This is so true

Four pools.

Based on Champs performance, pool 1 is FNC, FUT, NAVI

Pool 2 only has two teams: TL and GX

Pool 3 is Vit (placed 6th in regular season), KOI and KC (who both got wins at LCQ)

Pool 4 is TH, BBL (went out of LCQ winless) and M8 (Asc)

Then each group has one team from each pool, randomly drawn, with group C missing a pool 2 team and having FNC in it guaranteed.
Note that this also determines the brackets, we always have pool 1 vs pool 4 and pool 2 vs pool 3.

EDIT: Looking at APAC, this is consistent as well, even with how they present the brackets (i.e. which team is in which position)

APAC has the teams listed in the following order:

Group A:

T1 (pool 1)
Bleed (pool 4)

Zeta (pool 2)
GE (pool 3)

Group B:

DRX (pool 1)
DFM (pool 4)

TS (pool 2)
Talon (pool 3)

Group C:

Gen.G (pool 3)
RRQ (pool 4)
PRX (#1 seed)

The only thing that doesn't make sense to me is why Talon isn't in pool 4. Maybe it's because they went 1-1 in LCQ while RRQ went 1-2? Still doesn't make sense to me, they placed behind them.

100% KAST on four players is crazy

Nah, Vitality will put up a fight for sure, it'll be something like 13-11, 13-8

Giants - got grouped at Champs
KC - didn't get grouped at Champs

I think the case is clear, KC clears

Given the format, they'll likely just play Vitality twice. Maybe in the rematch after Vit inevitably lose to FNC, there might be a chance. I think Vit will put up a fight against FNC, which would give M8 some extra footage to watch besides of course the extra time they have to prep for the rematch. I wouldn't count them out, but Vit are definitely the favourites on paper.

Ascent - Omen
Split - Omen
Haven - Omen
Bind - Omen (although he's kinda shit on Bind, I just hate Brimstone with a passion)
Icebox - Viper
Breeze - Viper
Fracture - Omen (see Bind)
Pearl - Astra
Lotus - Omen
Sunset - Omen

Honestly mibr kinda clean, and by far the cheapest one as well.
100T looks like you just got back from a day at the construction site.
NRG sick as hell.
SEN and Lev go kinda hard as well, rest is alright.

EMEA are all kinda ugly tbh, I like the KC one though, and FUT is at least cheap.

In APAC I really like the PRX and Talon designs and I fuck with TS and DFM as well. GE is either really bad or really good but I don't know which.

In China I find none of them outstandingly good or bad, I probably like TE, JDG and Tyloo the most.

Maybe in the next RBHG, sure

I don't know man, BBL definitely look better than last year, but they probably won't exactly start a dynasty

TBD masterclass incoming

Oxy definitely has potential to be one of the best in NA, but in order to be MVP, the team actually has to make playoffs

They have many trophies as you have interesting comments on vlr, hope this helps.

Mickey Mouse tournaments like Candidates lmao

Russ didn't play in the partnered league in EMEA though, he only played challengers, and as far as I'm aware that actually makes a big difference. I'm pretty sure once you play in one of the big leagues you have to choose.

I guess it's kinda similar to football, where dual citizens can switch national teams while they play in youth teams, but once they have one official match for the senior squad, they can't switch anymore.

Yeah people are only shitting on BabyJ because of his name. Couldn't think of anything else tbh

He would be considered an import because he previously played as a non-import in Americas. You can only choose one region in which you can play as a non-import on VCT level

smartest vlr user

Ich glaube Anfang Januar haben die das bekannt gegeben

I mean one loss to SEN (if the leaks are true) and they'll be in play-ins, which is very losable

right, imma delete my account real quick

Oh if you don't count the best team of the region, the region overall did not do well? Woah, profound.

Teams know. Even some non-pros already know. FNS said on PlatChat that he knows the bracket already.

Is it racist

I mean he probably didn't mean anything evil by it, so I wouldn't judge him or anything, but yeah this kind of stuff can be super annoying to deal with and it might very well be rooted in some stereotypes. Best way to deal with it is probably to try to ignore it, and if it gets excessive, just tell him it makes you uncomfortable.

Riot also said explicitly that the max would be 14. Yes ascension teams keep their slot for two years only, but that just means in 2025 two teams will ascend.

Unfortunately emea doesn't have good controllers

They looked decent at champs, played very close series against Loud and DRX. They also won Copenhagen with this squad, so clearly whatever went wrong in 2023 wasn't just player quality.

No, more so a response to the take in the post I guess. My actual hot take is G2 will be bottom 4 in Americas.

EG will qualify to Madrid, but no other LAN

just break the trip bro

FakeAnanas

Go to settings and it's right below where you can choose your country flag

Thank you, geo!

can't even argue with this

unlucky

I mean let's go through all the teams that won international tournaments then.

SEN Reykjavík - Obviously TenZ was insane and had a shit ton of impact

GMB Berlin - D3ffo was pretty insane in Berlin, but nAts and Chron had a lot more impact. nAts even had a higher ACS while playing Viper and Cypher.

ACE Berlin - cNed and friends (although zeek had a pretty insane run that tournament -- notably he did play a lot of duelist as well though, both Reyna and Raze)

OPTC Reykjavík - yay was clearly their star player, and he barely played duelist. Victor was a good duelist, but he's not the type of guy you'd have in your top 5

FPX Copenhagen - mostly carried by Shao and Suygetsu. In the grand final, Zyppan was bottom fragging on Raze for two maps, they played no duelist on Icebox, and the last two maps were Zyppan on Raze and ardiis on Jett respectively, none of which had super insane impact (they both performed well though)

Loud Istanbul - While aspas is without a doubt one of the greatest, if not the greatest, duelist in this game, at that particular tournament, he had the lowest average rating on the team. pANcada was the tournament MVP and each player had insane impact.

FNC LOCK//IN - Derke was very good, had loads of impact. Still outperformed by Leo though

FNC Tokyo - Kind of similar to Loud at Champs, where Derke was good, but Leo, Alfa and Chron were just all better.

EG Champs - I mean the three maps they won in the GF were definitely on the back of insane duelist performances. Jawgemo went ballistic, and Demon1 had an insane Split on Jett. LF was pretty similar with the exception of Bind. The rest of the matches weren't really close and they just hard team diffed everyone else, so overall I'd say it's fair to say that great duelist performances were a big part of their actual win.

So out of the 9 teams that won tournaments, 3 (SEN at Reykjavík, ACE at Champs 21, and EG at Champs 23) were in large part due to great duelist performances, the rest had much higher impact from other parts of the team.

:3

No no, you don't understand. The 500 people were laid off so Riot can afford doubling Leo Faria's salary

If you have difficulties reading this I think that's on you bro

I'm babysasuke's grandma and I can confirm this

y0y

KD doesn't say everything

Brother that list didn't even mention KD

It's not just Brazilians, but the opinion that TenZ should be benched for pANcada is definitely more prevalent among Brazilian fans. Which makes sense, since Brazilians have probably watched a lot more gameplay from pANcada, watched him win champs, etc. Of course it's weird to see him on the bench for someone who arguably has been struggling a lot in recent years. When one player's famous hero moments are more prevalent in your memories than the other's, of course you're gonna think he's just better.

Brother this was posted in May. They clearly didn't mean "We will not ever change the roster again in the history of the world". This meant that they wouldn't change the roster for LCQ.

Because they tried playing with Pancada for an entire year and it didn't work

I mean CS also has less complexity in terms of theory crafting, which for a lot of pros is a bit part of their daily routine. Like Boaster works 60-80 hours a week, scrimming, vod reviewing, making lineups, etc. I have done 60 hour weeks for uni and tbh more than two weeks in a row of that workload I'd kill myself.

True, the open quals were pretty fun to watch. Akrew beating SEN was legendary.

Edit: This was not supposed to be a dig at your flair btw, the match was just wild.

2022 had two challengers (i.e. the equivalent to the ILs today) splits. Both splits had group stages with 5 matches per team, plus playoffs for the teams that qualified. Then there was LCQ, double elim, i.e. min 2 matches per team.

2024 will have two IL splits. Both splits will give each team 5 matches, plus playoffs for the teams that qualify. Then before the two splits there's kickoff, which has min 2 matches per team (actually there will be only one team that gets 2 matches, most teams will get at least 3).

I don't love the 2024 schedule, but I feel like it's extremely comparable to the 2022 schedule? At least in terms of number of games played, which seems to be most people's issue anyway. I still think they should do two full round robin splits, but it's not like this is breaking some sort of precedent.

Tenz ate my son

Thank you Bing, very cool!