Okinawa also is super toxic and has allegations of being racist to others. He geniunely bans people for making twitch clips of him insulting ranked players or him showing his awful behaviour on stream. There is tons of reasons why Meiy and other people like Ken had to stop queueing with him in ranked, he is a pure PR disaster for orgs and has shown zero maturity or willingness to grow as a human being. He is 18 and has still time to get past his awful character but he hasn't shown a lot of change as a person and that's all besides his bans in other games or cheating allegations.

yeah XQQ isn't the goat when Junior had been praised a ton for the 2022 run as a Assistant coach and the LCQ run when he was Headcoach of Zeta. It's kinda hilarious how fucking shit the two Japanese VCT teams in trying to get actual good coaches, like the tier2 teams in VCJ just have way better coaches than them, Riddle in Vorz, Murash with ate.
XQQ, Carlao, Melofovia and NorthernLights are all frauds who didn't do shit in years and have been terrrible ever since the start of the VCT partnership.

He is getting his one-way ticket to being dropped after this match. Insane amount of mistakes, every game he plays.

they need to immediately make moves, kick Governor and Ban and get more players who can shoot back.

it was a really great match to watch. They are super well coached, when hatto and ayuta later join they will be super scary to play against

hatto and ayuta are also coming, they are so back holy

Unironically this match was really high lvl

it sucks that him and ayuta are too young to play, in premier they were both by far their best players. But the coaching of ZETA actually looks good, the kids played so well together

damn the magic he had done with them is crazy. Reject didn't even play that bad and won both pistols

I like their aggression, they are so proactive and play with fundamentals. Also bunny plays so much better when he isn't inting every round, his mechanics are great but he trolls so often

why does the coaching of the Academy look better than their vct team lmao

is he really 15?

wait both of Zeta's best academy players are 15??? There is no fucking way

less of a commitment issue and more of people working on a project they have no technical idea about how it is supposed to be done.

they didn't wait for Ascension, the roster was finished before that. They would have played LOB he was trialing with them and doing good before he got injured and couldn't play for a month properly afterwards.

he is kinda like the og gyen, also at least has academy experience so he would be unironically a better player than him. DFM kinda messed up by not taking LOB because of his injury

Sengoku's macro looks nice, it's kinda cool to see how much Nobita and Misaya improved as players, just way better aimers now.

Since the TO changed, the tech pauses are more frequent than ever. It's as bad as the rest of APAC now which is kinda impressive considering the new TO is Japanese television.

They seem both seem super fluent in it, I am actually surprised how much Saya talks lmao

You little shit I fucking watched VCT since 2020 I fucking know how dogshit every single Japanese team was until NTH's LCQ run in 2021 and ZETA at Master Reykjavik 2022.
I watched this region for over 4years and part of the problem why JP teams were so bad is because they relied on washed players like Zepher who got absolute crushed against X10 and Version1 in 2021. Even in his 2021 days at Crazy Racoon he was absolute astrocious and averaged a 0.95 rating for that qualifier to the first international event. He always struggled on every team he played so far and rarely had great games.
I know my stuff about the Japanese scene because I vodreviewed hundreds of hours of their matches still to this day and will continue to do it afterwards. If you don't scout and always go back to old talent you won't be able to find success, Zepher is no Cned, no Derke or was he ever praised as one of the best players in JP, those were Laz, Meiy, Neth, Dep, Syouta, Popogachi, Anthem and Feez in 2021. There is a reason he didn't have much success since 2021 and wasn't part of a good team until today with Scarz, if Medusa didn't advocate for him he wouldn't be even part of this roster.

I will believe in Zepher for the time being because he played a great qualifiers and had a great match yesterday, if you by stats those were his best matches in his career, he is playing unbelievable rn but I also am realistic and want to have bigger sample size until we can say for sure he is a great player.

it's not that he only got exposed for it, he literally bragged about it and they are still together it's a super weird situation

he owns Murash, also somewhat big Youtuber and streamer

honestly their macro is the one thing impressing me, their mechanics kinda look like the average Radiant player but the coaching seems legit. They know how to take map control, have several good setplays, the coaches timeout had really good reactions and the util is used with purpose.

tomix kinda needs a bigger sample size but just looking at pure stats, he must be a complete mechanical demon that just dominates everyone he plays against. I personally rate slathom higher because he had been one of the highest rated players in APAC for two years now.

I would also add:
xcool3
k1wsy
slathom999
tomix
umaruchans
Xan
Laz
Kadoom
Zeus

you could probably put in Yoshiii also up there. It's kinda hilarious how Secret didn't even try to get him

someone save LOB from this team, my man needs to be in Tier1 already

that would be so bad

he needs to perform this over an entire split, this is way too early to judge

he averaged a 0.92 rating all year in 2024

it's not a lie, their scouting and roster building is not very great and loses out to other regions, which you saw for years in ZETA, CR, DFM previous roster that all played in tier1.

They have been very bad historically in scouting own regional talent, they overrely to this day on players outside of Japan.
Not only that, they often reuse washed players like TENNN, Pablo, Sakurai and many more that aren't top tier talents anymore.
BB has been one of the few orgs that have always found good talent in JP and outside of it they scouted players like Jemkin, Something, Xdll, Kr1stal, Xero and Satwoshi, but they are definitely not the norm of Japanese orgs and do not have the coaching staff to back them up.

BB and NTH take risks to scout good talents unlike the big orgs Zeta and DFM, who have been very conservative in getting good tier2 players until very recently.
Scouting good players is one thing to do, creating a team that can challenge other top tier teams inside and outside your region is just as important.
Both NTH and BB didn't make Challengers despite having one or two very talented players, their overall roster is still badly constructed and lack better coaching to overcome this step to challengers.

Also pls stop blaming players for not getting scouted when Yutaro and others do play with other pros and have been grinding hard for months to make the pro scene, it's still up to the orgs to find those talents and develope them. A good chunk of orgs don't do basic research, ignore stats and use very old application systems instead of going out their way to find talent.

Japanese teams just don't scout, look at dfm's academy team lmao. It is really simple imo.

I mean he is lft and his profile says he can speak Japanese, I do scout a lot of talents and this dude has probabably some of the best mechanics I have seen in recent memory, wouldn't surprise me if given the chance he could become someone like Hyunmin.

Inazawara and gray just aren't even close to his lvl, he would just destroy them lmao. Like you don't understand how ridiculous his mechanics are unless you watch more of his gameplay.

okay makes sense if ayuta can't play yet. I base this mostly out of their stats in premier where there is a gigantic gap between them and the rest of their team. Also hatto has showed good flexibility being able to swap roles and still being able frag out, having a good KAST, fkd and high apr. He ususally is grinding a ton and having pretty good stats even in ranked.

Someone sign Yutaro pls he has unbelievable mechanics.

good to know, ty for your input.

Little assessment I have made for Scarz and Crest this match:

Scarz have rebuilt their team after a disastrous performance in Split2 and after also failing to qualify for Split3 Challengers, it consist of: LOB, Yoshiii, Anthem, Medusa and Zepher.

Their new lineup has pretty decent firepower and has in my honest opinion, two tier1 ready players in Yoshiii and LOB, who consistently were one of the best players in the Japanese circuit for several years now.
Medusa and Anthem are coming freshly from the 2024 DFM roster and had pretty bad individual performances, despite that Anthem's igling last year was actually one of the few bright spots the old DFM team had and if he is igling could benefit Scarz a lot with his added tier1 experience.
Medusa relies heavily on taking solo duels and timings as a Sentinel player, he likes to lurk and possesses great mechanics. But he showed a lot of flaws in his game last year, when he couldn't handle playing against mechanically superior players in tier1 who punished him for often badly timed lurks and his tendency to take solo duels.
Zepher is probably the most confusing member chosen for this Scarz iteration, who replaced a young 16year old duelist talent in Satwoshi fairly recently. He struggled a ton last year and most of the time got outaimed by the opposite duelist players. His rating and ACS was terrible for a duelist player and he ended up as one of the worst players in the last Challenger splits, his entrying showed a lot of flaws in his pathing as a duelist and is in need of improvement. I myself am not sure why he got picked up for Scarz but to give him the benefit of the doubt he performed well in the qualifiers for this split and already has existing synergy with his teammates.

This match is probably the first real challenge for this new Scarz roster, they just stomped qualifiers without any difficulties. It will be interesting to see if Medusa and Zepher can keep up their individual performances the further Scarz get into this bracket. They will in all likelihood face Riddle in the Upper Semis who are the current best team in VCJ.

Crest on the other hand struggled to qualify to this stage and performed very badly in split 3 last year, despite having a superb off-season showing.
They seem incredibly inconsistent and are too reliant on Ken's individual performance to close out their matches.
They play weird comps and have often non-meta reads on a lot of maps that might confuse badly prepped teams, but this also could explain their inconsistent performances in the past. Their roster has potential but lacks more firepower and should set more clear roles for their players.
Bazz is their 2nd best player but also their igl, so he can't always step up when Ken has a bad series. He is very fun to watch and likes to take a lot of risk compared to other smokes players.
Kapi doesn't have that much experience but has potential just looking at his pure mechanical ability, he still needs more time to develope as a talent.
Brofeld always had been the glue in past iterations for this roster and is a very solid Sentinel player, despite having good mechanics he seems often timid and is too passive when he plays. Sakurai has been by far their most inconsistent player and is juggling tons of roles, don't let him play smokes! his util can lose you games! He sometimes was their worst players on previous rosters but can also abruptly have great periods where he was their 2nd best player on the team.

Crest as a team have a lot of issues to fix and will probably lose this upcoming matchup against Scarz. Depending on what goals Crest Gaming has set this year they might need to make roster changes and get better coaching to have a chance for making Ascension. They should thrive to be part of every split this year but are unlikely to become contenders with their current roster when they face hard competition such as Riddle, Fennel, Scarz, Sengoku and Reject as major opponents in this league.

TDLR: Scarz should win 2-0 because of their roster and coaching

This lineup from Zeta really doesn't make sense considering hatto and Ayuta are by far their best players in their current academy system. Why are Japanese Academy teams not playing their best players?

It should be an easy matchup, DFM's academy is poorly constructed and a roster full of mediocre ranked talents without any experience or crazy mechanics. Murash should win without dropping any maps.

I genuinely think the scouting of DFM is pretty bad and needs to improve, players like Yutaro who are dominating ranked being ignored kinda speaks volume about their inability to scout.

ez for deyten

I don't think they do scouting because it's just so awful that there is no excuses for it. Yoshii has been killing it in the JP scene for years and it doesn't seem they even trialed him after all those years, also they signed Invy to such a long contract that he is pretty much jailed on Secret and will never have the chance to leave them for an actual good tier1 team. Anyways hopefully this team and org get last place both in VCT and Challengers so they eventually get kicked out of partnership.

They must be signing terrible players on purpose because their region is actually super talented. Xavi, slathom, tomix, zeus, patmen and obviously the GE players that could have been signed. They are actively hurting the Filipino scene with their nepotism.

wait actually even CR when they were still good, they can't catch a break lmao

GG, lost because NTH didn't play my goat Yumia.

look at the years before, they are insanely unlucky. Reject in split1 last year, Crest before that in 2022.

Fav is always unlucky with their brackets, good try tho almost beat Fennel.

Ask isn't a good pickup and it might be time to move Reita to coaching so they can get actual firepower on the team. It's really badly build and speaks about their scouting.

Aace is definitely a good duelist tho, he started out as one and was like averaging 260 acs on that role before JoXJo joined and adjusted the roles on Riddle.

gg 60k people watching a wall of text. Also how did Murash almost threw a 12-7 lead, actually awful

why don't they just make Neth do 2ndary calls or let him igl completely like he did on CR before? It feels like waste of firepower if GON is igling. Also it doesn't make sense to have Hals play duelist when they have Aace and Hals is actually a great flex player, they have to swap roles and maybe replace one of their players if they actually want to qual to Ascension this year.

They need an actual igl and better defined roles.

grandpa fell asleep again