90%: Not a single team will play Deadlock
50%: EG getting grouped
10%: EDG winning it all

They played 3 games, one of which was the grand final, which was a seeding game where nobody played their normal roles. So 2 BO3 series that you can take seriously. That's nothing

Besides EDG, the Chinese scene is still behind. They will catch up, but right now I doubt BLG or FPX will make it out of groups

If you remove the good players the average player is pretty bad who would have thought

Guild has always been one of my favourite teams in EU, I just think they never really reached their full potential, and I always felt like they quite often threw very winnable rounds due to bad calls. I like kolda, he's a cool guy, and I was always rooting for him on Guild, I just don't rate him as a top IGL.

I say this in real life all the time bro, it's a light-hearted joke. I love France, I grew up close to the French border in Germany, been to Strasbourg many times. And like I said, took some camping trips through southern France, the scenery is really beautiful, some of my favourite vacations. Also met some lovely people there.

FPX beating FUT is definitely a spicy take. FUT looked extremely shaky at Tokyo and they still beat ASE. Everything else is pretty normal though

FUT goated team

Breloom + Bidoof = Breloof

Came up with the name when I made a second Pokémon GO account for trading, and wanted to use some Pokémon related name. My main account at the time was something like Azazel2107 (after the Binding of Isaac character), but I really liked the sound of the name Breloof, it's simple, unique and recognisable, so since then I have stuck with it and used it literally everywhere.

It'll be interesting to see where he ends up. Like, which teams would realistically change their IGL right now?
In NA:

• NRG and EG: Even if they flop at champs, they probably won't change the IGL
• 100T: only a possibility for vanity if they drop both stellar and bang imo (I guess vanity played initiators for SR, but I'm pretty sure he prefers smokes). It's not out of the question, a lot of IGLs don't really play the same role as stellar, so if they do decide to rebuild the team around another IGL, at least one more player will be on the chopping block. bang is great but sometimes it just doesn't work out. It's also possible that 100T only make changes to their coaching staff though. On the other hand johnqt also slots into stellar's role quite nicely and could be an option for 100T
• C9: While jakee and Runi were never the plan A, they were pretty good throughout a majority of the season (though they choked twice in important playoff games). I think there's a good chance that C9 hang on to their roster for at least the first split of 2024. Jakee and Runi likely still won't really get the highest salaries, and signing a bigger name might be too much of a risk. They've shown they can compete.
• SEN: They will definitely make changes. I highly doubt Marved will stay on the IGL role. It was a decent temporary solution, but I would be surprised if that was their long term plan. But I also think they will probably keep Marved on the roster, which means I think vanity wouldn't be the ideal IGL to sign either, since again I think his smokes are better than his initiators.

So quite honestly I think there's a good chance he will not end up on a tier 1 NA team at all.

In EMEA, the teams with a clear IGL problem are TH, Vitality and KC. KC is not an option for language reasons. TH and Vit will definitely sign an IGL in the off season, and I would not be surprised if he was pretty high up on their lists. It could be a realistic option (IF he is actually willing to move to Berlin. It's a big decision)

That being said, I do believe johnqt is the hotter commodity at the moment, but since they tend to play very different roles, it might come down to the orgs' vision for the entire team much more than just to the question "which IGL is better".

But also, I am very stupid, so most of what I say is probably poo poo garbage.

"No region has more than 2 or 3 decent teams" means "every region has at most 2 or 3 good teams". 3 is included in that

big trouble

Except Cypher after ulting. It's impossible to hit his head when he's not wearing his hat.

My solution: When he ults, he just puts on a baseball hat. Added benefit for Riot is you can give him a hat from a random MLB team and get a partnership going with the MLB, or maybe sell Cypher baseball hat skins for $100 a piece

Yeah, that's the point. In either case, a team that arguably doesn't really deserve it makes champs

Pretty sure the regions will be separated (except EMEA of course)

All EMEA teams except the Turkish ones and KC (and M8) comm in English.

They literally said unlikely, as in, it doesn't make sense for 100T to replace Cryo with yay, but Cryo and yay have a smilar role/play style, so it would be a good fit

You mean the team with a Swede, a Ukrainian, and a Latvian (living in England), and a Swedish coach?

France is a lovely country for a camping trip, especially if you're from Germany or NL/Belgium. Without all the French people it would be the best country in the world

Good enough to beat Clown9

Boaster and Tenz both get plenty of hate. It's just weird tbh, they both are super wholesome people.

Half of those countries have like 3 inhabitants and they're either all cattle farmers or professional tax evaders

I mean if we say LOUD and DRX underperformed, then we should also acknowledge that FUT and NAVI also underperformed and EG overperformed.

Especially if you watched the FUT games vs EG and DRX, I think it's clear that a lot of it came down to nerves, everyone besides atakaptan looked shaky af, which makes sense considering they only played tier 2 until this year. I think they can be as good as EG or 100T when EG isn't currently going on an absolutely insane run.

As for NAVI, god knows what they're doing tbh, they should be much better than this. Even in cNed's rare Jett games he doesn't perform like he used to.

I still think Americas has the edge over EMEA, but it's closer than people pretend. I feel like we've been there before, when 100T narrowly scraped by two wins against ACE and GMB and NA fans thought NA would destroy everyone at champs in 2021, and then 3 EMEA teams top 4. Or when EMEA underperformed at Reykjavík and then won Copenhagen.

To be fair to Navi, they are the only LCQ team that played in Tokyo, and thus had a lot less time to prep for LCQ.

Not like they looked good at Tokyo, just an observation.

Bro had trexx, Leo and Sayf on his team last year and got eliminated from LCQ by old NAVI and OGLU

Feel kinda bad for [team]

There was an "incident" in ranked where TenTen said something about Flip being Indian and shitting in the streets (which is especially dumb because Flip is Indonesian) and Flip said something mildly racist back about anime (which is especially dumb because TenTen is Korean). TenTen's contract with Northeption was immediately nullified, Flip wasn't really punished at all I believe.

Also TenTen is Meteor's brother, which is why this whole situation was brought up again for this game.

Open your eyes then

Chronicle came from competitive swimming

2022 Optic was definitely as much of an NA superteam as 2023 FNC.

skill issue

"El Clásico" ?

RRQ 3 - 1 TS

keep anthem and get young japanese talents, nerd

Unfortunately the grand final goes to KRÜ

Idk about that, their midrounding is awful, and that's not something a cracked duelist could fix. They have some of the best gameplans and set plays, but are so drilled on those, and so inflexible that they completely crumble whenever any detail of the plan goes wrong. That's why they always look amazing at the start of tournaments and then seemingly fall apart.

I think -Taco + keznit would make them better, but something else has to change in the team to fix their issues before they can genuinely be a top contender.

Yay would just be a 1:1 replacement for Cryo, who is the only one on that team that has been performing recently. Doesn't seem worth the risk tbh

Yeah it's definitely not impossible. TS, GE, RRQ and the likes are all pretty inconsistent, and then one BO3 against a team like T1 might be good enough to secure third place for masters. It'll be tough though.

I mean KRÜ vs FUR was at an acceptable time for EMEA. A lot of EMEA viewers like watching NA (almost more than EMEA itself lol). I think a significant part of NA viewership comes from Europe. Not a majority or anything, but it's not negligible.

I reckon if the games were switched, 100T vs SEN would have gotten more views.

Bro thinks he trembo 💀

They are going all the way

I have the most hope for The Guard, they've been together for a long time, have previously won NA, they've shown they can compete, they could easily make playoffs and maybe even make it to masters next year.

Bleed probably won't make any LANs, but they could certainly take some wins in the league. There's a couple teams in APAC that are within their reach.

M8 I honestly doubt are gonna do much. I mean it depends on how TH, KC, Vit and KOI rebuild for next year, those should all be beatable opponents, but if they get their shit together they should still be way ahead of M8.

Three French orgs partnered by Riot and KC is somehow the fourth best French org in the league

Optic won a Mickey Mouse tournament lol you call that a major?? Only the tournaments where my favourite teams win are majors, idiot

Welcome Team Heretics heat

Personal lessons for stuff like piano from professional teachers are like 30-50. Trent is not a trained coach.

jollz is literally a scammer lmao, his most specific personalised advice is like "go with team and look at the minimap sometimes"

Compare any of his coaching videos to for example a woohoojin vod review, and consider that woohoojin does this for free, it's night and day. Honestly you learn more from watching Woohoojin coach other people than from getting personal coaching from jollz

Tuyz is the best Harbour in the world and has been pretty solid on Omen and Brim all year (his Astra is not great tbf). He's not the best player on Loud, but if you look at all three international leagues, he's easily above average

If Optic worked together to become a really good team, AND had the best players in almost every role, the expectation should be much higher than an "artificially" created superteam, no?

In terms of individual prestige, 2022 Optic was on par with 2023 FNC, maybe even higher. Nobody really considered Alfa for best sentinel in the world before this year, and very few considered Derke to be the best duelist in the world before this year. Leo had a few more advocates I guess, and Chronicle was at least in the conversation in 2021. Yay was considered the best player in the world period, and Marved was on everyone's global top 3 list. Crashies was also always in the conversation for top 3 initiators.

The old FNC roster was basically a tier 2 roster apart from Derke. Magnum and Enzo are literally tier 2 players. Technically I guess so is yay, but I think we can agree that that's a very different situation. Doma is not even good enough for tier 2. Getting second with those guys on your team is a lot more impressive than getting second with yay and Marved on your team.

Obviously S0m and Ardiis are much worse than Marved and yay. The only comparison that makes sense is old Optic with new FNC and new NRG with old FNC. And that's lenient towards FNS honestly, S0m and Ardiis clear Magnum, Doma and Mistic in a 2v3 with their eyes closed. In that comparison, old Optic loses to new FNC (1/5 wins vs 2/2 wins) and new NRG is about on par with old FNC (some decent placements, top 4 internationally)

If you think Optic was not a superteam comparable to FNC currently, who would you have replaced in 2022 to make them better? I honestly can't think of a single player in NA.

Obviously S0m and Ardiis are worse than Marved and yay. The point is that FNS did have Marved and yay on his team for 5 international LANs, of which he only won a single one. He then had some good placements with S0m and Ardiis.

Similarly, FNC had some good placements with the old rosters, but now with the current roster won 2/2 LANs. I'm comparing old FNC to new NRG and new FNC to old Optic.