I still don't see the point of having an academy team that isn't full of ranked demons. Not sure where DFM really wants to go with this team but those players are nowhere near good enough to get promoted to their main roster or that great that they will get signed by a decent tier2 team later on. There is lots of young fa players to sign in the ranked leaderboards.

I doubt he will flex. Very realistic that Kush and him trade roles since Kush is a very good flex anyways.

Estrella lowkey got screwed by GenG that they didn't sign him otherwise this probably wouldn't have happened

Tomix is kinda insane, people should have eyes on him. I think he is better than PatrickWho ngl, has tons of potential, always goes insane every match.

Honestly this is the 2nd time that Sakurai lost them a qualifier, he should be on the cutting block just off that alone. He underperformed super hard even when he had Hyunmin and DH dropping 30s in that qualifier last year, reminds me a lot of that.

But yeah the team didn't have enough time, too many silly mistakes, they do have a lot of potential tho

gg, that Lotus will haunt Crest. They definitely have potential wonder if they do changes again.

he will just replace Hate, he will probably stick to Sentinel. Hate got kicked last week, which tbh is understandable if they had comms issues and he wasn't really playing well either.

Crest needs to understand that comps like these with almost zero info and no supportive util don't work in 2025 anymore. You cannot win just of firepower if you don't setup any of ur own players, they lost from the moment that maps were chosen. Murash played very well, clearly looked through vods, came prepared and absolutely crushed Crest today. Murash deservedly qualified to Challengers, they always come prepared try out new comps and play to their strengths.

The Gekko doesn't make sense with a double duelist comp, you need two initiators to get consistent value on it. It cannot setup a duelist on its own and definitely not two, it also doesn't pair well with any of their util. This genuinely might have been the worst Bind I have seen all year, zero gameplan, no midrounding, attack gameplan countered by an outlaw and awp because it's impossible to push them out with your non-existent util. The Clove is an objectively bad agent on this map, you don't get any value on the postplant, the smokes don't last long enough, it's basically worthless if you don't get kills.

Crest losing the first map in the agent selection. What is this comp, it doesn't have any synergy. Like your Gekko cannot setup any of your duelist, your smoker is too limited on the afterplant. Super terrible comp, cannot win against any team that prevents you from going to site.

Crest has been doing some really good work this year. Really great scouting and roster building where you can see their vision for the team. They take risks on lesser known ranked players but it pays off for them, Ken has been developing so well as a player, Sakurai is finally finding roles that helps the team, Bazz is getting good at igling while still fragging out. Jan and Yutaro have been really interesting signing with tons of potential for the future.
Really impressed by their work they have done to adjust for their failure in split1.
Even their Academy roster looks incredible with tons of talented young players that will help out the scene in the long-term. I hope they can keep up the work for the future.

Scarz just has the better team with better players. I am not convinced by the igling of Medusa but unless Zepher underperforms heavily again they shouldn't lose against BCS.

Scarz just don't know what they are doing, they will be forced to makes moves for next split if they don't qualify to Challengers. At that point they should look for a better duelist player, they struggle a lot with their entrying and Anthem seems kinda useless on the team when he isn't igling, they should maybe consider going for a full firepower roster.

I blame Xan

Imo this says a lot more about the mindset of Japanese orgs than everything else.
It's like not signing S1mple because he was absolutely toxic and racists when he was the same age as Okinawa.
There are ways to fix him, also he was a streamer at the time, which is a gigantic distinction, give him some PR training, show him the error of his ways and get him a good coach and igl and start winning.
Art also got kicked from orgs for being toxic and he is pretty much the only thing keeping dfm together because the coaches have absolutely no idea what they are doing. You can either take risks on players or stay losing forever.
Tonbo literally has accusations of harrasing a minor in real life and is still on the org, you can't make those comparisons, when Murash has a super toxic owner who doesn't give a fuck about PR.

he definitely has behaviour issues, but like that dude destroys Primmie in ranked, on a pure talent lvl you can't get anyone better than him in JP. If he ever stops being a toxic idiot it would be 100% worth to take the risk.

he is in all likelihood not cheating in Valorant. Especially since so many pros like him and a lot of coaches have their eyes on him, if a JP org isn't signing then eventually an org like PRX could take the risk on him.

because they are forced to speak several languages, so they can learn more at least that's my theory and he probably started playing fps games sooner than most Japanese people. He speaks Englsh, Russian, Ukrainian and Japanese.

If any Japanese orgs have the balls to sign Okinawa, he could probably save the Japanese scene. PRX already have their eyes on him, Alecks speaks about him greatly and he queued with Something today.

really great ranked player, just like KEN. He is better than Gyen but it's his first pro Valorant experience probably will take time to get good like KEN.

Scarz losing both pistol and bonus on map 3 killed them. Absolute astrocious performance from Zepher, he shoud never touch Yoru again

mods, Fancy won 2-0

Pretty good match, Crest should easily qualify back to Challengers after this. Their new roster looks good, Yutaro kinda needs to work on his entrying but aside from that looked decent out there.

he heard you talking shit

Ken isn't fluent, no idea about Jan but he is a pro in the scene for longer, seems like mix comms tho most of it is in Japanese.

Sengoku kinda lacks firepower this season after Jinboong leaving. Their players got outaimed every round and they couldn't deal with the Yoru util, the tps kept confusing them.

He should have been in tier1 ages ago, he is easily the best Filipino player outside of Invy. RRQ, TS and even PRX should be looking to pick him up, I never thought about him going to Zeta or DFM since Zeta never takes non-Japanese players otherwise or DFM since he doesn't fit them role wise. He might be lazy but he is clearly one of the best players in apac, his fluency will be a problem if DFM is the only team wanting to pick him up but I doubt it.

Yoshiii is the least problem of Scarz, they just cannot figure out the roles to play ffs. Yoshiii is by far their most consistent player despite swapping roles every year and was the reason why they made it so far so last split, they need to get someone else instead of Zepher, he is becoming more and more of a liability the longer the season goes on, you cannot qualify to Ascension with a bad tier2 duelist. The language barrier isn't that much of a problem when you watch them play, Yoshiii and LOB are the players to make the least amount of individual mistakes when you watch them play.

Rooting for Crest, I love their new roster. Yutaro is an actual ranked demon, people say Gyen is a ranked demon when he doesn't even have the same good stats as Yutaro has lmao.
Great roster building by the management, roster is only a week old but they have so much firepower, they should be able to beat out Sengoku.

2-1 for Crest

Only Sakurai is a weakness for them but you have four tier1 talents in KEN, Bazz, Jan and Yutaro, it's really great scouting and roster building done by Crest. Also looks like Yutaro is really half Japanese, I did suspect it but I wasn't sure because he only talks in Russian and English in streams, even when he plays with Okinawa he rarely talks in Japanese.

BCS trolled their roster a bit, Neal X is such a bad signing at that point put Flora on duelist instead. KEN getting two extremely good teammates in Jan and Yutaro is crazy, they might becomes absolute favourites for the next split, both are insanely talented players especially Yutaro if he unlocks his potential.

is there any reason why Jade hasn't been poached by the better GC teams yet? feels like she could easily be part of a future EMEA GC super team

Hands actually played for RRX before this week in this split. He is playing with Sakura a ton I expect him to have been poached by BCS, it's the reason why RRX had to replace him with Kapi who is really not great.

EX-FAV players got signed by Delight also, so they didn't play playoffs lmao

RRX has potential since they finally fixed roles. Considering they are swapping comps every match literally they haven't really taken it seriously while winning most matches.

Btw Crest really can just try getting Flora and Malinho. Would be really great pieces for them, in general scouting is so easy with so many players being lft rn.

they are actually replacing the players it seems in premier, they might come back later but it's almost impossible to qualify for split3 since there is only one slot for Advance teams even if they get far.

pick up the pieces of other teams, get Yutaro in. He was subbing in for one week for Satoshi in RRX btw. They have been trolling comps in premier even tho it's the only way to qualify for Challengers in JP.

Okinawa also is super toxic and has allegations of being racist to others. He geniunely bans people for making twitch clips of him insulting ranked players or him showing his awful behaviour on stream. There is tons of reasons why Meiy and other people like Ken had to stop queueing with him in ranked, he is a pure PR disaster for orgs and has shown zero maturity or willingness to grow as a human being. He is 18 and has still time to get past his awful character but he hasn't shown a lot of change as a person and that's all besides his bans in other games or cheating allegations.

yeah XQQ isn't the goat when Junior had been praised a ton for the 2022 run as a Assistant coach and the LCQ run when he was Headcoach of Zeta. It's kinda hilarious how fucking shit the two Japanese VCT teams in trying to get actual good coaches, like the tier2 teams in VCJ just have way better coaches than them, Riddle in Vorz, Murash with ate.
XQQ, Carlao, Melofovia and NorthernLights are all frauds who didn't do shit in years and have been terrrible ever since the start of the VCT partnership.

He is getting his one-way ticket to being dropped after this match. Insane amount of mistakes, every game he plays.

they need to immediately make moves, kick Governor and Ban and get more players who can shoot back.

it was a really great match to watch. They are super well coached, when hatto and ayuta later join they will be super scary to play against

hatto and ayuta are also coming, they are so back holy

Unironically this match was really high lvl

it sucks that him and ayuta are too young to play, in premier they were both by far their best players. But the coaching of ZETA actually looks good, the kids played so well together

damn the magic he had done with them is crazy. Reject didn't even play that bad and won both pistols

I like their aggression, they are so proactive and play with fundamentals. Also bunny plays so much better when he isn't inting every round, his mechanics are great but he trolls so often

why does the coaching of the Academy look better than their vct team lmao

is he really 15?

wait both of Zeta's best academy players are 15??? There is no fucking way

less of a commitment issue and more of people working on a project they have no technical idea about how it is supposed to be done.

they didn't wait for Ascension, the roster was finished before that. They would have played LOB he was trialing with them and doing good before he got injured and couldn't play for a month properly afterwards.

he is kinda like the og gyen, also at least has academy experience so he would be unironically a better player than him. DFM kinda messed up by not taking LOB because of his injury