true fan

This comment feel so real after what happened in ALGS today 💀

It's nothing to do with merging SEA T2 into one region. That only happened this year. The effects of merged SEA circuit will only manifest some time in the future. SEA representatives in VCT PAC doing bad has to do with something else, be it bad team management, bad read, or just getting diffed.

They merged SEA this year. SEA representatives in VCT pacific is doing bad this year. They have no correlation.

Stop coping, it's actually sad to see at this point.

They never banned Twitch. Twitch banned Korea

We all knew this match was gonna be a banger

time to take the revenge

Battle of mid ass coaches. Let's see which roster could save their coach's ass harder

tbh Saya was mid af yesterday. Bro was doing well when there were no broadcasts and just fell off hard once on mainstage. Obviously I'll reserve my judgement until the game between them and NOEZ ends, but there were just too many occasions where he was just getting aim-diffed and simply playing bad. His Raze is still not something to boast about either. Brian and Muto really saved rest of their team's asses.

I hope Medu does well. Funny fat man

RID 2-0 MRSH
Should be fairly easy for last year's VCJ champion

Time to see if Gwangboong is still That Gwangboong.

On the flipside, FL looked quite shaky during Advanced Stage

VCJ, for better or worse, looks pretty stacked this year, yet again.

This Year's the Year™

bro casually ignoring Jinboong and Gyen. Especially Gyen locked the fuck in

Well, I'm talking about players that could guaranteed get a spot in VCJ, not those who would lose their spot to imports. I'm not delusional enough to think that someone who can't even find a spot in VCJ would be successful abroad.

As for full-Japanese roster argument that I was making, I should note that I'm talking about two separate things here. On the one hand, like I've said, VCJ purely Japanese just for the sake of making it fully Japanese would only hamper quality. What's the meaning of giving new faces chances, if the competition is much easier? Sure, there were teams like Fennel and MRSH that did well in T2 as full-Japanese roster, but how could you say for sure that other full-Japanese rosters would be of same quality? Hence the argument about fully-Japanese rosters that are failing to qualify for the main stage. I think there's a good chance that the overall strength of VCJ would get closer to those teams that fail to qualify, than Fennel or MRSH should they impose absolute import ban.

As for the point about "mostly Japanese rosters", I'm talking about players that are clearly good enough for the international stage, be it good enough to qualify for Ascensions, or get a seat in T1, that are playing in a "mostly Japanese rosters". They are the ones that I'm arguing that should stop staying complacent and look for winning opportunities overseasz because mostly-Japanese rosters haven't worked for the last two years. This, however, doesn't apply for most of the T2 players.

You mean SF and Smash Bros. Tekken has always been Korean (+ Pakistani more recently) stronghold.

I think a big problem here is that they got used to losing. They don't have winning mentality as an org, or as a team. Seeing how DRX steadily changed for the better as a team during 2022 after losing to Zeta, is what you should expect of Zeta as well, every time they have underwhelming performances.

For DRX, it was an absolute shocker that they've lost to Zeta of all teams. Unfortunately at the moment, losing to any PAC teams would not be the same kind of a shocker for Zeta. Losing to the likes of PRX, DRX, GEN or T1? 'It's an expected outcome, they are top dogs.' Losing to other teams? 'their aims are cracked. nt gg.'

If anything, maybe it would be a good idea for Japanese teams to have a public tourney between T1 Japanese teams and T2 teams. I think there's a good chance that T1 teams will lose bad, and once they lose in publicly humiliating way, maybe then they'll fix their shit. Obviously that would never happen, but that sort of wake-up is what they need, I feel.

Maybe decimating VCJ and destroying their comfort zone will actually force good players to look outside for opportunities lol.

I know it's actually hard to tell these players to chase ambition in place of stable pay in Japanese T2, since it's literally their living, and since they are already at a disadvantage once they retire from the scene and pursuit another career, but I wanted to point out that, even so, it's pretty darn disappointing that you don't see a single notable Jaoanese player going abroad.

Tbf, Riot made Valo as accessible as possible for a game that was released in 2020. You could run it on 60 fps on an average jo laptop no-problem. I don't think hardware accessibility is the problem here.

Importing in VCJ feels more like a strucutral problem of higher order, a problem of orgs themselves rather than players. Sure, coaches have most say on rosters, but if the org wants it to be full Japanese, it would be (eg. Zeta). Also, I don't think making VCJ teams fully Japanese for the sake of it being fully Japanese wouldn't solve anything. We see a lot of full-Japanese entrants failing to qualify for the main stage already.

What I'm talking about rn is a more individual problem. To be very honest, I also believed in the strength of VCJ last year, and it did seem like the last Ascension spot was theirs to take. But now that it's quite evident they are lagging behind, I feel like we should be hearing much more news about Japanese players attending tryouts for foreign teams if they really want to win.

Japanese players playing mostly Japanese teams clearly hasn't worked for ghe last 4 years, bar that one Masters in Reykjavik. Standout players should realise that they need standout teammates in order to win.

That's why I said except RID. By extent Aace as well, since he left his winning roster, to look for a better team. My guy wants to win. But other than him and rest of the RID players?

Their players don't have any ambition. Like, Japanese and Korean are one of the most easiest to learn if you know how to speak one another. There's a winning region right next to you. if you want to win, start learning Korean, or English, and go abroad. You see plenty of Koreans playing outside of Korea already in Valo. Saya was already playing in NA and was winning even before franchise. We've seen Americans playing in APAC of all places, and some in EMEA. Some EMEA players in Americas, too.

As for Japanese players, I haven't heard once that their players are looking to find a team abroad or have attended a tryout on a foreign team, so that could play in a winning roster. All they care is to cruise and coast on comfy Japanese orgs, collecting paychecks and building fanbase so that once they retire, they've got a nice place to fall back on. Sayin "NT" and pat themselves in the back once in a while whenever they shit the bed and bomb out of whatever tournaments.

Like, the amount of players who want to stick to T2 is already crazy enough. When your are in a team like RID, I get it. There seems to be a real chance in winning Ascensions and challenging for the spot in the International League. Other than that, if they feel they are good enough but keep playing on T2 'because there's no spot in either Zeta or DFM', welp, what should I say?

Even in LoL, a Japanese player, who's from the region that is by far one of the weakest, a region absolutely deserted up until recently, went to LEC to take his chance, nearing 30 years of age, married and with child, leaving his family behind back in Japan. That is what you call pro-gridnset, the urge to win. I don't see any Japanese Valo players doing that.

Korean players in ALGS once made fun of Japanese players sticking to "NT" after getting wiped, after which the amount of NTs you hear on Japanese comms noticeably reduced.

Wth are you yappin. JP playerbase has been much larger ever since the start of Valo.

That loss fixed DRX though.

All top Korean talents play on Asia server instead of the Korean server. Your point is moot.

Estrella reading GEN like a book in map 1 handily won RRQ the game but these guys giving him all the shit. Bunch of bots.

gold medal in AG, but any medal in Olympics

You could normally delay until you are 27

NFX seen 14-4 ing against Gen.G main team on scrims.

They are cooking. RC 1-2 NFX

Seems like GenGA roster was revealed just after I wrote this.

It's Ash, BENECIA, Cloudy, H3il and Ramgi. I don't think they'll be fighting for titles like T1A and FearX (and maybe DRXP) but seems good enough for middle of the pack.

I definitely see the potential. Though if they're good enough to beat either of the BME or NS, should they win Ascension as you predict, would be another question.

Wait, he's actually jacked. More reason to be excited anout T1A, but it also would be such a waste should they win

Medalist, Golden Kamui, Blue Giant

That's actually my question too. Theu can't go to Ascension anyeays regardless, so it feels like it does defeat the whole point of "Academy". Maybe they think it's a good investment should the contract be longer than 2 years? Though T1's probably the richest org in all of Pacific literally owned by a mega corp and have been very nice to their players before when it comes to contracts, so I don't see that happening either.

Maybe they were brought in as contingency/pseudo-sub players in-case anyone on the main T1 roster under performs

Yeah, it's only been a single match, to be fair. We'll see how they'll perform on the lower brackets which I think would be the real test.

Also, what's your verdict about T1A roster and their performance during their respective stints in VCJ?

Don't really care about negativity since this was also a round-up of what I've gathered.

Thanks nonetheless

Thanks.

Tbh, I also am more invested in VCJ than VCK, though since SPG won the last Ascension and looks pretty promising in terms of how they'll do this year, I think it wouldn't be bad if I post about who to look out for.

I think him and Moothie would be best performers of T1A if they win VCK

thanks mate

modern brainrot problem

bro did the extra work to type this shit

watch out for T1A, BNK FearX and DRX, dont need to actually watch VCK though

Was not paying attention to VCK since there are no Liquipedia nor VLR page for it, but from what I've looked up, it seems at least two teams (maybe +1 to make it three teams) out of eight are going to be good enough to contend for the Ascensions title this year.

For starters, among the 3 Academy teams, T1 has a roster consisting of GangPin, DH, Moothie, exa and TenTen. The other two are either internally grown rookies who I don't know much about (DRX) or hasn't revealed the roster yet (Gen.G)

If you watch VCJ or used to watch, you'll know how good GangPin, DH, Moothie and TenTen could be, especially DH. He was shortly at CGZ alongside Hyunmin and was able to show that he could be just as good as Hyunmin. TenTen was also in CGZ until he had a beef with flipzjder and got himself in trouble. He had some issues with consistency, but when CGZ won, quite a lot of times he was the, or was one of the carries. GangPin played alongside Akame in Reject and had a pretty good showing. Since Akame's performance, who was Reject's best player at the time, wasn't really inspiring/standing out during the DFM v. RRQ match, I might consider GangPin a step below the former CGZ players, but imo he's quite good nonetheless. Don't know much about exa so I can't say much.

DRX Prospects had a quite a few promising talents before, so I'm looking forward to see how they'll perform in T2 environment. No info about Gen.G so no idea.

Apart from T1A, BNK FEARX also looks very promising. They are basically the ex-NS players that have won 2024 S3 bar Xross, + Hermes from fOu Clan that was runner up in 2024 S3. NS was also a all-around very good team during 2024, and Cloy and SID were already part of the roster that was just one map away from beating Sin Prisa during 2024 S2. PKM and Yoman from their runner-up squad went to IAM and Gen.G respectively, and were replace by Kally and Banger. Both are not bad replacements.

DK is a bit of a question mark. They had a let-down in 2024 S3 and haven't qualified for 2025 S1, so they acquired 3 of the fOu Clan players, which as I've mentioned above, were runner ups during 2024 S3. They are going to play alongside kAyle and Bangnan, who used to play for Varrel before they disbanded. To be exact, Bangan left and kAyle joined as his replacement for VCJ 2024 S2. Bangnan then played in VEC Daejon, but anyways, Varrel and VEC Daejon weren't particularly strong teams, and Bangnan and kAyle were not much of a standouts even in those lower-mid teams. kAyle used to be hyped by a few as the next big thing, the next Korean ranked demon, but he unfortunately wasn't. Should see how DK performs with former fOu members and if ex-Varrel players could show that they've improved. (btw, Empty, the last fOu Clan member not mentioned is still LFT so I think he'll be picked up by one of the VCK teams)

Haven't got much to note about the rest of the entrants. IAM dropped out, as reported on front page, so there'll be one more team that would qualify but no clue how they'll pick that team. Could have been Sherpa, but they've disbanded. Open qualifiers could be possible, since 2024 S1 also started quite late. SLT and CRG were 3rd and 4th place during 2024 S3, so my expectations are that they're probably not the teams who'd win VCK this year.

It's going to be the yardstick for how things will pan out in the near future, that's for sure. Like conversely, if the viewership drops yet again, might really be hopeless. Riot esports folks are definitely going to like the resulta of today though, that's for sure.

Yeah, I could for example see Tarik streaming SR GC games, at least during the first half of the split. While browsing Twitch I've seen a few female streamers with few thousand viewers as well. Can't really say if they're big names, but there definitely is interest.

I've seen a lot of people talk about T2 downfall, but with SR GC, is NA T2 saved, at least for this split? Supporters of GC or girls in esports would be highly interested so a lot of them will tune in, and unfortunate haters would also tune in as well, hoping to witness their downfall. Apart from those who support or hate, there will also be people who don't really have an opinion(= simply don't support) but still interested in GC team performace in T2 tune in as well.

Like, this is kinda big for NA T2, no?

The most utilitarian option

Holy smokes they did it, and with map 2 in quute a dominant fashion. Fucking grats