bro not even us dach watchers think dach is doing shit xD

but ye I can see dach being good in scrims. In terms of current talent dach will be probably top 3 with spain and turkey due to us importing all the stars from other leagues

shame our teams look ass in officials

thats not what I way saying at all
the second part of the second sentence is the point^^
people who havent been in tier 1 yet, who you can properly mold however you want to fit the team/coach
soulcas is already an established player (a good one mind you in the sense that he has been a glue player for liquid which increases his value a ton imo, but I just think teams would prefer to take the chance and try to and recreate an EG or Heretics)

I dont think so sadly
with how the season in t1 went the focus is gonna be on younger players that the coach can still shape however they want

so unless an org blows up their roster completely and is looking for a more veteran player I just cant see him getting a slot, despite looking t1 ready all year

well its a bit more than just sportwashing, but yes youll find most problems people have with the olympic games also handled under that term (so it should server you very well if thats a term youre already familiar with)

Purely focusing on the political issues and ignoring ethical problems they cause inside the host countries:

Olympics have always, and will always, be a political tool. They are a great way for a country to celebrate themselves, change (inter-)national perception, and are generally one of the very best ways to sportwash ones image.

For the best documented case there are a ton of great articles/books on the 1936 olympics in germany. If youre remotely interested in sportwashing then thats one of the best places to start.
Its generally held relatively black and white ('tis the way history goes after losing a war) which makes it a lot easier to grasp the critiques using concrete examples compared more nuanced modern articles.

There are also detailed write-ups that I know of for China and Russia (and im sure for a toooooon of western countries too, who ofc will also be abusing the olympics for their own gain).

Heck even this years are already surrounded in political controversy with the snap election.

Then theres boycotts galore for political reasons. People accusing their political enemies of cheating etc.

Its a mess, deeply intertwined with political bs, that misuses sports. And now esports.

If you want a lighter critique try and see if you can find an online version of "Asterix at the Olympics Games", that ones at least fun to read, even if its messages are a bit more veiled.

ye we're fucked
sorta glad fps dodged the bullet for now, but wont be long till were fully integrated in the sports politics web too

like we knew we were screwed for a while now with Saudi so not that new, but this feels like a death blow, especially with how many people react to this positively - seemingly completely unaware of just how messed up the olympics are

if they actually asked for that much then thats the point
but this is an ardiis clip were using as a source so I was talking about the concept, since we have no idea what the actual numbers are/were

its definitely unusual but really doesnt change anything at all

might as well filter out the orgs that are serious
no point in wasting prac days, and creating unnecessary tension if theyre not willing to pay
A player wanting to leave, but being kept in an org via contract alone is just bad for everyone involved anyways

Idk thats just a nothing burger
Hey the org doesnt want their players poached and wants monetary compensation for taking the risk of losing their stars
We have a crap ton of orgs in t2 who straight up refuse to sell their players at all or purposefully add an insanely high buyout; this is just the same thing

whatever helps ya sleep at night^^
cya next year

Genuinely funny seeing all these people who dont have the slightest clue about turkish valorant malding at playoff upsets every year
Youd think people would learn but alas
maybe next year

very fun game
Ianto gotta be the most impressive t2 rookie of the year - great igling and shoots well
also harambe proving why everyone wanted to have them on their ultimate t3 roster in hazzas chat during the qual, just amazing aim ngl

to add on to what Mortadelo said: some leauges have it be a direct qualifier to ascension, others have it qualify you for playoffs (and top 2 in playoffs then qualify to ascension)

as soon as youre in ascension theyre irrelevant and its just the exact same format as we've seen

eyo bringing in lime gotta be cheating
AT bout to win another playoffs from their grave

Well we know what team sen have been scrimming

Theyve been in beta 3.5 years now and its been years since the last update

But yea its just a blind elo system atm. Doesnt rate teams based on tier - so the best t2 team will have similar elo to the best t1 team (at times even better elo since they can be more dominant)

Its even more funny in EMEA where t2 teams play in separate leagues, meaning teams like Dsyre only have to play against a still very young Italian scene with only 1 real competition the entire year

Its a mess and quite frankly VLR is only harming t2 teams since theres still orgs to this day that use the rankings to determine if they wanna sign teams

and sen looked horrible in comparison xD we do have to judge both teams based off potential if they have a bit of time to prepare, since otherwise neither are relevant in this tourney

TH have easily been the most innovative team this year (ok except for china, they be crazy), so your point about sen doing great with time applies to them too

hot af takes for sure
but ye give em some time and he probs has a 33% correct rate on em (which is high af considering how outrageous some of them are)

also people getting upset at him is one of the funniest thing in valorant ngl
https://x.com/OfficialBoaster/status/1384986738020466691

Theres no way he wasnt also your goat during the OG bonk days

fair tbh

Are we sure this is correct or is this speculation? Because if theres 1 thing lev wasnt it was disciplined (and given the player quality on the roster I would expect that they'd at least try to work with their coach)

Nah thats just teams having a focus on that region atm
For example in EMEA t2 East is winning the export game atm (crushing everyone except for Russia with 38 exports across all leagues - for comparison turkey is at 11)

Turkey is attractive since you can judge the players on raw mechanics though, with the league having its.... unique playstyle, so teams can be sure theyre getting demons

Yes but the solutions I can think of kinda suck

You could treat the regionals as actual qualifiers. You get top 4 you dont have to play any more games. https://www.vlr.gg/event/196/first-strike-europe/c-d-playoffs
(Obviously not single elim, but the core idea is visible)

Then there's also the multi qual idea you can see in first strike (or just any open quals riot held back then) - 2 qualifiers but only top 2 qualify. But unrealistic since that means more games which goes against who riot wants their format.
Means there's only 2 seeding games total and everything else matters.

I wouldnt read into that thing too much
He also had talks on stream about probably hanging up the mouse during the pre franchise roster shuffle (based on the timing it will have been pretty close to when fnatic turned him down for chronicle - though this is purely my speculation)

Sayf is very outspoken so I would interpret it more as him voicing his momentary doubts/worries rather than a premeditated decision. I wouldnt worry until he does a proper announcement.

While KC was disappointing after the strong start, he still grew a ton during this year
as long as its a team that will let him keep growing im down for it regardless of region

Kid is the future

and the coaches getting a bit stuck in the harbor attempts
scrims must have been going decently well, but dang it always looked rough in officials

Well n4rrate is getting poached for sure
We know Vit is interested in him (pregame with coach iirc?), and I would expect theres quite a few other teams who would love to get him in Americas and EMEA

LFG, ggs

duality of man lmao

"You can call me daddy man, no problem"
idk if this is the stream for me

no clue ngl
its more a behind the scene thing, so we only get rumors

Considering the narrative thats going around is that its a vibes thing (with even doombros pointing it out as a positive that they were back during the m8 game) I think its reasonable to expect.
All 5 of the players can do extremely well, so them being part of the roster shuffle this year is probably for the best

he definitely hasnt been outplaying outher igls to the level boo or boaster have
and those are just the 2 you need to be beating to get your team an advantage

not bad, but this post is about making a super team

I wouldnt mind them going the 2 meh igl route while giving cender more time to grow
Getting some hard fragging IGL like sociablEE to help out and then trasition to full duelist could be a really fun experiment
(though I feel like we might be reaching the too many cooks in the kitchen point real quick)

They preformed similar to how youd expect given their players for most of the year. Its just that they had the Guild curse and couldnt make it to any internationals.

Theres so many open quals where theyd finish second or third, beating out teams that would end up making it to the internationals convincingly - only to crumble when it matters most

As a 2020 guild fan while it was frustrating af, I can still look back on the team fondly. And seeing 2 of the (almost) original roster absolutely dominate has been great

fr, now that chiwawa can play kj and viper its criminal that hes not in t1

lmao you find me one team who consistently set their duelist up for 24-36 kills in their attack and we might have the best team in the world

this just isnt backed up by any statistics whatsoever and goes off the assumption that the set plays are built around the duelist getting kills, which just isnt the case for a lot of them.

Aspas and Something are the 2 best players by pure numbers I can think of. Both of them are on teams that do not have hard set plays and instead let the duelist pick duels that are favorable for them.

Duelists like Derke, rb, deffo, or even Victor in NRG, didnt have this freedom.
If you go back to old vods you will find so many jett dashes onto site where getting a single kill is already them diffing their opponents. Those will still reduce their stats though.
1 for 1 isnt good enough when youre comparing yourself to Aspas who just get to lurk around the map for a while during the defaults, or a Something who will often have a second duelist entry with him, where the whole site hit is built around getting kills,rather than space.

Its a completely different philosophy of what how the teams use the duelists.

glad you read the entire thing

that is down to team structure though and one of the main points of the conclusion
Derke CANT have the stats of aspas since thats not how fnatic has worked since... pretty much 2021 (where he did in fact have aspas level stats)

that is exactly the circumstances that I mentioned above. A freedom oriented team like Loud will allow for much higher numbers than a structure & set-play oriented team like Fnatic or Drx
This doesnt tell you anything about the players though.

To really answer the question I would ask you if derke is the goat.
Every argument you made for aspas is one you could also make for him. Yet we all agree that derke definitely isnt.

I couldnt give you an answer for Goat either though. With so many roles, playstyles, circumstances etc its always so easy to find someone who is better at another thing.

Given that quite a few players on this list have been playing other duelists, I'd assume this list focuses more on "Jett onetricks" - where its clear that theyre significantly more comfortable on jett than other duelists

But ye misleading title given the players listed for sure

you have more hope in them than 95% of dach watchers ngl xD

Hard to say
Dach, Spain are sending solid teams this year
East (presumably) top 2 teams are both scary
Turkey is turkey so gl predicting how theyll do
Apeks
France is chaos

Im putting my bets on Acend getting their shit together and actually winning the whole thing.
I really like their core and am pretty adamant its the strongest in emea t2 based on potential.
They still have a good bit of time to figure stuff out so theres hope, despite their form this year.

would solve a lot of issues with the tiebreakers, but alas

only playing at the time
theyre not connected, only named them because theyre the ones that I know were asked explicitly, saw the question and made a comment on it (even if it was that they wont talk about Niesow like with sliggy and l1nk)

we dont know
we do know from multiple players and coaches that there has never been a ban.

watch ardiis' infamous "leak everything" stream if you wanna get his take on it (obviously over the top since its ardiis, but funny af)
or just check out Tanizhq's twitter (the coach of the team)

NiesoW isnt banned by riot
He definitely deserves to go on the blacklisted by other players list though with quite a few pros "refusing to comment" on the niesow situation.

Ardiis is an obvious example (ok there were a lot of comments in that segment xD), but Sliggy also had the topic borderline blacklisted a while back and L1nk ignored all questions regarding it. Nukkye (his teammate at the time) also didnt wanna talk about it (in sliggys chat, Im not around on his own stream enough to know if he talked about it there).
This doesnt equate to Niesow being guilty ofc, but I think its safe to say that a lot of people wouldnt be comfortable with having him in the scene.

Heretics wasnt a team with 3 veterans
ya gotta go all in on t2 talent for the heretics experience

Talon give the stage 1 c9 vibes
Look like they should get beat every week but somehow always drag their opponents into the mud and come out on top