Started watching halfway through the EMEA quals for Berlin

If NRG keep the optic core, there is no way Marved joins them unless they make S0m play duelist. But S0m is extremely valuable for NRG's branding, and also was probably their most consistent top performer this year.

Can they? Yes. It's very unlikely though

The one roster change they made also proved to be extremely valuable. ATAKAPTAN is the fucking goat

Not very surprising, coming out of LCQ sucks, less prep time, and more vods for other teams to study (especially KRÜ, who had to play 5 matches at LCQ)

EG with double map bans in the grand final might have a chance (they should be favoured on Fracture and Pearl), but that's a very unlikely scenario in the first place

He probably has one of the safest jobs of all franchise players. He's the face of Giants, their only Spanish player, the only player that was on the team before franchising, and he's also been performing well recently overall. Unless he actively wants to leave, it would take a lot for the org to bench or cut him. And it wouldn't really make sense for him to want to leave.

The Middle East (as per the definition on Wikipedia) includes regions on three different continents my guy

China has more inhabitants than NA and SA combined. Literally a bigger region than Americas

1. FUT

Poor guy. He'll be back on that stage though.

How does that make it less impressive lmao

EU is less clouted because nobody bothers watching Valorant when EU orgs are actually successful in CS. NA League and CS are kinda shit, so people watch Valorant instead. Plus BIG didn't make VCT EMEA and Germany is the biggest country in EU

Also Cryo and yay are very similar in the roles they fulfill, and it would be a huge risk to "upgrade" when Cryo has been pretty solid all year while yay had....well....a year. It just wouldn't make sense.

I'm pretty sure EMEA is the region where the most teams comm in English. Only KC, FUT and BBL don't (and I guess M8 now as well).

In Americas only the five NA teams comm in English. In APAC it's PRX, GE, T1 (I think), RRQ, and for TS I believe it's a mix between Tagalog and English.

So yeah not sure where they get that from.

I mean if yay is actually willing to play for minimum wage and actually willing to relocate, I could see Vitality or Team Heretics signing him. The only teams that comm in a language that isn't English are KC, BBL and FUT.

The extra slots were just a temporary solution for the integration of China into VCT anyway.

Next year each region (including China) will have 3 masters slots and 4 champs slots. I think giving slots to the winners of LOCK//IN and Tokyo was fine. The simpler, the better.

Eh, two tough losses (38-38 vs DRX, 35-37 vs Loud). They did fine. Not great, but obviously not anywhere as bad as the average vlr intellectual will make it out to be.

FUT Indian pride 🇮🇳🇮🇳🇮🇳

India best region with five teams in playoffs (EG, Loud, FNC, Bilibili gaming and FUT)

Cloud isn't overhyped, he's always been good back on Navi as well. I trust mini's judgement.

Does he? I don't see him at champions.

This year was an exception because it's the first year of the partnership leagues, with visas being a big issue in the early stages (which is why we had lock//in instead of a first split). The following years will look very different and we will get mid-year transfers.

Iceland I can see because of the FPX and FNC situations, but which part of Copenhagen or Tokyo was lucky for Optic/NRG?

In Copenhagen, they had Guild (Leo, Sayf, trexx) and Loud and KRÜ in their group, who were all competitive. Group B had two bottom feeders in Xerxia and Northeption (no disrespect to those teams but group A was def harder). I don't see anything particularly lucky happen to them during that run.

And in Tokyo again, they had the better of the two EMEA teams in their group, and the far better one of the two Chinese teams. So again, slightly more difficult group. And then they immediately drew FNC in the first playoff match. Where is the luck?

https://www.deepl.com

Wym 🗿

That's the dream

He is the best Harbour hands down. His Astra and Omen are a bit hit and miss, but overall he deserves to be there

Trembo posts like these are why I still come to this hellhole of a site

Threads like these need to be studied by professional psychologists

Am I tripping or aren't those 5 the exact same duelists that were mentioned in the post?

If BLG is so bad that their games don't even matter because they're leagues below Tier 1 Valorant I guess NRG is a Tier 5 team

John Riot literally did make a freer bracket in group B

Yacine was pretty much an emergency substitute (because Riot put a lock on Twisten with whom they practiced) so I don't blame him. Russ was always the clear weakest link though.

Kolda is on KOI as their token Spanish player (like Mixwell on Heretics, at least Fit1nho is a good player)

I mean it's not Optic's fault that FNC and FPX were weakened. Whether or not they would have won otherwise, they got four top 3 finishes in the five LANs they attended, you have to be delusional to call that a fluke.

SEN and Acend had one good tournament, Gambit had two, FPX had two (and probably would have had three in better circumstances), Loud had two, and Optic had four. (Pre-franchise)

There's no way you actually believe this 💀

Literally nobody said that.

He's had a bunch of bad matches this year, for example against EDG. Overall he probably had more good than bad games and a bunch of REALLY good games, but there were definitely some clear fluctuations.

I love your detailed analyses trembo, never change

Can't find a source on where mini said that he considered Cloud as an option for Fnatic (but I do remember him saying it if that vouch means anything). I did find this tweet:

https://twitter.com/minijake_/status/1625228954511585280?s=20

He zm on my jj till I kk

Eh, Lock//in was single elim and they didn't really care. In Tokyo they played with a sub. A trophy in either tournament would have been a miracle.

Yeah NA Valorant has a huge sustainability issue with these salaries.

Didn't he say that there will be big changes going into next year or am I tripping?

NRG probably, Loud no way

It definitely feels like some kind of org policy that the players and coach were told to follow.

Optic had plenty of games last year where yay was the primary fragger on Chamber with Victor setting him up on Raze/Neon without necessarily getting the most kills.

It depends on the team and the meta I guess. Chamber meta was mostly about setting Chamber up for kills, now it's more about setting up the Jett for kills. You can get value on duelists without top fragging, but usually the team is more successful if their duelist can consistently get kills.

Agreed with the first two, FNC should be higher

Point is they're not consistent

Optic famously never lost any group stage games