Call of Duty Rostermania Recap

After CWL Anaheim, the CWL underwent its most eventful Rostermania of the Black Ops 4 season. With only two events left, one of them being the CWL Championship, players and general managers did all they could to assemble their best available roster to finish out the year. Ultimately, only OpTic Gaming, 100 Thieves, Gen. G, EUnited, and FaZe Clan stood pat. Everybody else will have some hear some new voices in their team comms for the rest of the season.

Luminosity Gaming

-Gunless -Classic +Skyz +Brack

Luminosity was the first Rostermania domino to fall, announcing their final roster via this tweet on June 19^th. Team superstar slayer and CWL Dallas MVP, Pierce “Gunless” Hillman did not even play with the team at last weekend’s CWL Anaheim tournament, indicating his days with this star-studded roster was drawing to a close. Sure enough, Gunless landed on Team EnvyUs. Also departing Luminosity is the much-maligned Nicholas “Classic” DiCostanzo.

Luminosity thus sought out two Assault-Rifle players as replacements. They landed on two standouts from some of the weaker and lesser known teams in the CWL, Cesar “Skyz” Bueno and Carson “Brack” Newberry. Moreover, team captain Matthew “Formal” Piper will move to a more aggressive Assault Rifle role, and Skyz will serve as the main-AR player for the time being.

This team has standout Black Ops 4 performers at all positions now except for one. The determining factor of this team’s performance will be Sub-Machine Gun Slayer Johnathon “John” Perez. John has underperformed during the Black Ops 4 season, but he’s had slow starts in other titles as well and has always found a way to finish strong.

Team EnvyUs

-Huke -Ferocitys +Gunless +Assault

Following T-16 (last place) finish at CWL Anaheim, frustrated young SMG Superstar Cuyler “Huke” Garland appears to have requested a change of scenery. The team also parted ways with flex-player Maurice “Ferocitys” Henriquez in order to move team captain Patrick “Aches” Price to a flex role and bring back Adam “Assault” Garcia as a main-AR Player.

Meanwhile, Envy will hope that they replace Huke’s slaying power through the acquisition of Gunless. However, the ceiling of this team will be dictated by the play of their captain, Aches.

Splyce

-Accuracy +Huke

This is probably the most interesting team change. Because Donny “Temp” Laroda has been so successful with an AR in his hands, Splyce always had a tough time finding their second main-SMG player. Now they add Huke, arguably the most talented SMG player in Call of Duty.

Meanwhile, they ship out Lamar “Accuracy” Abedi. This means that Ulysses “Aqua” Silva will take over the main-AR role. Aqua has been one of the best AR’s in recent Call of Duty history. For the first time this season, Splyce will have optimized the roles of the players on their team. They are supremely talented, mixing young energy with veteran leadership. Splyce had a strong start to the Black Ops 4 season. After falling by the wayside recently, Splyce has all the tools to once again contend for a major championship.

Evil Geniuses

-Phantomz +Accuracy

Of all the roster moves, this raised the most eyebrows. Timothy “Phantomz” Landis had a 1.12 adjusted K/D at CWL Anaheim and a 1.19 adjusted K/D in the CWL Pro League. Meanwhile, Splyce benched Accuracy due to a combination of role issues and underperformance. Perhaps Evil Geniuses feels that Accuracy’s greater experience as a main-AR will fix their team issues, but EG has a lot of experience already, and Phantomz has had the better record recently. Only time will tell if this move will pay off.

UYU

-Parzelion -Zaptius -Royalty -Mayhem +Saints +Blazt +Classic +Phantomz

UYU underwent the most substantial team change, keeping only main-AR Anthony “Methodz” Zinni. While UYU’s roster change seems to be a lateral move, perhaps unknown chemistry issues ailed the former team. With the addition of Saints and Classic, UYU is adding a lot of experience to their roster. The one question mark on their roster is who will run the second SMG after Saints on tighter maps. Because this roster underwent the most substantive change, it also has the most variety of potential outcomes, both good and bad.

Several other teams made roster changes. Team Reciprocity added Alex “Alexx” Carpenter for some extra SMG slaying power. Enigma 6 and Midnight Esports found alternative slaying power from around the Pro League. Meanwhile, The Units, Heretics, and Elevate made team changes primarily to improve team chemistry.

Going Forward

There are only two more weeks of Pro League action left before the CWL Pro League Finals in Miami at the end of July. Pro League seeding will decide the Playoff Bracket, with 1 and 2 seeds from each division getting a bye and the bottom two seeds from each division starting in Loser’s Bracket. The current standings are below:

These two weeks of the Pro League will feature Cross-Divisional play, and it will begin tomorrow at 3:00 PM EST on ESTNN & www.twitch.tv/callofduty. Happy watching!