Because it's a reference to the real life el classico (a football match between Real Madrid and Barcelona)

Yeah, they played really well individually and as a team.
Deserved to win today.

I would say it's more of a meteoric rise.

A Cinderella run is more related to the success of a team, with an underdog team defying expectations.
You can't really call prx an underdog team in the Pacific league.

So does that mean Mako is the Harry Kane of valorant?

Why didn't you wait a few hours until all the leagues concluded to make this post?
The stats will vary come the end of the day.

The value in reyna is the ability to create overwhelming floods, the eye creates an impactful distraction that needs to be addressed.

I think only a team like paper rex could pull it off due to how fast their playstyle is.
I can't say for certain if it's strong or not but Masters Tokyo will provide a good opportunity to see how successful it is.
Anti-stratting might be a big issue.. but we will wait and see.

It's a copypasta, so I don't think he's being serious.

The GSL groups will be randomly drawn, with each of the groups containing one team per region (Americas, EMEA, Pacific, and China).
I know you've made it random but you may aswell make the groups feasible.

Shorty nerf is huge.
Doubled the price while decreasing the a lot of the attributes.

I would predict that its part of the Emergency Roster Lock Exception (4.1.8 in the VCT23 Roster Construction Rules), caused by what happened with Zeek.

It's at the League sole discretion so I doubt other teams will get to take advantage, would be a case by case basis.

Pearl.
They are 6-0 on pearl, with a 66% atk round win-rate and a 54% defence round win-rate.
Pearl results in Americas League:
13-11 vs NRG
13-11 vs FURIA
13-4 vs Sentinels
13-4 vs MIBR
13-10 vs EG
20-18 vs FURIA

Championship Sunday I guess.
It's fun to have all the leagues synced together.

Americas: crazy drama accusing teams of leaking scrims, shit talking etc

Emea: https://twitter.com/nocontexesports/status/1661792389957074946?s=20

It's crazy to think about considering how good they (NRG and C9) were for the majority of the regular season.

Though EG would 100% deserve it based on how they've played these last two games.

I would love to watch an EG versus NRG rematch, especially after what happened yesterday.

Mena average viewers for split 2:
Levant and North Africa: 691
GCC and Iraq: 494

Mena peak viewers for split 2:
Levant and North Africa: 2,058
GCC and Iraq: 1,486

Source: escharts.com

Sadly, MENA as a region is not popular enough to warrant having a slot in franchising.

You are a weird individual.

Sadly, people will hate boaster no matter what.
If he wins with this super team people will say "he's being carried" etc
If he loses with this super team people will say "fraud" or that a different igl would do better.

Just looking at his achievements you can't argue he's not a top igl.
He's one of the few igls to remain at the top level since the beginning of the game.

Boaster and mini have created one of the best coaching/igl setups in all of valorant, there was no reason to change that going into 2023.
Fnatic have remained a consistent contender whilst chopping and changing their roster throughout the years, with Boaster and Mini being a core part of the reason why.

I know he's too young but in the future Neon would be perfect.
He's 15 currently playing for Leviatan academy, they have been dominating t3 latam tournaments.
It's going to be super interesting to see how he develops.

https://twitter.com/neonnnval/status/1652671130681978880?s=20

Furia won map 1.

Second map Pearl.

• Lev: 20
• Furia: 18

Round 26: 3v5 retake to save furia
Furia timeout called.
Round 27: Good retake and trading secure Lev the round.
Round 28: Strong anchoring by mazin, with a 3k to win the round.
Leviatan timeout called.
Round 29: Kingg sneaks onto site, denies the plant and gets a 3k.
Round 30: Furia get a few picks early resulting in a comfortable 5v3 scenario that they win. OT continues
Round 31: Mazin with a collat shorty double kill in a 1v2!!
Round 32: What a round from Taco. A 4k from him which saves Leviatan.
Round 33: A fast B hit from Furia which gets Furia to match point.
Round 34: A crazy early round brawl, which allows lev to get the plant 3v2. Furia turn it around for a 2v1 but lev clutch the round regardless.
Round 35: Another match point for Furia.
Round 36: Early trades in the round results in a 4v4, Furia gamble 3 towards A but Leviatan goes B. Unsuccesful retake.. another ot.
Round 37: Taco 4k with the OP, another match point for Lev.
Round 38: Leviatan close the game. Forcing a map 3.

This is now the Longest VCT Americas match.

I'm not going to do map 3 this took way too long.

In a recent video by Faze Rain he went over the costs and revenues produced by Faze's esports teams.
This video was released due to an ongoing feud between Faze Rain and Faze Clan itself, mainly over the way the company has been ran recently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDbc7AICIV0
In the video he appears to have a notebook containing the costs and revenue for each of Faze's esports divisions.

According to Rain both the GC and main valorant rosters generate 0$ in revenue.
With the gamechangers roster losing $94,000 a month and the main roster losing $224,000 a month.
That a combined $319,000 lost each month for Valorant alone.

I don't know if we can confirm if all the data is accurate, this video may just be a way to "get back at Faze clan" but if there is truth in what he is saying it's worrying.

10 team VCT Jetts:

1. Derke
2. Aspas
3. Leaf
4. Sayf
5. Something
6. Cned
7. Sayaplayer
8. Ardiis
9. qw1
10. demon1

S tier: 1st-4th
A TIER: 5th-8th
B TIER: 9th+

Ardiis is player who could rise a few places post-playoffs.
Nrg have made him flex around a lot this season but he's looked great the past few games on the jett.

Foxy9 is a player I'm unsure about right now, it's obvious he has a high ceiling but I'm yet to see him hit it consistently.
It will be easier to properly assess him after watching him at Masters Tokyo, he's another player who could rise tremendously.

Honestly it just seems like Rebels trying to save money, or it just being easy to promote from within.

The initial split 2 roster of: vo0kashu, humanz, gatsh, rexs ,phardon was not working.
Before vo0kashu left they were 2-7 in the split.

Then hastack started playing, who acted liked a 6th man for the team in the past, instead of vo0kashu.
With hastack playing they lost 4 games out of 4.

They have now been playing with Rebels GC players for the last 4 games.
Winning 1 and losing 3.
devilasxa playing 3 of the games (winning 1), didii playing 1 game so far.

It seems like any hope to make ascension was already over by the time vo0kashu was removed.
I don't think you can pin the "failure" of the team on 1 player, sometimes things just don't work out.

MENA is split into two regions, "GCC & iraq" and "Levant & North Africa".
To decide which teams make the ascension tournament the top two teams from each of the two regions will play in a mini tournament.

The Levant & North Africa points rankings, which is based on points accumulated during both splits, had Team RA'AD in first with GEEKAY and NASR tied for second place both on 300 points.

This game was used as the tiebreaker to decide which of the two teams would progress to the MENA Lan finals

Their coach just clutched a game by knifing someone.
I think that is worth celebrating.

Did rglmeister just smoke off his own team?

Only reason I'm not going to put Mako in is based on what his team achieved that year.
I feel like only making 2/3 of the international events and not having a deep run in any of them dampens his performances quite alot.

Controller/IGL: redgar
Duelist: cned
Initiator: Shahzam
Flex: Chronicle
Sentinel: Nats

Shahzam actually had a really good year, featuring in every international event whilst putting up good numbers.
Duelist is the hardest role, there were a lot of crazy performances that year.
Redgar was the best igl that year in my opinion. Though each player on gambit were flexing roles so much.
Nats, undisputed best sentinel player that year.
Chronicle another player with a fantastic year.

I think people like to root for underdogs, watching teams have a miracle run is always fascinating.
The only issue is if becomes too much of a regular occurrence.
Having teams that can make the latter stages of tournaments regularly is good for creating rivalries and storylines.

I like to use the David versus Goliath analogy for these cases, an underdog vs an established powerhouse.
People would like to watch a "David vs Goliath", which in this case would be Gamer legion vs Vitality.
They would also like to watch two Goliaths facing off, but to have a final with two "Davids" is not as interesting.

I haven't been watching Velocity's games but their roster decisions seem strange.
They have a 6 man roster and seem to be chopping and changing a lot.

For the group stage of split 1 they went 4-0 (8-0 in maps) with the starting 5 of: ec1s, deathmaker, doma, helfff and excali.
That was the only time they played with that 5 despite it being successful.
Their record with any other combination of players is: 1 win and 6 losses.

I believe some of the roster changes were due to outside factors but that doesn't cover all decisions.

Nope absolutely nothing.
Their placement is only dependent on 100t's result versus mibr
If 100t win, Leviatan place 5th.
If 100t lose, Leviatan place 4th.

Yeah, I was thinking there was some possibility Keznit could go to EMEA.
With multiple spanish speaking orgs, importing a strong spanish speaking duelist player could be good for the branding and for the competitiveness.

I'm not sure how viable a full spanish (emea + keznit) team would be but it could be an interesting project.

Start Date: 15th July
End Date: 23rd of July

This should be the positions that all teams can theoretically place:
Loud: 1st/2nd
C9: 1st/2nd
NRG: 3rd
100t: 4TH/8TH
LEV: 4TH/5TH
FURIA: 5TH/6TH
EG: 6TH/7TH
SEN: 7th/8TH
MIBR: 9TH
KRU: 10TH

Teams confirmed for playoffs:
Top 2 seeds: c9 and loud
3rd: NRG
4th-6th: Furia and Lev

Potential playoff candidates: 100T or EG

Let me know if anything is wrong, it's a bit complicated.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe:

Confirmed teams regardless of any results:
Loud
C9
NRG
LEV
FURIA

If 100t win: 100t qualify
If 100t lose: Eg qualify

These are the VCT tiebreakers:

2-way tie

1. Head-to-head Match Score

3-way tie

1. Head-to-head Match Series
   • Teams with two matchup head-to-head advantage automatically receives first of the group. Tie-breakers for the remaining two teams are determined using the above head-to-head tiebreaker process.
   • If no team has a two matchup head-to-head advantage (all Teams are 1-1 head-to-head), then proceed to next step of the 3-way tie-breaker process.
2. Map differential
3. Round differential
4. Tiebreaker Bo1 match

4+-way tie

1. Map differential
2. Round differential
3. Map differential among the tied teams
4. Round differential among the tied teams
   • If ties reduced to less than 3 teams after this process, tiebreakers for respective number of teams must be used to break ties among them.

if both EG and 100t win, Leviatán win the three way tie breaker between furia and sentinels (all teams would be 4-5)
This is because all three teams are 1-1 head-to-head, which means it goes to map differential and Leviatan has the best map differential.
Lev: 11-11 (worst case)
Furia: 11-12
Sentinels: 10-12

That's a great question.
I'd expect there would be a tiebreaker of some sought, though I haven't found the definitive answer.

I've seen some people speculating that it would be the team that came into Masters with the lower seed would go to the lcq, take that with a pinch of salt though.

The top 3 teams best performing teams at masters for each region also go to Champions.
So for Americas and Pacific, the teams that go to masters also go to Champions.

Each franchised league then gets 1 lcq slot for champions.
However the region which wins masters gets an additional slot.

There are also regular monthly t2 circuits in EMEA, just because it's not on VLR does not mean it doesn't exist.
There's Project V for Dach players, Birds of Prey that's now transitioned into a tournament for northern players.
The REBELS series for Turkish players and a few more tournaments that exist.

I don't understand your point about florescent?
I claimed there weren't that many strong teams outside of the "Big 8" but there are some talented individuals still unsigned.
I mean she was also on a top 5 North American game changers team in 2022 anyway, at least this is backed up by circuit points.

The way the EMEA game changers system is setup is helping the scene so much.
The new format is gaining more interest from organisations, having a short regular season with more games is great.

I'm just simply comparing the amount of organisations involved in each region.
A large amount of organisations willing to support GC players will always help to improve the competition.

I've watched some NA game changers games, yes you have your juggernauts like v1, xset, sr, complexity.
However, outside of the "big 8" there's a handful of interesting players but not too much else.

Emea is heavily invested into their GC scene, there are so many organisation involved already.
There is even a tier 2 EMEA GC scene that's forming under the new tier 1 scene.

If anything the EMEA game changers scene is the healthiest right now.
You could argue that version1 might be the best game changers team but that's not a guarantee.

You can't compare the Turkish talent pool to the South Asian one.
Turkiye is one of the strongest scenes globally, with multiple strong teams.
Turkey itself has had a team and multiple players to grace the international stage.

Controversial ranking.
I can't see EG winning a h2h versus Furia or 100t.

Both Victor and ardiis look at their best on duelist imo.
I'm happy NRG has switched their split comp to the double dive, it also seems to be working.

This is Palorant.

He's 18, but yeah incredible performance by him.

Okay, I know of Saadhak.
but is there any strong Brazilian igl's outside of Saadhak, since Brazil has 3 slots in franchising.

It's hard to understand who is the best igl without watching a larger amount of games.

So if anyone has a good understanding of Brazil and it's scene..
Who would you say is the best Brazilian igl?

Edit: Doesn't have to be "Brazilian" but a player that could lead a Brazilian franchised team.

Not right now.
They have a head to head advantage vs EG which is quite useful.

This tweet explains it the best: https://twitter.com/willminder/status/1656189758601568259