I feel like you're intentionally misunderstanding literally every single word I wrote.

If you don't see the difference between 2025 Vitality roster planning and 2026 Vitality roster planning, I don't know what to tell you. Your point about cohesion was obvious nonsense, because signing an entire core from another team (and getting Chron who has established chemistry with Derke) is literally the most cohesion you could possibly ever get on a rebuilt team without going the BBL Pcific route.

I interpret "throwing money at problems" as meaning "just buying whatever looks shiny and expensive and hoping it works with no actual idea of what to do with it", which is what they did last year (no IGL, no team cohesion, a coach that didn't know what he's doing). Clearly, all of those issues have been very thoroughly addressed here.

I mean.... Yes that's what happened last year, but this team is the opposite of what you're saying.

The team is pretty much half of BBL (including a coach & IGL duo) and half of FNC, and then one very unproven up-and-comer in Sayonara.

Obviously there is no guarantee the team will work, but cohesion was clearly a top priority.

Profek and Jamppi are not superstars in the same way Less and Derke were before being signed last year. Jamppi has IGLed on two different teams and the calling was never bad or anything. PAL is not a fraud who's had one semi-decent run in tier 2 and nothing else to show for it, and he's worked with Jamppi and Profek for an entire year, and while the team had their issues, I don't think the coaching/IGLing was their biggest problem. I mean, if LewN hadn't lost that Iso ult to a classic, they probably would have made champs.

This roster construction is in every way the opposite of last year's.

Another year of Breloof making pointless comments on vlr dot gg

Thank you for this inspiring comment

People were not expecting much from China I guess. Not that huge of an upset, but I think Ninetails was definitely generally expected to win.

The team that will replace TALON in VCT Pacific has not been decided yet, but Riot have selected a candidate teams from APAC to go through the competitive application process.

Come on man, this is not a long article.

Zekken is going to mibr and Keiko is going to NRG (these both seem to be all but confirmed by very credible reports).

Edit: Actually, Keiko has been officially announced atp

media literacy wilted rose emoji

It's just a showmatch

I feel like this article makes it sound like chiwa actually played at the Ascension tournament, but he missed out on that one too (from what I can tell, also due to visa issues). His last game with Joblife was in EMEA Stage 3.

That's a great pun you thought of. Maybe make a third comment mentioning Poobert so people can appreciate it a bit more

Didn't Keznit get a 6k against FNC on Icebox in the quarterfinal in 2021?

NRG invented the concept of signing players that weren't previously in tier 1. That never happened before.

The people commenting on this thread, I would assume.

I don't think it's a fumble. You're right that he was a big part of the team, but this looks like it'll be a major rebuild with only N4rrate staying, and in that case there's definitely better players out there, you just gotta be careful with how you build the new roster.

He clearly had a big part in turning that godawful 2023 squad around and winning Madrid. Makes sense to release him, you can definitely upgrade firepower wise, but damn he was an important part of the team.

His contract ran out

I'm pretty sure Boaster is the main reason Chron joined the team and stayed for three years.

Pcific is an independent org. They were affiliated with BBL while playing in tier 2 (that whole new system Riot introduced last year), and that affiliation will simply end now. So BBL will be in VCT, and so will Pcific.

6

Are these FNC fans in the room with us right now?

Americas should be 0 NA teams, 0 LATAM, 0 Brazil, and 10 EMEA teams.

Both got carried by their underlings tbh

Egal

1+2+3 rounds on Haven FOKUS

I thought it was just a random draw, since seeding is a bit sketchy in this format

I understand wanting to make changes. Xenon and art were solid (and especially art was crucial in setting up aspas), but you can surely upgrade from them.

But by getting rid of Cortez, we're basically nuking the whole team, and like....why? They had a solid year, honestly better than many would have expected. They had a pretty good champs, and it's clear that this core could do even more damage next year if you make some well thought-out changes.

By only keeping Aspas and Verno (if even them two), they're basically starting from scratch again. There was really no reason for that, the core of the team showed so much promise.

Huge disappointment if Cortezia actually leaves. I don't have much hope for this team next year.

Aspas and artzin were the yay and Victor of this team. Aspas couldn't have done it without him.

No doubt someone like Keiko could improve this roster, but man miniboo has been great for this team. He's not a top 5 duelist in the world or anything, but he did his job, he had massive impact, and he doesn't deserve all this hate and negativity. Great guy, really mature for his age.

I'm definitely sad to see this roster change, but tbh if the replacement is Keiko I'm also really excited about the new roster.

Curious to see where MiniBoo will end up and how he will do in a new environment. Good luck o7

That's literally what I'm saying.

Although the red carpet doesn't mean shit, and warnings would never be public. They have gotten warnings in the past.

I mean like I said, the removal of KOI is perfectly valid. I just think the M8 situation was likely something that contributed to the exact course of action here.

Ibai isn't just the number one streamer in Spain, he was the number one streamer in the world (by Twitch followers) until recently. Now he's second behind Kai Cenat, but still, massive.

On the other hand, M8s clout specifically wrt Valorant is massive, and in that regard, they're definitely an upgrade over KOI, who despite Ibai's presence never had as much of a fanbase (plus Ibai barely costreamed Valorant this year, so harnessing that popularity wasn't even that easy recently).

It's very possible that they would have kicked literally any org for M8, and only went with KOI because all the other orgs held up the deal convincingly. I wouldn't necessarily discount that possibility just because Ibai is very popular.

I think the point is while kicking KOI was perfectly valid from Riot according to the partnership contract, the only reason they actually did kick them (instead of for example giving them an ultimatum of some sorts) was to bring M8 in.

Leo makes a bad decision --> it's his fault alone

Leo makes a good decision --> he's just a figurehead

Pretty simple

HyunminFanboy was only born after Champions 2024 when Hyunmin joined DRX

Have you watched their previous matches? FNC and NRG shared two opponents in this tournament: mibr and DRX. Both won both matches 2-1.

FNC won 13-10 vs mibr on map 3, whereas NRG won 16-14.

FNC won 13-5 vs DRX on map 3, where NRG won 13-11.

Not sure where there's supposed to be an argument that FNC struggled more against these opponents.

And then for the other playoffs match, we have NRG playing the weakest playoffs team and FNC playing the strongest playoffs team with a spontaneous sub, who pretty much got straight from the airport to the arena. Those games are not comparable at all. Obviously NRG played really well against GX, but that doesn't mean their side of the bracket wasn't much easier.

Fair enough then

Imagine your favourite team wins and all you can think about is the other team. Beta cuck behaviour

There's a couple days until the upper final. Good chance Alfa will be back, no?

Read again

It's always been like that

Edit: Also to add on to this. Of course "we've always done it like this" is not an argument for why it's good.

The thing is, the final four are usually held in a different, bigger arena from the rest of the tournament. Booking such an arena is expensive, and so you'll want to minimise the time you have there.

Also, matches on three days in a row have not really proven to be a real disadvantage for teams. On the contrary: we've seen plenty of lower final winners win the grand final as well, despite the map ban disadvantage.

That deep into the tournament, it's less about prep and more about resilience, form and momentum. Winning that LF and then playing the GF on the next day can actually be quite the advantage for a lot of teams.

Demon1 did pretty well considering they were not comming a single word in English. Bro was in 2vXs getting no info.

I thought you were me for a second

Agree with this a lot. You see it often that the MIBR players often get isolated and the trades aren't as amazing. I personally believe that on top of the individualistic playstyle, MIBR messed up their veto pick. Bind was lowkey a blessing in disguise since they had a fairly solid comp that could delay FNATIC well and they had really nice micro details to win out some of the clutch rounds.

However, Abyss was a problematic pick since they lost some of the momentum on attack and were completely shut out in defence. I would have expected a put more prep-work to anti FNC's defence, but it felt a little more like they tried to get away with treating the comp like any other comp.

It's clear now that the Breach-Astra-Waylay combo is an extremely potent way to flush out key positions that the site anchor would hold so playing on-site would be far too risky. Boaster was so crucial in the late-round with that Operator so retaking would suddenly become quite bad especially if you have no vision block. The solution then becomes to play proactively and aggressively for space because you do not want FNC to be set-up for a site pop. I also believe that double-smokes might be a nice way to counter some of the operator post-plant play as Cortezia's sentinel utility did not garner much value on defence.

Love your lullaby. Just gotta work on the lyrics a bit

Who tf is putting money on T1 for this match

DEI = half the partnered teams in EMEA are from just two countries (France & Spain) with entire subregions (e.g. MENA) having zero representation?

Will be interesting to see how GX do against an actually good team

Verno remembered how to play the game

N4rrate is looking different