s0m has never been the best controller in the world. Marved will be in 2022 form this season now that he has a functional team and isnt igling.

Nah, that isn't how it works.

Pure speculation

Nah, Marved is better. If he was on a functional team last year, he would have been one of the best, if not the best, controllers in the world, just like in 2022.

ahh

The odds are in favor of SEN no? Or were the pre-match odds significantly different?

People perpetually overrating SEN for so long has built so much resentment that now when they're actually pretty good, the slightest stumble from them cause people to go crazy with underrating them. It's not over yet but if they do win, I don't think it's really appropriate to call it an upset.

I think you might be in for a rude awakening if you actually believe that.

No. He built it alone. Mce didn't know he was getting fired and was needlessly putting something together with screwface.

Sen maybe, maybe not. Didn't say that about G2. Either way, pretending as if they're in different stratospheres isn't realistic. Those teams(NRG, Loud) would definitely be advantaged but pretending as if an upset could never occur is most definitely delusional.

Plenty of people with 2 brain cells. Saw plenty of people saying EG would be the worst team in americas and putting them low. Personally had EG going through in first place but that definitely wasn't most ppl. Also, you're pretty delusional when it comes to your estimation of the skill of some of these teams. Americas has a competitive field. ALL the teams are good.

When more than half the community is expecting them to go 11th place? Yes, it is a success. That's not cope. Just reality.

A team with 0 expectations losing to NRG/LOUD/SEN/LEV isn't being "exposed."

lol. As far as I'm concerned (and a great many others i'd wager), kick off is already a successful result for this new EG.

There was a top 5 coach ITW thread earlier and some bozo rated Zikz as #2, said he was responsible for EG's success and left potter off of it but I guess you're right, he definitely doesn't have a brain.

Don't think I agree with a lot of these lol. We learned that EG is competent. A lot of people legitimately thought they were going to be an 11th place team. But I think there was also some reasonable people that knew that was never going to be the case. Maybe they'll be insane later on in the year but I'm not quite sure they're their yet. We'll see come playoffs.

Nothing can be done. They used the same format in all the other regions. Not Riot's fault that EG chose to act like terrors and burn down their champions winning roster. And changing it up for a single region would be the opposite of competitive integrity.

100T isn't shit or at the very least, that doesn't seem to be the case anymore from what we've seen. 100T was doomed last year. Not only did they downgrade from Sgares to Mikes as a coach, but they literally only had one coach. In the 1 match a week format where so much time is needed for prep, I think it was pretty much impossible for them to do well.

Also, something that is is seldom mentioned is that in 2022 the team was trained in a way that was extremely exec heavy and going into to 2023 they wanted to play more loose. Imo this more or less erased much of the progress they made as a team during 2022. The players weren't accustomed to heavily using their brains in the mid-round and it showed. They looked lost at the start of the season and remained a mediocre team till the end of the year.

There is no set opponent in playoffs. It's random draw with the only rule being play-in winner avoiding the team from their group. Loud can play NRG as well.

Pretty sure he's being sarcastic lol

huh? is this true? source?

Yea, maybe he edited after remembering the name and forgot to remove that text.

Paper Rex

Loud has changed head coaches every year since they began. Doesn't make much sense to rate them #1 does it?

edit: Also, you've seen 2 bo3s from the new 100thieves which also has EG's igl and that alone makes you ready to conclude their assistant coach was a bigger factor in EG's success than their actual head coach? Very interesting.

1. Chet
2. Mini
3. Potter
4. Alecks
5. Erik

Historical*

Did Saadhak grow up in Brazil? I was under the impression he only came to Brazil after becoming an adult and starting his pro career.

That's not how it works. We've already seen how playoff bracket is decided in pacific. Random draw to determine who plays who in playoffs. Only restriction is play-in winner can't play the team that came from their group. So just to correct your first example, NRG could play Loud OR C1.

Fnatic would have definitely lost lotus. Re-watch the tournament. Eg had the best lotus in the world at champions.

Fnatic were playing worse at champions. EG got better. 9 round differential in that 3 map series, pretty close. They would have lost.

??

Sure. Doesn't change that they still would have lost at champions to EG/PRX.

Probably wont. They switched ppl doing intros between series last week.

I'm not convinced DRX is better than T1/Geng anymore. So honestly, it's probably not much of a problem if they get PRX.

lol perhaps. Bren/sideshow said something once on platchat about them not choosing what they wear. Just assumed it was the same in emea.

Lmao. I'm not 100% sure but I think production chooses what their wardrobe will be on broadcast. They might have some influence but it's not all their fault.

I think you're a bit delusional if you're saying that and truly think it's a certainty. Lol. I wouldn't make this statement about ANY team in Americas. All a team has to do is be top 4 by the end of the year to make it champions. Any of the 11 teams are capable of this.

Honestly. I wouldn't even be that surprised if this happened.

So you're calling him racist when you have absolutely no idea what he said or what his intentions were whatsoever? I won't pretend whatever he said didn't cross a line but Zellsis is a jokester, we all know that. And you're making a whole lot of assumptions with ABSOLUTELY 0 FACTS. You're being so uncharitable with your assumptions and being so fucking transparent with your agenda, it's fucking laughable

Also, since this involves riot staff I can't even trust that whatever he said was truly that severe but rather over-sensitivity on the riot staff's part. In 2018, certain riot staff working in the LCS pressured Golden guardians into firing Locodoco (And essentially blacklisted him from the scene) after he made what was deemed "an innapropriate remark" to a female staff member. You know what that remark was? He made a joke about a foam microphone looking like a condom he saw in Korea. Is that a fucking stupid and immature thing to say in a professional setting? Absolutely. But does that make you a POS who deserves people brigading together to get you fired while doing their absolute best to assassinate your public image? Absolutely not.

Wouldn't surprise me at all if Zellsis said some stupid, immature shit with 0 malice that was ultimately innocuous and then Riot chose to blow it out of proportion.

Fut played poorly
Heretics played decent
Giants played decent
KC played well, looks like they have good potential

Seems like all these teams would currently get destroyed by the Americas teams but I'm sure they'll improve as the season goes.

A lot of esports, not all.

I think tomaszy is the duelist. Marteen i'm not sure. Could have that backwards, not sure.

He's flex i believe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwKRLA1Ow2k

Not dickriding. Simply repeating a statement of someone that I know is very knowledgeable, sliggy, with him having vod reviewed and analyzed thousands of hours of Valorant (and coached team liquid himself previously). Same with people echoing FNS, someone who's played CS/Valorant for years professionally and been at times called the goat IGL in the valorant.

If if it bothers you so much, fuck off the site cunt.

Sliggy said multiple times during the series that it was really high level play we were seeing, Sen and 100T are pretty good. This group was tragic.

Mental health issues? what do you mean? (idk his cs history)

In NA T2

You're just biased. 100T looked good. There is no guarantee they'd be better with Nzr.

Pretty sure sacy carrying is completely irrelevant to benching pancada.

Of course they look lost. Never seen or dreamed of that comp. Playing against things you've never seen on the fly is extremely hard. Especially if your opponents are well drilled against a very set meta.

Apothecary diaries or Vinland saga

What people don't understand is that riot is and has never been motivated by what is absolutely best for their esports scenes from a competitive perspective (Anyone who's followed league of legends for the last decade should know this). They're a large company with many priorities with the top of their hierarchy of priorities being $$$. They may(and always do) claim otherwise but this is the truth. I'm not gonna pretend to know exactly how riot is thinking at all times(no one can) but they've chosen to invest more in GC because they believe it will ultimately benefit them more as a company.

I don't even have to think very hard to see why they believe this to be true:

1. Call it cynical thinking if you want, but the reality is that the health of the T2 ecosystem does not matter from a $$$ perspective. As long as the game remains popular enough, prospective talent will continue to enter and compete in the T2 scene with aspirations of one day reaching VCT
2. The vast majority of fans can not differentiate in the levels of play/performance as the highest levels of play are approached(this is true in all esports) so even if the level of pro play declines, it will have almost 0 impact on viewership and not affect the game's popularity.
3. Running and funding the GC circuit, the largest and best funded women's scene in all of esports, buys riot goodwill from the valorant audience and the wider gaming audience. This might not seem important but it is, it's the same logic/reasoning the rich use when engaging in/advertising their philanthropic endeavors. It's never completely selfless, that goodwill ultimately leads to a return on investment in other ways and eventually more $$$
4. Bragging rights. Sounds dumb right? But that's the reality. In the last 10 years+ riot have shown that they want to be unique. They like being trend setters at the forefront when it comes to esports and that's exactly what a well run/funded global women/marginalized gender's circuit is in esports, which is extremely male dominated.
5. Your definition of a healthy valorant eco-system may simply not align with their definition. They may just value eventually having women competing in the T1 scene to be the most healthy state of affairs and see prioritizing that as more important than T2.

It's probably mostly reasons 1-4. I'm sure there also plenty of individuals who feel 5 is true as well but with riot being riot, proud and profit oriented, those other points are probably the prevalent reasons as to why things are the way they are. Ultimately, companies and orgs will invest where they want to invest and there is no changing that.