don't worry young one your bait skills will improve as you spend more time here

i had drx going to the GF on upper bracket

was it hopeful? for sure

was i expecting them to beat SEN at least? honestly yeah lol

rare instance of someone saying a team is saving strats when that team was actually saving strats

well played

The Mets baby

yeah i like watching pro valorant but not enough to completely adjust my sleep schedule around it

right. good catch, had forgotten about that. fuck that org

#2 -- not imports
#3 -- yes imports

i love VLR

bumping your own thread just makes you look like a clown for the record

I can understand using kovaak's/etc as aim training and I don't think it's a complete waste of time but those that make it their sole personality are insufferable. I'm talking about those that consider themselves part of the "aim community" and treat their kovaak's leaderboard position like social status

Specifically whenever I think of kovaak's aim training I think of the "i'll see you in dallas" kid

a player can negotiate and agree to a contract with another team, but the player's original team can match/beat that offer and keep them or even just refuse that offer (at least, I think). similar to other sports. an unrestricted free agent can sign with whoever he wants and the org can't do anything.

so basically, a player can negotiate and sign with another team, but then the current team has to approve. i don't think i've seen a team refuse an offer for a player in vct so far? someone feel free to fact check

He's improved a ton since starting. I remember when he switched off being perma-jett to playing kayo and he looked ROUGH

Still not close to a top-tier initiator, but considering he wasn't ever a flex before, he's adjusted pretty well IMO

i hovered around diamond/ascendant for multiple episodes and had many games with an immo1 in it, and almost every time the immo1 performed about the same level if not worse than the rest of the lobby, so i agree

the low immos also tend to be more toxic because they're low immo and think they own the server

whenever a dev says "performance" with no other details i typically assume it's framerate stuff. i imagine it's the same here. low-end potato laptops probably struggle a lot with iso ult i guess?

console

ok, that's good i guess. thought it would just be a free-for-all where the pros that have money can just unpack the broken players and use those lmao

but yeah, FIFA being an esport with UT is... cringe. i feel like if PES had somehow survived (or at least, didn't try to change engines and rebrand) it could've become the esport of choice for the better general gameplay

I've never watched pro FIFA, is it just Ultimate Team competition or do they play with regular teams? If it's UT then it's crazy that there's an esport with that insane p2w system... I just play player/manager careermode

Could be, never played or watched Dota myself personally. Similar skills required, though

Either LoL or Overwatch IMO

LoL because of how delicate a teamfight can be in a pro match, and little things like cs can influence the match at that level. A lot of cooldown managing as well, since you have to know your own cooldowns, your team's cooldowns, and the entire enemy team's cooldowns

OW because you need to be extremely good at aiming (unless you play tank -- then you have to be extremely good at not dying more than aiming) while also knowing cooldowns like in LoL

EG. Fuck that org, but the players didn't deserve what happened to them.

The best surprise would be DRX winning Champs after their weakest ever season

Any Chinese team reaching upper finals would be more than welcome too

I feel like 2023 should've taught us to never leave out those that barely qualified, or those that look weak at the start. EG almost didn't qualify and then won the whole thing, This year SEN was almost written off entirely because of one bad series against the favorites, and Trace was probably in everyone's pickems as getting eliminated in groups. No team at Champs is objectively weak

I argue it's more because we've already seen what DRX does -- at their peak they look unstoppable, but then they get mentally boomed and crash out before they reach top 3/4. So, everyone expects them to do the same here.

Funnily enough, I feel like this lack of pressure of not being the obvious favorites (GenG were, and now TH/G2/FNC) + having home support will really help them actually break that curse. But, they have to win first. One game at a time

frailty is maybe top 5 albums oat for me it's so good. the album cover going insanely hard helps it too

the new song flash in the pan is also fantastic

for BMTH i thought NeX GEn's cover went super hard

The pyrokinesis ones are super cool, i never knew of him so it's my first time seeing those covers

i usually dislike album covers that are just photos but Die Lit's photo is something DIFFERENT

I'm kinda bored for my last half hour at work and got curious

I've been going through a phase where I look for albums that have amazing covers. They don't have to be good albums, just that the cover goes hard af and they just look great

What are y'alls favorite covers/which ones do you think go hardest?

Some notable covers from me that aren't uber popular/well known (yet):

• Nothing But Thieves -- Broken Machine (Deluxe)
• Thornhill -- The Dark Pool
• Jane Remover -- Frailty
• FINNEAS -- Blood Harmony
• Kehlani -- CRASH
• brakence -- hypnagogia

Thanks for the reminder. I should probably do this soon. Was hesitant for a while because I didn't want to void the warranty (even by accident) but now that that's passed I should open it up and deep clean

for certain sports it's for air resistance. pro gymnasts (for example) will always wear tight clothing because air resistance can ruin their consistency (especially in events like trampoline)

for many other sports it's also for comfort or cultural reasons. female beach volleyball players can be seen wearing regular bikinis, long sleeve shirts/pants, or something in between

how does this affect lebron's legacy

it's still complete brainrot content, plus at least when i was young i never looked at a yt poop and said ha ha this is good parody

all i'm saying is that now i look at old youtube poops and cringe at the fact i used to love watching them. gen alpha will eventually grow up and realize that too (assuming their brains don't actually wither away)

my ideal scenario is if they did away with Masters and replaced them with third-party tournaments (like IEM, Blast, etc from CS) where part of the rewards are circuit points for Champions

i like Champions being a Riot-based end-all-be-all tournament each year

unfortunately that's never gonna happen

i'm solidly gen z. i watched a couple of "episodes" because i used to love watching Source Filmmaker content (especially the Saxxy Award TF2 films) and always appreciate good animation. (it's not that good)

it is complete nonsense and don't get how anyone can watch it on repeat. i was at a bar/restaurant last week and there was a kid (maybe like. 5? 6?) at the table in front of mine and was literally watching skibidi toilet on his ipad. kid did not say a SINGLE word that entire time they were there.

i argue skibidi toilet today is the gen alpha equivalent of youtube poops for us

people think valo looks bad? unless they're cs/cod kids that want their "realism," that makes very little sense

at least pearl is finally coming back, that's been confirmed. i think most people forgot that it was even reworked before it got taken out

They're definitely getting paid/doing their friend Shroud a favor by shilling the game for him. Normal behavior

Will it kill Valorant? Probably not -- it's a completely different game with an admittedly awesome gimmick

Streamers can also try out new games without it implying that they're abandoning their former game btw. A lot of Overwatch streamers spent a while playing Marvel Rivals (the supposed new Overwatch Killer)

hmm, guess it depends on what you get banned for/how long?

i've seen plenty of people have 4 stars, disappear for a while, and come back with zero stars on the same account

stars are only removed when you get banned

DRX-LEV, LEV-EDG, DRX-EDG are the dream

imma be real with you chief i don't think i've played an unrated or a swiftplay since before fracture was removed. mb

still a whole year without a map is criminal. meanwhile i'm playing lotus and ascent every night

Fracture was removed from the unrated and ranked map pools in patch 7.04. This was 354 days ago

Just a friendly reminder while you queue into your 20th Ascent game this episode. Valorant simply does not have enough maps to be taking some of them out for 1+ years like this

it's one thing to dislike a team, it's another thing to make that your personality

reminds me of MxM in NA Challengers and Apeks in EMEA Challengers last year

MxM had an incredible split 2 and almost qualified to Ascension undefeated in the split, then lost 0-2 to M80 and 0-3 to TGRD back-to-back and crashed out

Apeks had only lost one match in the entirety of EMEA Challengers and Ascension, then lost 0-3 to Gentle Mates in the final

the mental boom from even losing one map whenever you are favorites or on a win streak is real

smaller venues and no real crowd mic (at least... i think)

put a Masters in the same venue as IEM Dallas and it'll be hype i guarantee it

This is bold. I kinda like it

Mine is incredibly hopium https://www.vlr.gg/pickem/9c74ed55

there's an esports world cup?

the chicago crimerate has gone down a lot over the years. a lot of websites rn don't even list it in the top 20 most dangerous US cities anymore

rn it's just like any other city -- just gotta know where you are and avoid the bad areas where you can

i agree, but there's so few events happening each year anyway that viewers (and i imagine many players too) would complain about even more waiting between events

there should be something going on during these downtimes to justify even more waiting. doesn't even have to be pro matches, could be like creator tournaments sponsored by Riot and streamed in the official VCT channels. or pro matches with gimmicks like agent bans

or of course riot can fix the schedule (very hard i know)

people were so confident GenG were going to beat SEN again that now anything SEN does will be considered a fluke

i wonder how many people lost money thinking they had it in the bag

lowkey my ideal scenario:
Masters Singapore
Masters Chicago/Detroit/Toronto
Champions Lisbon/Amsterdam/London

All would be fire choices. i'm 99% sure there will be a Masters in NA after having zero international events this year. Would also make sense to have another champs at EU and just make it a rotating cycle (NA->APAC->EU, plus China somewhere idk)

it's a matter of taking care of the laptop and getting some solid peripherals to keep it going, really.

the thermals in these laptops aren't the best and constantly gaming at 90-100 degrees C will cause either the CPU or GPU (or even both) to slowly start failing, which does suck.

i have a 4 year-old laptop that still runs stuff super well, maybe as good as when i got it. i genuinely think i made the right choice by investing in a cooling pad too so the thermals don't shit themselves. i also got a keyboard so i'm not wearing the laptop keyboard out