| Country: | United States |
| Registered: | July 14, 2022 |
| Last post: | April 13, 2024 at 11:19 PM |
| Posts: | 79 |
It’s weird without a doubt. I generally like Willius, but only when he’s not talking about college and or Harvard. I think anyone can understand how great of an achievement it is to gain entry into a prestigious university. There’s also no issue with announcing it, but the issue (that’s rightly being pointed out) is that when it becomes a part of your personality people will start to like you less as it’s pretty distasteful.
I think he could greatly improve the dumpster fire that is c9
it may not be, I guess it's just interesting to speculate
The explanation as I understand it from the original thread is that it could just be a visual glitch from ShahZaM's steam because the score of the custom doesn't change and is stuck on 0-0. I'm personally not sure but the screenshot is nevertheless valid evidence to the contrary.
First I'd like to credit Nachtel and james_ff for investigating who the potential 5th man for the roster going into 2024 will be. They've done incredible work and if you'd like to read about their findings you can check it out here: https://www.vlr.gg/264008/investigation-sentinels-5th-man-revealed
But anyways after reading the status report, I've become a little more convinced by the idea of nitr0 scrimming with Sentinels. Assuming this to be accurate, I wanted to know of everyone's thoughts on this potential team. Recently they've been dominating in scrims (even though scrims don't mean much I think it's a good sign of potential nevertheless). Personally, I think this move makes sense for several reasons. First off there aren't a lot of proven IGLs who can play the sentinel role. nitr0 does have experience from his days on 100 thieves and CSGO both of which had some degree of success. Many will look to FNS or Johnqt both of which are great options but I doubt FNS will leave NRG (despite what scrims lead us to believe) and I'm generally unsure what Johnqt will choose to do (other than probably sticking with the m80 players). Secondly, I think he could bring a lot of structure and creativity (again referring back to his days on 100 thieves and CS) that could work well in a team consisting of multiple super star talents. What do you all think?
YES it would be cool to see but logically speaking it doesn't make sense for a few reasons. First off, for FNS to leave the Optic core in the first place seems extremely far fetched both from an org and team perspective. FNS has history with the players on the team (Victor and crashies) as well as the coach (Chet) all of whom are again from the same Optic core of NRG. So for him to leave would mean that the team has either lost faith in him to IGL or he's chasing a higher salary. Both of these don't seem likely since he's a top tier IGL in NA (especially in terms of calling and playing the sentinel role) with a proven track record of leading his team to pretty much every LAN event. Also, we're currently in an esports winter and acquiring him would probably be expensive for Sentinels. The second point is about him joining Sentinels specifically. I don't really see a solid reason other than money for why he'd like to join a team like Sentinels when he doesn't have history with any of their players. The only explanation I could give in this sense would be that perhaps he just wants a change of pace since he's been with the Optic core for so long and would like to try something new. But then again, I don't know for sure and only time will tell.
Among the players in playoffs:
Ethan is not included in this list because his role is being the flashing initiator for EG. He has only played Yoru twice this entire year.
This wasn't a take more so speculation asserting that IF any team were to use the agent it would be then. I'm also not sure at to where the idea of Paper Rex using meme comps in only "lower stakes tournaments" is coming from because you seem to be forgetting their Breeze comp against FPX in the last map where the score was 2:2 and the winner would be the Masters Copenhagen champion. But ignoring that I agree that the chances are still little to none of them playing the agent.
The only team I could see utilizing it at any point during playoffs is Paper Rex. But even they would probably not use it unless they’ve made it to the finals.
The top 5 below is among those who've made it to playoffs and whose primary role is to play initiator. As a result a few great flex players who are really good at initiator will be excluded.
It's just time to move on. They tried but lost in a pretty disappointing fashion for the fans. It's important to recognize that chet and fns would definitely agree that they lost fair and square as a result of many mistakes. Even fns and ardiis has described billi billi as the better team coming out of these two games. It's pretty clear NRG have to work towards adopting better strategies against some of these aggressive APAC teams because at this point we've seen this be a clear weakness multiple times. They've lose to PRX last year and this year (even when they had a sub) and now they've lost to billi billi twice without gaining a map. No one doubts the strength of NRG against NA and EMEA teams. But it's important adequate adjustments are made and lessons are learned from this game.
nAts
Redgar
jampii
Sayf
+
option 1: sheydos (part of the gambit core, specializes in flashing initiators)
option 2: trexx (very good player, has history with sayf from guild, flexible)
Personally, I think sheydos is probably a slightly better choice since he has history with nAts and Redgar. His role and agent pool is also nearly a perfect 1 to 1 upgrade from soulcas. Trexx is still a great option though for sure.
From Champions:
DEULIST
INITIATORS
SENTINELS
CONTROLLERS
FLEX:
I mean I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using the judge if it works for them. The objective of these games is to be competitive enough to win, get out of groups, and ideally perform well during playoffs. There is good rationale to criticize differences in play styles but if it helps a team win then you have to respect it. There is no one correct style. Although in the moment it can come across as fun and brain dead, I think in the long term it contributes to new anti-strats, new metas, and discussion about how good the judge really is.
I'm gonna have to respectfully disagree with this. His kayo was actually pretty good and was noted by multiple analysts and commentators as being surprisingly impactful specifically with his flashes during retakes. I do think it's bound to get better overtime though.
Redgar leaving Team Liquid is highly unlikely. Especially considering that Nats is also on the team. Also who would IGL on this proposed roster without Redgar? I do like the idea of bringing Trexx into the team though.
I’ll just start the conversation with M80. Everyone on that team is incredibly talented.
nismo:
eeiu:
Johnqt:
Zander:
koalanoob:
I think Yay is as good as how much you set him up for success. Yes the chamber meta was a good fit for him as a very patient op player. But also people don’t credit FNS enough for how well him and Optic utilized his talents. I think in this case with DSG they probably just couldn’t mesh well together as a team, along with bad IGLing, and poor decision making. With that being said I’m very curious about Steel. He’s been off multiple teams and remains very confident in his system. I wonder if we’ll ever get to know from another player’s perspective as to why Steel’s IGLing doesn’t work.
Honestly you have a good point. I guess seeing the lack of success, even among the Brazilian teams in the league, it’s hard to imagine they won’t be scrambling to go after Sacy and or Pancada.
Yeah part of my assumption is that Sacy and Pancada will go to mibr and Loud respectively. Although they’re great players the season has not gone the way the team imagined it would. That’s not to blame those two but I doubt they are content with continuing with this team next year without exploring better offers.
This has been on my mind ever since M80 lost to The Guard, but it’s very likely Sentinels make roster changes. It’s also important to note that Kaplan is the former coach of the Ghost Gaming team which is now mostly the M80 roster. Below are two potential roster moves.
IF Marved and Tenz stays:
Tenz (Duelist, Chamber, Flashing Initiator)
Marved (Controller)
Zekken (Duelist, Recon Initiator, Flex)
Nismo (Flashing Initiator, Duelist)
Johnqt (IGL, Sentinel, Flex)
IF Marved and Tenz decide to step away:
Zekken (Duelist, Flex)
Nismo (Duelist, Flashing initiator)
Johnqt (IGL, Sentinel, Flex)
eeiu (Recon Initiator)
Zander (Controller)
A few things to note:
1) I think if Marved and TenZ stay it’s more likely the team will prioritize keeping them in the roster.
2) I think it’s more likely at least one of the M80 players will go to 100 thieves (specifically Zander, eeiu, or Johnqt) given the current status of that team.
3) I personally like the first team just because it seems to check every role box along with bringing the IGLing and firepower.
dephh moving to the flashing initiator role seems to be creating some fundamental problems. as a direct result of this, sacy and pancada are playing new roles. i'm sure they'll get better playing these new roles as time progresses but it doesn't make much sense picking up one of the best controllers and initiators in the world if they can't play on their respective roles. I also think this has put tenz into an awkward situation. we've seen him expand his agent pool like in the ludqig/tarik invitational where he played kayo (and his kayo looked pretty good). i find this particularly sad because now he's forced to play mainly jett where if he underperforms he's hated on by everyone watching him. I'm not sure what the solution is if dephh decides to permanently adopt the flashing initiator role, but if this roster was truly built around utilizing tenz's skill, then I think they're doing a poor job so far. only time will tell.
dephh moving to the flashing initiator role seems to be creating some fundamental problems. as a direct result of this, sacy and pancada are playing new roles. i'm sure they'll get better playing these new roles as time progresses but it doesn't make much sense picking up one of the best controllers and initiators in the world if they can't play on their respective roles. I also think this has put tenz into an awkward situation. we've seen him expand his agent pool like in the ludqig/tarik invitational where he played kayo (and his kayo looked pretty good). i find this particularly sad because now he's forced to play mainly jett where if he underperforms he's hated on by everyone watching him. I'm not sure what the solution is if dephh decides to permanently adopt the flashing initiator role, but if this roster was truly built around utilizing tenz's skill, then I think they've done a poor job so far. only time will tell.
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