good news, SA is merging with DACH https://x.com/esportsinsider/status/1806644645662712226 so they have to share their region too!

For me its the g2 vs gambit game during his debut tourney. He had a rough go at it and for whatever reason that one stuck with me, so I get ya

Very polarizing maps thats for sure

Yea Id say keloqz S tier is plausible, although I would personally move him down to A or even B due to how long I think turning him into a super star would take.

Kid has insane potential, but has never been on a team where he develops into a proper tier 1 player. Hes too agressive, tries to make too many plays and so on, but these are problems you will find on the vast majority of duelists from t2.

I do get the skepticism though since hes been in t1 for a while and seemingly never truly improved in those aspects, but id personally blame it more on the environments being wrong for him, rather than an inability to learn.

IGL

Id agree with others here with that they can make playoffs. Theyre a team that doesnt have those major flaws youll find in a lot of the worse group stage teams, however they also lack anything special to set them apart from the mid teams.
They have the problem that their playstyle doesnt suit the meta, where concise and fast game plans are the norm. It also doesnt help that imo theyre one of the worst teams at snowballing.
With Derke being back (for a while now tbf) I dont see them getting run over, so I do think theyll be able to exploit the weaker competition during the group stage. I dont see them get further than that though, due to the flaws mentioned above.

wait what the actual fuck
HOW

yes I believe Russ is a good IGL and should be the core piece of any t1 indian roster atm.
Russ has been doing fine fragging and GEs calling has never looked truly bad this year. There have been weird comps and bad rounds for sure, but overall GE has always had good calling.

I can see them building around Russ next year, ye and introduce more indian t2 talent.
Would you be kicking Lightningfast for Techno though, or would you want to transition him to another role?
Mainly asking since I really dont think LF is ready to play main duelist atm, and sentinel has been SO contested in terms of talent the past 2 years.

EDG is looking to change so that they can break the status quo, and I think that in order to do that there need to be big changes, and during those big changes dips in performances are inevitable.

Ye this exactly. They changed how they play significantly during the first stage and in turn... looked underwhelming.
However Im not sure if I have trust that theyll be able to surpass their past performances; they already showed that they were willing to fall back into their old ways during playoffs.
This at least to me signals that theres not really trust inside the team that the new system can win them games, in which case the project is destined to fail.

I dont think theyre a trash team now, as many have concluded after their past 2-4 losses, I just dont think we'd have them consistently at the top of their region regardless of their competition.

the 4060 is a borderline scam from a gaming perspective, hence the reviews
but its not bad to the point where you should never get it; you have one of the rare use case where nvidia is simply superior

I only dabbled in ML for a paper in regards to QC so I cant exactly provide any in depth insight.
The one thing I can confirm is that lot of super new implementations are made for Nvidia hardware. However at least for my use cases the 3060 (12gb) already had severe memory limitations, to the point where I had to use the universities Server.
If you go into MI I would assume your university offers a similar service. The main question would be how accessible they are for you (waitlists etc).

bro burnt the kitchen
1 person you 100% need to keep lmao

it is, but this entire playoffs is still for points
top 2 points make it to ascension

Good changes in general.
Guts small regions, because clearly 8 teams is enough.
Hype to have more cross region tourneys.

pretty much the entire cast+production being done by 2 brothers in their bedroom not good enough for you?!

They were supposed to have Fokus too (we dont talk about what happend there...)

And youre not wrong. I really wanted them to merge with dach and just replace our TO.

There was interest behind closed doors for some more notable orgs to join next year (no clue how far the discussions went, I just know that there were some), but idk how stuff changed with the recent announcements so we'll see.

Riot relied too much on the expectation that the national scenes would build themselves off the pre-existing fanbases for CSGO and other TacFPS

Worst thing is that we knew this wasnt gonna work when we went into the t2 system but they doubled down on it. Only really France, Spain and turkey took off and the rest of us have laughable viewership. Whole thing is just a messy riot masterclass

O vlr moment and a half. I wish these matches ever showed up because I had completely forgotten about them.

Well Polaris has overtaken both Italy and Portugal within a year again (in terms of Viewership)
Mist games has been absolutely incredible on the production side, making huge improvements in such a short timeframe, imo already beating the 3 big leagues in Dach (ok everyone does), Spain and Turkey in terms of production.

So Id think they were guaranteed some time to actually fix stuff before a merge, given that the merge got denied/was deemed undesirable during the offseason before they were brought in

Rough.
Once again makes 100% sense for the TOs financially, t2 isnt anywhere near what Riot had hoped for when they started ascension (who would have guessed when you rush it this much).
8 teams is too little. With Spains current system this would have been trivial to expand it to 12 teams, but oh well.

I just dont understand why they dont merge Italy or Portugal with Dach. Yes we have more big orgs atm, but we're also (at least from what I know) the only EMEA league with a proper t3 system. Why not merge with the region where you can be sure talent development will continue AND you can make the existing t3 system more accessible.
80% of our teams speak English too so come on.
Unless there are more merges planned (Polaris pls join us and bring your TO) this is just trolling.

edit: polaris has a t3 too actually, forgot about them

edit: numbers were wrong since Liquipedia already added the split2 minimum secured points and I just didnt notice.

KPI lose this:
Minimum points they get is 165, which guarantees them 2nd or better. (Next closest team is Ramboot with 160 if they come second)

Barca has a chance: they get 1st -> 158 points. If Ucam gets second Baraca is in and Ucam is out (145 points for Ucam).
If Ramboot gets second Barca is out (160 points for Ramboot).
Barca lose theyre out.

Pretty much impossible to say with how split the leagues are. We cant really compare players that well since all region power rankings are purely speculative (and scrimbux arent reliable) and often times good players are trapped in mid teams.

Spain, Dach and Turkey all have a seemingly endless list of talent this year.

Players im particularly fond off in the 3 regions I actively watch:
Dach: Lime, Al0rante, DaviH, Fizzy, elllement, Click, luckeR (biased af)
France: D3ffo, Ambi, Kamyk and Jady
Polaris: HearthBeat, kaajak, soulcas and Ianto

(Genuinely sign HearthBeat though guys, how tf is an accomplished IGL, who also frags on an unsigned team)

Oh yea Dach is stacked af individually this split. Since we've turned into the big import region (next to spain) the player level has shot through the roof.

Tbf to other teams, TH also lost in spain that tourney so that was just early days stuff. But yea FKS was just plain the best t2 roster in EMEA at the time, the scrimbux were going absolutely crazy. They just have a lot of catching up to do after essentially missing out on an entire split together.
If they make it to ascension Im all in on them winning.

no clue
they just didnt feel like a team this year, then made roster moves and still havent fixed it yet

Such a shame considering they have 3 of the very, very best t2 players locked into their roster, but probably wont make it this year either

Australia would kill to finally be properly accepted into a region lmao. Theyre on the polar opposite where theyre so isolated that they dont get a chance to do anything either.

Id assume this was done for financial reasons with the TOs being unable to sustainably run these small region without riot support.

So Im not completely against it, however I do feel like this is a bit much? I understand consolidating a few struggling regions into 1 (similar to what some of us in EMEA wanted with Dach and Polaris merge), but 6 at once is a bit overkill imo

Its gonna suck for t2 players rn. Lots of people gonna lose their spots on such short notice, and developing new talent is gonna be a lot harder with so few t2 slots and (afaik) no established t3 scene.

I think its fine at the end of the day. Riot rushed franchising and had a vision of t2 that they just didnt leave enough times for the local scenes to develop. This was bound to happen in APAC and EMEA anyways, so even though this feels far too much, far too quickly its probably for the best.

bro is getting baited 2 months later

lime has been gods gift this year
first hard carries Case through playoffs and now absolutely farms dach

Man Im glad to see this team succeed
Alliance Lucker is back

Shit is torture... would (will) play again

https://www.vlr.gg/160667/vlr-gg-player-rating-explained
Just takes more stuff into consideration that just "this was a kill, this was a death"

yea
I made a post on the vlr article after being part of a discussion with a team manager of a dach team, who expressed similar concerns

This change definitely lowered morale, thats for sure, I just pray it wont be the reason too many t2 orgs leave

Ive heard estimates in the millions from multiple managers at orgs now, but its always shocking to read
Such a joke for a 1 year contract

"The business expense of complying with all the legal requirements in Germany and minimum league conditions, plus the taxes in Germany, mean that the cost of promotion is NEVER less than a million euros in the first year"

Just look at the last tournament: All top 3 teams had at least 2 t2 (or worse) players.
Screwing t2, even more than they already do, will also make the games worse, since talent development takes a hit every time an org leaves.

Yes riot can decide that they want talent compressed into fewer teams, however this decision should be at the detriment of t1 teams not t2. Every league has more than enough candidates who deserve to be looked at.
Making t2 teams responsible for some franchised teams inability to make rosters just harms the scene.

I have to admit while the thought of being able to earn a longer slot is very nice, this will only lead to winning to teams dropping more of their players right away (remember in EMEA we have region locks in t2, so any team promoted will be very likely to make changes to be competitive right away)

1 year contracts are a joke considering how many requirements there are for ascended teams (again I only know about EMEA)... I genuinely doubt the 1 year in t1 will actually be profitable for the org given the INSANE initial overhead

and then lastly, this reduces the amount of promoted teams from 14 to 12. This is a joke and Im surprised the general reception is positive to this.

So yea lets make t1 even harder to get in, make ascension guarantee even less security, screw over t2 players, while removing more protections for orgs in t2 (with the new premier qual rules).
I wouldnt be surprised in the slightest to see the more and more of the big orgs in t2 leave in the coming years.
Horrible execution, trying to solve a niche problem, while screwing over an entire system even more.

all valid

Id add Polvi. Hes got some BIG issues, but people on here hyper focus on those and somehow miss all the good plays he has.
He ended the first split with 211 acs which is perfectly fine for a duelist

pretty sure that part was referring to the fans not his teammates

I cant give you much insight into Canada specifically but here are my personal experiences (mainly from Paladins cause I suck at valo, but the process should be similar here)

Get to top ranks so you play with t3-t1 players regularly - accept friend requests and get to know people in the scene
Try and get into pugs with t2/t3 players (just pay attention if a new server opens/if there is an active one + go ask people)
-> Make friends in the scene! Genuinely the most important step so be nice to people^^

Join a t3 team/make one with ranked friends and then just start playing in open qual tournaments
Having people see you guys play helps getting scrims
Do your darnest to get scrims! (I hope its easier in valo since its a bigger scene, but this can be an absolute pain ngl)

And then just keep playing and making friends tbh until you end up on a good t3 team

I havent been paying enough attention to premier, but I would think Premier makes this even more straight forward since you dont have to go out of your way looking for quals to make yourself a name in and instead teams will take notice if you do well against them

because hes asian

Holy brainrot

there a 2 paths you can go with this:
either you assume that exclusively Indians shit on him and his team (5 second glance at vlr will already tell you this is false but whatever) -> he said that Indians were the most stupid fans
but then its not racism, then its just him calling them the most stupid fans due to his current experience. There is no prejudice leading to discrimination, because the very post the twitter-user is complaining about shows that he would think the exact same of any other fanbase if they treated him like that.

or you can read and see that hes talking about the GE fanbase as a whole -> he found out that other fans are just as bad/worse than Indonesian fans
but then theres the problem that youre no longer talking about a single race

The only race he made a generalized statement on were Indonesians, so until they get upset/perceive it as racsim theres no racism problem here

Tweets like this are just prove that if you have to assume the worst in someone at every step to come to your conclusion you shouldnt press post. You dont have a point, youre being an asshole trying to justify yourself.

yea pretty good description of koi

I wouldnt mind them keeping shadow instead of kamo, if he keeps up the steady improvments in his IGLing for the rest of the season
but yea they need some more t2 stars

globex farmed me in ranked too, so I agree
big cheater

depends on the team
coaches, players and managers have all done coaching in tier 1
Most common is probably coach but I dont think we really have public info on who does it for most teams

Russ is indian and going forth can no longer play in EMEA without counting as an import

It has slightly more bloat as mentioned above, so minimally worse than win10 (unless youre on one of the newer intel cpus then its a bit weird on if its better or worse)
the real reason I wouldn't recommend anyone to swap atm is that Microsoft is being very careless with their features, having introduced multiple vulnerabilities when adding "AI" features (and only rolling them back after proof of concept applications were created)

1. Terraria
2. Minecraft
   3. WoW aged poorly ngl
3. Monster Sanctuary

he did, people just like to be mad without learning about his opinions xD
still perfectly fine to disagree after, but its always a bit sad to see how many people are just upset for the sake of being upset

this game is one of the all time greats in terms of entertainment
if you missed it, WATCH IT

And youre not wrong
Who knows if its because of map pool, meta or whatever, fact is this has been the year where we've seen the most crossover between tiers (apart from the early days).
A player picked up based on ranked just won an international looking like one of the best players itw
A t2 team was Americas best representative
EMEAs strongest team this year is filled to the brim with t2 players
and so on

And that does translate to t2 too (can only point to emea t2 since I dont watch americas or pacific atm)
Chipi Chapa's (literal ranked demons) just ended a split second in their region, above Ascend (3rd place ascension finishers and general t2 powerhouse)
SweetNsour (a literal t3 team before this year, except for their igl) just trashed Apeks in a bo3
and theres a ton more t3 talent doing well here too

So what is to say someone like flor couldnt do the same? Till she goes to t2 we dont know so theres really no point in getting upset over someone entertaining the possibility
And this goes for pretty much any player, as a sidenote, not just flor. Let people cheer for their favorite t2 player to get picked up in t1 without feeling the need to trash on them.

first he farms france, then he farms turkey, now hes gonna farm the big league
huge talent and im super exited to see how he does

ya cant be saying stuff like this while having a DragonX flair smh
(but yes both of them are old af orgs/corporations and as such the names are very old school)