firstly, let's think about what yay has experienced in his valorant career:

• 2nd place in first international (highest rated in the tournament by a significant margin)
• grouped in champs (small sample size obviously, but still 5th highest rating in the tournament)
• won reykjavik (3rd highest rating in the tournament)
• 3rd in copenhagen (4th highest rating in the tournament)
• 2nd in champs (highest rated in the tournament)

then, after all of those incredible placements both as a team and individually, he is rightfully considered the best player in the world. he joins c9 with this reputation, and gets removed after 2 games even tho he clearly wasn't the problem, joins disguised, takes a significant hit in performance with the expectation he would drop 30 every game, joins bleed, has a similarly poor performance.

and yet, after all that, he's still going, and the reason i believe he will make a return is not only this mental resilience, but also his work ethic. in the interview with the bleed coach, he says that yay would do lots of work outside of the game on other teams and generally put in lots of effort. he's had his name smeared for both performance and individual reasons, and even now he's still looking to play next year. not many other players can deal with that sort of pressure, and that is why i think yay will make a return!

(sorry for yap, pretty much: yay has a great work ethic and super strong mental resilience)

0 rounds on attack side lotus is INSANE

what

if ur an nrg fan you can surely admit that ethan is t he best init no?

i dont think he's a one trick at all, but he is one of few to really "mastered" harbor, he can also play omen and astra at an incredibly high level as one of the best smokes itw of 2023, and then you'd put him on duelist? idk, i think he just looks so good on smokes it would be a risk to move him off it

why would you put s0m on duelist? he's not a duelist player? his only experience on duelist was like 2 years ago and the game was so different back then, just keep him on smokes. also demon1 should NOT play neon, neon is an entry duelist he is not an entry player. also, fns is an incredible igl, why would you replace him with a decent sentinel who can decently call?

curious to see the source for this, i mean its the most likely move but even so

edg looked awful for the rest of the year and looked amazing in champs, eg looked awful start of the year, looked super strong in tokyo, and then obviously looked amazing in champs - i think it's very different

alfa might be one of the biggest overheaters in vct and was way worse decision making wise as a player than derke, i think derke leaving is a personal choice as fnatic is (arguably) holding him back from more trophies considering his recent form and also he's been on that team for so long probs just wants a change

1 Geng
2 TH
3 EDG
4 SEN
5 LEV

why? new team with rookies, got 2 international 2nd places, 2 regional 2nd places, and took both international 2nds to a map 5. they were one of the best teams of the year with not a single standout player. so no, there is no good reason for them to make roster changes. they looked incredible this year and will only grow as players

shanghai grand finals he crumbled tho?

problem is tho entrying with little util is super difficult, and while he does find first kills, he's going to find a lot more first deaths due to the fact that a duelist running it down on a site will find it hard to deal with site anchors consistently without the proper support

idk, i think this is just the way LEV plays - if you look at 2023 loud, aspas played a hard entry role and looked incredible on it. i think on 2024 the lev system is to set up him to frag way more and not just be a hard entry

but then its unfair to players like miniboo, where the whole team idea is that miniboo makes space with little support, dies, gets traded, plays a post plant - i would argue miniboo is a top duelist and one of the key reasons heretics made it so far in champs

when talking about the "best duelist", what do you think classifies a player as the best duelist? is it their fragging, consistency, teamplay? for me personally, i would say the community opinion is that (up until the grand finals) aspas was not only the best duelist in the world, but also the best player in the world - but he is beaten in terms of fragging and teamplay by other duelists, consistency being his only claim to the best duelist. idk, just curious to see how people define "best duelist"

well firstly, it legitimately does not matter what ur hs% is whatsoever and if you think its limiting yourself then i would have to hard disagree. players like leaf, zekken, derke etc. have relatively low hs% (like low 20%) yet are considered some of the best players itw. if you do wanna improve your hs% tho without throwing your games, just take your time to go for headshots, go for taps/bursts instead of sprays, dont play phantom, op, judge or other guns that encourage bodyshotting, and focus more on your movement to let the enemies spray on you to get an easy 1 tap!

also if you keep watching that interview from the 1:55 point he talks more about it as well!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtZ38Nk1w74

about 1:55 in, but also evident through their team comps in kickoff especially on maps like ascent

there's also probably otrher clips where he explains it in more detail but couldnt find any, just remember him not liking them

i guess this is what saadhak was thinking too?

only started watching val from early 2022 but from what i can recall sick was sen's only good player in 2022, the team was straight ass and yet he would still be performing - who knows how good he would be if he was playing today :(

definitely, but in Reykjavík he hadn't found the same dominance that he did in the later part of the year (i.e in champs) in my opinion, and his dominance was nowhere players like Alfajer.

take the stats for example - yay had a 1.19 rating over the tournament, which is incredible, but the #1 rated player mako had 1.29, a whole 0.1 rating over. in comparison, alfajer had a 1.33 rating over the tournament, and the next highest player that wasnt his teammate was 0.18 below.

in other words, yay was great in Reykjavík, but alfajer was a different beast in tokyo

yay is way too high on this list in my opinion, he was obviously an incredible player in Reykjavík but to say he was more dominant than alfa in tokyo or demon1 in champs is insane

Prime less rivaled most of the best val players at their peaks, meteor hasn't really

better writing and story, but fo4 clears in gameplay and is way better in terms of crashing (new vegas crashes every 5 minutes!)

miniboo is literally a sova drone in player form for heretics - he goes in and dies and they win anyways because that's how they play. they didnt lose today because miniboo "performed badly", they lost bc they were the worse team

i think it will be 2-1 either way, potentially leaning into heretics winning bc they just have so many shooters but if sacy/zellsis step up then it could be 2-1 for sen. either ways, its gonna be a banger and i cant wait to see who wins

definitely, 2 masters win and a champions win. despite their inconsistency, i dont think any other team would really be in contention (correct me if im wrong)

agree - they went from looking like a mid-bottom tier team to one of the top teams itw. just because his performance doesnt necessarily look great doesnt mean he isnt contributing heavily to flexibility and entrying for the team. one of the most underrated players imo

This is going to be one of the best matches of the year I feel...

chamber over phoenix, astra over sova, brim over kayo and then it's a W comp.

ascent has legitimately been here forever, so all map pools have been brought down by it
abyss is eh, kinda fun to watch but super ass to play
sunset is mid asf
icebox is also mid
meta is pretty good tho imo!

"L map pool" only bad maps are really Icebox and Abyss atm (maybe sunset too)
"L meta" no insanely broken agents, variety of duelists (jett, raze, neon, even some yoru and iso from fnatic)

Everything else i agree!

replace omen with iso and you might just have discovered the lotus meta

then i think lock in should be higher because the grand finals went to map 5 OT with (arguably) the greatest match of valorant ever, certainly best grand final ever, with insane games like NRG vs LOUD, DRX vs LOUD, and just overall every match being so hard to predict - even more so as teams had changed many players out so we had no idea who would be the best

competitiveness as in how "fair" the tournament is, or how stacked the top teams are / how close opponents and matches are?

i mean at madrid gen.g had a very deep map pool w/ 2 map bans and we know how that went...

i think he is the best player of all time, as he was really good in 2021, good in 2022, really good in 2023, and is performing exceptionally well in 2024 (this is all at international tournaments btw)

super good list, maybe put tex a little lower, i think trent and sacy can be swapped too as sacy has been incredible for sen this tournament

for me derke is either the best or second best duelist of all time, sayf is incredible but hasnt had the results yet to prove he deserves a spot

1. Derke
2. Chronicle
3. Aspas
4. Leo
5. Alfajer

alot of the time lurkers have to take the most 1v1s and players like alfajer and less have such crazy aim which makes them the best lurkers, duelists rely on a lot of support from the team whereas sentinels take their own fights and have to win them in order to get value

duelist is not the easiest agent, sentinel is not the hardest agent

Nice pickems

has to be up there for sure

kru went to every single event up until tokyo i believe
right now longest streak is propably paper rex?

OPTIC 3 - 0 LOUD
YOU CANT SPELL LOUD WITHOUT "L" AM I RIGHT

OPTIC FNS GETS DOUBLE DIGIT KILLS IN ONE OF THESE MAPS CALLING IT RN :pray: