yall losing your mind over 7 acs, the 0 adr and no hs rate is where its actually at

based on these stats 0 bullets were hit

this game is the true IGL masterclass

nah nah bo3 finals with bracket reset is where its at

ye they count as affiliate
they're pushing the lines with the name change but Riot and BBL staff confirmed that theyre only an affiliate team and that its allowed in the current ruleset
https://x.com/Aarrost/status/1847344148489150544
https://x.com/da1monnn/status/1847349815048302922

I prefer a tier system simply based on how Riot intended them via rules

tier 1 - VCT
tier 2 - CL
tier 3 - GC, anything that qualifies you into t2 (premier, the beacons, project V, Liga Radiante, etc) and high level "for fun" tournaments (e.g. epic.lan#43)

cant really define a t4 since our t3 circuits tend to already be open tourneys and without a rank restriction (but generally stuff that isnt notable enough to even show up on liquipedia ig)

and yet theyre playing with 2 FA players... HMMMMMM
(nah I got no clue, good for em if they do, though I'd have liked to see the proper roster then instead smh)

And so the bidding war between Fokus and Ucam began

Jas is a demon and current roster looking pretty good ngl

most teams are using this as "high pressure" trials so we dont know

however for teams like s2g who dont have other offseason tourneys going on atm, its reasonable to think that he's one of their top candidates if theyre committing to using him for the tourney

ey ey enough with the imports for both regions
let peeps use their own talent (also we need him to win ascension smh)

Pal in t1 is a dream come true
Palorant on top

He was better than alfa while only on cypher in the chamber meta during the "ascension" run in 2022 if that gives you any idea
Basically hes THE t2 sentinel since forever and theres very few players who deserve a shot more than him

Champ pool was always the main worry in the past (for us on vlr, no clue if he was more flexible in scrims and his cypher was just too good to pass up), but he plays a good variety nowadays so its about time
just way too good to be stuck in t2 forever

no, none of the open quals had official streams/feeds
turkey is the one exception for the international play-ins qualifiers, but that wasnt open ig

people are allowed to costream pretty sure
just no feed so its up to the teams to provide one (as per usual for open quals though)

I do think merging could be possible, however definitely not by next year so I do agree that its not a solution for the current problem.
Im personally looking over towards how pacific does this year, since theyre basically running the (at least from what Ive read from orgs) most popular solution

but even then i dont think it will be enough so idk
any proper solution would require them to rethink the amount of guest slots in t1 and I cant see Riot doing that in the current economical landscape

for the short term all I can say is gl finding a TO for east, that region is impossible to make money in even for a cheap TO xD

yea this was an expected one
sadly we're gonna be seeing some more big ones leave if current rumors are correct

Riot is just moving too slowly to fix t2 (and some of the fixes also include 2 steps back cough 1 year minimum duration cough)

Well in this case the problem is that east essentially doesnt have a TO anymore
the statement form krobatv touches on it briefly, but east's TO PLE is having some major issues right now

they havent paid some prizes for years at this point (not only t2 league in emea so thats good news for the future x.x), dont have any valorant specific staff left (afaik) and has been ghosting everyone in valorant

It is impossible to get any information about the current status or future of East right now. This makes it incredibly hard for the big spenders in East like Acend and GoNext to even consider investing, when the bare minimum, a league to play in, isnt guaranteed (and thats ignoring the t2 system as a whole being very problematic already)

Basically East has no guaranteed return at all atm, so it doesnt make sense for an org to stay

Riot has nothing to do with this (well except maybe not stepping in and t2 format being questionable at best), this is PLE having some.... issues....

To my knowledge no one was paid yet and the league has no valorant specific staff atm
No clue whats going on, hopefully we get some good news soon, but atm its looking grim
(well even if there is good news, dont think there'd be any orgs left by then)

nah liquipedia might not be wrong
I was just curious if it was public knowledge by now and I had managed to miss it

If anything, no one knowing anything would make it more likely for Riot to be the TO (though that'd be weird imo, since Riot tried to be as hands off with t2 as possible)

actually looks like im wrong
I thought it was 5k but (assuming SEA has the same guidelines as NA) https://developer.riotgames.com/policies/na-tournaments says its 10k

I should note that the link actually refers to LoL tournaments, however its the only public reference we have afaik, and has been cited in multiple critiques of our current t2 system (most prominent one being from the Americas Val. Players Association)

this tournament has an 8k prize pool so it wouldnt require approval

edit: wrong, read next response

nah they got a greenlight thats what makes this unusual
Riot has to approve all large tourneys in valo afaik

ill look if I can find the reference sheet, but based on the prizepool this got properly looked at before being approved too

do you know a source on this btw?

I tried looking into who had gotten the rights when it was announced and couldnt find any info on it at all and the liquipedia doesnt have any source again (and Riot is just listed per default for all challengers, even in all the other ones where they have a proper TO)

there was a timeframe given yes, which the actual schedule falls into
however an actual date was announced very late and the intial timeframe was overly broad (though everyone knew it was end of October, so Id believe TOs in SEA knew too)

that being said Riot approved of both tournaments, so its weird that they ignored the clear conflict in dates

It just looks messy, where both were already too far into their plans when they noticed the conflicts and just had to keep going imo

This was RA with Yoman:
https://www.vlr.gg/event/1880/china-evolution-series-act-3-heritability/main-event
https://www.vlr.gg/event/1825/china-evolution-series-act-2-selection/knockouts
https://www.vlr.gg/event/1747/china-evolution-series-act-1-variation/main-stage

this is JDG (RA roster) without Yoman: https://www.vlr.gg/event/2096/champions-tour-2024-china-stage-2/regular-season

basically his team struggled after losing him, which in turns made his stocks go up for a lot of peeps
did well in korea with a (imo) meh roster too so when purely looking at results hes one of the very best IGL's you could get in pacific

Sadly theres no recent interviews of him
give it a week and im sure we'll start getting stuff that should give us an idea of what kind of coach he is

theres an old akrew interview, but its been a couple years (and theres not too much in there)

Vuubit was insane this qual, shame he didnt end up making it

I hope HGE at least keeps 2-3 players; roster is great rn and it would suck to have it split up completely after winning the slot

Comeback stopped by a turret
10/10 game

nah Valorant pretty much always does h2h tiebreakers in a 2 way tie
(its the most fair if you think about it, since its then the players own performance that decides it, not a random 3rd team that threw vs 1 team but not the other)

For vct 2024 it was:
2 way tie: h2h match score -> h2h map diff -> h2h round -> event map diff -> event round diff
3 way tie: h2h match diff (so team that won against all the others in the tie quals) -> event map diff -> event round diff -> bo1 tiebreaker

(based on the 2024 global ruleset in https://www.emea-competitiveops.com/)

if anything it'd be h2h in a normal ruleset so EF would get the better seed
but more matches is great for us so cant complain

hes been getting trials every year but always got screwed over by his champ pool afaik
used to be a borderline cypher onetrick (at least based on what he played)

So with Chamber and KJ being so much better than the other sentinels in the past, his insane performances always had that asterisks
now that cypher is meta again hes a must pick

dude was better than Alfa back in 2022 so its about time xD

3rd years the charm

I meant it as in "get into t2", not make it to ascension
making it out of spain, to ascension, is rough for new rosters ngl

yea theyre not even close to being favorites for ascension yet
but I'd be very disappointed if they dont make it to spain ngl

also pretty sure all the players are still looking for teams while playing the qual (Destrian and zeddy last post regarding teams are their LFT ones, https://x.com/d3ffo111/status/1842580786261954652, https://x.com/H1berr/status/1842562088931377242, https://x.com/insiderg0d/status/1842544976502100051)

BBL will be playing with the pcific roster https://www.vlr.gg/413844/red-bull-home-grounds-news
and idk about fut; hope they announce and play with a new roster but havent heard any news

well if there is a site/process in which you can enter the information about the tournament that is then reviewed by admins and (if correct) added

If you do find a form then post it here pls

yea they do ruin the hype, and there have been orgs that have been openly critical of them in the past

It was lothar or g2s social media manager at the time (they were the 2 talking with each other about it iirc) back in.... 2022? (or before... idk back in the stone ages) who talked about how g2 couldnt justify a proper budget for announcements, since with leaks taking all the hype out of them there would be no way to make the money back

leaks can be detrimental for players too since they cost them opportunities (for example theres no point trialing a player thats rumored to be joining fnatic as Koi, since you cant compete anyways, but if the deal falls through then the player is left with no team)

We as the fans are the only one who profit from it (and maybe Riot), since it fills the offseason before the offseason events start
Idk, I really enjoy them, so its hypocritical for me to call em detrimental for the scene, but I do wonder if we'd get some better and more hype announcements if they didnt exist

For team Germany id consider LuckeR to replace Benny

igl and flex which the team lacks atm

Frees up the roles a bit more and allows for a bigger variety of comps to be run (a hyper specialized team isnt necessarily bad for a world cup, but I feel like, when we're making rosters purely on paper, banking on double duelist working out with the huge mix of playstyles present is a bit risky)

And then -tex or -al0 for felix again as described in #178

nah that makes the roster a whole lot worse
you have so much role overlap now
al0 - sentinel and duelist (could flex onto flash but isnt very experienced in that role based on stats)
tex - sentinel and duelist (could flex onto flash but isnt very experienced in that role based on stats)
BennY - duelist and gekko
Click - duelist

basically your flex is already questionable (though fine for a WC tbh) but the intiator role is just sad
If you wanna add tex then replace al0 imo

Felix is a must (or Obnoks is you wanna add a bit of experience into the team which it lacks otherwise)

What should we do with people who were racist then?

Given that the steps he took werent enough, whats the solution in your opinion?

those poor starforge employees lmao
from one owner destroying the company, to the next one doing his very best

cant say exactly what made him popular since I've never been able to get into his content at all, but at least he wasnt really that controversial in the past
his content has always been discussion heavy and he just streamed insane hours

he seemed to be "normal" (in the context of being the ultimate shut-in, not compared to an average person), but man the last years have not been kind

dudes been weird af since the Amber Heard trials iirc
at least its perfectly safe to dismiss anything he says from now on and pray he finally gets removed off twitch

I appreciate it being an actual show of values rather than the usual corporate crap you'd get in situations like this

they did get better tbf, but ye those early games were something

dont remember the game sadly so idk if it really was as one sided as the score would suggest (acs would say no, but Ill watch it after work if I remember)

(for franchising)
in EMEA https://www.vlr.gg/183947/team-liquid-vs-karmine-corp-champions-tour-2023-emea-league-w2/ was the most one sided one I can remember

found the KC vs TH (the week before) more of a stomp personally (since TH was also shit so it made it even more upsetting), but the ACS on the TL game tells the story of just how one sided that one was

alright thank ya^^

ah dang, thats a bit of a shame to not get a peek at the new roster

does this mean bbl will be running an academy team in turkey then if they still have all the players signed this close to split 3? (not in the loop with bbls plans at all)

too early to say (this years DVM should have been the best team in france on paper too and we all saw how that went xD) but I can def see it
Scary af

The problem with this line of thinking is that it turns into a self fulfilling prophecy

Strip a region the chance to improve and of course they wont be as good. It would be like if we didnt have China or Pacific at all since they were borderline irrelevant until last year.
The whole "why waste slots" thread spam, was/is utter bs. And thats the problem here too.
For a healthy (as in competitively, not monetarily) t2 you need a steady flow between t1 and t2. T2 players getting the chance is obvious, but t1 players returning back to the region is just as important. It funnels experience back into t2 and pushes the level of play. Neither will happen if theres no SA players in t1

It shouldnt be a full SA roster, that would be suicide for the org, however none is also problematic.
We know Riot doesnt think like this so its not GE doing anything wrong mind you, but criticism from fans is perfectly valid and should be encouraged, to insensitive orgs to take care of their respective t2 scenes (obviously shouldnt shift over to hating on players like it did last year; thats going way too far and just being an asshole).

idk, he had under 40% hs rate map 1 again
seems like he fell off if you ask me

If Sayf is IGL regardless of their 5th then yes

I really believe teams need proper support players and in that regard kicks is perfectly viable
Already knowing he has a matching personality and the correct work ethic is a big plus too on a team like Vit

Only worry is gekko really, but Im positive he can fix/improve that during the offseason, cause his flashes were already on par (or better) with the other teams at champs