not justifying the act, but you hyperbolize this to a great extent:

racism against a nation

dawg just say racism we know what tenten did was high-key questionable

also, please look at the whole situation: fl1pzjder was the one who incited the drama, insulted TenTen for having a weeb-like pfp and essentially tells him to go back to where he came from (in this case meaning the Japan servers)--as a retaliatory remark, TenTen shot racist Indian remarks, thinking fl1pzjder was Indian and not Indonesian. Upon realizing he got the wrong race, he made further racist Indo remarks. This would've never happened if fl1pzjder wasn't the toxic a-hole he was, but here we are. What's happened happened, and we can't change that fact.

while i'm not defending tenten for being a racist prick, lets not make extremities of a comparison and try to milk it. also worth mentioning that TenTen was also kicked from NTH (Northeption) as a result, while fl1pzjder wasn't even kicked out by RRQ and in fact, RRQ disrespected the situation by doubling down and standing up for fl1pzjder, which enraged the JP/KR scene, rightfully so. After all, it's not normal for a professional org to support racism, yes? So I find it very ironic that I'm seeing a lot of Indonesians (not you, presumably) use these type of examples...

do y'all just enjoy hopping on the hate train like its a trend to hate koreans for being racist? that in itself is racist (not you specifically but the recent threads have been counter-racist to koreans and y'all act like its justified because of hive-mind mentality and because of the recent drama)

mid only because red is overused

no choice for them since their theme overlaps with other existing bundles, still not too bad though

what did you expect on this site

terrible use of stats imo

some teams play more full Bo3s than others.
recommendations:

• ACSMax or KMax aren't good statistics since it might highlight a duelist with high highs but low lows, but I'm pretty sure your values for "Top ACS" is actually just ACS/map
• FK_total and Kills_total shouldn't be here, should be FKPR and KPR for fair assessment with accordance to the n-value

rest seems good, keep up the good work

what's the criteria

if you don't want to read that's up to you :)

bad idea adding beyn even as a DRX diehard fan

meta bad for double ini
double duelist becoming the new trend for the meta
thus beyn's involvement in the team is less valued and someone that can flex on senti-duelist finds more value

we can see this happen with estrella, as FB plays duelist because estrella picks up his senti role, and on maps where estrella plays smokes, mako and shift to the viper and FB has the option to go back on the senti

you act like VLR is home to intellectual and grammar-proper individuals

but yes, crowd was slightly biased towards FNC

read what he said. "so far no"

then he mentions the fact that he has high hopes for Paris going to be crazy, and bases off the fact that Madrid and Reykjavik was underwhelming.

also CS >>> VAL in terms of EU viewership and fanbases + riot-based game obviously less unhinged and more moderated than cs events

you are comparing apples to watermelons atp

same thing can be said about AMER: G2 (solid lock) MIBR (who didn't even make it to bangkok but they look good enough to be included)

• SEN (lost to KRU, who are somehow 3-0)
• KRU (faced like 2 bad teams rn + a shaky SEN)
• C9 (known playoff chokers, if they start remembering how to shoot in playoffs they will be added)

CN is just EDG (who have taken a significant dip in performance and lost to NOVA as if they are EDG's cryptonite)

EMEA is tricky. all of them just look like they're in an awkward place, even amongst the top of the standings. VIT (and FNC if they keep this up) are obviously what you would call a 2-team region, but that's not even a guarantee. TH is looking scrappy, barely pulling 2-1 victories over low-tier teams like GX and APK, and FUT seems consistent... just not good enough to be added to EMEA's best.

APAC has BME now, and they look very much ready for Toronto with the form they have. convincing 2-0 and 2-1 against GE and PRX, and even a clean 2-0 against GEN, arguably a top 3 APAC team. add that to the ranks of TLN NS and GEN, who all have crazy potential, and you're looking at a budding region.

love to see that VLR is still illiterate

this is correct

all the people above referring to K/D for a basis of aim...

there's a correlation with K/D and aim, but it just isn't the only factor and everyone seems to be neglecting that fact

has valorant even been out for 6 years?

pretty sure GE acquired the GodSquad roster around 4.5 yrs ago...

no, if you see teams like rapid lofi representing VN and talents like YESicaN being wasted yk VN is not even close to competitive...

it seems that viet-americans/canadians are pretty cracked at val though (e.g. TenZ, v1c, OXY, florescent, bao, etc...)

my guess is estrella has less of a burden while igling since mako is co-igling, which allows both mako and estrella to focus a bit more on aim than before

a lot of people don't realize that the odd place the meta is in rn essentially made some teams have a 6-man rotation. would actually argue that DRX are late to the trend compared to teams like GEN

but at the same time, its a gamble. the 6-man rotation in 2023 was unjustified, especially with such a stale, 5-man centric meta; this is more justified but we just gotta hope DRX doesn't troll again

i've actually dipped my toes in the scene before wing became uber-viral but never got the chance to try bbx for myself. and yes, dopamine was legendary and as a Korean I felt double-proud (lol)

so I did see this video and drilled it, but I decided to have fun with it and did a few variations. was fun

just curious, are you also a bbx enjoyer, or do you have experience with bbx?

tysm very appreciated

enlighten me. I've always been interested by Chinese vendors but my past experience with Chinese sellers has been horrible, what's the difference?

I'd also suggest using a burner card or even debit/gift cards, surprisingly handy!
I'm not tryna be racist but based on my past experiences, you can never trust Chinese e-commerce platforms to the full

don't worry at least we're not NRG zzzzzz

wish I could agree

unfortunately, meta is meta for a reason, and if they don't have the finesse to win those mirror matchups, it's just realistically difficult to have the capability to "out-comp" the opposition using a variant/unique comp. that's why you see most of the early innovation from top teams, while other interesting comps don't spread (one example being FUTs obsession with brimstone on maps like lotus, where it isn't the norm, and didn't work)

careful...

someone close to me ordered something on aliexpress and their CC info got compromised, they didn't get their order despite ordering from a "trusted" vendor, and to this day still gets spam emails from them despite trying to unsubscribe, from different emails, so its physically impossible to permanently block them

id be wary, just my two cents

you seemed to have missed the entire point by a long shot.

Let's look at your original statement:

Why disqualify EDG?
Majority of regions only have 1 good team anyway

by the premise of your original statement, anyone reading can definitely assume that our main point of conversation is trying to really see if there is 1 good team or not per region.

sterllaresca rebutted with giving examples of regions with multiple decent teams, you used the argument of claiming that none of those teams were good at the same time, which in itself is a faulty argument--that shouldn't be mentioned, since you never really specified or required that in your original statement.

anyways, instead of directly questioning why you asked that question which was irrelevant to the main idea, I decided to take a different approach by stating that your point was wrong nevertheless with other examples, since if I were to just reiterate what stellaresca said, I wouldn't really be contributing anything to the debate. I get why you added "we were mainly talking about 2024 when EDG started being good," but in what way does that make it a fair assessment? its fair to say that teams like EDG and FPX had the required experience (trials, scrims w/ APAC) pre-China release! So why neglect anything (everything in your case) before 2024, when EDG won their first champs after crashing out of both masters preluding to champs 24?

in general, your argument doesn't make sense in at least four different ways: none of your replies are relevant to your original statement, there's no reason to mention 2024 and beyond since that's realistically cherry-picking, not specifying any constraints regarding your initial argument, and with comment #29 in the thread, merely stating something with 0 backing and 0 clarification.

GMB 2021 M2 Berlin
ACE 2021 C Berlin
FPX 2022 M2 Copenhagen
FNC 2023 LOCK//IN Sao Paulo (I counted this as a Masters event for the sake of simplicity)
FNC 2023 M1 Tokyo

AMER and EMEA have 5 trophies (3M 2C and 4M 1C respectively) each. how much more you think champs is weighted over masters is up to discretion.

imo c9 is better than most of EMEAs mid-table teams atm, but yes, 100T is not showing signs of life.

also, I think the “ooh ascension team is good" argument actually has some validity. tgrd being t1 but not in franchising just shows how packed the talent pool was perceived to be at the time, therefore teams like tgrd/g2 m80 and mxs all stuck in tier 2.

and your last point is fallacious. NAVI and FNC was already on the decline before koalanoob and crashies joining, APK was always shit regardless of flor, and KOI isn't a real team in the first place.

flor
1.17 / 5 maps kickoff
0.71 / 3 maps s1

flyuh
0.77 / 6 maps kickoff
0.64 / 2 maps s1

koalanoob
0.88 / 6 maps kickoff
1.28 / 2 maps s1

crashies
0.89 / 10 maps kickoff
1.66 / 2 maps s1

it seems very variable so far, especially with the low sample size (n). either way, hard to make that last statement. also, koalanoob and crashies seem to be stepping up, barring recency bias.

the entirety of LCS seem to have 5 vibe merchants with their abhorrent performance internationally.

W bait

I think it's unfair to assess VALORANT in terms of the CS series or other hero-shooters like OW/OW2 or even Apex, since VALORANT has just started down its "longevity" route as a video game compared to these games. CS franchise was released in 2000, Quake in 1996, OW in 2016, R6 in 2015, and Apex in 2019. (these are merely examples of tac-shooters, hero-shooters, and high-movement shooters)

refer to LoL, yet another product by Riot Games that has made it big. The meta has shifted unbelievably (one that I can think of recently is lane-switching that pros do, might not be viable anymore) despite being released in 2009 amidst great waves of popularity. VALORANT being under Riot Games and receiving way more frequent updates that any aforementioned games above makes me inclined to think that the skill ceiling will artificially be raised, if necessary, and will likely follow that trend nevertheless.

right now? no, not as high as other tac-shooters or MOBAs, since certain elements (like you briefed over) inhibit VALORANT from reaching such a ceiling.

id say PRX is beta LEV with how long these issues have been persisting for

so this is just factually wrong?

most notably, as far back as late 2022/early 2023, EMEA had ex-FPX/NAVI + FNC, AMER had OPTC + LOUD and then LOUD + EG, APAC had DRX + PRX

good shout

k1Ng pseudo-retired due to army + age
Zest is on infinite limbo aka "hiatus"

😭

I'd say late 2022 to mid 2023 hit hard

it was a time when we had a potential dynasty in FNC, classic teams (OPTC, LOUD, EU-FPX/NAVI, DRX, PRX) alongside them, the novelty of franchising (with all the interesting drama and great roster shifts we had), and the best time to see a rapid development of strats (as compared to now, where not as many unique strats are being innovated because a lot of the meta strats have already been innovated). We also saw the rise of new challengers such as EG, who later on went to win it all. oh and late 2022 also had crazy ass teams that didn't make it to franchising such as XSET (Cryocells + zekken), OPTC (NRG if they actually locked tf in + prime yay), GLD (Leo + trexx + Sayf, how did they not place higher), TGRD (pre-G2 + Sayaplayer), XIA (pre-TLN)

you're right on all aspects but there's really no need to say this godobvious fact out loud

100T can be swapped with C9 or even LOUD, but nevertheless I think this list does a solid at representing the general power landscape of AMER

idk this guy has 0 ball knowledge and probably started watching either late 2022 or early 2023 and onwards

nah fr u cooking

you're good I just like shitting on NRG fans since a lot of my IRL friends are devout NRG fans

dawg what happened while I was asleep 😊

I agree! Pacific is truly the worst region of all time.

Truly these tourneys seem to be mickey mouse and nothing else!

istg NRG fans aren't even trying to get rid of their illiteracy allegations.

"You can't take more than 1 player from each team"

immediately puts leaf and valyn

thats actually a smart strat.

with MIBR, G2, DRX, T1, and PRX out, your only competition is VIT, TL, EDG, and SEN if we're going by teams who made it to Masters Bangkok.

if you want to make the strat more efficient but the roster slightly less efficient, JAWGEMO instead of aspas is a good shout.

im ngl kind of but at least we were the goats at it

0/8

at least you aren't spewing nonsense like the other user in the thread.

also I wouldn't call it a free read, that comp is genuinely broken IMO and with the best tejo, I would say that's the best option they have. (although I would agree that maybe 1/2 map comp change might be necessary)

but hey, alecks and co. face an even sterner problem...

i feel like atp you're just branching your own points and just throwing all of yellow_donkey's rebuttals out the window by not properly addressing them

genuinely, you're trying so hard to act like you have an in-depth knowledge about the KR scene, but you're pivoting around the same point over and over, being that everything is solely termi's fault. you mention how glow is a vital part (which is valid), but it seems like you're being hypocritical by not giving termi his flowers. termi was put in difficult roster situations and pinning the blame entirely on him (and not DRX management, known to be lacking in the organizational and the financial sectors compared to T1/GEN) is blown out of proportion and at minimum, mildly ridiculous.

and if we ever say otherwise, we're apparently blinded by the "fan-girl" bias you are conjuring out of thin air. hello?

ok you're just saying you're a hater in general? what're you tryna say

There's two sides to every coin, and today, well, he got the short end of the stick.

My condolences to leaf and I genuinely hope it doesn't get to his head, he's been frying lately and one bad series doesn't determine his prowess in-game.

RIP.

I mean, it's better a track record than 95% of tier 1 teams