to earn, and returning him to the roster without signing a new agreement is clearly not NAVI’s path. FaZe themselves felt what it’s like to have a star of Sasha’s level on the team and reportedly remained satisfied with this trial period. Considering the crisis of all top teams, continuing to work in this roster at least until the next Major looks like a reasonable decision.
Finishing the topic of roster changes, we’d like to return to the Vitality era. In our view, most changes will be “hysterical” in a blind pursuit of a team that is absolutely unreachable at the moment. Waiting for their natural decline and working on yourself looks like a more reliable strategy than building a dream team from scratch. Accepting reality is sometimes more correct than trying to build your own new world.
Who Surprised at the Major?
Of course, we want to pay respect to teams like Legacy, Lynn Vision, and Nemiga, who passed 2 group stages and made bright statements about themselves. For example, Nemiga player Zweih has already appeared on top teams’ radars, and Brazilian dumau even ended up in fourth place among the best players by rating 2.1. It’s not unlikely that both won’t stay in their teams for long and will move up to the tier-1 CS world.
Of course, we can’t fail to mention the playoff triumphers – MOUZ and The MongolZ, who definitely deserved their bronze and silver awards, forcing Vitality to play at full strength. We’re confident nothing will happen to these rosters and they’ll continue to regularly reach playoffs of major tournaments, as well as compete for trophies in the second half of 2025. By the way, if you want to get to know the finalists of this Major better, we recommend reading our material about The MongolZ. There you’ll find answers to why rumors about buying out the roster to a more serious organization like Aurora are complete nonsense and won’t happen.
Regarding other teams, VP players began to see light at the end of a very dark tunnel, but there’s still a lot of work ahead. We can also expect something positive from G2, who even in this roster could have grabbed a playoff spot, which, honestly, was a surprise.
Austin Major Item Investments
Well, as we already said, this Major seems very interesting to us from an investment perspective for several reasons:
- Unique sticker design that will unlikely be repeated (especially pay attention to paper and foil versions)
- Presence of a 16-team capsule, which significantly cuts the number of stickers
- New souvenir items with highlight charms
Regarding the second point, we traditionally recommend stocking up on Chinese teams’ stickers – you won’t go wrong. Competition in this region is regularly growing, and it’s not certain we’ll see Lynn Vision and TYLOO at the next Major. After canceling regional qualifications and giving Major invites for top-32 VALVE rating (VRS), their chances clearly increase, but with poor play, these points will rapidly disappear. Currently, both teams easily qualify for the next event, but a 200-point gap is very easy to make up, and being outside the 32 best teams doesn’t look unrealistic.
We advise not to pass by the main emotional stars – Jee and EmiliaQAQ, who made the audience fall in love with them and already have a solid fanbase not only among compatriots. Other thoughts on event item investments in Austin can be read here.
We’d like to separately note the new souvenir packages, which at the time of writing this material still haven’t appeared in the game. It feels like they should be more than in demand due to the unique charm, and our community loves exclusives. Souvenir skins from these cases should cost more, and there’s also a chance to catch a “beta” version that will be reworked by the next Major and the charm’s appearance (or placement) will be changed.
Austin Major Conclusions
Events in the US have always been distinguished by their emotionality, and even VALVE tried this time and delivered new in-game content for us. But from the tournament itself perspective – it will hardly be remembered as one of the best. In mood, it very much reminded us of the last BLAST Major in Paris, which is remembered as “the last CS:GO Major,” with underdog victories, favorite championship, strange trophy, and a sea of various roster changes after the end. But Austin doesn’t have epochal status, strong teams still made it to playoffs, and all sensations fell on the groups, the cup no longer causes laughter, and all this is significantly inferior even to the Paris event. We’re more interested in what happens next than remembering what was literally yesterday. So we wait and observe events together!
