Do you also feel like VCT observers make Valorant look a lot more messy than it is with free cam/overview observer POVs? I think they make valorant look 10× more complicated and confuse the viewer compared to CS, when in reality Valorant is maybe 2x more confusing than CS just because there are so many types of utility.

When there is a site exec or retake happening, or when someone is planting/defusing the bomb observers switch to Overview POV and we miss 70-80% of the kills when there is a site exec and we just watch wingman plant the bomb for 4 seconds and miss 7 kills/trades in the process. Just keep observing the player holding the site and its much better for audience to understand whats going on.

You can just see from EWC qual matches that without observers' high cam POV games look a lot more understandable and less confusing even though teams were playing in old tejo patch and there was no replays in those matches.

Who is gonna be the comparable team to PSG in Valorant?
It should be a team who pays high salaries and never won an international before with superteam rosters but drops their superstars and wins champs.

I think its like NRG winning champs this year(after dropping superstars like Optic core, Demon1 and Verno) or VIT winning next years champs after dropping Derke, Less and Sayf.

LEV: +Natank instead of Mazino
Vitality: -trexx (not saying cyvoph is bad but the team synergy is more important)
GENG: -Meteor

Who has the pure best aim in Toronto? What I mean by this is if everyone takes like 30 hard bot challenge 5 times, who will have the most and who will have the least average score amongst all 80 players in Toronto?
I think the best score is gonna be someone with calm tappy aim like woot or cortezia, idk about the worst one

So what are the roles look like in TL after penny joins? The problem is penny is not an igl and presumably patiteK picks up an igling role, that shouldnt be that much of a problem. Also penny only played duelist in his career, so I assume Serial moves to perma senti role, penny duelist and kamo moves to flex role as he shows to be flexible.

What are your thoughts for what the roles would look like? Would penny replace nats as a senti or would all the role swaps happen as I mentioned?

Will they announce group draws ahead of time or drawing process video anywhere or is it just announced 1 week before the event?

Does anyone have any idea about how does EWC organize group draws from other esports in last year ot something?
From what I know so far and if we assume regional restrictions apply pots should be like this:
Pot 1: G2, FNC, RRQ, XLG
Pot 2: SEN, TH, GENG, BLG
Pot 3: NRG, BBL, PRX, EDG
Pot 4: 100T, KC, DRX, TEC

If the regional resteictions apply, most deadly group will be G2, TH, EDG and DRX in the same group

NA going to Middle East for money, wow never seen that before

Yeah but you are missing the point again. You might say raze ult has equal value as yoru ult, but raze is still one dimensional compared to yoru. You can play yoru so agressive on defense, do you remember how zekken hold A main down against MIBR and G2 on his own? He cant do that on raze. Also yoru can push up mid 1-2 rounds in a half and that forces attack to use their drone to clear mid, raze cant do that safely.

But fade util and omen paranoia will help with yoru ult. Yoru has 2 flashes, 1 clone, 2 prowlers, fade eye and seize and omen paranoia to help to execute with yoru ult. Its still enough to overhelm 2-3 players on site.

Yoru even without countering vyse stuff, still looks like the best duelist on Split. Yoru has much more defensive agression potential, especially holding A main and pushing mid, also his ult is usually better than raze/jett ult and flashes are useful without breach in the comp

We are seeing a lot of double duelist on Split to be successful again just like in 2023 and are we gonna see shift towards Cypher Viper comp(Sen's 2024 comp) to counter double duelist again?

The reason why that old comp was bad at the beginning of the year was tejo, because viper was having a really hard time holding mid against breach tejo. And now tejo is gone is that comp gonna come back?

My theory for new comp is:
Cypher, Viper, Omen, Yoru and Fade

Or are we about to see double duelist from every team? What are your predictions?

MIBR players are sooo good at saving man, I ve never seen them miss a shot when they are saving, its honestly impressive how consistent they are

Bro both of these teams are sooooo shit how did MIBR lose to these guys? Ethan is always calling his team to 4stacked sites, 100T are swinging ahead of execs with their stacked sites, score should be 10-0 for 100T right now but they threw so many rounds

That platoon video stats are soo boosted lmao. It is only playoff and international tournaments and leo has only 2 sample tournaments, 7 matches to get stats. Even if you know these are small sample, Leo has boosted stats because he had so many exit kills in EMEA playoffs. You just have to watch the breeze game against KC to understand what I am saying

Personal bias and I think TH are more flexible and will adapt to new meta easier than FNC. FNC lately have been late to adapt to new metas, they adapted to gekko stuff late in early 2024, they didnt play neon in late 2024, they didnt play tejo enough in kickoff. So they might struggle again fo figure out stuff

Since so many teams are very close to each other and even arguably the best team in the world - G2 was rounds away from losing to EG, 100T, MIBR and C9 in Americas alone, it wouldnt shock me if we see another cindarella run like T1 at Toronto again. So thats why I prefer to rank teams on tierlists rather than pure ranking. This tierlist is based on general community expectations and little biased towards Americas and Pacific:

Expected to win the event: G2
Title contenders: TH, GENG, SEN, MIBR
Pure dark horse: PRX
Potential title contenders but I expect them to flop:
FNC, RRQ, XLG
Expected to get grouped: TL, BLG, WOL

He has rough maps too sometimes, even when he was the best player on the world he went like -10 against LOUD in Madrid, so what I am saying is its just hard being consistent duelist in this game

It is cope but kinda reasonable cope, I ve never seen someone's POV playing duelist in a competetive setting

After watching Tenz's POV I kinda understand why dueliat players have off games even if they are a good shooter. I feel like Tenz lost like 4-5 fair gunfight the entire match and he was getting killed by random shit a lot especially on attack side. Obviously I have a bias but Tenz was winning a lot of pure 1v1 gunfights when it was given to him and honestly I dont remember Tenz killing anyone who is stunnned or flashed.
You kinda understand after watching this why some players with good aim become jett one tricks and cant play dive duelists.

Thing is they were never great with tejo either, you have to understand the coachs POV too, if your players are not comfortable with running tejo comps, it is just better to run more comfort double duelist. If the matches against FNC didnt happen you would be praising TH how they didnt even need tejo to dominate EMEA and they are already ready for Toronto, but the matches happened and FNC were just better

NRG if they win against KRU today they have to play against their worst nightmare which is C9 Xeppa. And if they somehow win against C9 they have to play against MIBR and even if they win that they have to win one more game again. Honestly, Sean gares might be their biggest win con

I think he is playing duelist for them

We have Tenz returning to competetive Valorant before GTA 6 and C9 playoff win

Yeah thats what irrtates me the most, people especially who are EU biased saying Leo was light years ahead of everybody. Like do they just forget that everyone looked at Shao, Sacy and Crashies as the best initiators in the world in 2021-2022 and Leo was considered best only in 2023 with the superteam he had?

Leo was on the roster until the end of Shanghai and mini was still the asisstant coach. Nothing much changed in FNC apart from Leo being sick at the end but still FNC didnt qual for Madrid and struggled early on Stage 1.
Meta didnt change much in terms of agents but the way of playing the game changed in 2024. Teams that were fast in modrounds and reclearing spaces were good in 2024. Just remember 50s reclears of TH and KC, or Munchkin or Meteor just pushing out on defense to reclear.

I mean they were clearly top 2 rosters in terms of consisteny in entire 2024. EDG were only great at the end, SEN was bit inconsistent.

I actually think thats completely wrong narrative. Game is getting better every year, every months even. You saw FNATIC who dominated 2023 look lost at the beginning of 2024 against top teams because they didnt adapt to new fast reclearing meta that developed in 2024.

I feel like players who performed in 2023 get overrated a lot compared to others. For example people count Leo and Alfa into undisputable goat discussions but they just forget other years happened in VCT. For example if you only count only 1 whole year of excellence every LOUD and OPTIC player in 2022 should be on this list as well, as well as every TH and GENG player in 2024, or it might be bit early but also G2 players in 2025 can be contenders. For some reason, every costreamer and coaches outweigh excellence in 2023 compared to other years. We havent seen any team be dominant for more than 6-7 months in this game yet, so its always hard to determine who the GOAT is.

GENG as on organization have qualified for 5 international events in Valorant and have only played against Americas teams in their opening matches and Toronto will be another one. All the matches:
0:2 vs LOUD at Lock/in
2-1 vs LOUD at Madrid
2-1 vs LEV at Shanghai
2-0 vs SEN at Seoul
And Now its against MIBR again. This is also the 3rd time for Aspas to face against GENG

In hindsight yeah, but its better to have an easier matchup in the first game of International in unknown new meta anyway

FINALLLY we get a good draw in international event.
In the first ever lan of valorant we drew FNATIC, then some good group stage draws at the end of 2021, then again drew FNC at Lock in, then TH at Madrid, then drew into group of death in champs. Finally we got an easier draw

But maaan if we lose this game, we will get dogged even more than NRG vs BLG

I mean dicey kinda cheated and won, game was over like 4 rounds ago and the score was like 13-10, but they just lost the track of the messed up the scoreline.
Also, dicey was kinda cheesing his way thru, he barely won pure duels, he always jiggle prefired and hot lucky to be honest

Dont worry brother there are so many slots for teams to shit the bed. In fact only one other team from Americas might qualify to Inernational this year considering how SEN, MIBR and G2 are way ahead in terms of points and gameplay.

I wont be surprised if C9 qualify to EWC from Americas and even win the whole thing then choke at stage 2 playoffs again. In fact I think its most like they will qual to EWC from Americas considering half the teams are with the new roster

Nah its just their playstyle. They either win the round together or make mistake together and whiff together. Its not comms issue.

Its so funny watching Liquid, they dont have any player with consistent aimlock type of aim like benjy or woot, but they always swing as 4 or just lurk, they never take raw 1v1s as much (apart from maybe Nats). Everytime you see liquid players get a kill its either againtt an opponent whose back is turned or they are swinging as 4. It just shows you can be a top team without "star" aimers

Thank god KOI are bad and has been bad for years. Imagine they won anything in the past or they were competetive this year, my god their fans would be unbearable. Just look at them how they are "boycotting" VCT EMEA just because they couldnt watch their team lose

Fracture in both games had similar comps and you can still see the aim gap, idk I think its just the pressure getting to TL and BBL players and TH and FNC players just playing casually

Is it just me or did anyone else feel like there was a huge skill gap in terms of the aim in the 2 games we just saw. You see people insta headshotting with sheriffs, marshals, or insta killing people who are double swinging them in TH vs FNC game, and you see nats having enough time to take 2 outlaw shots, reload and take 2 more outlaw shots before finally getting traded in the next game.
It feels weird to see such an aim disparity considering how close TL vs FNC game was, maybe its just last chance for Toronto and everyone was nervous thats why we saw a lot of whiffs in TL vs BBL, but man the difference was big

Did he play in NA tier 2? Whats going on? Ever since the the score was 11-5 was or something he whiffed every single round. It looked like BBL were playing 4v5 on their defense

I think they wanted to get a break to fix hardware and lan server issues that was happening constantly in VCT games thats why they scheduled a break between groups and playoffs. Even then, they are only 1 week behind the schedule that was put at the beginning of the year. From what I read, EMEA was supposed to finish at the same time as Pacific, but they took a break between groups and playoffs

How are they still blaming Riot for not allowing them to not boradcast EWC qualifiers?
1) Riot had this rule for 3 years now, when there is a VCT match is going on, any 3rd party tournament is not allowed to be broadcasted
2) Even players who play in Tier 1 arent allowed to stream ranked when there is VCT match is going on, how is org owners arent aware of that rule? I didnt see single player yet that complained about EWC not getting broadcasted
3) Blame EWC organizers who were aware of Riots schedule knowing all the rules since the start of the year and they still scheduled the qualifer at the same time with VCT matches
4) Even then, riot is allowing the matches to be broadcasted after VCT matches are done, and still org owners are complaining. Like when do people get satisfied?

I think 8 franchise and 4 ascencion teams system really helps to solve this issue of orgs not investing.

I have always wondered why NA tier 1 teams have always picked up players from only 3 teams in tier 2: MxS, M80 and Oxygen. They were clearly 3 consistent top teams last year but they were not always the best teams, we have seen some other teams like Darkzero, TSM, YFP and blinn sneak into top 3 in couple of splits but almost nobody from those teams got picked up.
Even in 2025, teams are still picking up replacements from those teams, like brawk and skuba to NRG, okeanos and sato to LEV etc.
It feels like people from tier 1 known these issues for a long time and didnt even scout players from some teams even though they were performing better in some instances.

I think XLG could ve made top 4 if meta stayed the same but historically Chinese teams are slow on picking up the meta so it might take time

I am not really counting Sunset for any team as an advantage because there are so many potential good Sunset teams in this tournament. PRX and TH could be good again just like last year, G2 might learn to play Sunset with Jawgemo Neon, anh chinese team might surprise team with a good sunset, we dont know anything about RRQ's potential Sunset.

I think if SEN wins this tournament, meta has to shift towards double controller and we might see more Zellsis viper, I think SEN play at their best when Zellsis on viper and Narrate is on comfort role.

Alfajer havent been playing good this split to deserve top 10. I would put Rarga or Kaajak instead of Alfa
Also putting someone who is playing his first international in experienced team on a new meta is soo risky

So what are the roles then again? Aee they putting
Sato- duelist
Tex- senti
Okeanos/bao- smokes
Com- scan
Kingg - flex

What is wrong with this team? Kingg is already world class smokes player, just pick up a flex player instead

I ve only seen rumors indicating that Bao and Sato were joining. If Okeanos is joining instead of Bao, he will have role issues with Com because they paly the same agents. If he is joining instead of Com, then LEV roster looks promising with more chemistry in the team.