FNC & Boaster: eliminated and didnt make Champs Top 5 for the first time ever
DRX: struggling & eliminated soon
TH: eliminated
G2: struggling vs teams like XLG
FrosT: eliminated
Smart baiter - Aspas: might not make champs
who's doing well:
Assuna: won a trophy
Turkish all aim no brain teams: dominating emea
Cheathan: cheater winning in Americas (was a clown as igl in 2024 btw)
LEV kinggg & VIT Jamppi: son
it's very weird how after 5 years of consistently adapting to different metas, 2026 suddenly was the one year all historically smart teams started struggling
FNC had ten other problems and picked up engh for some reason, DRX lost two of their core last year and flashback this year, TH had koshmaras all year, G2 has babybay, frost's team is throwing and he has no intention of helping, I'll give you aspas though
cant believe how fluke teams like nongshit and 100bots are winning international event imo we should not consider 2026 a genuine serious year this year has been a complete joke so far
the problem is that teams dont understand that this is a firepower meta, spacing, trading and coordination need to be incredibly tight to win games, yet they are still putting too much emphasis on the macro game (navi for example), lev understood the assignment and kept post-nerf neon before most teams realized that she was still good because this is force and not macro, utility, setups, etc. Teams needed to learn to play explosive retakes or site hits, instead they kept slow midrounding, very meticulous retakes, emea kept trying to play "perfectly" using fnatic 2023 as their role model, while the tier 2 emea teams actually were playing the current game as it is, which is why almost all of them made it out of playins
Ngl LEV is smart and has firepower, they would be fine in any meta. Cant say the same about Nongshim or 100T tho
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