Idk, a lot of them also seem like there's some holes being filled with T2 talent.
Maybe a couple more stand outs but also how much of that is comparing them to the field where the other teams like a USA, Thailand or Korea is effectively a non consideration in CS. The gap between EU CS and the other regions is way bigger, so the teams are more of a threat.

I mean in terms of ENC, the EU talent doesn't really sort into single nationality teams outside of the Turkish teams and the Russian teams before they got the thanos snap.

Then when you look at the higher performing EU teams you have a very diverse pool of nationalities (outside of the prominence of Turkish and Russian players).

Meaning making that many ENC rosters have to pull from a lot of T2 talent to cover gaps

PRX are going to champs, even if they get grouped 0:5 in stage 2 they're still going.

Is it time for the ultimate saving strats narrative?

Kinda depends what your driving and where you're learning. There's a big difference between learning on an auto in the country compared to a manual in city traffic.

In general the auto is the best starting place in terms of building confidence on the road but the hours required to get the feeling for the manual generally results in more overall confidence
(but trying not to stall while holding up traffic on your first driving lesson is stressful as fuck for the learner and a pain in the arse for everyone else on the road so don't start with that)

You get those sometimes, remember 2020 had the most rocket ship of rocket ships Merc ever had and that season still had some bangers and iconic moments.
Kinda like when Max had a rocketship, you just gotta look further back than P1 for the interesting story lines.

Surely they cheer for XLG and NoMan (the pride of Wales)

Also London crowd with the Sideshow XLG football chants would go kinda hard

ULF not paying their would have to go down as the biggest fumble in Valorant history right?

Pacific is all locked in, last week's just for seeding

Yeah but it would be so funny. And liquid already lost 1st seed to FUT so time to save some strats, meanwhile mates will be trying their arse off to avoid starting playoffs in lowers

If Fut beat heretics (fairly likely) and Navi beat KC (also fairly likely) then Navi would qualify ahead of heretics on head to head.
Meaning Comeback would make it into playoffs because he lost the game on Heretics to qualify with Navi.
Man was playing 5D chess this whole time.

I think it depends on the bar your leveling to,
Does America's or apac have more than a couple IGL's that you can set the bare minimum as top 8 team in the world (playoffs of an international event).

Yeah probably munchkin & Valyn. Maybe Ethan (granted he's been shown to struggle without the NRG system being able to prep). Maybe Saadhak or Kingg if he can keep up their current runs but both have very questionable parts of their credibility.

There are other good IGL's running around but they're not at that bar and most of them are compatible to EMEA IGL's currently performing like sociable or Rose.

You forget Carpe is the second son of T1 after Faker. Legit will probably never leave T1

The team doesn't need experienced players, they have those already and it ain't working. Vic and Oxy are the only young players and Oxy is in his 3rd year on C9.

Hot take, cooked like a gourmet meal

I don't care if it's because of the meta or gameplay quality.
Parity and unpredictable results > quality gameplay pretty much everytime.

Bros got fibre in Uzbekistan and I'm out here in the middle of a medium sized city still plugging the router to the adsl2 line

Sometimes the lucky country is not so lucky

I don't live in a state capital city
good luck mate

In my eyes this definitely isn't a contract jail.
Granted I think people would complain it's contract jail if hypothetically the loan team won ascension and Gen G hold him on there bench.

At the end of the day if a development contract doesn't have both a buy out option for the player and a right to first refusal for the team then it's not a good contract.

I mean, I respect the confidence if you really do think the kid is next up.

Be interesting to know what the terms of the contract are like. Hoping given his age it's not too predatory granted it's Esports so I doubt it, granted it's also Esports so I'm assuming if it's reasonable but at some point Gen G prevent a move to another team then people will complain about contract jail (even though they definitely deserve to hold him with this big of an investment)

I'm guessing the decision to loan him out to Onside is partially part of the financial justification (help pay whatever minimum wage salary he's on, otherwise surely you would just put him on Gen G Academy)

NS
Francis
M8s if marteen's 'gods gift to kickoff' run ends at the lan like last time
G2

That's a real shame, I was really hoping for the possibility of Demon1 vs Babybay chamber and more importantly the interview afterwards of either Demon1 giga ego or Demon1 getting clowned on for his last interview

Your telling me PRX fans wouldn't enjoy watching Dambi.

Dambi plays the game PRX fans think that PRX plays.

Y'all got more options for servers than Sydney, Sydney or Sidney?

I mean Ion ain't 18 until 2027 so Rossy at least has a fair bit of job security (assuming history doesn't repeat and he gets replaced after 1 stage)

What do you mean 'an awful team to have in vct'.

They're a great team to have. They have a distinctive team Identity, the players have a story and personalities which in the world of Esports is a hard thing to find. You might not like those personalities but they're sure as hell good for the game in terms of engagement and attention which is the goal of Esports (given Esports is literally a marketing program).

Like ain't no one excited for some boring respectful shake hands, play game, thank team mates, thank fans, say your opponent tried their best/we'll get them next time, generic Twitter post player, life's better with a bit of spice.

I can see where your coming from and it's generally more relevant to think about your course and where your passion is. Like I'm in my final year of Mechanical Engineering and the maths really isn't what makes me excited about the degree or the field and the really hard non-intuitive stuff that I would throw at the LLMs to find a starting point is not overly relevant to my career path. But if you're in a maths degree then I could see the learning being more important to you than a means to an end.

Also your uni/college might also be pretty vigilant around LLMs, the school of engineering at my university are pretty chill and I've had a lot of lecturers say something along the lines of "every industry partner we have uses them in there businesses and would prefer we send them interns and undergrads that can use them effectively instead never using them at all"

In my experience LLMs are pretty good at differential equations these days.

Always worth throwing it through and reading through the output to see if it actually has the right process. Helps you get started by showing you the patterns to look for when rearranging equations and identifying the processes to solve them more than the raw calculations of derivatives and integrals (which btw derivative.com and integral.com are great solvers with steps to also help learn the process).

Text books are fine but you gotta read a lot of fluff and generally don't have anything useful for the more complex issues where the challenge is more about starting it.

Just what ever you do don't just copy past an LLM response as an answer, use it as a tool like any other calculator and not as the solution to ever problem

Surprising that so many of them are smokes players
Aspas on duelist
Boaster smokes igl
Mazino probably playing flash initiators
Saadhak probably playing initiator
Artzin on sentinel "perma viper"

Mines still sitting in the envelope it got given to me in. Figured it would make a good keepsake at some point even if it's just cash sitting on my bookshelf.

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, but the Kingdom bit kinda feels like a technicality so take that how you will

Definitely OCE challengers... Big things this year

Lowkey the actual announcement video was straight fire.
Lived up to the hype even though it's been leaked for ages.

Me when I kill the entire identity of a team

Ok hear me out. Is it finally OCE's change to get an org spot in franchising. Surely there's enough SEA teams, one spot for little old OCE wouldn't hurt no one would it.

Valyn?
Never heard of it. Must a Chinese brand that never made it to Aus. Does it have those extra buttons on the back?

I get that popular vote is probably the Xbox One controller (there's a reason it didn't swap from the XBONE to the Series X). Personally I'm a big fan of the GameCube controller, Nintendo were low-key a second full joystick and analogue trigger away from perfection.

Personally not a huge dual shock fan anymore the Dual Shock 2 was fire but i wasn't really a fan of the skinny way they do the analogue triggers on the new ones.

And shout out the Logitech F310 for is dual purpose of games and submarine steering

I mean you sound pretty convinced. As someone who also did the 1hr 30 minutes commute (granted that was just living in a different regional town so less frustrating than traffic) if it's killing your passion for what your doing then it's time to either move closer or start a plan to move on. I highly recommend you don't just send it and resign, have a plan find something else 1st.

Always one foot in one foot out, unemployment leads to desperation and taking anything you can get which probably would be just as bad for your mental as living with the commute.

Yay ain't a good fit, yays the up there with cryo for the most passive duelist players going around. Not exactly matching the Cane and Envy playstyle.

Wasn't expecting the KDG Carpe reunion in the big 2025

Tenz was also them buying an established player and the face of valorant just of dominating masters 2 the 1st Lan event of the game. The gambit players weren't known at the time, they were all players without a major social presence in an isolated region and gambit got forced out before they would have resigned new contracts for higher compensation.

Nah, pretty sure allegation was that bro was watching to much Overwatch 'content' on the hub and he got hella memes for it

I heard on a stream Hastr0 was planning for Envy to have a tier 2 roster for next year so Cane and Ion don't just have to ride a bench. Anyone able to confirm/find the source for that one?

BBL Pacific isn't an academy team it's an affiliate team. As long as they separate from BBL if they win they're fine. Think KRU and Oxen instead of Lev and Lev academy

There's a better way to look at this question.
Is 2 Turkish ascension teams make it to VCT enough to prevent Cojo finding a cracked Turkish tier 2 player for Boaster's system to mould into an absolute weapon?
If not, I can only assume the old challenger Turkey sort by ACS might win out

From memory the global contract database listed him as an Americas resident for import limits.

Do you like other Pokemon games? if so you'll probably enjoy it if you buy it. If you don't, then problem solved don't buy it.

In terms of more nuanced takes,

• the new combat system looks interesting, a more interactive twist on the old turn based jrpg formula Pokemons built off
• the new Megas are pretty cool (granted gen 6 hits some peak nostalgia for me so probably a biased take)
• story and characters will probably be what your expecting, not the most overly complicated plot but with hype moments that (kind of like the crap TV everyone secretly loves to watch)

No maple no wins
Unfortunately you get those on the big jobs sometimes

Hear me out here, if the match goes 1-1. Gentlemen's agreement to sub in Babybay and Carpe for the greatest final map of the century.

I mean the traffic lights are looking good for it
Win last week against NS and DRX
Lose this week to PRX
Win the next week of games in lower bracket final and PRX rematch in the grand finals

Might come undone though if it counts weeks that games aren't played on

Unfortunate for nongshim. Got them on the wrong week

Have some faith. For dreams to come true enough people need to dream