my thoughts on the 4 VCT americas matches so far:
NRG looks pretty good, still quite a few holes in their attack especially but that's to be expected for a new team. Ethan is looking as good as last year, his supportive util is amazing.
Furia isn't as shabby as I thought, but their ideas seem to be very basic and relying a lot on Mwzera to get the opening kills. If he gets first blood, they win the round. If not, they lose. Easy counter is to shut him down.
C9 looked worse than the offseason in my opinion, underwhelmingly mid. Vanity calls and ideas are not very fleshed out (gekko + fade on lotus felt very disjointed especially), but Oxy obviously the highlight of the team and carried them to a win.
MIBR was better than most people think, I'm personally not surprised that they were on par with C9. They looked pretty structured, biggest issue imo is the lack of firepower (ITS A GUN GAME!) but in terms of discipline and midround ideas, they looked decent (probably thanks to Frod and Bzk giving that to the team, plus no internal issues)
Sentinels honestly looked good even though they lost 2-0, first map especially was really close and they had really good ideas and awareness of what was going on. Biggest problem for me is that they seemed a little surprised when LOUD did a midround push, or an agressive play on the defense. But easily reigning that in, I can see them make their way through the lower bracket. Not lacking in firepower.
LOUD is looking amazing, not unexpected to me. Chadhaak cooking on both maps was crazy, especially Ascent. Although both comps have issues and I feel like if antistratted correctly they can be countered, but there's no guarantee that they will play any crazy comps again, and they may come with improvements next time. Overall though, the team looked really good with coordinated fights, everyone on the same page.
Leviatan, same as NRG tbh. Aspas is firing on all cylinders, the team has some pretty neat ideas. But their coordination especially, looks pretty off for now. Especially that Split map, very dissapointed the Sova pick had nothing backing up, no interesting set plays or cool ideas. The entire map looked like a ranked game. If Lev can avoid that, they'll be good. Just do "Aspas go kill" strat tbh.
100T is the weirdest of all, def better than at the end of last year but that's not a high bar. Boostio is def a very good addition and on top of gekko cosplay he brings energy and confidence the team needed for sure. Just not sure this team has the synergy to execute the ideas Zikz may bring to the table just yet. The execution of everything seems off, like they're not on the same page. But maybe it'll improve with time.
Anyways, feel free to drop your own takes in the comments, I'm interested to see what y'all think of everything we've seen so far! The meta is def in a very interesting place, so many different ideas.
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