yep, and many of these kills the opponent is stunned, flashed, behind a smoke, scanned by sova/fade/cypher or something similar. if i spend 40% of each round using support utility for my duelist then of course they will have better k/d. does that mean he is having more game impact? maybe, maybe not. if i don't use my flashes for him then he has worse k/d while mine will get better because i take more fights myself

damage is a great indicator of value but it's too limiting to be considered as the only thing

yeah that makes a lot of sense and im not saying people should ignore k/d or ACS but it bothers me when that's the only thing they consider. as you say it's important to be a complete player which means more than just getting high frags - not to mention it would be 10x harder for the aspas, texture, zekken of vct to get those frags without the supportive util and the calls

this may well be a high number but as an example if oxy has 25 kills and 10 of those are on blinded or stunned opponents from xeppa's util that is equally important impact from xeppa that wont net him any k/d, oxy just claimed free kills. xeppa himself needs to be able to shoot of course and i agree that having better mechanics opens more doors for you in terms of possibilities but nobody will credit xeppa for giving oxy literal free kills and they will 100% credit oxy for getting blind/stun kills. Oxy is fantastic dont get me wrong but using only k/d as a metric for player skill is so biased in favour of certain roles and basically gives everyon a free license to dump on players who enable those guys to get the kills in the first place

Not sure who said the quote in your title but I think it's to do with demon1 having far fewer average first engagements than aspas - even when both being jett/entry players - specifically the demon1 from EG. I assume the person also assumed demon1 was coming in to replace aspas as primary duelist and not to replace mazino as you've said. I guess we'll have to see who they get as their 5th guy if aspas really does leave or even what happens if he stays. not sure what the lev roster will be

On NRG they tried to make demon1 play hard entry and it failed miserably. On EG it was actually jaw and boostio who helped out a bunch taking first engagements and helping create space (demon1 did it too of course)

Aspas style is much more aggressive compared to demon1 so I assume that's what whoever said your thread title is referring to. But this is only relevant if aspas leaves which would mean he isnt just coming in to replace mazino

Someone made a great video about all of this on this very topic of demon1 on EG vs NRG and compared him with LOUD aspas but i cant remember the video rn

then everyone would just play duelist because that's the easiest way to get ACS and have a good game. supportive util is necessary in all/most capacities (smokes, flash, recon, senti, heal, walls, etc)

If I skye flash for my raze to get a kill on a guy who is full blind he gets (almost) all the ACS for a literal free kill. does that mean he was better than me in that play? then i should pick jett instead and we both just rush the guy no flash and take the fight for ACS

the fact someone immediately tried to downvote this is hilarious to me

maybe in pro-play things are different but as far as ranked goes far more people are held back by things that fall into "game sense" (util usage, timings, awareness, etc) compared to simple aim diff - at least after you get out of silver/gold level. getting to gold maybe more mechs. so im not sure this is really true it's a lot more than just learning lineups

if you think this is incorrect look at almost any coaching vod (many quality valorant coaches) for players above gold/plat they aren't talking much about aim trainers

maybe once you reach semi-pro level and want to become a top tier pro the balance changes again back into aim being harder i can't say since im clearly not a pro player but i think everyone just hyper focuses on aim both when watching pro and also when playing themselves because it's simply the easiest thing to see and attach emotion to

i died -> aim diff

much easier than asking yourself why you were standing there in the first place or why you didnt ask for teammate flash/smoke to help or anything at all

doesn't he? i've barely seen any sen fans talk poorly of him while sacy you could see hate everywhere

I'm sure most people realise there are a lot of other ways to impact the game other than just being the topfrag on the server but why is it that everyone is so quick to attack players who aren't high fraggers? Sure if someone is consistently like double negative that is probably too far over the line fair enough but most guys arent

Particularly players who play flash initiator or flex roles as the most notable and easy examples. IGLs seem to get a free pass most of the time except maybe boaster? which is funny because he's one of the most winning players in valorant but yeah fair enough his recent stats have been too low to be made up for with great IGLing (compared to other winning teams - they still are a great team)

basically everyone who has ever been asked has said xeppa is a fantastic teammate and yet half the fans just think he's terrible. i guess they forgot C9 were actually one of the best americas teams both franchise years domestically and looked very promising too

Sacy, lakia, foxy9, mindfreak, c0m, and so many others. Zellsis seems to get a free pass because of his great comms and vibes (valid) but why does nobody else?

Nobody cares that demon1 is a notoriously quiet bad communicator but everyone cares when c0m has a negative k/d. They both won champs but one of them had a pretty great 2nd season after EG and the other didn't - which was that again? Right it was the vibes/comms guy not the MVP. no hate on demon1 or anything just serves as a useful example. Sacy won madrid and champs, lakia won APAC's first international but we're all so certain they were the problems?

DRX looked great towards the end of last season with beyn + foxy + flashback all in the roster and now they drop half the guys including the promising newer guys - particularly beyn imo who was just incredible and foxy also great adaptable guy who brings great energy

Suddenly dropping them along with buzz seems saddening also for drx fans who were fans of the original roster too.

I think it has much less to do with freeing and hyunmin being perceived as bad and more to do with drx letting go of their promising newer players so easily. How can you believe in the system when every few months people just get thrown out even if they perform well? With so much turnover and lack of consistency it seems hard to believe in DRX as a fan rn

I say this as someone who supported drx all last year after they put foxy9 in the lineup and even more after I saw beyn. they became 2 of my favourite players and suddenly they're gone despite performing well and adapting nicely

Is there a way to pin this for just myself I like to try to keep up and check on roster moves and you're doing a great job of being active and updating stuff

also anyone know of anything about beyn? one of my favourite players last season and honestly insane. maybe gen g? idk what the rumours are

GE were not good but this is really just a scrim not that deep.

Going into 2023 lock in, Lev were said to be stomping everyone in scrims and they didnt even make the playoffs
Optic as I recall were notoriously "bad" in scrims
Also recently didnt some heretics guys say SPG destroyed them in scrims? not that spg are bad but heretics were literally the #2 best team in the world and even EDG didnt "destroy" them

If more of these leaks got out I wouldnt be surprised at all of more tier 2 teams had scrim wins over tier 1 teams

Scrims are practice and experimentation, sometimes you win sometimes you don't either way not that deep really. Not sure what spin's purpose was in leaking this scrim but whatever opinions people have about GE's players last year will only reflect even more on him

alright I had to make an account upon seeing so much stupidity from PRX fans. you guys make me want to stop enjoying PRX games sometimes. He does not "underperform" even if you're short-sighted enough to only think kills = game impact he does just fine most games. Look at their recent loss to DRX and by only looking at kill numbers identify which one is the "underperforming" mindfreak lol

his ACS is generally lower because he plays smokes and lurks on such a hyper aggressive team that very often feasts (kills everyone very quickly) or famines (all die, mindfreak the lurk in 1v3). He plays his role and is also one of the most clutch players in VCT. He executes what needs to get done in his role very well. If you speed up your lurk you get caught, if you don't you run crazy risk of being too slow given how fast PRX play and how much they contest space/take aggressive gunfights. He has a damn hard job and still generally performs very well particularly when the team needs him most. Coldest clutcher on PRX no question

I'm sure you guys are the same ones who only have duelists on your "top 5 players" lists and quite frankly I feel like he only gets this much hate because he isn't one of the more likeable outspoken guys on the roster compared to someone like jingg. I invite you to consider that there are other ways to impact the game other than just getting frags (which he still does reasonably well btw) particularly when your team consists of batshit crazy explosive/fast players

His k/d for this season hovers around 1.00 (+/- tiny bit depending on agent) which isnt even an underperformance at all when you consider his teammates so I genuinely have no idea how people consider him the weak link either even if you're a k/d merchant