start?

in your reply history apparently, wild

Literally what is the motivation otherwise? You've not given one.

I'll hear the argument they don't know the APAC scene as well as EMEA and Amer due to language barriers which could lead to misevaluation, but i think "they're secretly racist" is a bit far.

God forbid new people become interested in the scene that have just enough of a life to not come in here during the downtime between events unlike us.

Saying G2 is overall a better team than T1 is not saying T1 isn't good or didn't deserve to win. It just means G2 wasn't at their best and are more likely to perform later in the year too, which frankly, I agree with, and I'm a huge America's hater who was routing for T1 the whole event.

You're so right, PRX is so capable of winning without an IGL that they've just signed one 🤣

There's a world of difference between "Able to reach playoffs" and "Can actually play through the Bo5 and win a title"

not as funny when one guy does 70% of it but go off

Like I said, you need the best of both worlds to win titles, not that you can't place with just aimers, especially early season.

They'd have crashed and burned either like this year VIT or PRX.

You ain't getting titles without a good igl, even if you can run headfirst into playoffs before you hit the wall.

e

bro

igl needs good team, team needs good igl.

real news at 7

Jing as Raze maybe Pheonix merchant surely he can't do anything else and they don't want to drop him fully.

no

They're a bit out of options right now and don't want to cut Jing entirely because of clout and team synergy, so I'd wait and see, I reckon we're getting it anyway. 6 man with him on the bench 5/7 maps is a close as they're willing to go to cutting Jingg, which is what they should ACTUALLY be doing.

Regular blogging kinda been dead for a decade cuz of microblog social media though... don't think you'll have any luck.

I thought the implication was they would 6 man like T1 did and sub Jing as a Raze/Pheonix merchant but not use him otherwise.

seriously just do what everyone else is doing and use twit- oh. errrr... convince your favorite analyst to use bluesky? Idk

Finals and crowd were great but personally I don't think I can faithfully argue the event that was 90% "Oops one team shat themselves" instead of "Wow, these are some crazy interesting well thought through outplays" is anywhere near the top of the list.

Even if some of that shiting themselves was occasionally pretty funny.

Rest of the event was very meh with so many games lost because of one team shitting themselves inexplicably while the other team played decent, but the final definitely was EXCELLENT.

Most of us don't consider every team shitting the bed a good event.

call it masters Bangkok the way these games are ABSOLUTE penis...

I don't think I'd call them heavily underrated based on their prior performance, I think they've just improved exceptionally quickly, which is arguably a bigger accomplishment.

It doesn't create role issues unless you're doggardly convinced sentinel IGL is untenable which has literally no evidence. Boostio won Champs as a sentinel IGL. John won Madrid, as a sentinel IGL. Nats beat them, literally in their last game, as a sentinel IGL.

Stop forcing John to play initiator instead of creating a system that allows him to IGL properly on Senti, like other teams clearly can. Then N4rrate can play at his best. If Bang isn't comming enough to enable that, cut him, his pacing is already also an issue.

The only time senti IGL doesn't work is if your IGL can't frag. This wasn't true of Boostio when he won and isn't true of John or Nats now. If you're FNS I mean yeah rip but your IGL being a walking ult orb is crap regardless of their role.

BBL as 3rd seed EMEA is crazy when TH and KC looked better than them despite getting knocked out. The former looked excellent until finals and the latter is the only team yet to get close to beating VIT (literally down to a single 1v1 postplant thrown by Avez) who you rank 2nd overall.

The region also doesn't really look weak, just scrappy. In fact, I'd argue it's the strongest region across right now, because Americas and China are basically one-teams right now and pacific has no big standouts like EDG, VIT or G2 despite having multiple decent teams.

Because SEN has him on the payroll bro it ain't hie fault an NA team wants him more.

It's the complete opposite. EMEA "looked horrible" - read: had any amount of two-sided games - because there were about 5 serious contenders, unlike other regions that have exactly 1 each. VIT, TL, KC and GX are all legitimately good teams that have a shot at internationals.

VIT is ahead right now because they look more obviously closer to G2 and EDG level. TL is close behind with DRX.

TH could comeback too since they very clearly were underprac'd after all the illness.

You want an actual answer, the team is probably fine. You could argue to cut Zellsis but he just needs to work on his aim and actually provide the vibes they keep claiming he gives while Narrate needs to work on his chill. And whoever decided to mess with comps and that John can't IGL on Senti needs sacked or at least have their input on comp building withheld and they just comm better.

They also need to seriously train whoever will be playing Omen to keep up with Zekken better. But these are all fixable.

Anyway, now that's done SEN BAD RARRR

barely misses beating 2nd place = 23rd apparently

One of them was an exceptionally close match against the best team in the region lost exclusively because Avez threw two clutches, so like... yeah, actually.

With a team that's equally as good as she is, she could.

To be totally fair, I think Yay Chamber could still be excellent if EG were as good at setting him up as Optic were back in the day.

The question of if that's good enough nowadays is up in the air, but I'd like to at least see it given a chance.

I think the answer is just they're bad but KC start making mistakes if their opponents do and so can't beat bad teams themselves somehow.

Still probably pretty high up EMEA for being so close to beating VIT but I'm biased. EMEA seems to actually be pretty close altogether though, 2-3 standouts, about 6-7 solid teams on top. And Apeks I guess.

Tiny map doesn't favor Harbor, it favors Tejo or the Deadlock comp they ran on Bind.

His problem is a complete lack of designed purpose in his kit with a bonus of multiple crippling weaknesses to counterbalance how "broken" he would "clearly" have been without them.