Vitality: Will they remain trophyless in the first half of the year? - Hugo's Spring Final predictions

Vitality were without a doubt the best team in 2023, but six months and four tournaments into 2024, they are yet to win a trophy.

If you disregard their last-place finish at IEM Katowice as an anomaly, their results have been far from poor. A semi-final finish and two runners-up finishes is more than most teams in the world could ever hope for - but does that tell the full story?

The team has undeniably looked out of sorts in 2024, they capitulated in the final of Pro League and were defeated by G2 with a stand-in in Dallas, so it’s no surprise that Hugo has ranked them as the fifth-best team coming into Spring Final.

So can they turn their deep runs into an event win in London?

Photo: Stephanie Lindgren

Are they missing Magisk?

We all know that Magisk’s time with Falcons hasn’t yet gone to plan and his ratings have took a huge hit as a result, but are Vitality missing the veteran Dane?

The French organisation’s back-to-back wins at Fall Final and World Final 2023 suggested they wouldn’t, but their closest competitors at that time, FaZe, were very much in flux due to their roster changes, so they may not have been true reflections of this Vitality team’s levels.

It could also be put down to a honeymoon period, but now that the honeymoon is over, we might be seeing the implications of a Magisk-less Vitality team.

Going purely off the numbers, Magisk’s 1.12 rating in 2023 made him a solid third star behind ZywOo and Spinx. By comparison, mezii currently holds a 1.02 rating in 2024. This is a huge gulf in rating, and while mezii was never intended to be a 1:1 replacement for the Dane, it does suggest that the overall floor of the squad has been lowered.

This isn’t to say that mezii hasn’t had his shining moments. He recorded four 1vX wins and was Vitality’s highest-rated player during the Dallas final.

But this might be something that needs to become more consistent across tournaments if Vitality wants to succeed.

Photo: Stephanie Lindgren

Stage fright

Another issue that was formerly negated by Magisk (and to some degree, by dupreeh) was the team’s ability to handle the highest-pressure environments. Magisk is a big game player, and although mezii sees no real change to his ratings in elimination games, another member of the team does.

As shown by HLTV, Spinx experiences some of the biggest drop-offs of any player in elimination games.

In these games, Spinx sees his rating fall 0.11, a somewhat significant drop and not one you want to see from your main rifle star - especially when he is so integral to how you play mid and late-round situations.

Of course, this is offset by flameZ and his 1.19 rating, but when playing against the FaZe, G2, and Spirits of the World, sometimes you need three players to be playing at least somewhat close to their peak levels to get the win. What you don’t need is your second star suddenly becoming your fourth-best player and your IGL overtaking him.

Photo: Stephanie Lindgren

Vitality are a team that knows how to win events, and they know how to win events with this exact lineup. The only thing stopping them is themselves, but that won’t be something that happens forever.

As we’ve seen from G2 in Dallas and NAVI at the Major, winning an event in 2024 can come down to hitting your peak at the right time, and Vitality with their recent form must be close to that peak.

That’s not the only thing going their way either, the international team has a favourable bracket ahead of them should they win their games, and Pimp has already predicted that they will at least be in the final.

At the third time of asking, it could be the final that Vitality finally win.