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

EDG < TL
TL < Navi
Navi < NRG
NRG < BLG
BLG < EDG

EDG <<<< EDG

I enjoy the NA vs EU shit talk, but this Demon1 stuff or the Boostio interviews about Chinese Valorant are just cringe.

It's like when you and your friend call each other idiots as friendly banter and then some random kid comes along and tries to join and calls you dumb. It's not hurtful or anything, just embarrassing.

Yeah, Potter and Boostio trash talking also seems a bit forced. Idk the shit they talk about EU is fine imo, but this weird obsession with calling China shit is just cringe.

If he refuses to move, it might get difficult for him. But there certainly are some orgs in EMEA that I could see trying to sign him (Vitality or Heretics for example)

Try to just track the straight 1v1 fights in your dms. Don't try to win. After every death, if you were double peeked or shot in the back, just try to ignore it (can be hard, I know); and if you lost a straight duel, ask yourself why (was it movement, was it aim, angle disadvantage, peeker's advantage? Something else?) and keep track of your mistakes. If you make certain mistakes more often than others, try to run a DM while only focusing on that stuff.

If you hyperfocus on small errors and trying to get better at very specific things, you'll often notice visible progress, even if you continuously get shat on. For example, my problem was that I often pressed W while peeking, so I double bound knife equip to the W key and focused on swinging with A and D only and strafing during fights. I didn't do well in the DMs kill-wise, but after a couple of them I noticed I was getting a lot better at horizontal movement, so it still felt like a success and I didn't really tilt much.

It's also not just the "hardness" of the work that matters but also the quality of the type of work, and a lot of external and internal factors. I think FNC is one of the best orgs when it comes to providing players with everything they need, including diet, performance coaches, and so much more. There's a lot of factors at play behind the scenes that we can't really see.

It's definitely not just "they work harder".

Bro also had Zeta above FNC, Loud above DRX, T1 above FUT and TL above Navi.

You literally got everything wrong except this one 💀

He played a lot of KJ on surreal

Sorry bud but Holland is actually the greatest city in the world

Sure, someone with the same IGL skills and better firepower would be better, but it's a team game, and what matters is how the team performs. If the positive effect of their IGLing outweighs the negative effect of their lack of firepower, they make their team better, and that's what matters.

FNC without Boaster and NRG without Fenis would be much worse teams.

A healthy amount of energy drinks is zero.

But riot isn't promoting snus, it was just one guy doing it. Meanwhile they are actually actively promoting redbull, which is also a terrible thing to promote to children.

It's less the fact that nicotine in isolation is comparable to caffeine in isolation, and more the fact that the negative health effects of snus and the negative health effects of redbull (both in regular quantities) are comparable in severity.

Yeah I guess it's mostly about public perception. Redbull is fucking awful as well but they promote it anyway. I didn't realise snus was this frowned upon I guess.

Smoked tobacco a handful of times while drunk, never liked it while sober, never even tried other forms of nicotine.

I don't think caffeine is as severe as nicotine, of course not. I just don't see the justification for banning one while actively promoting the other.

In terms of performance enhancing effects for esports, they're comparable, or are they not?

And in terms of health, clearly nicotine in isolation is much worse than caffeine in isolation. But we're not talking about coffee here, we're talking about energy drinks, which have a variety of negative health impacts that differ from the effects of nicotine, but I would argue are comparable in severity.

I haven't read the literature on this in a few years so I might be wrong, but I also think my point just came across wrong.

Of course nicotine is overall a bit more dangerous than caffeine, but they're both legal, so why does Rito draw a line between them, when their performance enhancing effects are very comparable?

Also it's not like I'm saying coffee is as detrimental to health than snus, but redbull definitely is, there are plenty of negative effects on health that come with regular energy drink consumption, yet Riot actively promotes them while Banning snus, which feels a bit weird.

What would you say is the big difference? Because all I can find are similarities. They are both CNS stimulants that work in similar ways and have similar effects on the body and brain.

They're both CNS stimulants, they both increase heart rate, they are both addictive. Sure, nicotine might be a bit more addictive, but at the end of the day they're quite similar. What would you say is the decisive difference that makes a comparison unreasonable?

he doesn't like NA teams at all

his favourite teams are NRG and The Guard

what does this have to do with anything

What

smokers

Try to read the sources you cite