Bro's never been good. He's a solid t2 player but doesn't have the skill to make it in t1. Has random flashes of brilliance, but nothing near the level of consistency. TL should've taken a bet on an up-and-coming player tbh.

I will be praying on Fnatic's downfall so that a chronicle move can be made possible.

I would give anything to see a Gambit reunion but with Something/Jemkin/b1sk/Kr1stal instead of Deffo.

Aspas would've dropped like 80 against random emea T2 pros. Keiko is good, but don't get ahead of yourself.

Tbf to NA, that didn't really feel like banter. Felt like the FPX players were actually being toxic because they thought xset members were trying to replay the match when they didn't request it.

Just confirmed, I can only buy the bundle, not the items individually.

My understanding is that the esports bundles are bundle only. Every region can buy normal skin bundles separately, but Brazil can buy bundle-only items individually.

Could be wrong tho

Too soon of a turnaround. According to Ferahgo's article, they'll be coming out sometime in May.

The guy's doing amazing

On a side note, wouldn't his name be pronounced like Kay-ko instead of like Key-ko?

Key-ko sounds goofy as hell

Wasn't there a situation similar to this that happened with xQc? He said something that got interpreted the wrong way (idk I never followed OWL). Not saying this is necessarily the case, but I would want to see the statement or remark before making any strong judgements.

The sad thing is he's not even the best T2 Japanese duelist. DFM just keeps recycling old players instead of just picking up new talent. This is a shame because most other rookies seem to be performing well this year.

CN is definitely stepping up in talent, but I don't think they're quite at that level yet. JDG got nerfed because of import rules and FPX has yet to be competitive against top teams (and even not top teams) at international lans. I don't think many people think other teams even have a shot.

Wouldn't they have to beat NRG/Cloud9 if you look at the Playoffs bracket?

NRG would be difficult. Maybe C9 as well

Maybe, but I feel like a lot of the duelist players who can't perform well anymore would do better on smokes as they can be played in a similar style to old duelists (i.e., Tenz). Plus you have the added benefit of disrupting the roles as little as possible since Egoist plays sentinel.

If you're referring to sScary it's because he's not really off-rolling. sScary lurks all the time, which is something viper is more suited for. You let him play his best agent while Yay plays the smokes that are needed.

This would be for the next split or next year.

Yay > Smokes
sScary > viper
Deryeon > entry
Egosit > sentinel
crazyguy > flex

Lets yay focus on rifling and holding angles on site. Deryeon gets to entry. sScary gets to focus on lurking which is better for his playstyle.

They can ban maps that require double initiators or play off-meta comps.

Thoughts?

I think they have a higher ceiling right now, but their level of performance is the same as last year right now. Unfortunately, kickoff is a punishing bracket, so I think they'll likely not be able to improve enough in time to make it in Madrid, but they should be better for Shanghai or Seoul.

I think Carlao needs to be more proactive with his timeouts and try to stop the members from tilting. It looked like they were just running it down towards the end of the 1st half on sunset.

Tbf, TENNN was actually pretty good and was part of the reason they were so successful in Reykjavik. He hasn't been able to perform to the same level since his eye issue, I don't know how much it contributes to the issue, but it's worth mentioning. Crow has always had subpar performance, but the members (especially the new NTH members in 2022) commonly referred to him as a brother figure that helped with morale and getting them used to the team.

They should be releasing on Thursday. So expect a teaser earlier in the week.

c0m has the best sova in the world, the man redefined an entire meta on a fracture with his Sova. Even Fnatic switched to it after getting beaten by it.

If 100T hadn't lost that thrifty they probably close out Icebox without dropping any defensive rounds, just kept giving out free picks to a Reyna.

Chanting USA isn't cringe, but there's a little bit of irony in the team only having 2 American players.

I'll also take USA chants any day over just clapping and not saying anything like yesterday.

Tbf, that guys post wasn't SR criticism. You can say SR is not a great team, and they need to improve. However, he was on some weird shit about GC. It became pretty obvious that he was just trying to shit on the system instead of providing any actual constructive criticism.

America's

1. NRG
2. SEN
3. LOUD

EMEA

1. FUT
2. VIT
3. KC

Pacific

1. DRX
2. T1
3. ZETA

China

1. JDG
2. EDG
3. TEC

Donk and Faker

Meiy and Anthem are good, and popogachi is pretty decent. Neth is really hit or miss, and Medusa has never really impressed me.

Deft won worlds before Keria and T1, so PRX would win first tho.

Bro thought he was cooking with this

I see literally 0 reason to have any player other than f0rsaken on yoru on that roster.

If our definition of washed is making every international lan except 1 (pretty sure the core didn't even exist for that LA ) and then only failing twice, I guess they're washed.

The only thing I would be concerned about with the 1.1mil to 730k is that you're going below you're previous average of around 800K. Now, there could be some sort of lurking variable that's causing this, but the obvious conclusion would be that CS2 is a downgrade for some CSGO fans.

However, Playerbases fluctuate all the time. People tend to lose interest, and whenever the next update (at valve pace maybe 2026) happens, the player base will go back.

Depends on what you mean by confusing. I play a lot of valorant so when I see the ability dump clips that go viral, they tend to not be really confusing, but put me on Anubis and there's more than 2 pieces of util and I don't know what's happening.

Just depends on what you're used to.

Idk, they're going back to before CS2 was announced number, and even starting to go lower than that. That shouldn't be what you expect for a huge decade-old game that's got a major update. I think the game just feels like shit rn. Even CS frogs don't argue with that it seems from the Reddit comments.

There needs to be studies into how Valve fumbled the bag so hard on CS2. I initially though it was just an overinflated player base and they went back to normal, but they're starting to go below CS2 being announced numbers.

Funnily enough, I'm starting to enjoy CS esports more, but holy shit is playing that game a pain. I even like a lot of the changes they made to CS2, 13 rounds, smokes etc. It's just playing the actual game feels like torture sometimes, constant cheaters, bad netcode, mollies look really bad (more of a personal opinion).

I'm kinda in agreement that I think the UB advantage is too strong, but I don't think I agree with the counter factual. FNC in Tokyo probably still would've won.

I kinda like the idea that the Team that is in the UB gets first side pick on every map, allowing them to still have an advantage while not insanely stacking a series in their favor.

It depends a lot on how both are set up. If they're a club and not directly affiliated with the school, then they're basically a free-agent team, meaning an org would need to pick them up. If Winthrop has them under contract, then Winthrop would need to sign the contract for VCT.

I'm assuming they're a club, so I would say they're essentially the equivalent of a free agent team that would need an org to pick them up, they just use the Winthrop university branding.

I can't imagine Riot would be okay with cash substitutes for player salaries in T1 circuit. They'd likely have to pay the league minimum as salaries to the players, and then they'd have to start considering a bunch of extra legal business that comes around with what type of employee someone is.

I wouldn't be surprised if all this complexity causes them to lose interest in signing onto the system. That or they start trying to pull a TGRD and try to negotiate different elements of the contract.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you have to put your signature in escrow for the VCT contract when you join T2, so that in the case that you win ascension you don't start to try to negotiate.

Do you guys think Winthrop has agreed to something like this? I can see a very real scenario in which the players get left out to dry because the university doesn't want to start signing contracts like that. I hope that either I'm wrong about the escrow, or the players had the foresight to talk to administration about it prior, because it would be really unfortunate for them if Winthrop doesn't want to.

Idk man, I had a similar thought the other night, and after thinking about it more, I don't think it mattered. In between GC champs and the GC OQ, the map pool changed and we had some buffs and nerfs to agents that will change how comps are picked. If SR, the best GC team in the world, went into the NA GC OQ revealing strats that they were going to use in the T2 OQ, they probably deserve to get anti-strated.

JDG wanted to pick up the RA team, and Stew was already in the RA roster, so they had to let him go due to import restrictions. I assume he's LFT and will probably be picked up by a T2 emea or JP team eventually.

Also a side note, but if you look at his twitter, most of his posts are just about something. Kinda cute. https://twitter.com/Vici_tty

Hmm, I think Lock-In had some issues, but past that, it was really good.

The Tokyo production was really good, and I'm pretty sure the overall number of Tech pauses went way down.

Idk bro, I've been watching some LCS and there have been net issues in almost every game that cause them to have some 10-15-minute pauses. I don't know if that's a League issue or a Riot Arena networking issue, but it's got me a little nervous. I can't speak for the Pacific arena, but EMEA has been fine tho. Stadium's look a lot better imo

I've been trying to watch some more CS esports recently, and I must say, while I still don't like the game as much, their UI is MILES better than what we have. Last year wasn't that bad, but I think there need to be some changes to the Ability bar at the bottom when you're watching only one player. I don't like that it just uses the default UI for that, makes the camera look out of place.

I get that people might disagree with this, but I think it really comes down to how long they've been playing the game. I don't have any data to back this up, but I would assume that if you polled most VCT pros, they started playing fps games at a very young age. I'd also be willing to be that if you did the same polling to GC teams, the average age you get would be a lot higher, probably around early teens.

It's a well understood fact of psychology that skills are way easier to learn when you're younger. I.e., learning a language or an instrument is a lot easier when you're a kid then when youre in your mid twenties. People that have been playing since they were a kid develop the essential habits way quicker then someone who decides to start playing later in life.

As for why this is the case, you can look at the score eSports channel and look at any story of pro players. They tend to have some sort of older brother, friend, or father that gets them into gaming at a young age. It's true that in society, we tend to discourage women from gaming when they're young as we don't typically associate it with them. I can only speak from anecdotes, but my female friends who got into gaming only got into it because of friends they met later on in their lives.

I'll admit, there are articles that he wrote that are really good, you can see either my response to ChickenJoe or #5 for a clarification on my position.

And then the drama... its stupid that it escalated to this extend. A simple clarification from ds_santos on either of the dramas would have reduced it to a "I think youre stupid" instead of whatever tf this is.

Yes... It's almost like my critique of him not engaging with criticism would change if he engaged with criticism, wow...

As for the rest, I shouldn't care about what a prominent journalist is doing to gatekeep his profession and belittle someone trying to startup because people post unhinged shit on VLR?

My critique will always be the same, you can't just ignore criticism even if you think it is from people that don't understand your field. Prior to starting my graduate education, I worked in game dev. I'm well used to people saying they want certain things about games when they don't really understand what goes on behind the scenes, and how plausible certain ideas are. You can't just sit yourself in an echo chamber and ignore outside criticism from anyone just simply because they don't have the same credentials as you.

His articles were fine. What my criticism was meant to be was more that he made high standards for what journalism was supposed to be, tried to use those standards as a way to gatekeep the profession, and belittle the work of someone who was trying to start up in the field.

The term journalist/journalism has a very different conotation to it. I think most people see it as talking to sources, compiling information, and then choosing what information is trustworthy enough to then report it to a broader audience. The vast majority of the articles that happen on VLR are just summaries of videos or tweets that get put out by Orgs or players. Every now and then we do get in depth articles around events, but they are few and far between.

Again, I don't want to belittle the work of the VLR writers, I just think that it doesn't give them carte-blanche to gatekeep journalism.

I appreciate the response. I did try to ammend my statement more in #5. My attempt wasn't to dismiss anything that he did on VLR as unimportant, or not a "real job." My statement was more in attempt to criticize the fact that he gatekept an area where he probably would not have met the criteria that he was using to gatekeep. Again, I will throw in the caveat that I don't understand journalism as much as the writers, and I don't know the inner workings of VLR, but to me I don't see where the journalism aspect comes in. But never the less, I should have been more carefully worded.

Again, thank you for the response.

Daveeys Tweet: put out a tweet saying that Twistens death hit him more than Daveeys ( I think it was on the day he died) https://twitter.com/ds_santos_/status/1698726866864009354?t=daEpAOlHYzICrHO9_BUUjA&s=19

James: called James a "basement dweller who looks at twitch all day," after James started a Twitter account for posting scrim leaks, where he added the job Journalist in his bio. https://twitter.com/ds_santos_/status/1697658983480230224?t=BtPZeUN-qvDEibsugGa_Hg&s=19

Edit: added posts for context

Yeah, rest in piss bozo

I just saw that in the r/ValComp thread, he was saying that he still doesn't believe in accepting criticism from anyone on social media.

Obviously, not literally what he said but you get the point.

Anything can technically be a job and I don't want to personally attack the other writers, because they're all good people.

To be clear, I don't have any problem calling what happens on VLR journalism, but I don't think it's right to the use that as a way to patronize what James was doing.

Friendly reminder that the whole thing happened with James adding journalist to his Twitter bio, iirc, he never made any attacks on Santos prior.