LMAO no way
I just cursed OPTIC 100%

How does one engage with Valorant pro scene and proceed to type this out, think to himself "facts" and post it...

To be fair, it is all a matter of preference. There is no recency bias if people say Derrek. If anything, trent has been struggling a little prior to LCQ, while Derrek always delivered when he was called upon. The problem with this comparison is the "kill vs clutches" agenda even you were pushing. It has zero connection with what these 2 have to do in their team environment.

Their style of initiation is different also. Derrek sticks behind to set the team up and is often second to last to be on the site, which leaves him a lot in 1vX or 2vX situations. Trent embodies the role of initiator that goes with his duelist and is the first to trade him, putting him in a position to leave his mark on the scoreboard, more than Derrek, whos kills are momentum shifting.

Either way, these 2 are best in what they do.

My guy said ended the reply like it was an email

Its not hard to rate them, they're fucking amazing lol
But to be fair, they got kicked a spot or two down rn, because they don't have international LAN experience and probably haven't faced juggernauts like FPX yet.

Pulp Fiction

Thanks for pointing out, it was a typographical error

ACTUAL LIST:

that's it

True indeed, one can only speculate.

I was not 100% sure about where to place them. TeNN is a loss, sure, but they probably worked around his absence already. I was just not convinced enough, seeing them kinda crumble during stage 2, yk

And you absolutely missed the point of why it is purposefully renamed like that.

edited, i accidentally deleted it when i was repositioning some teams

 I know a team like OPTIC beats Boom Esports probably 8 out of 10 times, but in the end, it all boils down to fine margins and the current momentum. Do not be shocked if we see another Cinderella story emerge out of the final stage of Champions, because...

ALL TEAMS THAT QUALIFIED ARE S TIER TEAMS.

ALL TEAMS THAT QUALIFIED ARE S TIER TEAMS.

These are the best of the best right now, filtered through multiple regions.

.

Spot on.
And this is so good for the international stage too. Having more and more teams put the reps in on the biggest stage is crucial to an overall improvement of the quality of the game.

They have been improving consistently, and out-strating the teams.
They have hungry young players with a potential out of this world + a proper IGL to discipline them and set them up.
They do not depend on one player to carry to load.

Seems quite enough to me. :)

EXACTLY.
It is almost a butterfly effect where even one slip up in round2 can spiral out of control and show its effects in the later rounds.

TBH, I wanted to place them higher up. I just haven't seen them on the international stage and against teams that have a very specific or unorthodox style of gameplay. But just seeing how well coordinated and structured they are, I can see team causing ruckus on the stage, no doubt.

Team Liquid is a momentum-based team with a LOT of raw firepower.
In essence, you have 5 players who can flip the course of a round and the course of a match in a matter of seconds. If they are getting the outcome they desire with their strats, they can beat anyone, which people often forget.

The least likely scenario is them being the best placed team from EMEA. It is far from impossible tho.

Here is a quick reminder for y'all.

I like seeing people evaluate and try to predict the outcome of the Champions even tho it boils down to biased takes and wishes from fans. But do not overdo it with region slander and toxicity directed towards certain teams. Keep banter and troll tamed to some extent. I know a team like OPTIC beats Boom Esports probably 8 out of 10 times, but in the end, it all boils down to fine margins and the current momentum. Do not be shocked if we see another Cinderella story emerge out of the final stage of Champions, because...

ALL TEAMS THAT QUALIFIED ARE S TIER TEAMS.

These are the best of the best right now, filtered through multiple regions. [To be fair, filtered with less than 100% precision, as we have some more S tier teams missing].
With that being said, here is my attempt of a tier list, featuring teams that qualified for Champions.

SS+ tier [Probable winners]: FunPlus Phoenix; Paper Rex;
SS tier [Strong contenders]: FNATIC; OPTIC Gaming;
S+ tier [Borderline contenders]: 100Thieves; Team Liquid; DRX; Leviatan; LOUD;
S tier [Upset potential]: XSET; EDward Gaming; KRU Esports;
S- tier [Cinderella run potential]: ZETA Division; FURIA; Boom Esports; Xerixia

Feel free to critique and give your own thoughts and hot takes down below.

EMEA

Duelist: FNC Alfajer; Guild sayf; FNC Derke; M3C Chronicle; G2 nukkye

Flex: M3C Sheydos; OGLU Molsi; FPX ardiis; FPX shao

Initiator: Guild Leo; FNC Enzo;

Controller: ACE Link; VIT baddyG; M3C nAts

Sentinel: Guild trexx; FPX SUYGETSU;

Operator: ACE cNed

IGL: FPX ANGE1; FNC Boaster; M3C Redgar

Coach: FPX d00mbr0s; FNC mini; M3C ENGH

Valorantle #15 4/8

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⬛ 🟨⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ 🟩
⬛ 🟨🟩 ⬛⬛🟨 ⬛
🟩 🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩 🟩

https://valorantle.melro5e.com

LOL hint didn't help me much I guess

All I know is that the Reaver gun buddy is the best thing in the bundle lol

i was laughing my ass off, like someone in chat just mentioned it to him after he came back from the bathroom and the man was dunking on people in ranked on Icebox, holding his laugh in and talking about it like it was a regular thing to discuss

everyone involved in the "discussion" was just being purposefully ironic and disgusting

Got shouted out by ozzy when he was playing for XL for one of my takes.
Climbed 10 sub-ranks in one act (from Silver 1 to Diamond 2).
Had a 10 min discussion on stream with 2 more people and Sayf from Guild, about peeing while sitting down.

Luxe Melee

Also, do not believe anyone reporting anything here claiming they have "sources".
The only ones that do, are reputable journalists, working for known publications.

His deal is real and he is generating numbers and a fanbase, regardless of their finish in the LCQ.
Sentinels in general have a PR and Marketing team that knows how to generate and retain an audience. Maybe even better than G2. And this is one hell of a PR move.

EDIT: Shroud is playing very well, do not get me wrong

Damn, chill out Dr Strange

I will have to disagree slightly but either way, gonna respect the take.

chamber on the other hand is the embodiment of high risk high (but inconsistent) reward>

What you have mentioned is an intentional design of the agent. Chamber should put himself in those risky positions, trying to be good for one and disappear. And that is fine if he wasn't able to do this again after 20sec. It gives Chamber the ability to get out of the heated situation unpunished multiple times in a round. Free ability btw.

Headhunter... Buying a bullet of Guardian for 100 is just ridiculous. Price change, all be it small, was more than necessary to balance out the eco rounds and pistol rounds. Pullout speed is also slightly overpowered as it gives him another tool to cover up the sloppiness of player who's being caught out in a bad position.

His trap is fine honestly, given his design. The point of sentinels is to be able to hold/delay multiple chokepoints and Chamber's trap is holding one, while he is needed to put his body on the line to defend another chokepoint with his increased gunplay potential.

But also, Chamber is overrated to a certain extent in pro play. Many teams opted out to play him over other sentinel agents and they are getting punished by non-mirror comps on some maps and it's like no one is paying attention to it lol.

His ult... Free buffed Operator? That slows everyone down in a radius? One of these things should be nerfed to ground tbh.

To be fair, they are top 3 on that team. Will has struggled with consistency and when he's able to efficiently do his duties, whether it's Chamber or Jett duty, there is hardly anyone that can be in a position to beat them. Stellar on the other hand has been really inefficient lately and I really think he is not fit to lead this squad to glory. Mid-rounding and adaptation have flat-out failed on multiple instances during the LCQ.

OPTIC is much better than any other NA team, yet it is no reason to clown teams with great strategic depth that goes unrecognized too often.
NRG, 100T, The Guard and Faze are currently all showing some great Valorant.

nAts

idk why, but it sounds so menacing
shorter names sound way cooler in general imo

I love the singing from those guys at the end of the clip lol, made my day

Last night, I had a random thought to rewatch some of the games that I remember being nail-biting and have watched highlights and VODs of some of them. Looking back, it is incredible to see how advanced teams became and how much the gameplay, in general, has improved. Teams are becoming better with each day. They are much more cohesive and coordinated with the utility usage and site executes. The efficiency with which teams play is now at an all-time high.

Watching those games in chronological order made me realize something, so I'd like to point out a few things and hear your thoughts about it. It is going to touch on the effect meta had on changing the game for the better.

So, meta comps change all the time and after the initial "chaos" during the early days of the game with team comps being whatever teams felt like bringing out, we've mostly seen comps considered "meta" or "non-meta", often resulting in a "meta" win. Sentinel meta, flash meta, Viper + Astra meta, Jett meta... We've been through a lot. But I'd like to say something which may be controversial, and I will use the Jett meta as an example (as this is also the timeframe when I've started watching the Valorant esport).

During the Jett meta, your duelist usually was a cracked aimer or an operator player who was able to farm people on both T and CT side. This imbalance in meta made teams experiment with support agents to try to put their Jett's into advantageous positions. Eventually, all teams adopted the Jett as a constant in their team comps and experimented with an overpowered agent. Even though support agents were an afterthought, people slowly started tapping into the potential of agents like Breach, KAY/O, Skye etc.

My point is that , imbalance in the meta forcefully created a higher learning curve for the game, meaning that FOR PRO PLAY, imbalanced Jett meta was a good thing. In the Jett meta, a team that would put their star duelist into a better position to frag out tended to win more games. And to put them into a better position, you needed to be more efficient with agents around her. The same goes for counter strats for opposing Jett players. The skill ceiling was continuously being raised.

As people started to move on, players already put a lot of reps in on a lot of agents, and we were seeing a lot more people flexing different roles and playstyles. These flex players became the glue that would hold their teams together. All of this resulted in seeing a lot of non-duelist players finding themselves on top of the scoreboards. Once Jett was gone, meta was kind of stale again (we were seeing more and more mirror comps or comps built with very similar approach to the game in mind). Most changes in team comps were flex players swapping roles, though with a similar playstyle, or a simple agent swap in the same role (Omen became Brimstone for example). This would change soon as this staleness gave birth to the incredible creativity and mind-bending ideas. On the front of this craziness were none-other than PRX, but also FPX and Fnatic.

And here we are, Masters 2 just ended and 2 best teams were the ones that set this previously mentioned crazy idea train in motion. One can only assume what else can be on the horizon once more and more teams return to the drawing board and experiment with even more complex team comps and keep continuously breaking the "must pick agent X" stigma. And one can only assume how much the ceiling skill will be raised again because of it.

That's it from me, tell me what you think about this down below and enjoy the LCQs.

Valorantle #7 2/8

🟥 🟨🟩 🟥🟥🟥 🟥
🟩 🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩 🟩

https://valorantle.melro5e.com

Few hiccups here and there and some goofiness on Twitter are fine imo. Though, he can do better.
But he grinds his ass off, is quickest to report big things and generally stands for what he believes is right for the community.

I cannot hate it or knock the hustle.

I recommend https://www.rocketjumpninja.com/mouse-search to get the basic idea about which mouse could fit you. Then try some local stores and look for similar mouses (or the ones you are targeting) before committing to one. Generally, you may find some of the suggestions not suited to the way you grip or move your mouse and it all should play a role when deciding which one to go for.

Do note that once you go wireless, you can never go back lol.
If you need any help with it, feel free to ask me, as I've tried out bunch of mouses in the last year (around 15).

FR now, question for all, is it worth switching to lets say Stockholm or London servers when I don't feel like listening to toxicity half of the game on Frankfurt servers... my ping is like 70-80 on London and Stockholm servers.

I'm hoping to see him on more of a support role, I honestly think he has more potential playing the second entry, flash instead of a duelist.

Rostermania and player swaps feels unavoidable however you flip it. Many T2 players on T1 rosters will get "filtered" unfortunately. Just hope players will be smart about their contracts and protect themselves from uncertainty.

In the long run, I do believe this is a good move, and I will root for league expansions as more orgs establish themselves in Valorant.

catch me spamming giveaways on twitter cuz i aint spending my minimal vage on skins lmao

makes a basic statement that is probably a general speculation
makes a big deal about people calling him out for not believing previous basic statements
calls those for calling out his bs "basement dwellers" and preaches positivity because "I thought you left vlr" comment is negativity

okay

Fair point, however, on any given day in Masters any team can beat any team. And even coming from that perspective, I still think Loud's case is more of a "we've played much worse than we can" instead of "this team beat us because they just played their A game today"

giggity, thank you Quagmire

Damn, must be miserable watching the games with that stance, so tell me... why do you watch them in the first place?

Thank you for that man!

Their placement has little to do with me being disappointed with their performance, it is inefficiencies that they didn't show prior to this tourney, which can be prescribed to lot out-of-the-game things. Expectations were 1st place, indeed, but that exact expectation existed for multiple teams, some of which performed even worse.

In the end, calling 4th best in the world currently "biggest disappointment"? It is either hateful or disrespectful, you know...

Ayo, W my man, spot on

EMEA
Omen/Viper (map dependant), also flex to Skye/Fade when needed
Sheriff