All victims of too few events, had there been more tier 1 events teams would have more time to gel and figure out issues, meanwhile with 3 regional stages and 3 international LANs you can have your season last just 2 months, sadge
I would argue that all of those who got kicked after kickoff/bangkok are better than 70% of players of their role across all leagues, so it isn't the worst of the worst getting kicked, rather A-B tier players in their role
i mean they still clear players of apeks, koi, giantx, navi. Thing is that this pre-stage 1 shuffle almost always takes part within the top, not within the bottom, so the serviceable players leave and the subpar players remain cuz bottomfeeders don't make shuffles
bottom feeder teams would unironically need to drop the entire roster to become competitive and orgs can't fork out that kind of money esp when existing players are under contract
if I was management I would just tank this year and save up for the next offseason to see if better options come up. Most of the bottom feeders are franchised so they have no rush to create competitive rosters.
I still dislike this trend, like why would a prospect join someone who tanks for 3 years like KOI if someone like liquid offered him even 3 months to prove himself?
It's not like other sports where tanking for a draft is a good idea. If you are not relevant in esports, you do not make money and have to drop the game.