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

Tmv's subclass theory is a 3 circle venn diagram.
https://youtu.be/EJ7yx93QrUE

The idea is that every agent has a primary role, (duelist, initiator, etc), but has sub roles that match another agent role. Like jett's sub role is controller, chamber is duelist.

But most of them aren't purely binary, they sit in different parts of the venn diagram. And the point is not to be super accurate, but just look for obvious huge gaps in the venn diagram to put new agents. It's been right before, gecko and deadlock were both in obvious gaps.

Movement/flashes/info are accurate subclasses, but too specific for how general the venn diagram thing is.

Anderzz has a similar system that's a bit more refined, could check that out as well.

Actually sounds more like unreal tournament. If you also added health pickups and spike rush power ups, it would be perfect.

Oh, no just misremembering. I mixed up the upper final with the grand final.

I'm also curious, what is this?

Outer wilds, subnautica

EG
EDG
FNC
LOUD
SEN
PRX
Why give so much credit to teams that didn't win? Fnatic lost champs 23 and beat eg only narrowly at Tokyo. Edg would have best them too.

Most mornings to check upcoming games/results. Longer for pickems and meta research.

I'm only on the forums to waste time on my phone (not as addicting as reddit). Maybe 5 minutes a day, but a lot more right now because I'm home for Christmas.

Peak silver, I pretty much only care about VCT. I for maybe a week once per act, when my friends feel like it.

So, I mainly find games I like and play them to death. I've got probably 15k hours in Minecraft, hundreds in each of a few games.

What remains of Edith finch is probably the main one I want to play. Had in my library for ages and still haven't played.

Hollow knight, hades and cup head are probably not my thing? Certain kinds of difficult games, I just don't care too much for. I usually need to love someone else about the game besides good difficult gameplay.

Stardew is okay, might finish another time. Signialis is definitely not for me, I can't take that style of sci-fi anymore.

The rest I've either never heard of or know very little about.

Dang you are a gamer indeed, I still have some of those on my list. Oh and subnatica subzero (same engine/asset, new map/story) is out, idk if that's what you meant by sequel. We might be waiting a while for the actual sequel. Subnatica 1 rocked tho, sooo good.

Also, these are all fairly triple A, for some alternative recs:

1. Outer Wilds (not Outer Worlds)
2. Subnautica
3. Northern Journey

All of these are very light on hand-holding and rely on exploration, atmosphere and some practical fear. I love them all to death.

Have you ever played a bio ware game? Dragon age, knights of the old republic? Bioware isn't for everyone, (including me) but if it is, it's probably one of the best on the list.

Does anyone have a good power ranking of all teams? Like from anyone who knows what they're talking about? I don't even know if plat chat has done a ranking yet.

I started my americas and yikes it's hard, even for a region I thought I knew well.

If a team does a roster overhaul, it's reasonable to be less certain about how good they are. That includes the possibility that they'll be really good. Happened to geng and heretics last year.

Apparently Bleed was worse than any of that

How has no one said sliggy? He costreams literally every game, gives extremely good commentary and strategic insights, and does no other bullshit (I couldn't stand TMV trying to fill with stupid Sporcle stuff).

Sideshow and/or plat chat costream is the best though, when they do it.

Thst said, Tarik is fine if you just want good screams of excitement, which is like 40% the fun of almost any sport anyway.

Any other instrumental listeners? Based on last.fm

1. C418
2. Roger Subirana (goated orchestral/ambient composer)
3. Patricia Taxxon (actual current favorite)
4. Jeremy Soule
5. Ben Prunty
6. John Williams
7. Adrian von Ziegler
8. Toby Fox
9. Lapfox Trax
10. Daft Punk

You delivered, this was utterly terrible

I feel like need more rules on categories, cause

I guess I'll jump on this bandwagon and make my own too.

Val is more random, but you have a ton of opportunities to control the randomness. The length of tournaments means that only the most consistent teams will actually win.

Val is more complicated than CS (and chess, sorta). There aren't ~4 basic pieces (smoke, flash, molly/bishop knight, rook) , there are ~10 (recon, traps, wall smoke, walls, decay, vulnerable, detained). With more frequent updates and balance patches, it's not enough to be good and implementing a strategy someone else discovered, you have to be able to invent things yourself during play.

Val also reduces the peak mechanical skill ceiling. Chess has no mechanical skill (other than blitz? Sorta?) so you have to rely more on mental calculation and preparation, not just shoot good. In that way, Val is more like chess.

Overall, I think they're just interesting in different ways. I don't play Val, CS, or chess seriously, but I watch them all seriously, in that order. Val is the more interesting because it combines the most fields and has the best balance of skills required. But watching Donk destroy a server of veterans is fun, and understanding a really good game of chess is fun (although I still need commentary or engines to understand high level chess).

I would guess that in the long run, Valorant will be the most approachable to casual viewers/players (including against LoL), because it doesn't put too much weight on any specific type of thing, and everyone can choose something they enjoy.

Streisand effect speedrun

It's only a day old

Yea, this might be rare enough not to be worth it. Maybe S1mon was just that perfect of a pickup, and fragging IGLs are more and more common.

And I just meant that IGLs often play killjoy, viper, or breach, but not because they're the best at that role; they're just comparatively easier agents to play. Maybe you'd rather have say, Sayf play Cypher and someone else play Jett, but the IGL can only play Killjoy, so that's what you play. Or have Alfajer, and play Killjoy anyway. Of course, this does not apply at all to fragging IGLs.

No, it's because they expected Ethan to walk in and fill FNS's calling style when he had just spent the past year with Boostio's, and the optic core had spent the last ~3 with FNS's. The mid-year switch and remaining as a coach are important so the style doesn't change, and the IGL is still there every timeout.

Edit: also, Haodong had been with the core for years. So maybe FNS/Boostio are not good candidates, but Boaster is. No wait, they just moved players around this year 🤔 okay maybe this is even more edge case than I thought.

But teams are still squeezing out role compatibility, and IGLs are usually kinda bad at their "role" no matter what it is. You gain extra bandwidth to play the best roles with an extra flex/fragger. Yes, it requires having a decent second caller and picking up just the right player, but it seems like a decent compromise between finding a fragging IGL or having no IGL at all.

Oh I'm def tired of FNS, but if he's gonna play, he should consider this.

I'm rewatching Platoon's videos about EDG's champs win, and just theorizing... is it meta to swap your IGL with an initiator/flex/easy to drop into role, and keep your IGL as coach/assistant coach? Haodong swap with S1mon was exactly this.

You need the IGL to help the team build strategy and cohesion and adapt to a meta. You can't not have an IGL at all, but once the team is comfortable, your second caller can probably handle it because they just have to copy what the IGL was doing. As long as you used to have an IGL, and maybe keep that IGL as a coach, you can swap without disaster.

Teams should try this. Boostio, Boaster, FNS etc. should stop playing before/during stage 2 and just put in someone else until the end of the year, then swap back for the next year/meta.

Oh okay, this is a cook then.

It looks like he's an IGL, and they did win split 1. But man, feels like there should be better IGL options, even in Brazil T2.

Please do more of these, but this first one was impossible.

W bait

I had never even considered a multi-sport tournament with LoL/CS/Val until you said it, but now I want it too.

Do you ever feel, feel so @PaperThin

Why unfair?

It could totally happen, if they can get their team play vibe down they could be vicious. But unless FNS learns to IGL less 5head and more like the aggressive style that's becoming meta, it'll peak early in the year.

Coming from valve/cs, I just don't get this.