Twisten is just a worse short notice pickup
And pAura is currently signed to a team which is in lcq so that really isnt an option
There are still a ton of t2 players who fill Russ' role so its not like taking Yacine isnt risky, so it seems theyre just banking on existing synergies and taking a proven t1 player

unlikely, yacine was playing kayo and sage on stream 2 weeks ago so im guessing he was asked to fill russ' roles (or just a lucky coincidence) but i doubt theyre gonna swap up their cores roles for a stand-in since you just dont have enough time to get everyone comfortable on new roles

he was playing kayo and sage on stream 2 weeks ago iirc so I assume hes been practicing russ' roles... but yea gonna be interesting

no they can actually win events now, they broke their curse last qualifier by making it to lan

Im a bit confused about the roles now, because ignoring those Yacine is 100% the perfect short notice pickup (existing synergy with the old guild players [and i assume decent/good relations with trexx since he recommended him for trials?], good coms and a lot of t1 experience)
But I don't want trexx to stop playing raze, so are we gonna see yacine play sage and viper? (not that worried about kayo and skye since they fit his playstyle way more)
That being said im exited af seeing some of the old Guild boys get reunited for lcq, them making it to lan with yacine would be the perfect arc

https://www.vlr.gg/pickem/b9b658a2
the reason i have Vit going last is just their bind & (based on their bans) fracture; assuming both maps are bad thats just SUCH a huge disadvantage
AT surprised me today by actually making the game vs Fut close, but until Lime turns back into the monster he was during the end of DACH playoffs im just not confident they can beat Fut and Case
And Case vs Fut is just a tossup from what I've seen; I havent watched much of their regional leagues and theyve been smashing here (gonna end up giving the edge to Case since I consider the competition they beat higher level, but at this point idek how to rate excel)

we have no way of rating how good coaches are, all we have is that pipson was given a star roster, told people he'd be able to turn anyone into an igl and well... g2 have been struggling with executers and mid round calling
this might not be related to him at all but the least we can say is that he wasn't able to achieve his vision with the roster yet
as long as the roster believes in him and vice versa he's still got time to prove us wrong since they def have the talent for it

.... you are aware they were playing a team which almost everyone had in their top 4 too?

I think the important part is that the individual skill celling will eventually not be as relevant in pro play. With all the util Valo has, duels will become less and less relevant since they have a lower % "winrate" (being 50/50 as pro players improve)
This in no way means that valo has a "lower skill celling" since you need the same mechanical aim as in cs (though you SHOULD be less dependent on it) but more importantly learning numerous execute/combos for your team

Thing is valo is still so new that we dont know how it will develop, maybe we're gonna end in a similar state to cs where spacing and timing are what make the best teams

the "fit with their roster" is probably the biggest part of makes good scouting though
you need to know what your team needs and be able to predict if a player will grow to fill the role, fnatic managed to do this with 2.5 t2 players in a row now so clearly their scouting priorities are effective

He very much was an underrated player;
Surreal had some hype around them and did well in the EMEA Promotion but if you look at the https://www.vlr.gg/event/stats/885/champions-tour-stage-1-emea-promotion stats, its not like he stood out as the best t2 player.

Based on the stats why would you pick him up over for example chiwawa?
And thats why fnc get praise because they just scouted well and saw that he had way more potential than he showed in Surreal

read the article, at least here he doesn't bash csgo at all xD
like the only reason he gave in the clip they're reporting about is: “I wonder if it’s hard because everyone is so good, and everyone is so good because the game is arguably easier,” he added. “Maybe that’s why [it’s harder]. It keeps the competition high.”

The comments on twitter are funny af since its clear not a single one of them actually read the (super short) article
And i love how people are mad someone who spent years grinding csgo compares stuff to it... because who tf does that? compare new stuff to stuff you know?!

currently there is no reward for vrl finals, its a bit of money but like... worth playing an entire split for ey

There's way better examples;
the 2v4 was benkai dying in an advantageous fight (since he shot first) then d4v4i trying to trade asap (ye this timing was super bad since there was enough time for suygetsu to reset his aim and he missed his first shot, but the idea is fine)
and lastly jingg + forsaken trying to set up to take the 2v1 together at different elevations (and again just the timing being SO bad since jingg was jumping when suygetsu swung and insta headshot forsaken)

Just before and during international events its toxic regardless of region
And it not being a NA vs EMEA finals def helps with people calming down faster after this event since peeps can just appreciate that both teams did amazing

No PRX and Xerxia to knock bleed out... lets see if they can stay consistent in APAC qualifiers

? im not sure what you mean
When they were presented with a clutch this tournament mindfreak was the most likely to win his clutch

The stat doesn't try to claim who was better at clutching since it doesn't take the value of X in a 1v X into consideration, only their clutch winrate %

oh yea cneds been slow to adapt to chamber, but started feeling himself again against fpx and actually abusing the champ like he used to on jett
we'll see if that game was an outlier or an indicator for the games to come

Well the "they did better than guild vs prx" is a meh argument since one team had 0 matches with 1 day prep time vs 2 matches with 5 days prep time
We saw how good optics prep was on bind and we just dont know how prep time would have changed the guild match

That being said i dont see much of an advantage of dabbling in hypotheticals since we will then never be able to agree on a ranking because theres just so much bias
Fact is optic placed 3rd this tournament
Just take results, its the one unbiased ranking we have

agreed, this format is pretty accurate when it comes to top 2 teams, but the rest of the rankings are less accurate since teams get eliminated with less matches
As long as people understand how the bracket works this format is perfectly fine for what riot wants

but they lost so their playstyle is dumb, reeeeeeeeeee

a genuine joy to watch, happy fpx finally got to prove why they were at the top of emea the last 2 splits would have still preferred prx to take this just so they have a guaranteed win before they end up splitting

The yay thing is way harder to judge since Guild just avoided him SO well only giving him 6 fk/fd on defense (where yay usually pops off). Compare that to 11 and 13 vs Prx and Drx respectively (and ye his acs also just slumped whenever they were on defense since guild were the ones deciding who they fight)

Suygetsu wasnt underpreforming on map 1 (the one that pretty much just decided the whole match) so i dont see this being relevant
(suygetsu litteraly won fpx the map by just walking into B-Lobby and killing 4, it was anyone's game otherwise)

I mean what other logic would you use xD none of us are gonna vod review the entire event to make a biased af "true" power ranking that just stays in hypotheticals

But yes you could put Guild over Fnc because they had a closer game vs FPX and ignore that, while it was a close map 2 with OT, Guild did worse vs prx

And same thing with optic, they did better than FPX than Optic, did almost the same vs prx and beat optic in a head to head

Problem with that is that you just stray SO far away from the only unbiased team ranking we have, results, that it just doesn't hold any value anymore since its all just personal opinions

I wouldn't say they're exactly unstable; a new org for sure but they're in quite a few esports now and they got a ton of big sponsors (they got CocaCola this week for example) so its a steep upwards trajectory for them atm
It just depends on how much riot wants to gamble taking a rapidly growing org or if they'd rather take an org that's been established for longer
The main reason I see them taking the chance is that guilds been a staple of EMEA valorant, they've been there since the start and have been in tier 1 consistently, as well as owning a tier 1 female roster, so theyve shown investment

Not really, lets look at the best EMEA team each international event
Reykjavík 2021 - Fnatic as 2. Seed (there were no extra slots for eu at the time compared to NA & Br)
Berlin 2021 - Gambit as 1. Seed
Champs 2021 - Acend as 2. Seed
Reykjavík 2022 - G2 as "1." Seed

The extra slots def help keep the EMEA scene as big as it currently (in regards to # of teams) is, but it doesn't directly influence placements

https://youtu.be/OvCt6Ms4hLQ?t=1911 from the press conference
Dudes just having fun

-viktor +food

Riots script writers just couldnt let BARBARR take all the attention away from the players so guild just had to go

Great run, shakey run as always but thats what makes optic optic and in all honesty id be boring if it was any other way
Looking forward to seeing them at masters

like don't get me wrong angel has an.... interesting playstyle for the champs he plays, but he really isn't a bad aimer (like his playstyle didn't develop because he kept getting diffed his entire career)

Id also add Payen (https://www.vlr.gg/player/1092/payen) to it, he was def a huge part of why both Noble and tsm-A was so consistent despite never having "star" players sticking with them

let me feel good about knowing how to play a map smh but yes its a 5 man rush a simulator

icebox is def the worst map when it comes to competitive (see the g2 comp being one of the most viable comps winrate wise) but in ranked id take icebox over split any day, at least i know how tf imma get on site without losing 4 people

tbf if you only watched playoffs youd be disappointed too, hes been pretty calm performance wise

What do you mean us silvers cant provide helpful feedback about pro games?!
In all honesty im sure if a pro player goes on a public forum after a game they know what level of stupidity theyre getting themselves into xD

True 0,96 kd in playoffs is so bad, a true t1 player would go 1,4 at least
Like look he's the second best igl from the 4 that were left, with angel and fns preforming SIGNIFICANTLY worse than him when it comes to fragging and I wouldnt say either of them are doing bad atm.

well ye, drx is unbeatable (especially vs other asian teams) until their not, and from that point onwards they're just out of the tourney
its why you need to watch kr to be able to judge how good teams are since scores are really bad to properly show that in the region.
I guess you could also technically use the last chance qualifier to gauge how good koreas other teams are, but the sample size is just so low that idk if its really worth much
But yes its 100% the region with the biggest difference between the best and the 2nd best team imo, but not nearly as big as people want to believe

based on this tournament I actually wouldnt say so: fpx have played all maps this playoff and except for haven and breeze have had close games on all of them

optic only played 4 this playoffs and with how their fracture has been going will probs use their ban on that from now on (theyve played all maps throughout the entire tourney though so they dont have a perma ban, which is good)

Even Korea isn't a 1 team region; they dropped sets against both Nuturn and Onslayers and last challengers were pushed by multiple teams (7th best team in Korea https://www.vlr.gg/101881/drx-vs-cnj-esports-champions-tour-korea-stage-2-challengers-w4)
They just dominate domestically against the "established" teams that they scrim a lot

Apac is just hard to judge how close they are due to prx trying out so many comps in officials, however their local competition in bleed consistently takes a map off them when they meet, and the title for 2nd best team is such a tossup between xerxia, bleed, secret and onic

I dont watch br since they dont have english streams so uuuuh

And lastly NA... look if you actually think NA is a 1 team region then the baits got to your head and you should close vlr and watch some vods
No its no EMEA where you literally cant say which 3 teams make it out at the start of a split, but dang they had some good matches and optic getting second twice in a row now should be an indicator of how high level the rest of the teams are

because its not been ruined by "fans" aka people who actually watch their regional games and it tends to be the bandwagoners who are annoying af.
its like how there are a ton of insufferable fnatic and optic "fans", despite both fanbases being chill af 2 splits ago

I mean yesnt, imo no regions in themselves deserve a slot, simply because we have way too many regions in EMEA for it;
however every region should feel represented and thats where i feel like turkey should be getting a team in, just based on historically the language barrier being an issue for a lot of Turkish players joining international teams (since id be worried they'd end up significantly underrepresented from a player-base -> pro player ratio)

Super hard to say whos the best plyer this masters tbh
Ardis is currently the best player stat wise after that insane performance vs drx
Then Forsaken Jinggg have been tearing everyone a new one
Marved is the perfect example of the "support meta" , where as mechanics and spacing get better the entries will start having less and less direct kills with pressure shifting to the supports to trade and clutch
(And im sure there's more players that could be considered especially since i dont have yay in there but id say those 4 are the current standouts for me)

while yes they def didnt feel on form aim wise during the match (with just way too many clutches from fpx) if you watch the game youll also see that fpx was really prepared for set plays drx has.
And considering those tend to be the swing rounds which decide who snowballs with money (in the case of for example vs optic) losing them and being forced to eco is just gonna wreck your overall performance
A team which relies on prep and set plays like drx will always struggle the further they get into the tournament since they have to show more and more strats

I do think they belong here since there just so good at recovering from losses;
it just takes so much pressure out of non GF matchups since you know they'll get value out of the second chance
And well they're just preforming tbh so except the Guild game where guild just had really good reads they've looked really good

that is an understatement xD
peeps just out for blood this masters, bcj cant stop catching strays either

oh yea i dont think anyones pretending that fnatic played like the team we were so hyped to see
we'll have to see if they can bounce back optic style or if they stay at this level

Lothar is doing a vod review atm so you can check out the vods if you want to see why fnatic lost
(Just be aware its lothar on his own stream so hes hyper critical, but its still good insight into both teams mistakes)

Oh 100%, if NA/EU/literally any region was riled up against a player to the point where people find it necessary to send death threads you can be sure people would be talking about this too