MY CHEST. THESE MATCH UPS ARE ACTUALLY WILD

Fair point to make - JDG as a whole is quite weak and I do remember stew on RA being an absolute beast. If he can unlock that sort of peak performance like free1ng is doing right now on DRX, by all means, T1 stew can cook.

Carpe's a capable player, but I hate how he forgets that he is the solo smokes for the team so he cannot be dying first. His survivability must be better. Buzz kinda fell flat after the lead was lost. Meteor doesn't feel quite the same - he has good moments and then goes missing for the next rounds.

Definitely agree that in certain instances, they definitely respond too passively. They misread a lot of how they should play and it applies zero pressure to the enemies. I wish that they had better plans on attack since they really let things slip too quickly. They need to bait util from the enemies a lot more too. Too many times that they try to accelerate against Tejo rockets, Breach stun, Raze nade, etc. Also breaking Vyse util is so key. Makes the B-site a lot more open.

TL vs EDG on Split was an absolute barn-burner. Amazing start to the event. DRX showed some amazing plays against SEN - free1ng and hyunmin had most of the casters and watchparties in awe. T1 vs VIT was a battle of superteams and looked amazing in the first half of Fracture. Though things slipped away. And I will give you that G2 vs TE is definitely the biggest gap in match-up, but Trace are still fairly good.

Honestly, Stew would be a nice addition, but he feels like he has fallen off since joining JDG. 6-man roster is still weird and I genuinely wonder why they switch in and out between carpe and Sylvan. I will say that there are greater issues that came from the T1 match.

The big one being carpe died first 3 times on attack meaning that 3 rounds were basically lost almost instantly since it's so difficult to open up Fracture without smokes. He did well on defence, but for some reason there were huge breakdowns on the attempt to enter site.

Another issue is that they have weirdly inaccurate reads - they hear spike tap, smoke off halls and flood from drop towards the smoke rather than towards the spike-planter. Derke got such a free ace because T1 decided to ignore the spike tap they heard.

And lastly, they really struggled to push off the operator holds with util pressure. They should have really tried to bait out any inkling of Derke's presence and rotated off of that information to pull the map because they kept hitting not only Derke's op, but the stacked site. They didn't stick together too well when fighting the retakes and it all felt very messy. T1 really threw Fracture which would have been a great map to steal because they broke down mentally and only read short-term.

Try to bait harder next time please and thank you

If this is your reaction to someone valuing Jenn as a translator, do not go into any VCT stream chat.

After today, the comment is a bit more justified. He had a stinker.

What did kamyk do? I understand the kamo drama, but kamyk is a great player and probably the most impactful behind Keiko to get TL to a grand final

Leo is gonna wake up to see Bangkok highlights and go berserk in the second half of the season.

Nah, Primmie is best in active engagements rather than passively holding the site. His peeks, aim and movement as a whole is really good. He was frying on Clove multiple times and Clove is the most duelist-like smokes agent. So why not let him play on duelist as a whole?

Big true. EMEA is broken up into smaller subregions for Tier 2 and it's filled with good players who all want to make it to Tier 1. And then you get the best from each subregion competing.

I just want Killua to maintain Breach and Vyse. He was so good on these agents that you would fumble to swap his role when he is proven to be a great flash-init or flash-based player.

The take is pretty bad given that it is just stating the obvious. You're naturally gonna watch the matches with the team you support. Tarik is incentivised to watch Cubert, but that's fair grounds given he is literally an employee to Sentinels.

Sure it would help to grow Tier 2 by giving everyone an equal pegging in terms of watchparties, but every team gets broadcasted by the Valorant channels anyway. The whole narrative of "support Valorant" is kind of stale and narrowminded if you take into account that this is not applied for traditional sports. If I was an Arsenal fan, I'm not gonna watch Brentford FC play unless they're playing Arsenal. This is the proportionality of representation in sports. You're as popular as you market your brand and players.

Now as for digging up tweets from 2022, that feels a little snaky. I don't know if Madi was dating Icy back in 2022, but these definitely are not "tea" or "messy" unless it's fact that she was dating Icy at the time.

As a last point, she was definitely baiting for responses in her replies with comments like "who is 'he'?" and "is it not obvious?" which only riles people up because she is hard-indirecting at Tarik.

So MinigodCS is definitely a good guy to check out. He's got his Youtube channel, Twitter and a lot of Aimlabs routines you can pick from. Primmie and Something basically spammed deathmatch, ranked and played the game to get an understanding of crosshair placement in all the maps.

Aimlabs/Kovaaks will always be nice to refine your mechanics in a broad sense, but deathmatch is so crucial to let your brain understand where people peek from and where to place your crosshair.

The additional tip is that you need to make conscious decisions and not autopilot. When you autopilot, your crosshair will drift and you might make your next gunfight a losing one.

I mean, South Asian cuisine typically uses Thai chilli peppers which are pretty spicy - in fact some of the spiciest dishes come from South Asian cuisine. My family is Bangladeshi so we use Thai chilli peppers, Naga chilli and other peppers often in our food and it definitely adds heat. Most pepper spice is just heat with not as much flavour profile. There's definitely regions in South Asia which use milder flavours, but they will still use a lot of aromatics like cardamom, garam masala, etc. But Japanese food is for the most part not spicy compared to other regions like South Asia and Southeast Asia.

But I will stand my ground in that I did not say Japanese food lacks seasoning. I just said the flavours are milder. You can still taste the food and I actually enjoy Japanese food a lot more now because I appreciate those more delicate flavours and the umami profile. South Asian cuisine is dense with spice since you use multiple pungent spices as well as chilli peppers in a lot of the cuisine. Japanese food is seasoned, but the flavours are definitely milder and more oriented towards salty, sweet, umami.

Edit: I added the last question as a bit of good faith in this post because it will at least be educational to tell what sort of dishes which foreigners might not know about should try to get a better understanding of Japanese flavour profiles and the cuisine in a broader sense.

If you took the time to read my post properly I said in regards to the ramen's meat being underseasoned was just my personal experience. I didn't say that Japanese food lacks seasoning, but by comparison to South Asian cuisine where the seasonings are more pungent, aromatic and spice-oriented, Japanese flavours are a lot milder and delicate. Obviously, there is a whole world of cuisine to try if you go to Japan which the original poster is probably missing out if all he knows is ramen, cheesecake and sushi.

I have tried quite a few different Japanese foods and even stuff seasoned or made with togarashi is milder compared to some South Asian cuisines. It's mainly down to the quantity of the spices involved because I know with confidence that when South Asian and Southeast Asian food claims it is spicy, they are not joking. Chilli peppers are tossed in like they are tomatoes. To give a rough comparison from my own experience, paprika which is a common eastern European seasoning is not that spicy to me and even underwhelming.

As a last point seeing as you have the Japanese flag, do you have any dishes, snacks or other cuisine items you would recommend foreigners to try for a better understanding of Japanese cuisine?

Reduxx has all the hype going for him because he was decent enough on Oxygen and he's a young buck who can't play until he turns 18 in April. He's got the can-do attitude since he is grinding with Cubert Academy whilst he waits to play for Tier 1.

Verno has always felt a little more subdued in vibe. He feels more reserved which is fine, but that could have strained some of the chemistry. He definitely grinds ranked, but in terms of practice, there is the scrims, VOD review, strategy building which he has to be engaged for. Now, none of us are privy to that info, but it could be the case that this was what he was missing in terms of practice. We will never know fully because it's fairly confidential.

The most difficult decisions require the strongest of wills. I enjoy Mystbloom a lot for the finisher noise. Neofrontier is really nice for the reload animation, colours and style. Primordium has amazing shooting sound for a phantom. Personally, I would say Neofrontier because you can revert it to Level 3 for a nice lowkey skin and then Level 4 if you like the finisher, colours, etc.

Curveball, recon phantom and oni phantom are cheaper if you want two skins which are very popular and versatile.

Imperial Valkyries might not be winning, but they are getting closer to the male competition as seen when they went to overtime against FURIA. Naturally these feeder projects are gonna be very slow in terms of progression, but the fact that that female roster is getting a chance on stage against Tier 1 competition and putting up a good fight gives hope to the scene. You ask how much longer does it have to be like you're in a rush to see a GC match but it will take as long as it needs or until RIOT sees it as not feasible to maintain.

If we were to look at Valorant, sure, GC on its own is still a far cry from Tier 1/2. However, during the spotlight tournament, there were definitely some GC players who could shoot back very well. GC started in 2021 and the first championship was in late 2022 so it wasn't exactly the start of Valorant. In addition, this single tournament was 8-teams until this passing year which had 10 teams because the competition pool is still small. It's always gonna be more difficult to improve if the quality of your competition is limited and they're not incentivised to do better. EMEA GC at least has a good level of competition due to the amount of proper orgs invested into it. NA GC on the other hand suffers from only having at max 3 teams and one of those is a super-dominant team which is multiple steps ahead of the competition.

Lastly, there is a whole conversation that could be had about the scrim opportunities GC teams get which they usually do not get that much of. They don't practice against good competition and thus their strats are not as refined or deepened. You can compare this to how recently teams with academy rosters are improving a lot more because they have a consistent scrim partner that they can fully deepen their strats with. As a result, the main team and academy team prosper to do better in their leagues. If GC teams had the opportunity to scrim their Tier 1/2 counterpart, we would see a huge jump in quality, but right now, they are perceived as not worth it.

To summarise that last point for you since I know you're gonna cry about me giving you a proper response, GC players definitely need to improve their mechanics and grind ranked to be on par with Tier 1/2 at the most foundational level of the game. Then they will get the scrims to improve strategy so that they can compete properly. How long that will take is again up to the players and Riot.

Didn't know you were Nostradamus to predict the future with factual certainty. I'll be very real with you in that GC players in the vast majority case have a long learning curve before they can get to Tier 1. I've seen some "GC" players who peaked Ascendant or low Immortal and that will always be a far cry from Tier 1/2 where Radiant 1000+ RR beasts are regularly featured. It's gonna take a while, but GC players will get more and more competitive over time increasing their average skill closer to Tier 2. It might take a decade if gets there since CS has been out for well over that and we are now seeing a women's team (Imperial) giving the men's teams a run for their money and impressing with their mechanics.

Likewise will go for GC: they just need a push to work harder, grind longer and reach for higher heights if they dream to make Valorant more of a career than a pastime activity. Furthermore, GC is a pipeline route to feed female and marginalised gender talent into Tier 2 because it is often more difficult for them to get there given the abuse they typically go through in ranked that deters them from going further.

I hope you enjoy this rebuttal to your "facts" and you can at least make some deeper claims than low-hanging bait.

Spice is literally a trigger response of pain. It definitely has a masochistic quality to it. And I proudly represent it since I love spice.

That ending really curveballed any opportunity to discuss things properly but I always like to waffle on these topics. Japanese food is a lot more mild and intimate in flavour profiles. I will say this now that I much prefer spicy food or foods that have some deep level of seasoning like a mixed masala. However, this isn't to say that Japanese food tastes bad to me. It's just a lot more mild in flavour than what I am used to.

I will say that if you haven't had authentic food in Japan then you haven't fully experienced the quality of Japan's food - their fish is especially high quality and any other foreign sushi by comparison feels like a cheap imitation. Unagi or eel meat is among the best due to it being refreshing and filling at the same time - it is expensive in comparison to other fish or meat. The ramen and udon is very hit and miss. I personally find the meat in ramen is underseasoned and has a mushy texture rather than a nice bite, but that is just a small sample of my personal experience. As for "spicy food", Japan is not known for spicy food. Japanese spice tolerance is among the lowest and you might prefer Korean food given that they mess around with chilli spice more.

Now, you're entitled to your opinion, but to flame people for liking Japanese food is a bit weird. I think it's definitely an acquired taste if you're coming from heavily seasoned cuisine. Don't get it twisted because spice is life to me. But sometimes you got to roll back your palate to enjoy some of the intimate flavours of food. Spice tolerance aside, there are flavours you might be missing because you're just searching for some kick from masala or chilli peppers.

Side note, we all lack vitamins in some capacity so it's not even the dig you think it is. I know I take Vitamin D3+K2, C and Zinc supplements and it has helped me quite a bit.

HERE COMES THE D00M

Chicken and potato curry with rice.

I would say if the maps are like 13-6 to 13-0, then it is a stomp. However, rounds never tell the full story since you can get a lot of very close, entertaining rounds in some of these stomps. And likewise, you can get some really boring, ugly Valorant in close matches. I will say that if you do get a barn-burner of an overtime, you're usually winning as the viewer.

I know people will complain about 2.0 bundle, Prelude-style finisher, but I think this Neptune Phantom is honestly more fitting than Neptune Vandal. Plus the melee has a unique quirkiness to it

Give her hot chocolate and then the moment she has cream on her upper lip, call her Sideshow.

I'll be honest. Neon in 2022 was a much weaker form of Jett and Raze. The strafing speed was slower and the energy recharge was a whole minute to get back to full. She was usable in certain scenarios such as Victor on Haven for Optic and F0rsaken on Fracture for PRX. But she was a far cry from game-shifting due to her limited usability throughout the round.

Yoru is a high-floor and high-ceiling agent. At best, Yoru can do very impressive amounts of pressure and distraction. However, if someone were not so experienced or comfortable on Yoru then he looks like a troll pick. I still think there are ways you can play Yoru that the pro play is not considering because it requires a long-call plan which for the most part in pro-play is not so viable. I'm very glad Yoru is becoming more and more viable and meta for pro-play since he is such a fun agent.

It's still rumours so surely they will find some sort of solution. I can definitely see him going to M8s or another EMEA team if they need a flex. I just think that they need to rework on how everybody in that LEV team plays. Demon1 is still not a first-contact duelist.

Valynshallah is kinda tough though. Could have done Valynt or Valint if you wanted to flame.

True, ain't nothing like your Jett or other duelist entering 3rd, last or worse going on a random lurk mid when they could be fighting to enter site. I see what your saying though since in pro-play, Jett has very limited map options. At best, she can play on Abyss, Ascent, Icebox, Breeze, Haven, Pearl and Split. But then we have seen new metas revolving around Yoru on Split, Abyss and Pearl; Neon in Pearl, Lotus, Sunset, Fracture and Haven; Iso in Haven and then Raze fits in for Bind, Sunset, Fracture, Lotus and Split. Pro-play is evolving and using so many new comp combos that it's refreshing after seeing Raze and Jett dominate for so long.

In terms of ranked, you can feasibly play a lot of agents which aren't optimal for a map until a certain skill level. I believe it was Sliggy who said you can get to Ascendant or even Immortal off of aim alone. You will definitely see in higher ranks that players pick agents closer to what the meta demands, but you can get away with comfort picks on most maps for a majority case of ranked games.

There are several issues looming around PRX. They seem a little less creative now so they are easier to read from enemy teams. Their discipline is really bad in the worst of times. They do not know how to deal with anti-ecos so they get thriftied or lose out big economically. Their mental is just genuinely the most bipolar since they can be truly impossible to play against like Boostio said after VCT Champs 2023 upper final, but they can completely implode once they are read. They lack a proper voice to take lead since they prefer the hivemind calls and it is tough to find the grit to fight back when you don't have a leader to set the example of what you should do round-to-round.

Not really. Jett for the longest time has had some of the best entry util given how fast she can dash in. She is useful to this day because her dash is a great bailout tool like the Neon sprint/slide or Reyna dismiss whilst also being a great space-opening tool because you create an amazing distraction when you cloudburst + dash.

Neon was genuinely broken pre-nerf. I'll give you a timeline of her changes.

8.11: Neon had a balance/nerf to her concuss (2 charges down to 1, but the wind-up is faster and the stun lasts longer), a buff to her sprint where she can strafe at max-speed (6.73m/s to 9.11m/s), a buff to her slide (2 charges up from 1 with no movement error whilst sliding and her weapon instantly comes out), her fast-lane wall was shortened in duration but dissipates longer, and last but certainly not least her energy was buffed from 60s recharge up to 20s recharge (LITERALLY 3x FASTER).

To comment on these buffs, she basically became Octane from Apex Legends where she can basically be at top-speeds and shoot back with 2 bailouts. More importantly, the buff to her recharge is the most key aspect to her kit. She can run around for more time in the round. But people are crying because she had her slide reverted a bit.

9.11: Her slide went down to 1 charge, crouching-accuracy if you were to shoot and slide, ultimate costs more and lasts 10s instead of 20s. All fair buffs considering her ultimate recharges her energy back to full when you hit the ult-button, she gains another slide off of it and it is aimbot so you only get punished if you have bad aim/tracking. Not to mention that her energy recharges back to full after each kill. So by halving the time her ult lasts, it forces players to be more considerate and tactical with the ult rather than hit it and oppress a round like it's nothing. Her energy recharge has remained the same and she is still fairly difficult to deal with when you're up against a skilled Neon.

Only if he goes to a different team in a different league and rips it up

Pacific maybe Snappy and exa

Most diverse in NA since... noot noot. American, Korean, Mexican, Icelandic and Fijian. But I doubt that they were the nationalities they put on VLR since mili was apparently Norwegian on Liquipedia.

IGL/Sentinel: Nats
Duelist: Something
Flex: Chronicle
Scan Init: Trexx
Smokes: Suygetsu

Cloud is a really good scan initiator but I definitely prefer trexx. Sheydos used to be such a beast - definitely would have picked him for initiator in his Gambit days. Shao would be the go-to smokes, but Suygetsu has greater firepower in my opinion and he has shown that he can be quite good on smokes. Kr1stal is another pretty good IGL/scan initiator. Rarga and Jemkin are amazing duelists, but Something feels slightly ahead.

The whole noot noot situation felt really poor on Riot's end. Upholding integrity should be first and foremost in Valorant. Letting a cheater play and eliminate teams whilst they're ban evading is just so wrong. And the fact that the identification system is still so loose just feels like an opening for players to give GC a shot so they can have a little platform in a welcoming community who won't question some of the things happening.

FlyQuest Red is a legit org so Bob probably plays for them to get contracted pay. BlueOtter is a "professional" challengers team which probably means that they're good enough for VCL, but aren't big enough to pay the players properly. Bob probably sees FlyQuest Red as being a more viable future since the team could be the best in NA with SR out of the picture. But I still see VCL as a better challenge for any player given the quality of players is much higher.

I noticed that as well the other day. NA game changers sometimes feels like a joke because of this and the fact that players can put a fake full name up, no image of themselves and a completely random nationality to hide their identity. I get some game changer players aren't comfortable being recognised, but if you're serious about playing Valorant professionally in any capacity, you should be ready to put yourself out there.

Phantom: Mystbloom
Vandal: Sentinels of Light

I mean, 2021-2022 was when PRX were starting to get noticed. There wasn't much expectation since Malaysia/Singapore/Indonesia never really had great prominence and success on the esports stage. And Valorant esports was still heavily growing and W-gaming was a lot more standout. Nowadays, W-gaming is easily countered by strategic play which most teams are adopting. Everyone is getting better at the game in both mechanics and game-sense so the brand is again easily punished.

I feel like aggressive playstyles can work but they need to be tempered with discipline and knowing when to aggress. If PRX were a football team, they would be playing high-press. But it doesn't work to always play that since you might get caught off guard by someone who is actually good or strategies that go around all of that aggression.

Barbados - Trident and colour contrast between blue and yellow is nice.
Mozambique - Repping the AK
North Macedonia - Kind of a nice sun pattern
Honourable Mentions: Mexico, Brazil and Switzerland is a big plus.

I could see your point until Leo. Literally won 2/3 international events in 2023 and was within Top 4 for Champs of that year. Not the best example to support your case since he was nearly 3 for 3 on internationals. Other than that, I agree since initiators benefit from setting up the team the most. However, in the worst case scenario when your team or strategy book is not working, you need the firepower to take over when someone else is simply not hitting their shots. It's why Leo is arguably an anomaly since he has some of the best util and can frag hard if need be.

Also, I know this is more of a nitpick, but it feels weird saying JonahP will win more than trent when they're on the same team. Maybe if they go separate ways who knows since it definitely requires a good system to help enable all of the actions in a round to work - fragging, setting up the frags, etc.

To be fairly honest, the best teams that win are the ones who have a system that works for all the players. Initiators are just part of that in a big way, but the system needs all parts working. You can't have amazing initiator util if your duelist is not playing off of it properly or dies before you can even let him use it properly.

Bang won VCT Americas Stage 1

Kinda wild how some of the best players have some level of Thai heritage. Leo and Keiko being Thai and having cracked aim as well as pretty good game sense is cool. There must be something about being Thai that makes you a great Valorant player. /j

Who's killing time and where can I meet her?

Damn, who hurt you?

Nats and Kamyk are really good too, but Keiko has been hitting a new level of form that is putting him just behind Derke in the stats. TL looked really bad at the beginning especially with their Fracture no-duelist comp, but they are looking better each match.