Riot has to chose:
Either financially support the leagues if you want them to remain split
Or allow leagues that are struggling financially to merge and allow for better sponsors (due to higher viewership), more orgs, more competition and less organization overhead

when looking at it competitively the system is completely illogical too since the only way into t1 has restrictive rules that don't apply to t1 teams (meaning t2 teams that eventually make it into t1 are at an extra disadvantage)

I dont exactly want another situation where, for example, Italy and Portugal have almost 0 representation in their merged league, but its also clearly not working atm, so you gotta pick a poison

well we have 0 idea on what theyre upgrading
how is purp0 with comms? how does he fit into the team personality wise? was the lackluster season because the team wasnt able to properly use his talent, or was he failing to adapt to the team (same thing for his util)?

unless we get public statements we're just taking blind guesses, and exclusively looking at someone's aim and just saying "yea hes clearly the better player" isnt gonna make a good team

ey waddles been doing well for a support player
hes also been in polaris for a while so I'd assume that players already have relations with him which should make the transition easier

yea I was also 100% expecting him to be the best player in polaris since hes been such a demon the previous splits
happens ig, im sure he'll farm on his next team

huh, he looked fine while on the server
hard to know whats going on in the team though (whether its comms, personalities, etc)

Waddle is a good player so look forward how stuff changes for them

Tbh im far more interested in the coach change, had expected maeVe to do well, so lets see what the team were unhappy with

the imports gonna hard throw in the finals to make sure they dont lose their jobs

oh nooooooo, someone asked a question D:

quick everyone report him before this heinous deed of "seeking information" becomes widespread on this forum

"jett you have a (really) [insert whatever tf "klanen" is supposed to mean] dick"
I would assume klanen is an intentionally misspelling of "small" since it audibly sounds similar when spoken in a Bavarian accent, but the word they used doesn't exist to my knowledge

also ofc it has to be a toxic statement, we have such a good rep when it comes to being friendly already

Dang, hope theres other news outlets looking for val journalists atm
Might not be a fan of his constant leaking, but he did write some interesting articles/reports in-between those so I do hope he stays with val. We dont exactly have too many valorant dedicated journalists in the scene atm

Gonna be rough living off of reporting without a salary

and now lets actually add the full quote: "I was like: there's no way that he has not shown the vod to that team. [...] I'm not saying that they anti-stratted us, I'm not saying that they did that, cause actually th- I'll get into it more"
Past tense. A false assumption. He's telling a story. Thoughts from before the match.
He goes into it during the vod if you wanna actually watch that, and explains how he believes they would have done better had they not got in their head about the vods potentially being leaked; BECAUSE LOUD DIDNT HAVE ANY VODS FROM THEM.

If you want the short version you can also just watch the vod from the next day where he addresses it (though thats gonna be a rough watch since its ardiis and he aint bout to stop baiting a community thats mad at him)

weird how bacon, sayf, redgar and sliggy have shown surprise at the fan reaction given its just "common sense"

oh ye it said that in the tweet^
more wondering if an org is looking to just snatch up the 5 now teamless players and basically secure themselves a spot in t2 right away

soooooo what happens to the teams?
any other orgs currently looking for a roster?

my dude he was at over 200 acs (and above 1.0 rating) average during both his seasons in Polaris, despite neither of his teams getting into top 4

he wasn't a god in emea t2 but hes also never been a bad shot

its h2h first, so with this faze are in and TT + SR are out

check https://twitter.com/KnightsArena/status/1636040953059328002
its h2h first and then round

meaning with faze losing to MXM theyre now 100% out since they lost to Faze (who are now 2-3) and OXG and regardless of it OXG or TT win theyll be in the bottom 2 (if TT win: SR and Faze are out since OXG beat both of them, or if TT lose: then TT and SR are out since faze beat both of them)

Yeeeah who would have guessed running a t2 scene in mandated regions, but not supporting the TOs financially could lead to certain regions dying.

Amazing for players in Polaris, now theres EVEN less chance for orgs to pick them up and actually support them. 10/10 system into t1

I dont get this point since its vanity AND mCe who are responsible for that; a coach can and HAS to pause to add input should the igl/the team be struggling in that department

So if you think that 1 game where the entire team had exactly 0 clue on what to do makes Vanity a bad igl then the same applies to mCe too

Healthy way of judging people for sure

I agree that this is anything but facts (including Tranizhq comment btw)

Both sides are talking out of their behind since there's no (publicly available) credible proof for or against it; its why I don't see any relevance of this in 2023 since there's 0 way we're gonna be solving/adding anymore meaningful information to it 2 years after

Ex teammate nukkye (who was in chat during the clip) didn't comment on it either so there's literally nothing new here.

that was a, clearly stated, personal opinion on him rationalizing why niesow left so suddenly

There's no clips which are him cheating for sure
There are multiple pros/coaches who plain refuse to comment on it, and there's ardiis openly accusing him of cheating

Its just not relevant in 2023 so I dont see why Lembo feels like they need to make drama about this; ardiis stance has been public on this for 2 years now

This is amazing
Looking forward to see how turkish teams preform in official vs other EMEA regions
Shame no acend, sbg or apeks but should still be a great way to get some understanding of their teams skill level

well all the others regions get points for the next season^ its only turkey where its completely irrelevant
(but yea the game didnt look like they were throwing it)

Dont think we have an m80, assuming m80 is actually capable of beating some t1 teams in official matches

In scrims the turkish teams are still gods from what some content creators/pros (sliggy when he watched TL pre LockIn, Derke and another t1 pro who I cant think of right now) have been saying, so it'd be FF and Parla (or ig s2g since they won? they always mentioned the other 2)
I always struggle knowing if that'd translate to real games though since Turkish teams have always been scrimgods; we'll see in ascension

Then Apeks, Acend and Focus look like the balanced teams in terms of playstyle, but im not confident they are better than our t1 teams; they'd certainly put up a fight though imo

And sbg would be the other team Id mention; they have a super aggressive playstyle with a lot of aim duels so I think they would need time in t1 before they do consistently well, but dang they have some good players.

Havent watched/heard from the other VCLs so cant comment on those

that sounds like ardiis alright
just hope nrg were warned about letting him stream xD

yeeea keeping up with the VCLs has been horrible this season
with (as you said) the schedule + so many of the streams just perma rerunning its been hard to keep up

every other region gets points that carry over to next season, but I dont remember ever reading anything about it for turkey
so money might be all they get
edit: https://liquipedia.net/valorant/VCL/2023/Northern_Europe/Circuit_Points has a Circuit Point Standings for every region except them

Furias coach (ye ik not player) also looks pretty big (no clue bout numbers though)
... mini might have helped with that appearance
https://youtu.be/84hR3BJTKMw?t=619

iirc the general consensus, last time this was asked, was: " ¯\(ツ)/¯ "

Id agree when it comes to playstyles, there are plays that just don't get punished the same way in t2 than they do in t1 nowadays, that lead to stats you cant reproduce when against the best teams
But aim, game understanding (in terms of both util and timing) and motivation very much carry over, so I dont think its worth dismissing t2 players generally; the teams should (and probably are doing) do their due diligence in scouting since (imo at least) there's a crap ton of players who would do well given the chance

agree with the statement generally, but ey magnum and mistic favorites in polaris atm

Purp0 just a different beast start of map 2, and the team being disciplined enough to close (both maps) out cleanly; nice game by focus

also props to LPB for doing SO well this season as an F/A team

wdym with LU? are you refering to LDN = london united (or just call them OGLU)?
because in that case, yes kAdavra was amazing series against them (though very... aggressive iirc)

but thats not a head to head comparison; you have 2 different teams with vastly different structures here.
that'd be like saying kAdavra is shit because Xms farmed him in their France matches last season. Dont think anyone could agree with that
Comparing players on different teams we pretty much only have the results the team get, since its hard, if not impossible, to determine what player contributed how much to it from the outside.

That's why I was using the time they were on the same team (which is where the quote you responded to is from^), since they'll have had the same eco, the same team structure, the same players popping off and the same scorelines to deal with.

Yes its still not a good comparison (at all) since teams set up different players differently (I doubt anyone's gonna be regularly flashing for the smokes player, rather than the jett, but the smokes player also doesn't have to entry), and the stats really dont tell you much about how well a player does for the team, but nothing we do is considering KC did their own trials to see who was the better fit, which we have no access to xD

and if you look at kAdavra in the same series vs t1 teams, he was "mid" too. Thats what happens on losses when trying to break into the t1 scene.
If you wanna take the games vs worse teams into consideration click on the all button in his stats, 200 average acs for a player right between t1 and t2 is quite simply not bad.

If you want me to go over those maps for you, looking exclusively at the maps xms was on smokes, feel free to ask; its quite literally back and forth of who was doing better... almost as if both were/are top players :o

all 50 rounds were in playoffs, aka vs the best teams of the league; if you watch the vods you'll see that its a champ hes practiced^ as mentioned in the post below the bo1 format allowed to map pool to be manipulated in a way where he ended up on chamber every time during the group stage

edit in response to your edit:
what tourney are you referencing here and what is "LU-series"?
cant exactly find direct comparisons myself since their head to head games were slightly one sided team wise

clip out of context^ watch his stream tonight he said hes gonna repeat it if you dont want to watch the vod (since he spreads explaining what he means out over like an hour during a documentary)

(tldr. in the vod he took it in a self doubt direction, criticizing himself for changing stuff up due to being unsure if Loud had seen the vods when they hadnt. Clip & the pacing of when he explains it is really really bad though so addressing it today is essential)

the cause of all problems

again with this bs
look at his last 2 seasons (aka his "chamber phase"), both seasons he showed he's more than capable on other characters too, being a top tier player (even higher acs) if you remove chamber

yes he was the chamber player for the team and played it a ton, especially/mainly in france where the bo1 format allowed the map pool to be manipulated, but that's as far as your argument goes

and then the whole "he was mid before"... dude was on a team with kAdavra and literally trading back and forth with him stat wise, while on smoke characters. So apparently both were "mid asf"

I understand liking kAdavra, hes putting up one hell of a show this season, but ya don't gotta drag another player through the mud for literally no reason because of it

wdym their sherif thriftys were amazing, they couldnt possibly lose all 10 of their pistol rounds ;3

Realistically its gonna be TL, theyre an amazing roster on paper. Their performance was abysmal though so no clue wtf is going on with them atm though.

Then I personally hope its gonna be KOI: amazing coach + igl combo, trexx is a god, sheydos seems to be doing well. Starxo and Wolfen are the 2 I'm unsure about, but we only saw 2 maps from them.

And Vit are also contenders in my mind since they just have a solid t1 roster. Would have been contenders for the very top last split imo (assuming the OGLU players were already the level they are now).

that's just not true at all, xms was primarily a smokes player
and in the last seasons, where he was primarily a chamber player for the team, he regularly played kayo too and put up amazing numbers
don't wanna talk about the reyna... like numbers are fine but that aint the stuff for t1

Xms' team got 1 place behind vit in the above tourney, losing to the same team as Vit, so im not sure what its supposed to prove in terms of t1 experience; yes xms wasnt putting up star duelist numbers... because he wasn't a duelist

neither of them (excluding including LockIn) have proven their sentinel vs t1 competition
He'd have to be underperforming in scrims too to warrant a swap to another t2 player.

ye am currently 20 mins in to the vod, just havent gotten to that section yet
Ardiis makes it entertaining ngl

do you have the full clip? havent been able to find it by just scrolling through

idk, he does need to address it
but yes knowing ardiis history its very much him just being dumb/farming impressions rather than them actually accusing Loud + TBK
a rough one if that clip is the entirety of it though

does someone have the full clip?
ardiis says "Im not saying that they did that, cause actually we - ill get into it more" and the clip cuts off before he starts that train of thought

So the thing about trying to replace Xms with a t2 player is that any stats you show for that t2 player are irrelevant. XMS was the god of t2; both in France as well as in polaris he was top of the stat board every season.

And yes, adding Enzo to this team makes so so soooo much sense; even if you want to keep scream on igl (I wouldnt, but seems like scream really really wants to igl), having a second igl to add inputs (like he did on fnatic) is gonna help during the transition

I might be super duper biased since I followed saadhak, frz and bonkar (+ the rest of the original nip team) here from paladins, but as long as saadhak is in your region im positive you guys will have a good shot at being ahead in the meta; dudes been consistently making good comps for a while now and has shown a great understanding when it comes to setups with new champs
the fact that BR teams will now (I assume at least) regularly scrim in NA, where theres optic nrg who also have been meta defining in the past year, will help too

100%, I had them beating NaVi and TL (... yea...) in my own pickems
The stuff Onur was able to do with Kru mid tourneys has him as one of my top coaches so I expected Lev to get really far + the scrimbux was sounding super good

My reply is only about Lev as a snapshot during this tourney since thats what the original post is worried about (cause we have 0 idea who all the teams will shape up during the next season)

... you mean the thing I said at the bottom of my first reply with that this tourney isnt good for determining definitive ranking and that its subjective?
yes im aware of that and proceeded under the assumption that you had the reading comprehension to take my stance on that into account reading my following reply

you see the problem is the exact same thing you gave lev could be applied to other teams too. "Giants should have rolled NRG if they had outplayed nrg like they did Detonation, just a bad game, clearly they are better" - its just a pointless argument.
This tournament Lev were not a top tier team for their region; whether it was them underperforming, or whatever tf factor it was (we quite simply dont know), they didn't preform like Loud did.

But yes, technically the only team we know for certain that was good is fnatic, every other team is a question mark to some extend since it was single elim

And yet they ended up having a significantly worse performance vs NaVi than for example KC did vs Loud (and I do not rate KC highly to put my opinion on them kindly)
I'm not saying they're not a good team, they're have one of the best coaches in valorant (imo) and amazing fragging power, I'm saying there's currently a gap between them and Loud/NRG