I'm thinking it was a bad move replacing Will he's a beast and better than stellar IMO and SicK should have a starting position on SENtinels.
SicK: bailed on SEN when they were at their lowest. Regardless of his personal issues, the team needed him and he chose himself and his personal life over the team. I'm not one to say if this was the right choice overall as I dont know what he was dealing with, but as an org I would not trust him in the future.
Will: He came in to 100T as an unknown, was an absolute force, and one of the best international performers on the team. I think he deserves a spot in Tier 1, BUT Cryo is better and theres no questioning it. All I can say is that its unlucky that Carlos sold G2's Franchising slot, ruining the slots for NA, and Riot only allotted 6 slots for NA which has been historically the strongest region in the game since its inception. I wish him nothing but the best, but FaZe is winning Ascension so its kind of a null point
This is fact
You take EMEA and APAC outside of top 3 and they cant compete in NA VCT. NA has been getting shafted in International slots for 2 years, and then Riot proceeds to give them half of the Franchising slots of the other major regions by combining them with the only other competitive underfunded regions (BR as well as LATAM, who were both able to fund 2 T1 teams each at the minimum)
You can cope all you want, but South America alone could have rivaled EMEA, Pacific, and NA
NA alone was stronger than EMEA and Pacific if you look at 10 teams from each
It's just a mess
historically the top emea teams are stronger than the top na teams.
NA was not shafted.
both masters events 1 of the na teams bombed out without wins.
100t failed to make it out of groups.
and thats not including what happened in 2021.
No point trying to create this hypothetical scenario when we have enough results to prove the hypothesis
a) Historically Americas and EMEA have the same amount of Champions wins
b) I believe Internationals are 3-3, with Americas winning 3 and EMEA winning 3 (2 NA, 1 SA, 2 CIS, 1 carried by CIS)
c) 100T 1 for 1'd Fnatic, if the win order was reversed you cant make that argument, WHICH doesnt matter to begin with because the only team Fnatic beat once they got out of groups was Liquid who didnt deserve to be there
2021? SEN fell apart, NV didnt have the experience. NA is well aware of their shortcomings in 2021, is Europe?
To say that Europe is better than NA is a hard sell, to say that they deserve double the Partnership slots is unhinged
Kiles is Spanish, is he not? Acend was carried by Cned who is Turkish. I'll take an L if you dont want to consider Turkey part of CIS, but I wont back down on that Kiles was literally boosted garbage dragged over the finish line by cNed and zeek
Don't accuse me of moving the goalposts either, because I said South America was a major region too that could have competed with APAC and EMEA on their own. EMEA is half of the world (especially considering China was blacklisted from competition), and we're limited to 2 countries and still have more talent.
And thank you for accepting that gamb0t and FPX were not EMEA rosters, hopefully you agree that its insane that they cut their VRLs when the only international success they've had is off the back of countries that are no longer politically acceptable by the rest of the world (not my opinion, but the opinion of Riot exacerbated by removal their regional league)
i dont know what world you are living in the has turkey being part of the CIS..
I only brought up kiles because hes the only one of that acend roster that could be considered from CIS
and yes gambit and fpx are emea.
You are getting confused between eu vs emea.
emea is a combination of multiple regions already.
like turkey, eu , mena, cis...
That is fucking cap. EMEA as a whole has always been stronger than NA. OpTic carried NA 2022 and outside of them only XSET did something and even that was only in Champions. Those 2 were clearly above rest in NA outside of The Guard during Stage 1 who flopped on LAN. EMEA was dominated by FPX and Fnatic this year, but outside of that you had Guild, Liquid, M3C even G2 who were all contending for 3rd spots, while NA was just shitshow of anyone outside of OpTic and XSET beating each other with week preparation time and showing how inconsistent and mid they are.
EMEA has always had clear tiers of teams in VCTs because these teams are actually competitive and actually good and while being so its messing up how you see the regions. EMEA has always been way more predictable, but that doesn't mean they are worse actually its the opposite. You could take any lower tier EMEA VCT team like NaVi, BIG, BBL etc and they would have competed among most of the NA teams.
NA 2022 in nutshell: "NRG won vs 100T omg! LG won over NRG omg! C9 won over LG omg! These teams are so competitive!!" while in reality it just shows how bad and not competitive these teams were and how most of them were just mid tier and couldn't keep winning like good teams actually do. While in EMEA you would never bet BIG over Guild or NaVi over M3C because teams like Guild and M3C were actually good on consistent level and were only competiting against best of EMEA. In NA these teams would have been strong contenders for 3rd if not even 2nd spot.