*Poor

Bro his teams are so wacky and can upset so many mid teams in champs but he is been put into Groups of Death back to back years. Last year he was put into all the grand finalists of that year with FPX and this year he is again with teams that made International Grand Finals this year (If you consider EWC, but still TH is A-S tier team). Bro cant get a team like GX, MIBR or DRX to save his life for once.

Probably Gambit winning Berlin. Nats was playing 2-3 levels above everybody else in terms of game IQ and chronicle is the goat.

Everything can change in Valorant in the matter of months. Would you believe if someone at the end of 2022 said Yay is going to play for DSG in NA tier 2? Or can you imagine saying to Brazilian fan at the end of 2023 that is gonna be a last champs qualification for LOUD and LOUD will win only 1 game in a regular season?

SEN got the easiest group imaginable lmao. They only have PRX in that group, they probably have the weakest 2nd + 4th seed combo, this group is so easy to get out of for SEN

Its not the end of the world yet, vibes seem way off than usual and bang and zellsis had some rough games against G2 and NRG. They need to play with more confidence for sure, especially bang because he wasnt holding any space yesterday

Last year the reason why they struggled at the end was because of map pool and losing so many pistols. This year the problems seem much more complicated than that, their mental is weak, they get tilted so easily, they cant hold down sites, rage 5-man rushes on attack, low confidence, form of zellsis and bang etc and I think the lack of x factor as well.

They are going out 0-2 if they dont fix the big issue NRG exposed today and PRX exposed at Toronto, which is holding sites. NRG is just 5-man hitting out of a choke point and they are taking the site almost everytime, I hope they work on this because this is so glaringly obvious issue. If they dont do that and give up every site they are not getting any defense rounds against APAC teams who just site hit all the time.

They aint beating any best with how easily they get tilted. Until they fix that they are losing every series against any team who pulls out a bs round against them

Duhhh, what else do I cope with?

I know everyone is upset but lets be honest we arent winning that Grand finals against G2. And honestly being 3rd seed is better than being 2nd seed, we get to dodge FNC, EDG and T1. Its all planned

Why is he so unconfident? He has the best utility in the game and he is just throwing it away for free and not even taking advantage of it. Every round Mada is scaling to site even when he is paranoia'd, can we hold the space after we paranoia for once? Also Ethan had like 2-3 bs rounds where he just ran into site blind and killed 3. I think he is the one of the big reasons why SEN lost Corrode defense.

Thats what crowd is, they will have a favourite. Or do you want zombie crowd who cheers for both teams like the one is Saudi?

Its not just that, you can be tilted after a round but you should just move on after that. N4RRATE rage swinging every chance he gets and john calling 5 man hits off barrier is just cuz of tilt

Like how are these issues still not solved yet? How are they getting tilted for the whole map after 1 round still? Just move on, shit happens, its valorant. Its been whole 1 year and the same problem since Bangkok, if someone wins bs round against them they are tilted for the rest of the series.

How can a team with 3 Masters winners and 1 year experience together get tilted so much and so easily? They are gonna lose 3-0, if they dont recover their mental. Was Sacy that important of a leader?

Thats what happens when a team with 65% pistol winrate dont win any pistols, they were bit overrated by the community because they were snowballing almost every game with ults and fast strats, now we are seeing their floor. Honestly impressed with GX tho, 5 solid players, solid team

I am a SEN fan but group A seems mid as fuck, worst 1st seed, worst 2nd seed, possibly worst 3rd seed even (SEN 3rd here lol) and the worst 4th seed. Its gonna be a clown show

Delusion has its limits brother

You just know they are getting BLG in their group, its just meant to happen, you cannot run from the destiny.

It doesnt matter even if net is playing horribly, other players were also involved in throwing the advantageous rounds away

C9 lost 3 5v3s, 1 3v1 and 2 anti ecoes in this Lotus alone. They also popped 2 ults on their ecoes on their defense half. Pure definiton of a choke.

X factor plays wins games, tournaments. The score is 13-8, 13-9, those x-factor plays were the difference, all the clutches, all the agressive lurks and all the thrifties that were the difference maker of 3-4 rounds each map. I still think they have better aimers than G2 they just need to rely on that more, leaf cant be walking top mid for free every round, they just need to peak and punish him

You are not getting my point, they are playing as a team but they arent taking risks. Can you remember any SEN player making a big play in this series over 40 rounds? They need x-factor plays, even narrate who usually makes those plays is playing passive. X-factor plays are the reason I was a fan of this team at first, they were never the team who sits around, they always made big plays

I think its the opposite bro, they are playing so scared, no one is making plays, they are so scared of getting ecoed to the degree they are just 5 man hitting on ecoes instead of searching with an outlaw. No one is lurking against no info sentinel comps, no agression in any postplants, nothing. They are just waiting around to get exec'ed on

Is Icebox that bad tho? I think they could take on G2 because they arent that good of a Icebox team themselves. I agree woth Bind and Ascent being bad tho so they are losing those maps for sure but I have hope on their Sunset still and Haven should be competetive. Its kickoff all over again, they just need to show up

Honestly bind was so horrible but this Sunset wasnt that bad. Their macro was good this time but they played with such a low confidence at the start of the defense half it was pretty much impossible to come back after that. If SEN make Grand finals again, I think the match will be closer and I think they would be able to take at least Sunset because I dont think zekken will have such a bad game on neon again.

They were great at the end of 2023 and bang just came from 100T, so they should good base to play the map. I dont get how rusty they looked on Bind when they are perma bunning Ascent as well because they just did the NRG and ran 5 man short hits every round and basically no midrounding

Everytime they play against G2 they forget to midround somehow I just dont understand. They are hitting a stacked site everytime and not cancelling or rotating even if its so obvious (like the round bang got a lurk kill on B on attack they shouldve tped 100%, it was such a important round too)
I said this everytime and its still true, SEN's ceiling is completely dependent on john, even if bang, narrate and zekken are shooting they can still lose games against good teams if john is not calling well

Kickoff Liquid is so back, just look at these rounds they are throwing away every advantage possible. They almost threw the pistol, threw the anti eco, threw the 2v2, threw another anti eco within 7 rounds. Just unbelievable, only Liquid can do that its just the same shit as cs team

I get the saying of TL are the champs contender team because of players like nats, keiko and trexx are on the roster and pati has always solid util. But kamo has really low floor man, when he is not feeling he doesnt hit a single shot and whiffs a whole clip sometimes I just dont think winning a title is possible when your duelist is like that. Imagine champs playoffs and he has one of these games against world class duelist and he gets 1st blooded every round, its rough out there

Your same logic didnt work with G2 tho. G2 were perma banning Sunset up until playoffs and 2nd banning Bind. If the same thing happened again they would not have played those maps against NRG and 100T. So its not impossible for C9 to prep Sunset for 1 week and beat NRG since their whole year depends on it. This is so likely considering C9's scrim partners are 2G and SEN and they are both good Sunset teams

Yeah kinda true but you cant really point to any map of C9 and say this is obvious weakness but you can say that with NRG's Sunset and Bind

I think NRG is getting heavily overrated after that LEV game because they only played on their defensive halves and we didnt actually see them getting tested on their weakpoints. I think this game is completely 50/50, I would personally favour C9 because of how well rounded they are as a team and how good their map pool is.

With NRG there are still obvious weaknesses, their attackside on Bind, Sunset and Corrode is basically non existent, they only win rounds based on ults or hero rounds and they still cant midround well. With C9 however, their attacksides look much better, we have seen so many good called rounds from mitch and net, I wouldnt be surprised igling is the deciding factor on this series and C9 come out on top.

If you think about it Americas 2nd seed is destined to be in the group of death. Because they have to play #1 and #3 seeds of other regions and just look at the #1 and #3 seeds:
#1: PRX, TL, BLG
#3: T1, FNC, EDG
even #4: RRQ(DRX), TH

So winning Americas Grand finals is really important for better champs tournament it looks like.

Even if one of NRG/C9 win Americas, the record would still be 30-3. Its just insane, reminds me bit of Optic vs LOUD 2022 but regionally. Optic were insane at the beginning and LOUD became better as the year goes on.

If SEN and G2 meet in the grand finals of Americas this weekend yet again, they would have 31-1 series record combined against the rest of the competetion in Americas the whole year (Only loss is SEN's loss vs KRU in groups, stage 1). This just shows how consistent both teams are even when they went to all the internationals and also shows we are definitely 2-team region lmao.

Pretty much every contender team have qualified for champs and in fact only 4 spots left between 8 teams. Who is gonna be on the list for top 10 for Paris?
My top 10:

1. Something
2. Forsaken
3. Zekken
4. Keiko
5. Kaajak
6. Jemkin
7. Meteor
8. Trent
9. CHICHOO
10. Alfajer

I wouldve liked to put the duelist of C9/NRG in there but it just feels too much Americas bias. Also I dont know who to put from BLG into top 10 because all of them are playing really good especially whzy, nephh and rushia. So it felt more like a team effort so I went with mr number 9 instead.

To make it worse they are guaranteed 4th seed as so they wont even get easier group.

Every region has like at least 2-3 english caster duos and I think the casters from the same regions cast very similar to each other but completeley different to other regions. For example:

EMEA:

"OMG what a crazy 4k from this player, he is reminding you who he is. He is always been this good, you can just see from these shots how high of calibre of a player this guy is"
Even tho guy was 5/14 before that round and 4k was on the eco

Pacific:
"OMG what an absolutely insane 4k, this might be the best clip I ve ever seen. How has he done that? What an insane player, he is one of the best to do it"
Even tho it was against someone like Team Secret and some of the players completely whiffed against him

Americas:
"What is going on? WHAAAT? How has he killed 4? Wow what an amazing round from this player but what are his opponents doing? Why are they swinging 1 by 1? One of them shouldve jump peeked before swinging and jumped and other shouldve wide swung. What a toss!"
Even if someone just insta kills 3 when they swing him and his opponents didnt know his position etc.

I think GENG and TH in 2024 set a bad example by fully rebuilding their roster and immediately having success. Because of that now every middling to bottom teams are blowing up their whole rosters after a bad season and they are missing key part of what makes a good team - chemistry.

I think to achieve consistent success you have to at least keep a core and build around 2-3 players and bring in a new young talent. You must have a good igl as well. There are way more teams who found consistent success with keeping their core and changing like 1-2 players:
SEN 2024, SEN 2025, FNC 2023, FNC 2025, G2, PRX, RRQ, even C9 and NRG this year and so much more.
All of these teams just made 1-2 roster moves and improved gradually or just stayed on high level.

But now all the teams who finished bottom half of the league are making 4-5 changes every year and blowing up their rosters and I just think its same playing russian roulette and seeing if you get lucky or not

Mr Fallin had 0 kill Haven this stage against VIT I think, I dont think there was a series where individual got a 0 kill tho

I just dont get how she didnt ban the only map 100T are competent on. Any other map 100T dont know what to do and they run around the map like headless chickens and Asuna will have 10 first deaths on one map alone. Even G2 banned Bind even tho its been one of their best maps historically because they know its the only map 100T look good on.

This falloff needs to be studied man because the way they are losing rounds right now is just unreal. At the beginning of the year everything was working, shooting, calling, macro everything. In stage 1 calling and macro has fallen off and they were only shooting but it didnt get them far. Right now their macro is really good but they cant shoot, they have 4 players everytime NAVI is hitting a site but they are still losing. Its just funny how the team with this many good players can have that many problem within like 3 months

5 pistols and 4 bonuses, they had to win that

I feel really bad for KC man they are playing very good but they just lost 5 pistols and 4 bonuses in one series and they almost won 2-0 still. This win is about to be so fraudelent for FNC, it just feels bad KC getting eliminated from champs like this, just unlucky

This champs feels like the most competetive yet with how close every team at the top is. If you were to do a tier list before champs It would go smth like this:

S: PRX, G2 (full strength),
A: T1, RRQ, Talon/DRX, SEN, FNC, TH, TL, EDG, BLG
B: every other team

I think every S and A tier team could win the event and I wont be surprised. Some people might underrate EDG and BLG but I think they are at the same level as other regions in terms of shooting and they get extra week compared to other regions so that might help a bit.

All the 3rd seeds for Champs are gonna be teams with high peaks but relatively bad form recently it looks like.
EDG and T1 are locked in for 3rd seed no matter what, I think FNC is gonna be 3rd seed from EMEA and only meh 3rd seed might come from Americas it looks like.

NRG would've been qualified if they win against G2 today but there is only one scenario they cant make it. That exact scenario:
KRU gets 4th, NRG 3rd, any other team than G2 in the grand finals with SEN.
The reason why NRG wouldnt be qualified is because they would be tied on points with KRU and the tiebreaker is H2H and it all comes down to round diff and KRU won +1 round diff against NRG all year. 1 round. LMAO imagine that happens.
But its so unlikely to happen and NRG are pretty much qualified if they win.

Its been a while Ive come out of the game in Americas with positives for both teams, I think C9 played great, potentially the best we have seen this year long. Sure you could say Oxy underperformed but so did bang(you could also add narrate as well considering how well he was playing in groups) from SEN. Also SEN showed the resilience against what I feared the most, they were getting snowballed whole game and C9 had ult advantage pretty much every gun round, but still SEN managed to close out, previous SEN wouldve lost this series against all these ults.
If NRG also come out and show a decent performance today, we might be back baby