keznit is dogshit as a person but definitely not overrated

hes literally worse than wardell on his op crutch, he force bough op twice in a row on ecos, atleast wardell hits his shots

bro faze arent easy at all, if they didnt choke split it was a 2-0, they played pretty well

league map

i watched the first half on 1.5x, thats some real promise, going this close against loud is always good

oh its against loud, ill watch it but aaa loud will probably just aim diff them smh

can you link the game? id love to see it

yes but many teams run sage, i think astra over sage>>>

people know the traditional ascent comp. it is

info initiator-usually fade or sova
duelist-jett, raze, or a pseudo duelist like a kayo
smokes- omen or astra, brim after stim nerf is not viable
sentinel- kj or chamber
flex- comfort pick, rn its breach sage kayo yoru and even fade if sova is the initiator pick.

so, where does astra really fit in a comp where you already have omen? ill give the traditional smoke pick to omen because rechargeable smokes. so, to me astra has to be in the flex pick, because traditional sentinels need to be picked on ascent otherwise youre asking them to walk to your spawn for free.
now, how does this work?

suppose the comp is fade raze omen kj astra.

ATTACK
now, on the attack you can suck A main off the bat without any repercussions and defeat the amain one way, after the star nerf it was kinda costly for astra to do that for free, with omen using his smokes, astra can freely use her stars selfishly and recklessly.
you can always throw a cat smoke or a market smoke and deny info, maybe throw both and make astra ot kj lurk while building pressure, with constant lack of info, drawing out util.
you also have decent executes as astra stun and suck along with omen blind can somewhat make up for the lack of kayo but youll be better off defaulting most of the time.
you have 10 times better post plant as astra can actually save atleast 2 stars for post plant almost every round, use it to resmoke or put both of spike making defuses extremely hard. of course astra has synergy with killjoy and raze and omen has synergy with fade, this can lead to some great combos.
astra can also recall a star where raze satchels or use it as misinformation for where raze is going in (it probably works ive tried it in customs ) making the raze entry a little more like jett entry.

DEFENSE

now, on defense you can also be very reckless with smokes and deny info for long times, making the opponents waste a ton of their util to get through, for example you can still throw the A main one way using omen every round but now you can insta smoke mid link using astra for even more info denial, you can always combo the a-main one way with an astra suck to punish people disrespecting it.
you can always use survival smokes in the middle of the site and anchor site for a LONG time
astra sucks- with execute heavy comps running wild with kayo fade sova breach and yoru, one astra suck can stop full rushes, and astra doesnt even have to be on site for that, making kayos suppress kinda invalid, kj can put her mollies on the site astra is playing in and play off site for helping astra if she gets suppressed.
raze nades with astra sucks and fade seize, you always have an option now, great defensive tools.
chaotic retakes with omen flash, astra stuns, kj ult and the entire kit of raze and fade, retakes will be over in a second.

CONS
now here are some cons, every comp has them
-sacrificing kayo or a 2nd initiator is really costly, kayo has shown his value on ascent, and definitely makes life easier, you could replace raze with kayo but that makes attacking really hard without a dive character.(unless you wanna do what fpx was doing and entry with omen)
raze- jett smoke dash is clearly a better entry and raze can be left vulnerable sometimes
flashes- you really have only the omen flash and fade prowlers, ops can be an issue but with ample astra stars and a shit ton of smokes, you can somehow deal with it.
fade-fade is relatively new and her kit can be made infinitely easier to use with a kayo or a breach flash making her util hard to destroy, but having different fade reveals will really help.
no killjoy lockdown counters (unless you wanna learn raze satchel lineups)
no op agent
ALTERNATIVES
kayo,breach for raze, recent games have proved you dont really need a duelist on ascent but you'll have to play really specifically to get value out of this, while breach has insane synergy with astra and makes up for lack of flashes and anti killjoy setups, you lose the paintshells which can also be used with astra, i dont need to explain kayo, hes pretty great.
chamber for killjoy- if youre comfortable you get an oper but you sacrifice extra info and better anchor
breach/kayo for killjoy- sacrifice flank protection and play extremely aggressive on one side and you can somehow get away with no info sentinels.
jett for raze- but why?
sova for fade- sova is a great character and has better info but you sacrifice good retake potential (sova is good on retakes too but fade is way better)
yoru for killjoy or raze- insane synergy with fade and with 2 smokes you can really capitalize on misinformation and lack there of.

imagine they had a viper molly to combine with yoru's pings in his ult, so many moments of omen being a throw

plus plant denying, info denying, constant pressure this feels so bad

holy shit the yoru and breach picks providing insane value, this has so much potential, i would love to see fpx drx or optic implement this in their regions

i think order have huge potential and i would love them to win but they lack experience rn, but i would love to see them take a map. close game regardless prx 2-1

there are so many times pyth just hid in the smoke and swung from the other end of it, could easily throw mollies while hiding, screens not being smoked gave him 2 free kills on a very huge round

yoru is great on icebox, my 3 stack runs it, it works a lot, icebox already has too many spots for opponents to watch, you can easily find holes in the defense or even them on attack, especially when its chaos, yoru thrives in chaos and icebox is mostly chaos, omen's smoke is giving bleed options to play around, its troll as fuck

no, ngl fade yoru breach all make sense, i see what theyre going for, its unconventional sure but not bad at all, the omen pick is costing them a LOT

lowkey trolling, its clear how many rounds the omen pick is costing them rounds, borkum on viper wouldve probably won them many more rounds, there are 5 times omen smokes being or not being there cost them so far

this is not a hot take, this is who youre supporting, atleast be confident in the team youre supporting tho?

i think team secret beating bleed is the only possible "upset" tbh

im really excited to see what they bring, hopefully prx trolls and entertains us

ill replace u on the team and prove your tier 6 take right then

no one cares about your take, dart monkey is tier 1+

?????? you can't be saying "give apac more slots" and be saying "remove a region with consistent 90k+ viewers from a slot" at the same time, also zeta showed why japan really deserves a slot, and if you call it a fluke run, go make your own team and see how easy it is to get top 3 in masters

dart monkey fans unite!!

i wont say apac is a bad region by any means, they can definitely compete toe to toe with emea, doesnt mean they need more slots, i know it sucks to think only 2 of the teams playing rn will go to master but its the same for NA, cant really do shit about it

?????????? apac gets 2 slots for the same reason NA gets 2 slots, the existence of south america and kr-jp, emea is a HUGE region, im pretty sure there's no bias, also calling liquid guild and fpx bad teams is a huge stretch, even g2 and gamit going through a slump en doesnt mean theyre bad, L post tbh

xerxia onic team secret paper rex bleed, all banger games holyshit im excited

aged well

GE is playing really really bad fundamental valorant, so many 4v2s 3v1s 2v1s even first bloods being failed to convert, theyre really hard to watch

even the last round, sage peeked before the spike tap, if not for raze ilt they wouldve been long gone

didnt lie tho, they play like ranked players with better aim, peeking one by one in 3v1s and throwing rounds, its painful to watch, alter ego isnt that good either

global is so readable? lack fundamentals, sage not saving gun in an unwinnable 1v3 with low eco, doing 5 man rushes with no map control, running into stacks, its hard to watch

another sinatraa thread smh

i just think replacing kappa wont make ge a better team, he isnt the problem, the team has the same problem sentinels has but they play even worse as a team

thats because na as a region wasnt good, a top 20 team from emea could defeat an na team, the na scene has gotten better, asuna has also arguably improved, just other good players have showed up

no??? just because i think ge is bad doesnt mean i hate sa, im literally saying alter ego isnt playing good either, i think og and enigma are better than ge and would push ae further maybe even take a map or even win, ge has dogshit util

hes very dominant wtf?? he probably makes the more impact that he ever has and plays in an actual team environment with discipline, steel couldnt stop him from overheating, stellar can

thwre is no copium, ge as a team played really bad, but replacing kappa isnt the play, he died with util out once btw i counted

what the fuck are you on about lmao? asuna moving to flex was probably the best role change ever and hes easily top 3 flex NA atleast just because hes not running in (he still plays great raze on fracture btw) and doing flashy plays doesnt mean hes a star

you guys really look at kills and demand a player getting benched, this is so funny lmao, kappa had good util, it was just comp and team diff, sova doesnt work on bind anymore, his util was pretty good tbh the team just couldnt capitalize on his info

no prx are definitely the better team and they did take the game casually, but this is the first time a team punished that and made them actually work to win grand finals

nah i just like to analyze games from a critical pov

nah, alter ego used default smokes when the skye dog cleared site, they couldve used deep heaven and ct smokes, against a good team they wouldve been punished

fake flagger detected plus you yourself arent confident in GE LMFAO.
theyre not a good team at all, enigma looked much more like a team than GE did, alter ego is playing bad, but ge arent even playing remotely good enough to punish that

even alterego isnt playing the best, shows how fundamentally bad GE is

maybe the paper rex win wasnt a fluke

they looked real promising today, maybe griffin is dogshit but maybe just maybe they looked promising enough to be top 4 apac, im excited to see them play against onic, if they do well, consider them a strong power

i couldn't be more obvious bruh

his raw aim is arguably better, yay has better movement, crosshair placement sure and is definitely the better player, but i think Aleksander has better microadjustments, yay doesnt have to make those because, crosshair placement

eu doesnt like phoenix,
KR NA AND APAC all have phoenix picks, eu doesnt:(