banger match
hope it's close

lmfao

https://www.vlr.gg/pickem/8f137e82

I don't think it's even about teams falling off. The tier 1 teams set a bar, and every team that qualified either reached that bar or went above it. It's all about teams adapting to each other, and I'll be really interested to see if Sen, 100t, Envy, and C9 will have that level of adaptation in the closed qualifiers.

I hope you're right - we'll see!

I'm not even talking about international level - I think with the level of play we've seen this open qual, any of these 12 NA teams could beat each other and Sen. A lot of them have new rosters, a lot of them have been grinding incredibly hard, and I think this could be a very tough qualifier for Sen.

true but this clip just summed up the problem so I thought it was worth a post.

In this Yay clip, he said that Sen only started seriously practicing last week - partly because Tenz has been moving.

And like - they could have snuck some practice in, Yay could be wrong, etc - but I'm worried Sen won't qualify since NA is looking so stacked rn. An unpracticed Sen just doesn't seem as solid as the current level of competition.

Edit: this got more attention than I thought it would. Just want to add that I do hope SEN perform well, and there's no way to really predict any team's performance till we see the closed qualifiers.

Xerulo, I don't have a clip but in Shaz's stream he said Zombs dropped 40 kills against a big team, and someone else said Tenz has been performing well.

obviously I know teams are holding back strats and scrims aren't everything etc. but it's still a hype thing to find out if teams or individual players are doing well!

Great list!!

• think stax and Lakia could be higher, at least 210 and 215 respectively - you're predicting a big drop with international competition but VS has been rumoured practicing 12 hours a day and could surprise us.
• I agree on Scream being 1st but the rest of the liquid roster has the potential to shock too, both Jamppi and Nivera can be star players so I would bump them up a little bit.
• Mwzera seems insane but Keyd has a rough bracket with Acend and Envy, so I'm not sure if he could attain top 3.

Finally, you clearly know this but ACS isn't the only stat that means a team will win - supporting and anchor roles might not have as high ACS but play the vital part in holding a site or delaying until the duelists can get there.