Sliggy and other analyzers says Pacific have lower ceiling than other regions.
Is this truth?
I mean they say that last year also.
I think you can make an argument for both, but it's probably ceiling being lowered first.
Floor MIGHT be lowered because of what you said -- the average APAC teams underperforming, especially with current meta. The thing is we can't really check... they may have improved relative to other regions but the same teams qualify to intl's every time so we can't know for sure.
Ceiling is definitely lowered because the most consistently good teams (namely DRX and PRX) have gone from being considered a favorite every tournament to being more dark-horse picks. And while GenG has improved drastically they aren't as dominant as they probably should be (and also they have really bad showings sometimes... GenG was a Champs favorite that got grouped, that's never a good look)
I'm not saying the floor lowered. I was saying that based on his statement he should have said that the floor was lowered since if bad teams are playing worse then the floor is lowered. I don't watch enough APAC to know fully what the state is of the floor but DRX is looking nice, I could see them doing good in Bangkok
I trust sliggy's judgement bc he watches every game. I tend to agree just due to the lack of high level mid-rounding IGL's. Outside of munchkin/geng's success, there hasn't been one and I'm a firm believer in that is how you win, set/fast strats only get you so far.
I haven't watched every game, but Geng/PRX seem to be playing at a lower level. However, the bottom of the pack has leveled up so the average of the region got stronger, just not the top teams in pacific. This is my "gold level" take