There has to be a scrim troll going round in apac atm convincing teams that single controller is good
first GE and now Bleed

(but also tbf we did see cypher be used as a substitute smoker back in... 2022(?) to moderate success, where they be aggressively throwing their cages... just.... dont do it in the fucking viper meta while shes the most busted thing in the game AND on one of her best maps. Or at least have some good and fun set plays ready)

Really nice article
Also gotta appreciate Ze1sh for being involved with the "casual" community, whether thats interviews or just randomly chatting with us plebs in twitch chat

What a series, ggs to both

yea had a similar issue (and similar to you didnt ear them for way too long after getting glasses)
I was recommended to just power through it and wear them as often as possible when I called my optician (it did get better as time went by)

just the new meta comp atm
we'll see if itll end up beating out the traditional sage comps but it has a ton of potential

dude will never leave dach
even when he tries to escape the region and go to polaris the entire org just says screw it and goes back to dach xD

worst part is that going into franchise we had 2 Dach teams in t1

just none of them were international level and orgs prefer taking risks on players from their own subregion so they can at least please the fans even if the player doesnt turn out to be good enough in the long run
(which is completely fine from the orgs, but riot just didnt consider that possibility whatsoever when selecting partners)

bracket reset would be a fun thing to try for VCLs, but yea a bo5 bracket reset is rough (and I dont think anyone's gonna argue for a bo3 grand finals)

to my understanding theyre gonna finish the split before fully leaving

A custom config of firefox
Lets you benefit from the google money without having to deal with the abundance of inbuilt trackers (mainstream browsers) or shady af ethics (most other "privacy" browsers)

Just a shame that its a really high bar of entry (although people are sharing their configs that you can just copy if you want it to work out of the box)
And with tracking pixels now being everywhere who tf knows if it actually matters but oh well

given that the next lower bracket game is a bo5 I think its safe to say thats gonna be a bo3 (otherwise they would have done 2 bo3s instead of a bo1 and bo5)

way too early to have spin on a worst coaches list
he had great success in t2 and has only had 3 games as head coach in t1 this far (1 of which they won)

Nukkye being benched wasnt on my 2024 card ngl
Im guessing disagreements with Redgar and Giants didnt want to end up with a liquid? Cause I feel like his performance was still more than fine

To quote your linked article: "However, that sex difference in reaction time is likely an artifact caused by using the same force threshold in women as men" - As the article itself explains theyre talking about "response time" and not reaction ("which is the sum of the premotor time, the electromechanical delay, and the time required to generate a given foot force against the starting block") and heavily incorperate on the force aspect for their argumentation. How do the differences in Spatial Ability scale when it comes to small movements like in esports?

Theres also the problem with using sprints as a source for reaction based research since the correlation between reaction time and results isnt generally accepted. From https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/fulltext/2013/04000/reaction_time_aspects_of_elite_sprinters_in.3.aspx (an article in favor of correlation): "Mero et al. (16) and Smirniotou et al. (20) reported no correlation between reaction time and performance level. Delalija et al. (9) observed a significant correlation [...]".

But most importantly the article I linked concludes " that male athletes younger than 18 years had a significantly longer reaction time (0.170 ± 0.031 seconds) (p < 0.01) than the other age groups [of male athletes]". 26–29 years is the "optimal" age according to their numbers with "0.150 ± 0.017 seconds". The >18 year olds RT is a whole 0.017 longer than more than 30 year old females ("0.153 ± 0.020 seconds").

Would this be a conclusion you agree with by looking at Valorant or CS pro players? Is the scene dominated by 26-29 year olds because they have a significant (up to 0.02 seconds!) biological advantage over their younger competition?

Very glad to see SK start meshing together more as the season goes on and not being as dependent on Click getting multi kills (though the first kills obviously still help)

he got kicked for the accusations, unless theres a tweet/announcement that we werent able to find (if so please share it) back when he got signed to koi, they never made any official statement to confirm them (there was a thread discussing and gathering all tweets we could find)

there isnt afaik
The accusations "kamoyes_koiexposed" is referring to was a messy thread/drama between Kamo and his ex (?) on twitter, however the whole thing was very very sketchy and all posts are deleted nowadays after the initial wave of support stopped and Kamo lost his spot on Nom

Its hard to say what/how much of it was/is true (just 2 incredibly biased parties, Nom never released any investigation and no one else credible came out to confirm the accusations afaik), however Kamo has not been involved in drama since

Alfa was available

nothing is confirmed whatsoever, but the current rumor is that crazyguy is getting dropped and that sscary will be learning to igl so yea sounds like taking the L

add GE to it and you have the big 3 "hated" teams in vlr imo

Pacific, China and EMEA are all within a 2 day window in duration (8-10 days), its only Americas that gets to have the nice schedule and have games on days where people actually have time to watch
Who tf knows why but yea it sucks

sayf would have replaced chronicle as a flex
would have been an insane team too

did you even look at the stat page before writing this

Brave has 10 FD, mind checking how many redgar and shao have?
I do agree that he had some horrible plays, but 0.1 fd per round is just fine

idk how but BARBARR cam only got better this year
I dont even need to watch valorant, just leave it on him the entire game

well the proposed bill is a response to being cut out ("The legislation is likely designed to help the Russian government to facilitate esports and circumvent international sanctions due to its ongoing war with Ukraine")

Sorta a "fuck you ip holders, we have our own copyright!"

Nah theres too much competition still.
After OGLU I was expecting him to be the next big thing (since OGLU improved SO much after they added more coaching staff in such a short time) so I hope he can live up to the expectation I had back then

But who knows, maybe after this year he'll be the new MrFaliN for emea, slowly replacing the old generation

gotta live up to his role as an igl
learned from the best

Well its different to Saudi since its more focused on its own citizens but its still deeply political unfortunately
Theyve been unhappy with the restrictions on esports for a while now (since it turns out people like sports and giving your citizens something they like makes them happy - which is a great tool for a government) - sports being political is nothing new and it really should stop anyone from enjoying the event but Putin knows exactly what hes doing and why theyre hosting the event xD

I dont think it ever made it to vlr: "Russian Lawmakers Propose Cutting Out Esports IP Holders" was a headline at the end of last year https://esportsadvocate.net/2023/11/russian-lawmakers-esports/ which was "rumored" to be linked to the Future Games
So yea look like its gonna be fun for people inside the country. Just keep in mind that big government funded sports events like this dont happen just because they like watching video games and regardless who host them, theyll always have an ulterior motive

He had suck. It was his teammate that shouldnt have swung during the suck and just waited to secure the round
Just bad communication and unfortunate that magnum lost the fight without getting a kill

1 team region internationally, but not in Pacific lmao
they had the very similar results last year
so yes while ofc they grinded its not like we're seeing anything new here in terms of how korea stacks up in pacific and people just forgot

Purely off wins cause I cba to actually do complex spreadsheet shit right now and add h2h, maps etc (so 4 wins = 4 wins even if the 2nd team beat the first... doesnt matter till the last week anyways when not all teams have played each other)
Drx always tied for first/straight up first
GenG was in the top 4/tied for top 4 till the last week (week 9), although from week 6 onward they were tied for 4th with Zeta (so placed 4-5). They also returned top 4 right away with their playoff performance
And t1 was top 4 till week 3 and then top 4 from week 6 onward (2-5 in week 6 and 2-3 till the last week where they drop to 3rd behind prx)

there is no way to make a 3 team bracket that doesnt have this situation
(have winner play game 2 -> they win -> qualified and 3rd game doesnt matter at all
have loser play game 2 -> they win -> current situation = have winner play game 2 -> they lose)

there are no pretty 3 team brackets unfortunately

ok but a subway surfers clone for tech pauses sounds effective af
Riot gotta invest

You just cant read the drama that happens in EMEA because it tends to be in the native language

For example Dach has way too much drama (at least we're leading in one department) but unless you speak german and follow a lot of the pros on twitter youll never find out since it doesnt spread to sites like vlr

the best part of this game was when Borkum said: "ITS BORKUM TIME" and borkumed all over the place.

Really fun map 3 despite double pistol, ggs to both teams

Lots of aggression by fut (TH won a lot of rounds by just stacking up, and fut just kept running into the 4-5 stack with 2 people)
The Boos happened
Fut lost a looooot of 3v3s, 2v2s and didnt get any clutches (only 2 1v1s vs the 4 TH got)

Both teams had a good chunk of new strats too so it had quite a few moments where people just got caught off guard

I love the fact that a post denying the existence of 2022 as a whole is actually baiting people

what a debut from KC
magnum is unreal and im glad him IGL'ing is working out

TH vs Fut was fun af and (despite being very fast paced for most of it) interesting strat wise
Split was good on KC vs GX, I didnt like map 2 and map 3 is just a stomp

oh yea, thats just the engh effect tbh
KC is way higher risk too since Magnum is new to being igl (though I trust that the t2 boys can get another upset)

Ngl my boo stocks are back to the OGLU levels
Boo is the future confirmed

It depends what kind of hate you mean
Rated as a bottom 3? Cores performance last year + offseason performance - I dont think its unreasonable to not expect Boo to outaim cned suddenly

Hated as in that they picked up the wrong new youngsters? Just people who dont watch t2

cant deny the facts

from the EMEA promotional video that released today it looks like BBL were struggling too
(every team has a proper filmed segment in the Arena and bbl just has a joke at the end that they finally got their visa)

c9 mibr are going to be knocked out after 2-3 games too if they play bad
increase the number of good games you also increase the number of bad games

just watch all regions and theres more than "good" valorant

only 2 teams will make it anyways
so if youre not top 2 in your group it doesnt matter, cause then youre not top 2 in the tournament

You remember who our biggest caster duo is right?

We dodged a bullet there that it wasnt the german
Just another day in the office for Ominous the indomie drama was gold though

Jolteon (Volt switch go brrrr - tf are ground types)
Slowking-Galar (regenerator is a thing)
Furret (WALK)

also to provide some additional info to the above answers: if you have dual nationality you can choose what region you represent UNTIL you play a single match in t1 - then you are locked into that region (after franchising was introduced) -> russ only played in t2 since franchising was a thing so he can choose