Then why wouldn't they go with fade over sova? Sova is such a troll pick on bind.
I know they won and all, but I don't get how having a sova over fade benefits them in anyway possible.

But he is also a viper main
Isn't he the one who literally started the viper on bind meta with that a site u hall lurk wall?
Like viper is one of nats comfort pick yet he doesn't pick it on one of the best maps for viper

Wtf was M3c's bind comp?
Why would you pick sova on bind?
Why isn't nats playing viper over cypher?
Why did both m3c and acend pick omen when brim or even astra is a better choice?
Seriously don't get it.

Also why tf would teams pick omen? Isn't brin just much better for bind?

Tragic, ghost was so promising yet they somehow lost to NRG.

TL wasn't in the group of death and only beat 3 tier 2/3 teams and an incredibly tilted M3C from the BIG loss. They lost to Guild kek.
Meanwhile at least FPX beat G2, the best performing EMEA team in masters 1 and is one of the only 2 teams to take a map off an incredibly red hot Fnatic

1)no one thought FPX would lose to tl other than some delusional ones
2)M3C are known to bounce back and clutch it up in many situations. Let's see how far they can go
3)I have no idea what happened to Ghost, but NRG is not tier 3 and is on the brink of tier 1

My Pickens are literally that tl will lose the fpx and make a miraculous lower bracket run to qualify.
Or if fpx still somehow still can't go to masters bc politics and tl qualify yet again(just to get beat by loud and zeta again)
If you can't tell, I'm a tl fan but I know tl's odds

Liquid only needs a support/igl. Anyone other than dreamas is essential to the team and deserved to stay.

I think the guild game broke him
Liquid usually wins against Guild no matter the roster they have, and Link prob felt like he limits the team too much and they need a radical change for even a chance for masters/champions, therefore he benched himself.

Because he had to.
Link usually is great at lurking and sentinels but nivera ls literally better than him in every way in that role so he has to fill a role that liquid needs, and it just so happens that he hates that role.

Actual good take
Although it would have been great if he can igl and frag a little bit more like FNS.
FNS is a great fit for liquid rn, shame that he is in the best team in the world rn

Team liquid just needs someone like FNS since putting anyone else on liquid on sage/breach is a waste of talent. They also dont have a igl
Guess roster changes will only happen after challengers since liquid probably isn't going to qualify for masters 😭😭😭

I think if they had a great igl that plays breach/sage they would gladly pick him up. Unfortunately Dreamas was the only one available that does that and it didn't go as well as people expected.
At least liquid made it close for FPX, who literally hard counters liquid, and because of this liquid won against them only once out of 10 games.

I think link got tired of playing support
He said on stream once that he hates playing the role dreamas is playing right now and wants to play like nats. Unfortunately the team needs a guy like dreamas to support and doesn't needs another aggressive lurker.
Liquid did the role swap after masters and link instantly got tired, so I think that's why

Team liquid probably thought:ok we have 3 phenomenal players and one great player. We don't need more fire power. Therefore let's get a guy who throws utility perfectly but can't aim at all.

Accidentally posted B4 finished typing
Anyways FPX just is a really strong anti-strat team and split is not a chamber map which liquid js very good at so that's why tl is losing

Absolutely braindead comment
Both astra and omen is far too powerful to give up on defence, and having 2 smokes allows them to default better, since it is almost impossible to rush sites on split due to choke points

One team regions:
Japan: Zeta(Only team that got more than 1 wins internationally for Japan)
Korea: DRX (Somehow qualifying 3/4 times for lan, very strategically respected by other teams but chokes it in the end. Somehow still never performed better than NUTURN internationally)
LATAM: KRU (Pretty self-explanatory. Only LATAM team to have ever qualified for VCT)

Special case:
Brazil: LOUD(only team that got past 4th place, however there has been instances where Brazil promised Super teams but failed to deliver so nobody knows.)

Not one team regions:
EMEA and NA constantly switches team to qualify and do great (6 teams from EMEA, 5 teams from NA), while APAC does the same thing without the doing great part(Paper Rex getting 4th and xerxia beating Optic twice currently was the only major achievements from these regions. Could change later)

So in general, 3 super team regions, 3 non-super team regions, and one very debatable super-team region.

I guess its quite fun to watch especially when you consider the teams that has super teams usually is considered "smaller" than teams that doesn't have super teams.

Just curious what people who constantly "study" pro games would come up with to rework phoenix.

My idea for example:

Blaze wall:
Duration: 8->12 sec
Removed self-healing
Dps: 30->10
Double length
Goes through walls
credits: 200->300

Flash:
Travel time reduced by 25%
Duration: 1.1->1.5 sec

Hot hands:
Phoenix turns into a fire bird (Like a skye dog that can fly at the speed of skye's bird, 125hp) and can scout for information.
When Phoenix is destroyed in the fire bird form, it explodes and does 125 dmg to the enemies surrounding it(like a raze boombot)
When the duration(3 sec) of the bird ends or when phoenix reuses the ability again, the fire bird explodes outwards, dealing 50 damage to surrounding enemies and pushing them backwards. Then phoenix will be teleported to the bird's location and a fire smoke will spawn(similar to a Jett smoke) around phoenix, lasting 4 sec and dealing 20 dps to enemies inside the smoke. The Ult timer will pause while Phoenix is in the fire bird form.

Ultimate:
Ult orb cost: 6->7
Can cancel ult by pressing x again. Does not insta-reload if ult is canceled.
Gain stim effect and 15% speed boost

Hot Hands change could be too op, but I'm just trying to give phoenix some actual entry ability, so feedback is welcome. I'm not certain if the new hot hands should be able to use as a Chamber tp or takes a long ass time to activate so that it isn't another op oper like Chamber/old Jett.

Depends on how they do.
If they qualify and made a great run in masters Copenhagen, maybe a large org like Heretics would drop everyone and pick up m3c
If not, then they'll all disband and teams will be looking to pick up some of the good players like Nats and Sheydos.
Similar situation to LG except LG has a higher chance to qualify than M3C.
Unfortunate circumstances really.

I'm pretty sure everyone's taking a part in igling. jamppi was originally the only igl, but they changed the team structure a bit and now scream helps igl too along with other people.

Was abt to write an essay based on title but saw the post and decided to laugh my ass off

FNS was igl
Not to mention he played breach too which is statically the worst agent to get frags.
Without FNS yay wouldn't be in the best position to frag out so you can't really compare them.
Nats consistently topfrags in his team despite being a sentinels main. That is far more powerful than dapr, another sentinels main. Casting the team chemistry aside, the addition of nats into sentinels only makes their firepower stronger(old sentinels, not this week ass sentinels)

Just like how optic exposed xerxia while xerxia sweeped optic 2-0?
Teams learn from their mistake and come back stronger. Optic against xerxia and zeta against drx is the best example.
At least liquid took a map off loud. Gold2 straight up got sweeped.

Unfortunately baldbuff isn't there anymore
LINK benched😭

Definitely sth with neon
Babybay loves neon too much😝😏😏😏

Got you fam
STATS:
mwzera https://tracker.gg/valorant/profile/riot/VK%20mwzera%234324/overview?playlist=competitive&season=all
cNed https://tracker.gg/valorant/profile/riot/ACE%20cNed%23carry/overview?season=all
TenZ https://tracker.gg/valorant/profile/riot/SEN%20TenZ%230505/overview?playlist=competitive&season=all

DEATHMATCH STATS
mwzera - 86% win rate (thats the insaniest thing ive seen in a while)
cNed - stats not availiable
TenZ - 73% win rate

RANKED STATS
mwzera - 66.3% winrate (MVP of 95% of the matches) proof here https://imgur.com/StiJmpg
cNed - 53.5% winrate (MVP of 13% of the matches)
TenZ - 60.4% winrate (MVP of 15% of the matches)

can you take your time to appreciate how insane mwzera is? without a doubt the most talented player to ever touch the game

I'll try to explain briefly why I think he is the best player in the world
Despite his insane aim and movement
The best way to know if a player is a good duelist is RAZE. There is a BIG difference between a good duelist and a jett abuser
If he is a good duelist, he needs to be good with raze.

heat? not good with raze
aspas? not good with raze
xand? not good with raze
tenz? not good with raze
cned? not good with raze
scream? not good with raze
d3ffo? not good with raze
derke? not good with raze

Thats why I think he is undoubtely the best player in the world. If RIOT by any means decides to nerf jett and shift the meta we prolly not gonna even hear names like cned and tenz again :>
He is not killing 40+ per map because when he joined VK he was forced to play a different role because heat is already a main jett... and lets be honest, every single duelist nowadays gets 20+ kills per map because team and setups are basically built around you (even steel managed to get 20 kills with it https://www.vlr.gg/29398/sentinels-vs-100-thieves-champions-tour-north-america-stage-3-challengers-playoffs-gf/?game=46692&tab=overview)

I'll be honest one thing was right in this copypasta:
Tenz and Cned is barely heard these days after the Jett nerf
Instead we hear insane Chamber player yay so much and maybe Derke(I'm counting F0rsaken as a yoru player pls stfu) a lot more than these Jett players.
Man I kinda miss the Jett meta now, at least it feels like there were more comp variety back then instead of teams forced to pick Chamber or enjoy not having Oper on their team.
A lot of the old names that were popular and good were Jett abusers and it felt like only yay truly adapted to the meta and became a chamber abuser kek

It's funny lmao
Roasting the common TrembolaRage L through these copypastas
I think you'll like them if you get to know TrembolaRage a bit more and how he literally dickrides mwzera as a living

I think what people thought "consistent" for Tenz is to literally hard carry the game and drag Sentinel's ass through. By that definition, he was only decent on the breeze game against LG where he dropped a 40 bomb.

Tenz lovers think he's perfect and only plays bad cuz unlucky/trash teammates while Tenz haters think he's trash and there is 0 problems with the team.

In reality, Tenz is a great player that doesn't have the team to support him, and the fact that Sentinel loses when Tenz sometimes underperforms without anyone to step it up is idiotic. A great team should be like Optic: each player can frag on their own and work well with each other with excellent util timing. Sure yay go kill is a great wild card to have, but it's used more to destroy the enemies even harder instead like a win condition that they need to rely on. After all, Yay does underperform sometimes but his teammates like victor/marved will step it up and carry the team to victory, unlike how Sentinels just loses when Tenz can't insta-kill 5 guys staring at him from different angles in 1 sec when he dashes into the site with 0 utils to support him. It happened against that 1 map against LG, it never happened again on the other 8 maps he played for Sentinels.

I forgot, that was Sick.
But still, sentinels does have similar play style to Smokes
Then again, Dapr popped off(relative to his shit team) on chamber so idk

Bro they looked strategically better against Optic than this crap
And that's with 2 subs(Dani and Rawkus)
Idk why they're not putting Shaz on Jett and Tenz on Chamber. Maybe Let Rawkus play Sova/breach(He played sova for Faze and played decent sova on Bind vs Optic, plus he looks a lot more comfortable on initiator than smokes), Kanpeki Play Kayo, and dapr play Astra/Omen(He had experience with Astra back in stage 1 in Fracture, also both decent lurk agents)

Also no one was using util to support each other, and neither was Rawkus using Omen's one-ways or good delay smokes. Sen got their roles messed up, and their attack completely incoherent.

Looks like when C9 got curry and decided to swap Vanity's role and Curry's without any practice.

C9B-They only started to pop off against a shit team late season. Took them enough time to integrate Curry.
Sentinels-Mostly cuz subs bc unfortunate situation, but still shit
TL-Played really sloppy against NAVI, thank god NAVI was not that great, and they were able to integrate Dreamas quick enough(Since they have 0 strats anyways)

head to head m3c won against navi
head to head comes b4 round differential
unless big won
but big lost
so...

XSET still got that 4th place curse, plus 100T just beat them earlier
My guess for top 4:
1: Optic
2: 100T
3: EG(Ghost prob lost to XSET)
4: XSET

Bro their star player is literally Nats, a dedicated lurk player
Back in the old meta with Viper and Astra being so dominant, playing slow was the only way to win, and Gambit thrived in that by using Nat's defensive power and lurk on offense.
Now in the new meta with a more execute-oriented style, a lurker shouldn't be their star player, and they lack a duelist star player, so having trouble adapting to the meta might be a problem there.

Top seeds:
Paper Rex(Impossible to anti-strat after so much troll games in MY/SG challengers)
Fnatic(Dominant in EU Group of Death)
LOUD(Dominant in Brazil)
Optic(Being the most consistent team from NA, I expect nothing less from Master winner. Ik EG just won against Optic, but their loss against Faze made me question if they can consistently pop off to get the top seed of NA)

2nd seeds:
Xerxia/TS(Xerxia beating Optic is great and all, but TS looking great too)
DRX(Not much to say, still the most dominant team from Korea)
'//,(3rd at masters, best performance in entire Japan region, don't see how they don't qualify)
FPX(God of Anti-stratting, could have won Masters if it weren't for travel restrictions)
Team Liquid(Mostly copium if you look at my flair, but adding Chamber to their comp instead of double controllers makes them a lot different since the Guild matchup, and they did complain that the old Comps was way too easy for Guild to Anti-strat)
NIP(I guess just good? Brazil isn't a region I look at a lot since LOUD just overshadows everything)
KRU(4 majors attendance in a row, this is the most consistent team ever, and I don't expect anything else)
100T(compared to EG and Ghost, having a god tier coach that has seen a lot of tournament and Asuna who can share experience about LAN is sth that Ghost and EG doesn't have, and they improve every time they win)

Honerable mentions:
Guild: Looking good so far, but Fnatic and FPX is clearly sth else, and New Team Liquid with Dreamas and Chamber is going to be a lot harder to anti-strat
Acend: Even though they beat FPX, we can't get rid of the possibility that they intentionally threw to face off against liquid. Plus, the new liquid has a lot of potential so its not unreasonable that they don't qualify.
EG/Ghost: both teams are far too young and while I believe a Guard run is possible for both teams, I think the slightly more experienced 100T and Optic would win.
OnSlayers: very dominant against other teams, but DRX still utterly destroyed them, and it's unlikely that they'd upset DRX.
Crazy Racoons: same story as OnSlayers, but maybe more likely than OnSlayers despite '//, getting 3rd at Masters
Vivo Keyd/Furia: good talent and all, and I'm not surprised if either team qualify over NIP. But I'm going to stay safe and assume that NIP would win.

Feel free to disagree, esp on the Liquid pick, but I just have too much copium on double edshot machine+Jamppi supremacy

I don't think so

Even if EG somehow lose to Faze, Faze would end up 3-2
And even if LG lose to Optic, LG would end up 3-2
since it is a tie, it would go to head-to-head and LG would win that since they beat Faze earlier in the tournament
Either way, they are guaranteed 2nd or 3rd seed and has a chance to push for 1st seed if EG somehow lose to Faze

Edit: if EG win and LG win, they're 2nd seed, not 1st seed due to head-to-head since LG lost to EG earlier in the tournament

2nd Edit: EG somehow lost to Faze, now LG is either 1st or 3rd seed depending on how the Optic matchup goes

At least that's important
If EG wins this, EG is the 1st seed of NA, while Faze is stuck at the 4th seed(bad because you end up in the lower bracket)
If EG loses this, EG lost the first seed to the winner of the LG vs Optic matchup which is really bad since you don't get a bye to the 2nd round. Faze is still stuck at 4th seed due to head-to-head stuff.

With Acend vs FPX they have an incentive to troll(as to not reveal their strats to other teams) since there is no difference in 2nd or 3rd seed.

Quick conspiracy theory here:
What if FPX intentionally threw so that they would go against Liquid, a team that they regularly beat(they had like 10 matches against each other and liquid only won one out of these) instead of M3C or BIG(Ik M3C looks really shaky now, and BIG has traditionally been a bad team, but they don't play each other often and could risk an unnecessary upset)

ratioed keklul

On a serious note, I seriously hope Fnatic makes the same comeback as Optic/Envy: both came 2nd at a major and now Envy/Optic has finally won a tournament, Fnatic should also win another Major. With how dominant Fnatic looks in the "Group of Death" of EMEA, Fnatic is definitely a top dog and has a high chance of winning it all!

Plus, if your bf wins, I get to see him twerk again, only this time on lan ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°).

Edit: apparently I got it wrong, sry mb

who beat out sentinels keklul

1) If what you said is true, then PRX wouldn't comfortably Guard or G2(champions of both regions ignoring FPX) and they will simply die in 7-8th place. Sure APAC is easy, but PRX is also playing on the International stage which is 2x harder than the NA region itself.

2) There is only one team in NA that played against this playstyle and it was the Guard who lost. The only team that could potentially counter this playstyle was Optic since they won against DRX who countered Paper Rex pretty well. If Sentinels follow the meta and don't make some drastic changes, they will only be a worse Optic with worse players who can't play their role correctly (Shaz kept on playing initiators as duelists and Tenz straight up can't play raze)

Although I agree with Reyna being a questionable pick. Honestly, it should just stay in ranked and not get picked in pro play a lot. (Reyna is like Chamber where she is extremely selfish and relies on her team to set up except that chamber has a flank watcher while Reyna has shit flash, and Chamber's Util is just leagues beyond Reyna's while being able to get a great economical advantage too)

It is painful to watch a once great valorant team fall like this while watching other fallen teams get back on to their footing. So I hope Sentinels would do some of the following changes to get them back on top again.

1)Rework the entire sentinels strategy

Right now sentinels kept putting wrong people on wrong roles. Tenz stated in one stream that he doesn't like rifling that much and as stats can show, clearly he isn't comfortable on raze at all.

Shazam feels like the weird one here: his igl and skills isn't terrible(none of the sentinels players are bad), but his comfort agents are clearly conflicting with Tenz a lot(both jett and op main) and he definitely isn't that good at initiators. This hasn't been a problem before as Shazam and tenz each take a duelist on maps like Icebox and breeze, but as the meta develops into a 2 initiator+raze+chamber meta it is clear that one of them has to go, and its clearly Shazam that has to go here

But what if he didn't?

Introducing the solution: Paper rex.

Paper rex has been known to be a really aggressive team and got good results out of it(eliminating prime guard and G2, 4th place in masters) and ran double duelists on some maps like Haven and Bind.

What if they copied their playstyle(tenz like f0rsaken with his op, jett, and yoru picks, dapr as benkai with his sentinel, and you can fill in the rest). We know that sentinels are full of cracked players and really, a lot of paper rex's strat devolves down to "jingg and f0rsaken go kill" which is like sentinel's "tenz go kill" strat right now. This strat could surprise a lot of the NA teams and give them a great fighting chance.

2)Get Sliggy in

Team liquid share a lot of similarity with paper rex in that the strat usually devolves into "we're cracked, and we will murder you" and sliggy helped set up that playstyle in team liquid. Adding sliggy as the head coach could help them refine the "cracked players go kill" strat, and plus, rawkus isn't that good of a coach anyways.

Edit: Also he's the one who made double op viable, perhaps he could make Shaz and Tenz both use op and make it work?

Overall, no hate to the players, but I believe these are the strats and changes sentinels needs to get back to the top again.

tldr: get sentinels to play like Raper Rex and get sliggy to mold them into that playstyle