Effects of the M4A1-S nerf and the Ancient change
How have the professionals fared after the latest changes?
Nearly a month ago, the patch that the CS:GO community had been yearning for hit the servers. The M4A1-S was nerfed by reducing the magazine size from 25 to 20. While the total amount of bullets remained the same, as the reserve amount was upped from 75 to 80, this was still a pretty big nerf.
The patch came on the 16th of June and was first used at a top-tier event at Roobet Cup. In the online tournament, it was evident that some players had not yet adjusted to the change, as they were caught out reloading after spamming smokes or trying for wallbangs. But now that players have had the time to adjust, has the nerf made any real difference?
By comparing CT-side winrates from September 21st, 2021 (Operation Riptide arrived and with it the M4A1-S buff) to June 16th, 2022 (The M4A1-S is nerfed) with the aftermath of the nerf (June 16th, 2022 to July 12th, 2022) we can see if the patch has made any statistical difference. Mind you, this is a rather small sample size as the patch is not yet a month old.
The left side of the statistic represents the CT side round win percentages of all official matches recorded within the period, while the right side only pertains to the Top 20 teams.
CT side round win percentages:
Inferno all officials - 50.7% to 50.8% | Inferno Top 20 - 52.8% to 50%
Mirage all officials - 55.3% to 53.7% | Mirage Top 20 - 55.6% to 55.1%
Dust2 all officials - 53.3% to 52.4% | Dust2 Top 20 - 54.5% to 52.2%
Vertigo all officials - 51.8% to 52.5% | Vertigo Top 20 - 51.9% to 55.2%
Overpass all officials - 56% to 56.9% | Overpass Top 20 - 56.6% to 56.1%
Nuke all officials - 56.7% to 55.1% | Nuke Top 20 - 57.8% to 57.9%
While almost all of the aforementioned maps' CT side winrates stayed within 0.1% or went down after the nerf, Vertigo is the outlier. For some reason, the Counter-Terrorists have done better after the nerf. Is it because Vertigo is a map that is not as affected by wallbangs and smoke-spams as the rest of the pool? We might never know.
Some people might at this point think "Wait, where is Ancient?". Well, the reason that Ancient is not included in the statistic above is because of the major changes that Ancient received in the patch.
The revision to the map was meant to make it less favorable to be on the defensive, as it was by far the most CT-sided map before. But it has had the opposite effect. In all official matches on Ancient, the CT sides have seen a rise in success by 2.0%, while the defense of Top 20 teams has seen an even bigger rise at 5.2%.
Ancient all officials - 57.8% to 59.8% | Ancient Top 20 - 57.6% to 62.8%
Is this merely a result of teams needing new tactics on the offense, or has Valve completely bungled this? Once again, we might never know. All we can do is hope that the changes will have a positive effect in the long run.
