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

not really
based on what we've seen there's noticeable gaps in all 3 regions between the top and the mid teams

EMEA has NaVi and Fnatic atm, Americas have Loud and NRG and Pacific have DRX

The one thing id note is that the brazilian teams (mainly furia) are ahead in terms of meta (and could very well be considered top tier because of it) since they and loud have incorporated harbor well on maps (especially Louds icebox comp being amazing af); but other teams should be able to catch up till the next international in that regard

Talent wise its just impossible to compare the region's teams atm since the tourneys format was only good for finding out who the best team was, with anything below being based on our personal judgement rather than results

? look I agree that they look great atm, but you cant call fnatic, the team thats won nothing, the favorites vs a team thats won and made it to another finals last year

I agree, every team should change their roster after losing to the favorites

In a Bo3 id give fnatic the edge since they def have the talent this split + theyve always excelled when it came to specific map preps (executes etc)
However when you have to prepare 5 maps I just feel like the bigger core + more fundamental based playstyle of NaVi is easier to pull off

Think both teams should do well in terms of anti-strat so I wouldn't know who to give the edge here

Gonna be an amazing series for sure, Navi 3-1

Nille was a beast this season, looking forward to them next split

idk both Fut and BBL looked a lot better than before
id be super interested in a matchup between the 3 to see how they stack up tbh

saying that none of us are even remotely qualified to be calling sick "manic" or saying he "lost his mind" is the reason "why depressive disorders are so massively underdiagnosed"? xD

stop the bs and visit therapy yourself just once to see how they handle stuff; theyre professionals and not even they are gonna diagnose you anywhere as quick as vlr

and neonfreak didnt even suggest that he shouldnt be seeking help

NaVis was hard, since they had to play Lev who many had winning this event based on scrims (rest was easy; vs liquid would have been fun had they lived up to expectations this tourney)
Louds wasnt any easier since they had to play Nrg (rest was easy on paper, though genG impressed)
Drxs seemed pretty easy tbh (BBL was surprisingly good, c9 disappointed with their map-pool and while I love talon doing well they were never contenders to win this event)
Fnatics was hard on paper only. Sen & 100t didn't live up to expectations, but Furia pushed Fnatic with their innovative Haven comp

Id still say DRX was the easiest path this far since c9 was the only team expected to challenge them on paper and then got absolutely trashed

This has been clarified already.
NaVi requested their flags to be changed -> they were changed on Vlr
Other teams didn't -> they weren't changed on Vlr

There's nothing bad about being from Russia/having a Russian flag, this is a complex political conflict that the vaaa[...]aaaast majority individual citizens have nothing to do with

THE CURSE LIVES OOOOON

nah nah they getting top 3, I aint getting stuck supporting Guild 2.0 again

oh trexx is gonna get recognition all right, dude farmed nrg on sova
if thats not a good sign for your season then idk what is

and I'm not worried bout kolda, him + BARBARR make good enough strats to get recognized as franchising goes on

sorta? even after their masters run where they beat optic and almost 2-0d the event winners people didn't exactly give them credit.
but yes lack of international events most definitely is the logical reason... guilds curse of being forgotten is way more fun though ;3

Thats not what I was saying at all?
Im saying people dont rate guild players despite them being the top of emea split after split

a single player from guild has managed to get recognition? From a team that's consistently been top 4 in EMEA since the first masters

(Also youre looking at a player whos team is currently preforming, fnatic choke/start falling off the public perception starts shifting; dont think its leo whos first on the chopping block, but who tf knows)

its the Guild curse, aint that easy to shake off

see, all planned

well fnatic needs to let them get to 10, since they got 2 rounds during the first half

Well basically you shift win % from round 2 into round 3
Its super good but requires you to play a specific way; NaVi have been doing it the longest (that I know of) so they're obviously already super drilled at it and make it look super broken.
Had the stingers not been nerfed right before this tourney I don't think the buy would have looked anywhere near as good, with opposing teams forcing on round 2.

no its "döner kebab" (- sandwich) and just as much of a kebab as whatever you think of when you hear kebab
there's no one true kebab, just look at this monster of a list trying to summarize all of them xD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kebab

currently NaVi and Nrg (most consistent teams the past year) + still looking good this tourney
Loud pretty consistent + most recent winner and current powerhouse
Drx, Lev and Fnatic are currently looking like they are contenders for top spots (with the latter 2 still having to prove themselves since its early on in the tourney for them). Maybe 100t too, hard to judge how good EDG are.

yea remember map 2 is pearl and that looked bad from Vit last time
lets not call this too early

Vit are gonna hard struggle if they cant win pistol rounds... and lev are good at pistols soooooo

Tbf the cage lineups on attack were really good; a weird af comp but NaVi almost wrote fpx there made it work

idk atm drx are looking way better... but we also know how the tourney usually goes for drx so I wouldnt bet a cent on them winning vs loud xD
The interesting matchups would be Furia vs Geng, and MiBR vs T1, couldnt tell ya who would win either of them

yea the punishment is fair, but its definitely not a light punishment since its a round + money
Thats a HUGE momentum shift

Pretty much anyone whos ever been on the bonk (/tundra/finest) team; whoever tf did their scouting just "found" cracked youngster after youngster
Nille, Kicks, Juseu, Keiko, dESTRUCTIVEE (i think... dont know his age)

yea pretty much any sub makes a huge difference, only to a lesser extend here since they're still a 10 man roster so they know and have played with each other, but its still a difference
Don't think they would have won, fundamentals were still way too lackluster, but I could see some of their setups being more comfortable

its also c9, so wait till they make an announcement; they'd troll us every chance they get
cough yay igl cough

ey look, at least they're further than liquid already