its fundamentally two different teams just under the same org.

Isn't Seven from Amercias? If he joins Crashies needs to leave due to import slot rule.

When was Sacy ever on a superteam that won? Neither 2022 Loud nor 2024 Sen were superteams before they won.

That’s a lot of faith in Sen

theyre back to back champs going into 2025 worlds, no one sees them as an underdog like 2022 DRX.

They did win split 1 in 2024, I wouldn't say they didn't give anyone a reason to not believe they could do it.

idk man, Asuna outlived Tenz's valorant career.

remember to floss as well

think the bar VCT has for franchises is whether they're competitive (making international events), have a decent amount of money to sustain their esports team, and are non-controversial. So far Fnatic has met all those requirements.

Doesn't Sen have 2 trophies?

There was a mistmatch with Bang and the team identity, they clearly wanted their smokes player to be more aggressive like Tenz was and wasn't able to adjust their approach to match Bang's strengths. It was just not a good team fit rather than the player sucking. They did the right thing for both parties.

who the heck was even debating this before? Riot doesn't put in any resources to support Australia compared to NA.

sounds about right, people expect them to be around the middle of the pack initially, which C is. They looked promising in the off-season which is what people are basing their current expectations off.

Its hard for people to conceptualize the use since the degree doesn't translate immediately to a necessary tangible service or good like engineering or sciences do, and people heavily weigh hard concrete skills like mathematics as a result due to its real-world applications. There are definite valuable use cases for arts and humanities but they don't necessarily need to be obtained within college only nor are other majors excluded from taking those classes (in fact i think a lot of colleges require some kind of liberal arts core as part of their curriculum). These majors also usually require a second advanced degree as a supplement if they want to pursue their field of study as a living, as compared to engineering degrees which usually requires a bachelors to enter the workforce for their intended fields of study.

Like policy making and social sciences are very important to the populace, but since they don't immediately turn into revenue and are often underserved (very poor salaries unless you're a high-ranking government official) its hard for people to really pay attention to them. And of course people mostly pay attention to the negative impacts of decisions that their government makes so everyone usually thinks that these people are incompetent anyways.

That being said your field of study isn't necessarily your career, and theres a ton of people in arts and humanities that goes into finance, law, management etc which has widespread impact on this world, so I wouldn't consider arts and humanities to be something that people should neglect, especially when its weaved into the social fabric of society.

Can't believe JohnQT has been downgraded that hard to a no-name.

allows the team to flex double duelist (aspas, zekken) + a very dangerous omen (Tenz) so I can't really laugh at that

why is C9 in B?

talon in tier 1 doesn't exist anymore unfortunately

No one was really to blame for G2's underperformance, but G2 felt that a change was needed otherwise nothing would change internationally (at least that's how they felt, they could win if they stuck together, who knows). JonahP just happened to be the odd one out.

they probably meant consistency wise, DRX hasn't missed champs yet and are always contending for regional titles

B2W2 for the postgame
That being said Emerald, Plat/HGSS Battle Frontiers were the peak for battling in-game.

Fnatic as it is currently isn’t a superteam, I don’t think there’s any true superteam atm, guess the closest would be MIBR but they don’t seem heads and shoulders above G2 and NRG in their own region.

Harden would be proud if Maxey gets MVP.

Pony Island

Brawk, Chovy, F0rsaken, Kakeru, Menard, Zywoo

Mako -> Tenz -> Zekken -> Cortezia

MIBR

what does TS stand for?

His Yoru wasn't bad either.

Why is crashies fraudulent? He was able to make a resurgence on Fnatic this year and they made the last two international grand finals.

Isn't the expected result for NRG to beat Sen?

bro Fnatic is just murdering them

So stage 2?

we dont get a bo3 until upper/lower finals :(

He'll most likely wait out kickoff, and join a promising team in stage 1 like how Brawk and Skuba went to NRG in stage 2.

Has no buyout though, which is a huge win and PR move; I really thought G2 was about to go back to their contract jail ways like they did when Ocelote was running the show.

no Trent?

DRX, surely they finally get a chip at one of the internationals this year right?

he got dropped, then he eventually got picked up by LEV during the offseason

He got dropped from the Guard core right after they made it to tier 1, remembered reading that a while back. It did work out for him in the end but yeah it was kind of a bad faith move to drop a person that got you to tier 1 before even letting him play at least 1 game in tier 1 with them.

was mentioned a while back in an older vlr thread: https://www.vlr.gg/579442/valyn#:~:text=mibr%20said%20no%20cuz%20aspas%20wants%20to,verno%20and%20verno%20and%20trent%20roles%20clash&text=aspas/zekken/valyn/trent/verno%20sounds%20like%20a%20few%20too%20many%20cooks%20in%20the

to be fair its only Valyn and Trent left, who wanted to go to MIBR as a pair.

Jawgemo didn't snake him, did reach out to make sure he was okay https://x.com/kellyk_lly/status/1988722125117747515

Think Sen fans expectations are relatively mild this year, would be great if they qualify for an international.

maybe both sides need a change of scenery, no doubt JonahP would thrive anywhere else but maybe G2 has a particular set of needs that we don't know of.

didn't they already fulfill the champs curse? S0m retired/took a break so the current roster isn't the full champs roster now.

Cortezia joining Sen was also a shocker given how much he grown on MIBR at Champs

seeing NRG win with 3 rookies (?) I dont think experience is the issue here...

I think it's fine as long as it's merit-based; we've seen Sen with Brazilian players in the past several years with Sacy, Pancada, and now Cortezia in reverse. As long as the players prove they belong regardless of their region of origination be it NA or SA I think it's fine. Makes the entire league more competitive as a result.

If Sen make top 2 I’ll give you a kiss (figuratively)