The EVPs and Best Five of ESL Pro League S21

The Big Three of 2024 are back leading an Exceptionally Valuable Player list after m0NESY's return to form.

Vitality's dominance was the big story of ESL Pro League as they built on their Katowice triumph in some style.

They look stronger than ever, and with the other big dogs all struggling — Vitality didn't play a top five team all tournament through no fault of their own — their grip at the top of the scene looks tough to break.

The team are 28-5 in maps with Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool, and 12-1 in series; there are true shades of FaZe's start to 2022 after their own signing of the Estonian.

But unlike FaZe then, Vitality have a true superstar. This was the event Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut took over Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev's MVP record, 22-21 overall and 15-14 at Big Events.

His raw numbers for the event beggar belief, a +4.07 Round Swing, and a full radar chart (meaning he was in the top five per cent for every single metric).

And, in an even more worrying sign for the rest of the scene, the 24-year-old is far from done.

Read more

ZywOo: "I won't stop just because I am one in front of s1mple"

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What's Round Swing?

A new metric has been added to our EVP charts for 2025 as part of the development process for rating 3.0.

Round Swing, or RS, looks at each kill and sees how much it changes a team's chance of winning the round. That includes each team's economic situation, whether the bomb is planted, how many players are alive on each team, and which map the player is on for targeted CT-T percentages.

We are then given a percentage average of how much a player increased their team's win probability; the average is around 0, with most players sitting between -3 and +3.

While it is still a very early version of the build (and exact figures may change when it is eventually deployed), we are confident enough in the new data that it will now impact EVP decisions — meaning it makes sense to include it on the radars.

For transparency, the committee also had access to economy-adjusted stats for kills, damage, deaths, and KAST, where we looked at individual equipment value in each gunfight to adjust the value of each action.

In combination with the usual important metrics, these new metrics will help make the top 20 and EVP lists even more accurate to what actually affects a round, event, or year.

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Danil "⁠donk⁠" Kryshkovets ended the group stage with a 1.74 rating, and there is no denying that is what earned him his EVP — a rare case where someone's form is so overwhelming in groups that an award was already secured.

But it speaks to donk's level that, even after a terrible start to Nuke against Eternal Fire in quarters, he recovered to a 24-frag 1.19 rating by the end of OT.

His floor was pretty high in the rest of playoffs too, a 1.21 rating overall, which kept his overall numbers at bonkers levels: 1.24 KPRW, +3.77 WPA, and 97.3 ADR.

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Ilya "⁠m0NESY⁠" Osipov, by his 2024 standards, has been in a bit of a slump since Shanghai.

He had a 1.29 rating through 2024 up to the RMR, but has dropped to a 1.16 since then and just 1.08 versus top 10 opponents.

ESL Pro League, then, was a welcome return to his peak form even if it didn't translate into team success. He was top of the tournament charts in Round Swing (+4.36) and had a multi-kill in a whopping 38.8% of G2's round wins.

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Shahar "⁠flameZ⁠" Shushan is one of those rare players who always seems to step up in playoffs and that was the case here, a middling 1.13 in groups and 1.33 in the knockouts.

80% of his kills led to round wins and his big peak in the semi-final (1.81 rating map one, 2.37 map three) against The MongolZ demonstrated his ability to take over matches at the flick of a switch.

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ropz was a model of consistency in Sweden, adding a second EVP to his Vitality cabinet.

He was great on both sides (1.27 CT, 1.30 T), in groups (1.31) and playoffs (1.27), and topped the event leaderboard in round-to-round consistency (79.8% KAST).

The specialist anchor-lurker may not have had too many Player of the Map performances but with a floor like this, an EVP was assured.

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Ádám "⁠torzsi⁠" Torzsás stood head and shoulders above his MOUZ teammates in terms of rating (1.15, Dorian "⁠xertioN⁠" Berman second with 1.08) and round swing (+1.44, Ludvig "⁠Brollan⁠" Brolin second with -0.26) whilst topping round wins too (0.97 KPRW) for a second EVP of his own.

In MOUZ's map wins that gap remained with torzsi on a 1.33 rating and +3.82 round swing. The team's numbers suffered from five convincing map losses to champions Vitality and a tough run (8 maps vs top five teams) but their AWPer kept his head above water for the final award of the event.

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The best players of ESL Pro League Season 21, in order

Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut (MVP)
Danil "⁠donk⁠" Kryshkovets
Ilya "⁠m0NESY⁠" Osipov
Shahar "⁠flameZ⁠" Shushan
Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool
Ádám "⁠torzsi⁠" Torzsás

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Honorable mentions

Azbayar "⁠Senzu⁠" Munkhbold was player of the map four times in The MongolZ's six group stage wins but, as has become a worrying trend, fell off in playoffs too much for an EVP.

Dmitry "⁠sh1ro⁠" Sokolov was solid but had plenty of empty kills, especially in the two Nukes in playoffs (0.83 KPR, but an insane 25.8% saving rate), and his overall map list is not quite EVP worthy.

Ali "⁠Wicadia⁠" Haydar Yalçın was in great form during the play-in (1.43 rating) and groups (1.20 rating) but was bottom of the board in EF's quarter-final.

Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire and William "⁠mezii⁠" Merriman had good moments, especially the Brit in the final, but also have Vitality's smooth run to thank some of their overall numbers. apEX had 0.82 KPRW and mezii 0.75, not enough contribution for an award.

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Best Five

Had flameZ had a stronger group stage or closed the final in the way he started it, we may have had all five Vitality members in our all-star team of the event.

Still, four out of five — with apEX leading his men to a 64.8% T side win rate — tells a tale of the team's dominance all event long.

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The EVPs of 2025