If you hold an ability while you ult, you can plant while invulnerable.

I was playing a comp game with a lower level account and I was able to play Yoru despite the fact that he is currently disabled. I think it is because my account has not unlocked Yoru yet. The plant bug still worked
edit: the second game he is now disabled. I don't know how it worked.

This thread is not meant to spark political debate. There are potential Valorant consequences of the recent world events.

Blast has recently announced that Russian organizations will not be a part of their CSGO events. It is debatable whether their decision was based on logistics or politics, but the consequence remains the same. The primary team that this effects in Valorant is Gambit (NAVI is Ukranian). Obviously the players of Gambit are not to blame for this situation, and multiple have even spoken out for peace.

The organization of Gambit, however, poses a different issue. Gambit are reportedly owned by a massive state owned Russian conglomerate company. Since many nations and companies are imposing sanctions or severing ties with Russian based companies, especially companies so integral to the Russian state and economy, Gambit could be removed from Valorant events. I think it is unlikely that Gambit are removed from the group stage of EMEA Stage 1, but large scale changes to CIS participation are looming. Riot themselves are no stranger to being part of a massive eastern based technology conglomeration. Gambit as an org could be removed from future events, but a more pressing issue is just the logistics.

Getting Gambit players to international events might be difficult. If travel from Russia in particular is restricted, Gambit may not be able to attend the international Masters events. I anticipate very little being done about this situation unless Gambit qualify for Masters 1.
Travel could also affect any Russian players on other teams who have not left Russia. I do not know where people are located, but there are russian players on FNC, GUILD, NAVI, and FPX.
Please be sensitive and understanding for everyone involved.

I think the BR teams this year are significantly better than last year. Vikings were by far the most successful BR team of 2021 and they suffered from merely good but not great firepower even by minor region standards as well as role/playstyle issues. The other teams were either completely outclassed in firepower or lacking the fundamentals to succeed (or both). I think every team except LOUD is an iteration away from true contention. I see LOUD, KS, Furia, NIP, and Liberty as being able to handle themselves in the international events, but it would take an upset run even by LOUD to win the titles. LOUD is on DRX levels in my opinion, and a couple of the others have the firepower potential to make playoffs of events if the stars align.

Thank you. I just got into these analysis pieces as a casual hobby, but I have really enjoyed them. Now I am looking to level up my analysis to incorporate more formal analysis with clips/stats. I don't plan on expanding my content beyond the written form, as I have neither the time nor the personality for those formats, but thank you for the support.

Yep, they have impressed so far. When I made those posts, I thought ableJ was going to be brought in as a Jett and Quick was going to continue to be a support which he struggled as. They haven't looked dominant against a good NIP or an average ING squad so far, but they could challenge the best teams. They really need that win against KS to guarantee the 1st round bye and avoid the potential of facing LOUD early in playoffs.

Make sure to mention that time he won a world championship as a stand-in.

I started following BR because I recognized frz and saadhak from paladins. (I still watch Bonkar as well.) I enjoy their games, and the EU/NA forums are a bit too saturated for me to find a niche. I will still do some predictions/analysis of the international LANs, but I didn't feel like it was worth my time to cover regions that have a lot of other coverage.

Disclaimer: These posts were my own independent amateur work

Update: I have joined the VLR writing staff, so some of the recaps/news/feature pieces will be more professional. Unfortunately, I don't really have the time/energy to produce a bunch of minor pieces. Updates to this library will probably be less frequent.

I have been making a number of opinion pieces on VCT BR lately, so I figured I would organize them into a catalog. I do not speak Portuguese, and I just do this for fun, so these posts are just casual analysis of the games I watch and the stats as well as my weekly recap series which started late.

Weekly Recap Series: I started late, but will try to finish this group stage at least.
Week 3 Group A Week 3 was not originally written for these forums and was posted after week 4.
Week 3 Group B
Week 4 Group B
Week 4 Group A
Week 5 Group A
Week 5 Group B

Team Analysis Series: I will try to add at least one of these each week. They are mostly criticisms, but I think some of these teams can become true contenders.
Sharks not Cohesive
LOUD lack Nuance
Keyd Stars have not Improved
Gamelanders: Not quite there

General Thoughts: General VCT BR posts. Mostly tournament format critiques so far.
The Misuse of Single-Elim about the closed quals
Bracket Faliure: VCT BR Groups

Tierlists and more: I intend to make new team/player tierlists after stage 1.
Player Tierlist Pre-Group-Stage
My team tierlist on a different thread
My VTT fantasy team

I am still not sure what to think of Liberty. They have looked really good so far. If they clean up business against the lower tier teams in group A they will probably make tier 1 in my eyes.

I agree with the heat chamber. Their bind comp looks good and should probably be extended to other maps. Their split comp needs work though. I typically don't like Jett+Chamber comps because they have very little versatile utility, and are both best on the awp which can be a bit constricting. When you add a second duelist like raze, the team has such little utility. On split, KS had no flashes, no information agents, no healing, and a lot of overlap. I would like to see their bind comp be copied to split.

I do think murizzz can become good at the sentinel role, but his impact has dropped significantly when he has played sentinel so far. Getting one of Liberty's players is very unlikely unless the roster starts doing much worse. Getting a second initiator/flex would be nice.

There are a lot of options for support/sentinel/flex players that didn't make the group stage. If Sharks prematurely implode their roster before stage 2, frz might be the best aimer available. Maybe someone like fznnn who played with mwzera on Gamelanders.

Saadhak, NagZ, and Nozwerr have done fairly well for themselves since winning First Strike LATAM-S undefeated.

Yeah, a lot of teams are having slow starts, but they are one fluke loss vs ING away from failing to make playoffs (potentially). This single round robin with teams playing only 4 matches over 5 weeks for some reason is really dangerous. Hopefully they have a fire lit under them now.

Right at the top with a bold TLDR lol.

TLDR: Keyd Stars are still good, but they have not fully unlocked the potential of this squad.

Here comes another casual analysis of the BR VCT teams. Here are the others that I have made so far.
Sharks not Cohesive
LOUD lack Nuance

Now that KS have played two series, it has become apparent that they have not significantly improved from Champions. I did not think that KS were the best BR team at the end of 2021, but I did think they had the highest potential. Now that other teams have been built to overcome that potential, KS needed to figure out how to get more out of this roster. They lost to a good but not yet great NIP squad that has started to gain steam to contend for the top of BR. They also had a close win over a Sharks team that has not been as cohesive as expected.. That win over Sharks will likely keep them in the playoffs, but their dreams of a first round bye are now possible but out of their control. The primary problems I see with this squad are role conflicts and an imbalanced roster.

Role Conflicts:
Their biggest problem when they brought in mwzera for Champions was roles. Heat is a great Jett, but he has never played anything else. (He did just play his first non-Jett game with Chamber on Bind). mwzera has nuts stats on duelists, but he downgrades from superstar to just a star when playing initiators. He has definitely improved on initiators which has helped KS from falling apart. murizzz is also a part of this problem, as most people remember him for his 2nd duelist pop off performance at Berlin. He is really effective in that role, but has struggled now that he is relegated to more supportive roles. He was mediocre at best on supportive agents against Sharks, and did better against NIP on duelists. Obviously this core of three players is extremely talented, but double duelist is only effective on a couple maps, and this team requires at least two aggressive agents for them to really shine. Heat looked good on Chamber, so I think they need to get him on that agent on more maps. JhoW playing hard support and v1xen playing exclusively smokes makes it difficult to build agent comps around that, so maybe JhoW could play the extra initiator.

Roster imbalance:
This team is still driven a bit too much by fragging. Their strategic game has never looked distinctive which is good because it doesn't stand out as terrible, but bad because I rarely see them doing super interesting things. They have done a better job than most at leveraging their high skill players. JhoW and v1xen (and murizzz if on supportive agents) are extremely good at playing their roles, but rarely take over a round. JhoW in particular is simply at a lower tier of individual skill. I think he brings a lot to the team besides mechanical skill, but if he isn't IGLing, it might be too much of a deficit to keep him on this roster if their goals are to dominate BR or challenge for international titles.

My player grades:
heat 8/10: His individual form has continued to be great, but he hasn't been able to carry like in previous tournaments.
mwzera 7/10: Some good stats, but his utility hasn't been amazing. He is still most effective when taking over rounds instead of methodically playing with his team.
v1xen 7/10: He has been quietly solid so far. His stats in the international tournaments were terrible, but he is still a solid role player.
murizzz 6/10: He has only done well when taking the higher priority fragging agents for himself. The two stars are so important, that figuring out how to make them work might have to come at the expense of his playstyle if they can't adapt.
Jhow 5/10: His stats are on par for his career which isn't great. From what people say, he brings a lot to his teams besides stats, but the stats are still important, and the eye test confirms that he rarely does anything outside his role.

KS should still compete for the top spot in Brazil, but they are no longer (if they ever were in the first place) running away from the pack.

Killdream has struggled by his standards but hasn't been terrible. Sharks just don't seem super cohesive and Prozin, Gaabxx, and Addicted have been super inconsistent.

The last two weeks they lost 7/10 pistols and all 7 second rounds after they lost the pistol but were winning most of the gun rounds. This week they have won all 4 pistols and all 4 2nd rounds, but have blundered the 3rd round and gone on a massive losing streak every time.

Killdream has also played in BR before in CSGO

I wouldn't say ING is the worst team in the group stage. Vikings look much worse and ING played Furia close as well. However, yes Sharks are missing something. I made a post last week that describes my problems with the team. I am still not sold on Addicted as an IGL for this team. The individual level on everyone except frz has been bad, however their teamplay is pretty meh.

I mostly meant on an individual skill level they match gambit pretty well if not better. They are still nowhere close in terms of cohesiveness.

I think they could definitely be Gambit level, but they need a lot of work to get to that level of prowess. I was waiting to do a VK analysis until they played another game or two.

Yeah, I think bzkA is great for the team atmosphere. I would like a secondary coach/analyst, but I don't know if they would necessarily have the authority to implement their system. Hopefully LOUD only need small adjustments and they don't get comfortable with what they have.

DRX vs LOUD for the masters 1 title would be fun.

Now that LOUD and DRX have the money behind them, it could be big if they were able to bootcamp for longer in EU before masters 1 if they qualify.

Yeah, there is no individual piece that needs to be changed. The other good BR teams fall off hard if their best players have a bad game, but LOUD are just so good across the board. The only change that I could see happening is a change based on tactics such as a coach change or IGL change with Saadhak going back to sentinel (or just flexing). I don't see any good replacements for either position and don't think it is necessary yet. Its a shame the groups are so lopsided and we won't see LOUD tested again until playoffs.

TLDR: LOUD have good macro tactics, but they lack midround adaptation.

LOUD just beat Liberty and basically guaranteed themselves a bye in the BR playoffs. This win did not come without some serious weaknesses in their game being exposed. LOUD have the best average individual skill across the team out of anyone in BR, and contrary to popular belief, they have relatively good teamplay. However, they did struggle with the cohesive nature of Liberty's tactics. It took some miracle plays to rescue the final map, and besides one stretch of rounds on Haven, LOUD never strung together a lot of rounds despite making good plays in most rounds. The problem that I see comes down to the nuance of their strategy. LOUD have excellent set plays with macro level executes and micro level utility combos, however the midround and adaptations are lackluster.

1) Adaptation
While writing this, I saw a clip from the latest Platchat episode where they basically said the same thing. When rounds are thrown into disarray, LOUD's utility and timing break down. There is a clip at 1:31:45 which shows an example of their lack of direction in midrounds. I think it is particularly visible when opponents make aggressive defensive plays with utility. When people criticize LOUD for their individual play it is these situations that are usually pointed to. On the defense, LOUD have very good

2) Variation
LOUD's macro plays match up fairly well with other good teams. However, once they get stopped, they often flounder. The best example I can think of is their Ascent attack. They set up 4 players towards A at least 80% of all rounds. Liberty decided to punish this by taking mid in a couple of crucial rounds and by continuously leaving only one or zero players B to fend off Less's lurk. I had this problem with the Saadhak led Vikings last year as well where when their initial plays didn't work and they ended up completely zoned by utility or a player down, their next moves were so much less potent. LOUD are keeping more opposite side map control than Vikings used to, so the rotations are better, but they still struggle to outmaneuver opponents if they lose the initial engagement.

My grades on individual performance:
Aspas 8/10: He has been excellent in the entry department and don't believe people that say he cannot play with the team. He is almost always working in tandem with another player and is usually directly opening space that is critical for what the team is doing like site executes. He is however, the biggest culprit of losing discipline in midrounds. His individual form has been good but not great against the good teams, but he should pad the stats until playoffs.
pancada 7/10: A top tier site anchor and one of the best mechanically gifted controllers.
Sacy 7/10: He has been somewhat disappointing so far. In particular, he is often part of the groups of LOUD players that are caught pushing together without clearing separate angles. He plays with his team a lot, but it feels like they need more practice being methodical.
Less 7/10: A young question mark, he has stepped up fairly well. His awareness at times can be lacking, but the gamble on him looks like it will pay off.
Saadhak 6/10: As an IGL and someone who takes a lot of entry fights, his anticipation of coordinated enemy plays has been rough. A lot of LOUD's tactical struggles fall on him to call

Ah true, I don't speak Portuguese, so I don't really follow anything outside the server. ableJ brings some more recent CS experience so maybe that helps.

Furia haven't looked super impressive to me. This roster doesn't seem like a big improvement over the old Furia as Quick is much more inconsistent than xand on Jett and ableJ has been pretty mediocre so far in Valorant. Nozwerr is definately one of the best fragging IGL's in BR. If it starts clicking, they could definately challenge the best teams. I really want a 3 way tie for the 2nd/3rd spot out of group B.

It is held back by Gaabxx bhopping into the open without his rifle out. I watched this live and it was absolutely nasty.

I have not been impressed by their icebox. It takes Frz off cypher and Killdream off astra. Addicted and Prozin didn't combo their information util very well so I would like to see them flex prozin to sage and frz to chamber. They can leave Frz to do more of the solo lurks and anchors while Gaabxx is used as a rotator that the rest of the team plays off of.

I still think Sharks are better than VKS, ING, TBK, and GLB, and on the level of NIP, FUR, LIB, with the potential to be better, but they are going to be locked out of the playoffs unless luck goes their way.

Thanks! I'm just a casual, but I will try to keep up the opinion pieces and stats analysis. Hopefully at the end of the group stage there will be some fun results.

Agreed, I mostly meant that there is no guarantee that other young players in BR with their potential would be able to adapt either. I would have liked a gamble on a younger player to develop, but I haven't watched the tier 2 enough to see anyone that could help.

My NA rankings: I limited it to one player per team, so for teams that split controllers, I just picked one. Also I factored in if they are IGLing.

1. Marved
2. Zander
3. Valyn
4. dephh
5. vanity
6. skuba
7. ec1s
8. supamen
9. zombs
10. hazed
11. TiGG
12. pho

Someone like jzz, RND, or Tisora might be available if Sharks want to spend, but that probably won't happen until at least stage 2. There isn't really a clear upgrade, so continued development of their players is more likely. Gaabxx and Prozin have the potential to match pretty much anyone not signed to a good team.

I thought Sharks would be one of the better teams in Brazil this split. It was the two best players from the old Sharks, plus a mechanically skilled player in Frz, plus the best player and igl from Saw. They played Keyd Stars close in their opener but got rolled by NIP. I still think this team can become better than NIP and Furia, but there are several issues that I see from just casually watching them.

1) The BR players don't fit the playstyle of the EU players particularly Gaabxx.
Frz has been very good on the sentinel role but he does a lot of work on lurks or individual plays. Prozin has struggled with the initiators and generally plays off of the other BR players. The bigger problem is Gaabxx who plays a completely different style to the rest of his team. Addicted has introduced a more measured and information based style than most of BR, but Gaabxx still has an extremely risky approach. He is incredibly aggressive, but rarely opens space for his team such as the standard dash into smoke on site to open it up. His positioning and awareness has been really awkward, and against NIP, he was caught dashing, running, jumping, or with his back turned an absurd number of times. For instance when you watch Cauanzin's 4k clutch, Gaabxx is just bhoping into the open for the final kill.

2) Slow starts.
Sharks have won 3/10 pistols so far and are 0/7 in finding any value if they lose the pistol. In the 5 maps they have played so far they have been at -8, -6, -5, -4, and -4 round differential at some point in the first half. Despite being 1/5 in maps so far, they have a positive round differential in the second halfs. Frz and Killdream have been pretty good with sheriffs, but Sharks need to figure out how to win without guns.

My rating for each player so far:
Frz: 8/10: As I suspected, sentinel fits his playstyle much better since he lacked the aggression for duelists and struggled with his aim while juggling lots of utility on initiators. He has quietly put up the best sentinel stats in BR with some nutty aim. His utility isn't always in sync with his team, but it has been pretty good overall.
Killdream 7/10: The most valuable player on Sharks, he has had a couple of really rough halfs so far, but his aim and astra utility is on par with the best in BR. If he can eliminate those dry spells, his controller stats would be the best by far.
Gaabxx 6/10: His opening stats against heat are great, but he threw so many rounds against NIP and has provided very little value other than the rounds where he pops off.
Prozin 5/10: He has been one of the weakest initiators so far which should change, but his utility has not been combined with killdream and addicted as much as I would like to see. His aim has also been slow to arrive.
Addicted 4/10: Sharks have looked good when they get the information plays or aggressive combos, but the lack of value from non-gun rounds combined with the lack of control over the individual plays the BR players are making makes me grade him low. Additionally, his individual form has been pretty bad so far.

I think this team will rebound, but it might be too late in this group of death. They really need Ingaming to upset Furia. I don't understand why there is only single round robin when the schedule could easily fit having each team play twice per week. If you spread your group stage out over so many weeks, this format is not optimal. Normally I blame BR VCT for bad bracket decisions however NA and EMEA have the same problem.

Gaabxx has died while dashing, running, jumping and being caught out of position so many times this series. It was a really nice shot by cauanzin though.

I believe in the puleule paladins power.

Sharks 2-0 NIP

I have been saying Sharks are legitimate. VK aren't invulnerable in this group. Map 2 should be fun.

I would argue Sharks, Furia, and NIP have a shot at tier 1. I might be way to high on Sharks but I think they are the third best team.

Quick on duelist is looking a lot more scary than the sage/skye.

I should have put him in the trembolonaRage tier.

Yeah, Loud vs GLB was a banger. Liberty looked really good, but they always roll bad teams and I don't know how bad Vks are.

lol

If anyone has watched the VKS, ING, or TBK rosters and wants to explain their perspective feel free to in this thread.

Oops lol I knew I missed someone.

I really want heat to play chamber and mwzera to pop off on raze, but I have no intel on KS's roles. I am hyped for their match against Sharks.