NAVI so good. Love to see them with ardiis again. Such a OG team.

*Edit: Okay, BBL still deserved this win. Crazy momentum. GG.

When you would show someone who never watched Valorant E-Sports the Fnatic matches of Masters Tokyo 2023, LOCKIN 2023 and the regional season 2023 and then the matches of this year, he would say it's a different team.

tex on Breeze was crazy! He made 2 nice matches recently.

I don't give a sh*t about regions in a damn video game, because I'm not 12 years old. Valorant is literally the only videogame where people care about regions - which fits the community very well. Loads of kiddos.

I think that shows how insanely great potter is. When you look up Demon1s Tier 2 stats, Verno etc. were much better. Verno and N4RRATE are the true NA talents now (I exclude zekken, because he is playing T1 for years).

What is even happening?

• EMEA absolutely random wins and losses
• Fnatic struggling
• NRG with 2023 superstar Demon1 struggling heavily
• Sentinels won the major with confidence a few weeks ago and is now losing and losing
• DRX strong again with 2023 coughing baby Foxy9 becoming hydrogen bomb -> stomping GENG

Weirdest season since start of Valo E-Sports.

Happy for Asuna. He deserves it.

But holy... I thought C9 would do much better. They looked so strong recently.

What a game. LEV so good... most sympathetic team, too.

Let us be honest. No one REALLY ever stopped aspas. Maybe for one match or so, but he always came back strong af.

Best duelist in the world for years now.

This could go in any direction, tbh.
Overall I think NRG has the much more balanced team. On LEV you basically only have aspas and kiNgg being constantly good - and also aspas in the need to carry.

Even though I'd love to see aspas winning, since he is the best... I say NRG wins this by 2-1.

*Edit: Okay, maybe I'm wrong again... like in 90% of my predictions. xD

Racist???

C9 looked deadly af today. Especially OXY gets better and better.

He is going to get signed by some VCT team in the future anyways is my guess.

al0rante on Astra so damn nice.

FOKUS on Split was awesome to watch, especially on Attack.

Icebox good, Defence on Bind nc.
Leo on Gekko = n1

Sayf easily the best Flex player in the region.

Hahahaha. Last season: Everyone was crying because only one team was winning, now there is no "consistency". That moment when you just hate because you want to hate.

People calling Elite the next Alfajer might not be wrong after all. In T2 he was insane. BBL might just needed a bit more time... and they showed in the offseason their potential against FUT already.

He owned zekken and TenZ, so he can't be that bad.

That was actually a beautiful series of NAVI.
Nice 1v5 Ace of N4RRATE, though.

GG.

I think FNC looked really good in some situations, but Gentle Mates also looked really, really bad. In the end you def. need confidence boosts like this to get back on track, so it will probably help Fnatic anyways. Derke used Yoru really well in my eyes... especially on Breeze during retakes. The agent is so insanely powerful when you use it with confidence - like TenZ or marteen. MiniBoo also shows how strong Neon can be when you are good with her. I like the "new" variety for duelists much more than only seeing Jett and Raze in every match.

Recent matches of Sentinels, Fnatic and DRX showed how much the mood of the players has an effect on the matches. I mean in CS you can see it all the time and in Apex you could see it perfectly during the last TSM matches.

So I guess a happy and confident bunch of Leos, Alfajers etc. will def. play for major titles again. Sentinels showed and proved that it's never joever.

aspas is simply the best.

N4RRATE is currently the best Gekko in the world probably... his inventiveness with that agent is insane.

Alfajer still the best rifler and Leo first time on Gekko was cool, but there is a lot of room for improvement. Especially with Derke on Yoru...

But (!) at least they introduced new strats and comps now. As the first match with this heavy change it was okay I guess.

As Boaster recently said: "We just need to keep on grinding."

That is actually the right attitude.

Ehm... lol?!

al0rante MVP. I'm glad he is fit again after his illness... he's the best player in DACH beside of Click and Fizzy. His rifling skills are even better than most Tier 1 players.

Less is so damn good. 11-7 on Demon1 (who had a great game) is actually crazy.

I feel like when LOUD and aspas will reconnect, they will be the best team again. All they are missing is a player like aspas - who does the necessary entries, who can anchor 3 people and still is able to win the duels and who is always able to suppress the opponents. Exactly like aspas did it before or like zekken for Sentinels, marteen for KC, Jinggg for PRX, MiniBoo for Heretics or Click for SK.

aspas still the best duelist in the world, but his team is simply at least one level below him mechanically.
If LEV won't change drastically by tactics, the year won't be fun for them.

marteen and N4RRATE are currently the most exciting new players to watch beside of MiniBoo in EU, imo.

French always were great E-Sport players tbh.

I'm actually angry as a longtime FNC supporter. Always defended Boaster because I thought he was only joking, but they play so damn lazy (except Leo). Boaster got destroyed and he keeps laughing as if he doesn't care. He is one of the best earners in VCT Europe and kept mocking Madrid teams and instead of doing everything to show the world that Fnatic still belongs under the best teams, they keep to 2022/2023 comps and playing much worse than last year - they are not even including Yoru or Gekko. I mean Elmapuddys losing-streak is one of the worst of all VCT coaches (incl. his time before Fnatic at GENG), but that can't be an excuse. As an IGL Boaster should be part of creating new comps and motivating his team.

Also - the difference between Fnatic now and Sentinels at their downfall was that Sentinels actually started in an instant to create new ideas, most didn't work in the beginning, but they changed comps, they played around with agents and stuff - TenZ was humble and never mocked any team (no one of Sentinels did). They watched other majors and payed respect. Boaster is just arrogant and keeps smiling - and especially on Lotus you could see that they stopped playing this 101% Valorant which made them so damn good. They don't even peek every corner anymore. Lazy af.

Leo played well. Otherwise: Yes. They fkd up.

He became arrogant af, but actually he cares more about Instagram than his work. Leo is the only one at that team who wants to win. He should leave.

Leo ist the only FNC player wanting to compete as it seems.

GG, Heretics. You were super strong against Sentinels + Paper Rex and now you destroyed Fnatic. Keep it up!

ANGE1 doing a crazy Ace... never thought I would see that again.

WTF? He was prob. their most ambitious player. G2 Valo section does some really weird things.

I bet when it would still be the Ascension winning team, incl. tex and just no changes they would be much more confident and being dangerous to every team.

Nice signing. Excited to see what he does in VCT...

Cloud is the only constant fragger at GIANTX and nukkye was their smartest player. Maybe the whole team should split up...

There is no hate, tbh. Boaster is befriended with many NA and APAC players and Derke is just baiting as everyone else of us here. In the end people should never mix up trashtalk in Valorant with racist idiots... that's something totally different... but some kiddos sadly don't understand that and think that Derke or whoever might actually mean their trashtalk seriously.

Again: Baiting and trashtalk in E-Sports is absolutely part of the game. Best example is still Boostio trashtalking everyone at Tokyo Masters and then playing PIng-Pong with everyone in the hotel lobby when not playing matches.

There are ups and downs. Who expected the last 3 years to be like that? Who ever expected Sentinels to have such a down and then this big comeback? E-Sport is a quick living sports. EMEA will be back, I'm sure about that. Maybe not in Shanghai, but at some point.

But yeah... NA did a great job in Madrid, Sentinels played well and deserve this absolutely. Every fair enjoyer of Valorant should admit that. No matter what regional fan you are.

Next major soon and then everything starts from scratch.

GG Sentinels

Sentinels carried by EMEA player (johnqt)
PRX carried by EMEA player (something)
NRG carried by EMEA player (Demon1)

I said before the tourney that either Sentinels or GENG will win this. I didn't actually believe that GENG would be THAT crazy against Sentinels, but they play such an amazing style of Valorant.

GENG deserve to win Madrid by 101%. They play amazing. And it would be Pacifics first major, so... would be actually a milestone win.

I only know ingame points doesn't work anymore. I had a Smurf account made in Turkey and I could buy points for a very low € amount compared to my German main account. But at some point it stopped working... :X I think they will check your IP (...).

Will be tough, but Sentinels will win 2-1 imo.

He said EMEA would not give Africa it's own "representation", which is the most stupid thing someone ever wrote. First because it's no regional, but a Riot decision and second because it's a basic longitude directed arrangement. It always have been like that. EMEA is actually a very important economical region for any kinds of sea- and airfreight. It's no "E-Sports thing". But I don't expect people like him to understand or know that...

You mean like NA with Americas and not giving Brazil etc. their own regional area? Would be the same logic when you look on the map. But you probably don't even know what a map is.

It must really hurt some people that their region got dominated by EU for years and years.

GENG is a fresh team, but almost all of those players have been around in Tier 1 for a while.
Heretics and KC are literally made out of 2023 Tier 2 / Tier 3 players. marteen f.e. had around 500 rounds of Tier 2 in 2023... which is not a lot.

EMEA still won the most majors / trophies in this game (which probably will be leveled after Madrid) and that def. shows the region can't be that trashy. Also when you look at Counter-Strike, which is dominated by Europe for 20 years, you can see that EU players def. love FPS and are good in those games.

But yeah, the year started bad for Europe... showing up with unexperienced teams is no good excuse, since those teams beat Fnatic, NAVI and Liquid. So it's actually no excuse to say that they have no experience. Also - PRX actually got a lot (!) of fans in Europe, just as Sentinels. Sentinels and PRX might be more popular than Heretics in Europe.

It actually sucks that the regional duels keep on appearing so early in majors. I mean it should be random, but maybe it would make sense to give it a higher chance that teams would face other regions teams in the first stage of upper brackets.

Anyways... I like both teams, but I think Sentinels will do it 2-1.