I think we are the only people on this site who know anything about this Challengers league and how to fix each team tbh
IDK about stomping. I do think they are on equal footing, so the Guard very well could win in a rematch. The difference between you and gamr is that you simply state your opinions about a team based on what you see, while gamr proceeds to call everyone who disagrees with him a moron.
The reason why I'm inclined to support MxM as being stronger is because they beat the Guard on bind. The Guard enjoys Bind, and you could argue it's their best map. MxM never played it before. To beat the Guard on Bind the first time you ever play Bind is a massive accomplishment, you can't deny that.
I'm copy pasting my response to gamr about Bind:
Where are you getting this from? Almost every time the Guard gets a chance to pick Bind, they do. How are you going to call Bind their 2nd worst map lmao? There was even a Sean Gares interview about when he was the 100T coach where he talked about playing the Guard and how the Guard like playing Bind so he prepped 100T against Guard's bind.
Before the MxM game, Bind was their second best map long-term historically with a win% of 73.6%, being second only to Icebox on which they have 77% win rate and is currently out of the pool. Lotus is their best map now with an 88% win rate, but they've only played it during this challengers season, so the sample size is small. Evidently, they weren't confident enough in Lotus to pick it against MxM.
Where are you getting this from? Almost every time the Guard gets a chance to pick Bind, they do. How are you going to call Bind their 2nd worst map lmao? There was even a Sean Gares interview about when he was the 100T coach where he talked about playing the Guard and how the Guard like playing Bind so he prepped 100T against Guard's bind.
Before the MxM game, Bind was their second best map long-term historically with a win% of 73.6%, being second only to Icebox on which they have 77% win rate and is currently out of the pool. Lotus is their best map now with an 88% win rate, but they've only played it during this challengers season, so the sample size is small. Evidently, they weren't confident enough in Lotus to pick it against MxM.
Of course people have biases for their teams; it's one thing to support a team, and it's another to feign omnipotence and put other people's opinions down.
I'm not saying it wasn't a close game. I didn't even say that the Guard played bad. I was just calling out a guy who claimed to be "the only one to know anything" when he was majorly wrong on a prediction. Simple as
He said that the Guard was going to stomp MxM. Losing 2-0 is the polar opposite of stomping someone. The Guard did not underperform. On the contrary, some of their round wins were spectacular, like the flawless thrifty win on Bind. You could say Tex had a bad day, but sym had pretty much the same scoreline as Tex, which tells you how the game was played:
the duelists were used a lot more for space creation/gaining control, and because both teams are super competent, they punished each other's duelists for being first entry. That is, MxM's set ups were overall better that game, if even a tiny bit. Combine that with the ungodly clutch capabilities of MxM, and that's enough to push MxM to the win.
MxM didn't barely win. They lost Split in triple OT, which you could argue is MxM's weakest map. Mind you, they got stomped by G2 on split 13-5 or something like that before, so that was a massive improvement. MxM swept Haven 13-7 and Pearl 13-7. A 6 round deficit isn't barely winning. They cleared the Guard on those maps with a coach.