fair warning this is going to be negative because i'm unbelievably pessimistic on valorant talent atm, sorry in advance to anybody here, it's not personal hate blah blah blah. i am curious how people place them too
s tier -> nobody
a tier -> nobody
b tier -> hypoc/pansy, sideshow/bren, achillios/paperthin. duos that are generally listenable and are a positive listening experience more often than not. no real complaints, but not exactly captivating to watch (in entertainment value or analysis) either. not much to say because these people turn in acceptable performances. good job!
c tier -> quack/valdes, tasteless/chobra, riv/vansilli. alright but mediocre. tasteless is of course a legend of esports casting but it's painful to watch him make the slowest reads on the game imaginable (the amount of times he, in semi-surprise, remarks "oh and it looks like team x is actually going to rotate here" when they started rotating 5s ago LOL) and i think he's probably the worst at the game out of any caster + he doesn't have amazing chemistry with chobra so the whole thing is doomed. quack/valdes is painfully unmemorable and this comes from someone with a soft spot for valdes. vansilli/riv are probably the best here but it feels like a lot of the time they're reduced to just saying "wow," which isn't exactly ideal for your casters. overall not enough to mute the stream but bland commentary that doesn't add to the game. doesn't majorly detract either.
d tier -> ender/exwarrior, mitch/tom. this is where the game becomes less watchable. no offense to exwarrior btw but ender basically 'steals the show' in their duo; this is not a compliment. the guy is just a massive failure. he's almost attractive, almost fashionable, almost intelligent, almost interesting, and almost funny. this is of course not really true, i just wrote it for the rhetorical effect -- the first one is, but he's not even close to almost fashionable/intelligent/interesting/funny. while it may be admirable that he pushes forward and tries despite these limitations, this damages the product: if he stuck to the standard, he'd be c or b tier. instead he tries painfully hard and juts his misguided self into every cast, trying to joke instead of attending to the game, garnishing himself without an appreciation for subtlety (one does not have to be subtle to appreciate subtlety). if he is truly expressing himself through his outfits then he is pitifully simple, and this i find to be the most likely possibility. henryg aspired to be the morrissey of casting, enigmatic and controversial: ender aspires to be the harry styles of casting, tasteless and appealing to the dullest base imaginable. mitch and tom actively require you to lower the volume of the stream, which is an entirely different issue but still incontrovertibly an irritation. their duo is the poster child for fake hype.
f tier -> doug/balla. balla i find tolerable, his issue is that he's a little righteous in his critique. critique is good, it's actually refreshing, but when you're not a pro you have to be very careful and walk the tightrope. balla isn't bad at the game, but he's not a pro and he struggles with this: there are times where his disapproval and disbelief is misinformed and he ends up the dunce for repeatedly hammering an incorrect point. doug however is legitimate sacrilege. he stands with very exclusive company for me; he is one of two in my personal abyss of grating, instant-broadcast-mute casting. seriously, rapid (league/starcraft/sexual harassment) and esportsdoug are the only two people that have ever infuriated me so much. not even djwheat could reach these lows. i have actually searched for videos of doug talking to check if his casting voice is pathological, in which case i could forgive it, and it is not. the stupid vocal quivering he does is contrived for hype, and it's fucking horrendous to listen to each and every time. maybe it'd be acceptable if he knew when to hype things up, but he doesn't. he'll hype up every 2k, regardless if the 2k is actually remarkable. "how does he get 2 there?!?!?!" there's a fucking answer, moron. he was set up to get two. or he did a good job of playing around a smoke. it's not that crazy. if scrawny is dollar store sadokist then doug is the dogshit splattering across your shoe when you return from the dollar store. but okay, ignorant hype: what separates that from tom/mitchman? the answer is his dreadful, cringe-inducing wordplay. and i don't like throwing 'cringe' around freely. i genuinely wince in my seat when i hear doug whip out one of his 'clever' one liners and it saddens me that reddit seems to encourage this: "not even the best thieves can steal time" made me roll my eyes so hard that i risked blindness when i craved deafness instead. give me two teams and i can write a dozen of those witless hackneyed quips. do i have to blame sadokist for this? when he uttered "the big apple and snax is hungry" did he shift the paradigm of esports casting into atrocious attempts at wordplay made to impress the barely literate? i have seriously considered watching his stream just in a state of depressed observatory curiosity. perhaps the actual saddest part of his casting is that he's improved while still being unlistenable.
special fuck you to mimi for "they were cooking!!!!" "it's joever!!!!!" "hahaha i'm gonna be ironic with talking about sentinels while simultaneously talking about sentinels!!!!" in every fucking plat chat. you're either pandering to the deadeyed sheeeeesh no cap kiss your homies AYO??? pause nba quote landfill of low-functioning valorant fans or you're one of them yourself, neither is good, try improvement instead.
special thank you to sliggy for being straightforward, grounded, and relatively intelligent. anyone who possesses a sliver of maturity has an advantage restreaming on the basis of lowering the casters, but he sticks out as being especially worthwhile. obviously he wouldn't approve of this negativity, but i'm not looking for his approval. i just had to get things off my chest. steel and sgares aren't bad either.
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