Ascent happened

From being shit in 2023 to reaching two international grand finals in 2024 to becoming the first partnered team to get relegated in 2025. What a rollercoaster

You can say what about loads of tier 2 teams? That their owners had to watch their team choke like four separate 12-x leads in tier 1, sending them back down into tier 2? I doubt it.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on which tier 2 org is as well-run as Gentle Mates with a comparable fanbase though.

Man that feels bad for the owners of M8. I hope they fully commit again next year and get a shot at franchising in 2027.

Great org with great fans and they deserve to be in tier 1.

I mean yeah they should have beaten FUT and TH, but GX and Vit are both winnable matches and if they do get them both, the only way they miss out on playoffs is if GX beat TH. I haven't given up hope yet.

Bro thought he cooked with this one 🥀

"Here's how Bernie can still win" type shit

Yeah they can only catch up to T1, who they have already lost the tiebreaker to

My goats are back, Cortezia my glorious king

If matches start at 18:00 in Berlin, it's midnight in China and 1am in Korea. That's not really doable for East Asia.

And you don't really want to start matches much earlier than that because the majority of the event will be on regular business days.

It's not really possible to please all regions at once, and Pacific and China just have by far the bigges fanbase. Plus Champions is actually rotating through the regions (in the partnership era we've had Americas, Pacific, EMEA, now China, and 2027 Americas again) so I don't think there's much to complain about.

Toronto and Paris this year should both be fine for Americas and tbh I'm expecting M2 next year to be in EMEA again and M1 probably in Americas too.

"You just gotta hit your shots" - autumn, probably

You're tripping, the accent is fire

Derrek my goat

What having spikezin does to a team

It was FNC in their EWC group, not Sentinels (also says "secured" twice in that sentence)

I don't know if you're serious, but even if NV win Ascension, they're only guaranteed one year and get relegated if they don't make stage 2 playoffs. So unless they make a lot of noise during kickoff and stage 1, mid season roster moves are pretty much a guarantee.

I had Art in my VFL team as a low cost filler, unlucky

Acend obviously

Oh yeah for sure. But vlr is also not exactly known for being 100% accurate on nationalities.

My point is only, just because he has an Italian flag on vlr, doesn't mean he's a citizen of Italy. He might still just be Brazilian which would explain the visa issues.

Liquipedia has him listed as Brazilian. Note that vlr flags do not always necessarily correctly reflect citizenship.

He might still be Italian, maybe he has dual citizenship, I don't know. I'm just saying the flag on vlr doesn't mean much.

Second most fraudulent tournament win in Valorant's history

Breaking the TH curse just to give them hope in the Champs finals before crushing them, trust (I am delusional).

Serial was solid, but when you get the chance to sign trexx, it's hard to justify keeping him.

Out of all 10 tier 1 tournaments this year (Kickoff x4, Bangkok, Stage 1 x4, Toronto), the lowest defense WR was EMEA stage 1 at 44%.

All other tourneys hovered in the 48-52% range.

I picked Toronto because it was the most recent one and reflects the current meta the best, plus was the highest level of play due to being an international tournament, so the data is less skewed by shit teams who just don't know how to play the game.

By and large, teams have figured out how to play defense on this map by fighting for A main or C mound, which mitigates a lot of the inherent advantage that T side seems to have on the surface (it being a 3 site map and all, with easy pivots through Hobbit or C door).

Obviously it depends a lot on team comps and stuff, but the current meta does favour the comps that shine a bit more on defense, so currently it does tend to be more CT sided.

Ascent at Toronto was actually the third most T sided map, funnily enough (behind Icebox and Pearl), with only 43% defense win rate.

But Ascent was only played 7 times, Lotus 12 times, so the Lotus data is a bit more robust.

Obviously it mostly depends on team comps. Some comps favour defense, others favour attack a bit more, and with meta shifts, the sided-ness of any map can shift pretty drastically.

Happy for your comebacks.

55% defense WR at Toronto still stands. More than any other map in the game.

How do people still think Lotus is T sided in the big 2025 just because you don't know how to play CT in ranked?

It was literally by far the most CT sided map at Toronto.

Sayonara will only be eligible to play starting in March 2026.

Ange1 can fix him

Shouldn't be a problem since EMEA is a fraudulent region. Chadhaak my Harbour goat will pull through. 💪🏻💪🏻

Nah but fr it'll be really tough. Given the points standings, KC need to make at least top 4 in stage 2, otherwise there's no way they can overtake all of NAVI, BBL, FUT and Vitality.

Sneaking a 4th place behind FNC, TL, and TH is not impossible, but if Vit remember how to play Valorant and NAVI and BBL keep up their form from the end of stage 1, I just don't see it, even if TH completely fumble.

PRX should have free wins on Pearl and Sunset, so this will be really tough for FNC. Not unwinnable, but they're gonna have to be near flawless on the other three maps.

No, vlr has done this before every game.

G2 were just the best team at using Tejo. Just like Optic and yay were the best team at using Chamber. It's easy to say they were carried by the agent; the reality is the other teams were using that agent too, they just sucked at it.

What do you think the "MEA" in "EMEA" stands for?

You ran out of alt accounts?

More like coperean am I right guys haha

Didn't Sayf say over and over again that he prefers to be off duelist? I don't think this was a management decision that was forced upon him.

Well I didn't do that, so not sure what your point is

I don't think that comparison is very fair. ScreaM didn't just have one bad tournament, he had an entire year in which he was bad. Yeah, sure, while IGLing, but that was also self inflicted.

Aspas played two series at this event, where he was obviously really really bad, and yeah probably worse than ScreaM ever was. But like, get real, nobody was calling ScreaM washed after Lock in. People were calling him washed when KC were playing like the worst team in the world for an entire season, and he was not really doing much individually either.

Plus aspas has just shown himself to be a much more complete Valorant player at multiple international events, has had way more success with his teams, and has also shown consistently good performances across three different teams, all three of which by the way were complete dogshit without him.

Just to explain what I mean by complete Valorant player: ScreaM is really good mechanically, I don't think anyone would seriously argue against that. Maybe even with potential to be the best in the world at just shooting gun. But can you remember a single piece of util from ScreaM, like ever? (Okay, I can remember a certain molly, so let's say a single good piece of util)

He's been shining at just shooting, but that's just not good enough to be considered a good Valorant player in the Lord's year of 2025. Aspas has not just been aim diffing people, but also using his util well and reading situations well. ScreaM's mechanics were good enough in 2021 when Reyna was still meta, and he was fine on Jett, but nowadays, you need more than that, and he's never really shown anything particularly impressive (hence, washed).

The last time they unleashed Ange1 like that they 13-0'd FNC. The world isn't ready.

Not to mention he's basically still brand new to IGLing and has been looking like one of the best IGLs in the region, plus he's also a big emotional leader for the team (and isn't he still like 22? Lmao)

"fucks human rights" is putting it nicely, they are executing people over tweets made to like 8 followers

He might just do that if he finally joins an actually decent team

Man this would be such a great analysis with sound arguments if any of it were even remotely true

It's a small island nation in Oceania. I just really like the flag

o7

FOR THE PILE!

LONG LIVE THE PILE!

And outside of the team. Being on the other end of the world than your family and friends at age 18 with all eyes on you and thousands of low life losers having nothing better to do than to spend their entire time devaluing your identity is not easy.

That kind of situation where you're a magnet for hate is already tough enough by itself, but that while being alone on a different continent without your support system is a lot to ask from someone who is eighteen (18) years old.

It was a different org in the same way that Giants and Giantx are different orgs. Basically just a rebrand. They didn't even change a coach. It's like saying fish123 and TL were different teams. There just wasn't much stability/continuity before franchising.

The three teams that Sayf qualified with literally only had one player in common (trexx was on both Guild and Vit). Same for Sacy: only Saadhak was on both Vikings and Loud (Pancada wasn't in Sen's active roster when they actually qualified to something).

NV and Optic were literally the exact same team, no way we count that. The others were all on completely different teams with different teammates.