W
Why formerly doombros tho?

Is it just me, or is the problem that we've never had a tournament so stacked before? Every team (except trace) has at least one player that feels like they deserve top 10, usually 2 or even 3. Normally, there's 2-3 kinda shit teams with maybe 1 good player. This might be the first tournament with only 1 team that feels irrelevant.

bren is braindead

Do you have any idea how many of Bren's unhinged rants were full of startlingly accurate predictions?

Kickoff last year had 11 teams, and had this awkward, unequal sized group stage. Plus, EG got a bye for winning champs, but the team was all new and pretty bad, that feels lame. This year, all the teams that got a bye are at least okay.

Not even a Sen flair, that's wild

That was hysterical, I'm expecting a prim and proper survey and the first question is a screenshot of "PUSH YOU FAT FUCKS", God that's hilarious, I died.

A major difference between high-level ranked in Val vs CS is that Val has almost no cheaters. There's no separate FACEIT, you just queue ranked, and that's it. There's at least one pro (tier 1 or 2) in almost every ranked game Eggsterr plays.

There's also still an enormous lack of good training/practice for pretty much all esports, and playing thousands of hours of ranked against legitimately good players helps a ton with that.

That said, the top tier 1 teams know how to play against the aggressive style, which is to match the aggression. They'll go fast, then back to slow, and Rankers will have to start guessing and not have the util to keep up with the slower rounds.

Reasonable take, I'm getting convinced

Difference between Saudi Govt and Saudi citizens. Your crown Prince assassinated and dismembered a journalist. I don't know anything about Saudi citizens, though.

Saudis are trying to invest their oil money before it runs out. Buying all of sports is a good option because everyone likes sports. But it doesn't make the Saudis okay.

Someday, aspas will be on an actual superteam again, and then god help everyone else.

It'd be interesting to run these longer, like 24 hours each, in the time between all kickoff finishing and Bangkok starting

eh, TH losing to G2 feels fine, rematch would still be 50-50. Losing to Sen is an upset tho, and Sen would lose the rematch for sure. All this was during American hours, so bit of bias.

If G2 wins the BO3 with no map advantage, they're def winning the BO5 with a map advantage.

I think he means within this fictional tourney

These would be such good games, but one of these teams will surely throw and not make it this far. Or maybe KRU is just on their run already and are destroying everyone, that would be fine too.

Clearly meant drx

Oh i missed last round. Would have gone TH

Lol no faith in T1 for the regional rematch, drx finally good.

And Sen have no shot against edg, without a troll or a life game.

XMS could just walk backwards and pick up a rifle, just leave. Scream can't buy! Just walk backwards and pick up a rifle! HE'S GONNA SURVIVE! INSTEAD OF PICKING UP THE RIFLE, THAT SCREAM NEEDS! I CANNOT BELIEVE IT!

Rankers = ranked players who were tired of waiting for teams and are actually very good, they won last challengers split.
cubert = Sentinels academy team, some have been in Tier 1 games in the past.

So probably cubert, but it will be a great game either way.

Swap something for a star Sentinel (the role) and the transition to normal agent comps is complete.

Nah, he's the protags funny best friend

Came here to say this^. Liquid are fucking cursed. Theyre consistently too terrible to ever have faith in, but just good enough to surprise you, mess up pickems and knock out teams people like.

Not to mention ruining good players. When Nats finally gets free it will be such a relief.

Why does this tourney exist? And why do the middle placed teams get the bye?

I only watch for gameplay, and don't really have a favorite team or players. I finally set flair to nongshim because they were so fun to watch, but I'm still gonna watch every other team to see what happens and try to predict it.

holy crap yep I didn't know about this game https://www.vlr.gg/30761/funplus-phoenix-vs-forze-champions-tour-stage-3-emea-challengers-playoffs-lr1/?game=all&tab=overview

Fnc vs M3 was the one I was trying to remember https://www.vlr.gg/79075/fnatic-vs-m3-champions-champions-tour-stage-1-emea-challengers-ubsf/?game=75816&tab=overview

but what was it before this? I vaguely remember a long one on split

each region + international?

🤦I added my single braincell

I put sliggy on while I'm at work and only want the game, not sporcle, geoguesser and chatter drama.

Inb4 cursed, grand final PRX 4 - 1 TLN

Naw, most of these are exactly what I think are a bad idea. should be more grounded, lighter touch, and like, final reward for a battle pass. So its less dev time and just giving something new to look at in game.

I would mainly pull inspo from existing alternate outfits they show in player cards and cinematics. And you limit it by map so players don't have to recognize every possible outfit on every possible map.

I would go for just 1 or 2 alt skins for each agent on specific maps. So like sage takes off the heavy cloak on breeze, a bunch of characters put on warmer stuff on icebox. Just a little bit of character and someone different to see in game.

This is a thing, it's called learning to read phonetically or not. I can confirm I was taught some phonetics in the US, but mostly, I just memorized the sound of words. Part of the problem is English, it's very hard to teach English phonetically with so many verbatim French/German/Latin/Greek influences. I was trying to learn Polish from a native speaker and really struggled to read a word phoenetically if I've never heard it. When I see a name or an unknown word, I don't even try to pronounce it. I memorize the shape, and check pronunciation later if I feel like it.

All that said, I can read just fine, and phonetics won't save you if you're dumb as bricks.

That's a good point, I forgot that nrg/optic always lose the first game.

Tomorrow headline: C9 release Xeppa

they have electric battery hand warmers now, batteries are going insane https://a.co/d/j3iDVzW

Even if he is an entertainer, you must treat entertainers with respect. Imagine I told a Broadway performer to change an entire scene in 2 weeks without discussing it with them. But it's their job! Nope, it's not good work life balance and disrespectful of their status as pro players. Eh, that puts it a bit harshly, I understand Riots position but also largely agree with FNS.

This is some insane kind of a cook, there's way too much to unpack here. Americas scan initiator section is wild, there's no way Trent, eeiu and c0m are all worse than cauizin with a big gap in between.

And averaging the placements is also a problem, it makes it seem like the lower placed players are way worse than they are. I think you would get better numbers if you just stole their 2024 VLR rating.

Chinese govt also wants more control, that's why they get their own client and part of why they get their own league. Riot will do what they want because it's such an enormous revenue stream. Chinese viewership is probably subsidizing other regions to some extent.

Better list for pro play/spectator. Correct me on Abyss and Breeze maybe?

1. Sunset
2. Haven
3. Lotus
4. Fracture
5. Bind
6. Split
7. Ascent
8. Pearl
9. Abyss
10. Breeze
11. Icebox

Okay okay the reason everyone on here likes fracture and hates icebox is that at high level pro play, icebox because very boring and fracture becomes extremely interesting. If you're talking about ranked experience, especially like plat and below, then just individual preference is fine. And it is probably reasonable to rate icebox better than fracture for like silver level play, you're much more likely to have silvers totally lost and confused playing fracture.

That said, you're on VLR, and we mostly think about pro play here. Icebox has an absurd number of angles and positions to play, it's like a shooting gallery. There is no other map in all of Valorant or Counter Strike that has that design style.

Bro I want to root for you but you make it so hard

I sent this to my lesbian bronze friends. They were aghast, and demanded I send this corrected list.

1. Viper
2. Reyna
3. Astra
4. Fade
5. Vyse
6. Deadlock
7. Skye
8. Sage
9. Raze
10. Jett
11. Neon
12. Killjoy
13. Clove

Dang I honestly forgot about that one

I feel like this is my whole point, you can't give agents a single subrole description. Like the controller section makes no sense. Local VS global smokes is just one aspect that you trade off for other things. And why are wall smokes their own category? You would also want to include 1 way smokes and astras larger dome smokes. It gets way too complicated.

That's why you generalize to 3 simpler overarching categories, and each agent gets a percentage score for each category.

Both anderzz and TMV mainly care about pro play and theory. Anderzz is a professional analyst, and tmv is just trying to understand how riot thinks about the game, what buffs/nerfs they might do, what agents they might add. All of this is like, super irrelevant to ranked play. The subclasses that everyone else are describing (dive, flash, info) are more practical ranked subclass stuff.

https://youtu.be/rQ8PXanlAD0
It is a CRIME that this video only has 20k views