Why is FNS so highly regarded.

Yes they had a good year with that Envy/Optic team, but he only won 1 S tier Tournament and it was not Champs, which i understand its a great achievement but surely not enough to be regarded this high? People always say he is such a smart player but this is the 2nd year in a row (that he is playing) that his IGLing and team building skills are horrible, teams that are barely coherent and have no variety of map pool, qualified to almost no international tournaments after the Optic core and the ones he did they were eliminated in the early stages.

Even IF he is that intelligent in game and can IGL very well, which I disagree, his individual performance is so bad that it does not make up for it, specially nowadays where IGLs are just as good aimers as the rest of the team.

I could make a statement about Marved as well which is super overrated but lets talk about FNS first.

FNS funny but bad so we sad

not at steel's level when it comes to IGLing but he's funny and has streamer clout

1. had 3 good years (2021,2022 and 2023) and was running rings around everyone in terms of his calling.
2. got the best out of his teammates during his time and was quick to adapt to metas.
3. he was the one who picked up the original envy roster who then became optic. calling his team building skills horrible is just untrue when those players at their peak was top 2 in their roles.
4. hes only missed champs 2024 and bangkok.
5. everyone praised him from players, igls, casters and coaches. u just dont know ball
6. he has fallen off a lot since his prime days but to me it just seems like u started watching vct today lmao

he has been at the top of north america for over 2 years, a higher tenure than most other igls in the region

only one igl in history has more than one chip and that’s boaster, who is in fact considered the greatest igl in valorant. him, fns, saadhak, etc. are considered all-time greats because of their longevity in the earliest days of val, none of their achievements should be disregarded just because they’re not as successful now

when you watch his co streams you can tell he knows a lot, and does a good job breaking down rounds. Always thought he would do better as a coach versus a player but he isnt bad, he is just having a bad split.

He was regarded as the mastermind behind OPTIC and how they even managed to have the success they did (apparent in their games). Also despite only winning one tournament the team had the most success out of any team EVER in terms of a yearly performance. After the OPTIC days he qualified to every single LAN in 2023 and created the second best team in America that year. Had his team not thrown/gotten cocky (cough cough ardiis) against BLG and PRX we would've had a much different story then we have today about placements.

But yeah lowk he buns now but he didn't even want to compete this year

Its just a bad split. From 2021-2023 (3 WHOLE seasons) he was considered a top 3 IGL in the game, and the undisputed best in NA. Even if NV/OPTC/NRG only won one trophy, they made every event save for Reykjavik 2021 in those 3 seasons for a reason

Basically to avoid yapping further #4 said it best

He was good when the game was in simpler times, not too many agents, barely any util combo and when the game doesn’t prioritise creativity. What working now, doesn’t work in the past and now he’s struggling to adapt. Also his firepower diminishes overtime too. BLG’s “are you okay FNS?” Is the wake up call that things change now, everyone catches up and he’s on the decline.

FNS is the reason why we make excuses for igls not fragging. Crazy how we made this demented fossil the standard

recency bias has everyone hating on fns' prime days
in 2021-22 they say yay carried him. watch what happened to yay in 2023 and what happened to fns in 2023. NRG 2023 was arguably a top 5 team ITW, only behind fnc, loud, eg, and prx. champs is the only exception.
and its not like 2021-22 was carried by yay either. while yay was dominant, all the setups and strats and plays that made yay pop off were set into action by fns' calling.
even in 2024 fns was doing great. the stage 2 roster flunked because of choking, but for example against SEN, FNS called some really good attack rounds on sunset to bring it back to OT. in the off-season his calls were also really strong because he'd basically analyzed everything from the past year and that iteration of NRG with verno, where fns would play breach and vyse a good portion of the time, showed some of FNS' old calling skills from 2023 mixed with new meta. and fns was fragging pretty well in the off season too.
tbh, it wasnt until tejo came out that fns truly tanked, and pretty much all of his and NRG's problems since can be attributed to tejo. not gonna take away the blame though, he should have seen how good tejo was immediately and probably some kind of arrogance from him and ethan caused all the problems they're having now.

but all that said, with the exception of 2025, 2024 stage 1 and 2021/23 champs, FNS has always been an excellent igl. that's a good showing at 6 int'l events out of 11 that he could have attended in his career. i don't think most igl's come even close to 4.

NA Cope (he just led the first good NA Team it was similar with Redgar in EMEA before the absolute disaster that was 2023 Liquid)

Also like yes his calling was actually like really fucking good in thoose days.

In short he is highly regarded because of the totality of his resume. He was dropped after the ardiis era, and remember that team made it to international tourneys. Only after that did everything kind of go to shit.

he's highly regarded you're highly retarded

@giantx

People shitting on FNS,Boaster are idiots lol

Coming second at champs can put you in as high of regard as the winners. Look at paperex, heretics, gambit.

Because yay was a god on Chamber and old Jett