undoubtedly

zest took over because the team thinks his style is better

maybe it wasn't your intention but you pose the fact that the winner's bracket team only has one chance whereas every other team has two as questionable. so naturally the assumption is that a system where the winner also has two is an alternative

i'm just addressing that

the alternative that you're describing is called a bracket reset, and only really works in shorter fast paced esports like fighting games. for something like valorant it would make the "first" grand finals much less interesting because only one team has an actual win condition in it. would extend the end of the tournament and drain hype

yeah, all of them minus crow (he isn't bad or anything, the others are just insane) have ridiculous pop off potential and have demonstrated the ability to take over an entire match all by themselves

i'm looking at the list of teams here and i think they would even be top 5 in terms of mechanics, trying to order within that is way too subjective though

i dont assume that lol. people on this site have literal chipmunk attention span

I'd like to say with ZETA's recent advancements we can try to move away from using regions' pasts, whether it be in other shooters or esports as a whole, as some sort of immutable anchor on their potential and ability.

The earliest form of this was the quickly dispelled notion of "asian players can't aim" -- spread by people who think CS is the only fps that exists -- but beyond that tons of people naturally took the idea that teams like ZETA would just fundamentally be inferior players solely because they're japanese, and well "japan sucks at fps"

If you watched the game today I think anyone would agree that ZD not only kept up with but exceeded G2 on an individual level. Obviously their tactics, midround calling, and coordination was worse but nobody can say that they were the worse players mechanically.

I'm hyperfocusing on zeta here but only because they're a great example of what i'm talking about. This game isn't CS:GO, it isn't Overwatch, etc. Stop imposing your biases or whatever you think of regions because of unrelated shit or trends from other esports, that was that and this is this.

no tldr too lazy to summarize

zeta is demonstrably not even in the bottom 4 teams at the event lol

gameplay is gameplay. they look good but in the end competition is unpredictable and you never know what other teams have prepared

valid point, it's the vision strikers effect

when u stomp all your games it's difficult to pinpoint your actual strengths and weaknesses

i mean they definitely did throw some pivotal rounds (the viper ult round 20 being the biggest example)

but they were also under shit circumstances so can’t give them too much shit. they did well for the hand they were dealt

what can you do right. i expected them to get destroyed because of their circumstances. seeing them make it so close actually disappoints me more, because it makes me think “what if” they had a fair chance

zeta looked shit on bind vs CR lmao, im surprised they patched it up in that short amount of time

i think he and dep have the highest peaks on the team

the only realistic change if laz is actually igling would be -crow +meiy, assuming he picks up the other initiators besides skye

map didn’t feel like 13-7, the amount of rounds that came to one person made it feel like 13-11 jesus

if they had a day to rest and prepare for g2 i would say they had an okay-ish chance of taking a map (like 20%)

but in the conditions they're given it's literally going to be 5% at best, everything is stacked against them

about the upside down thing, it's more like vandalism of imagery depicting a community is understood as a direct attack on them

if people think "wow man how sensitive can you get" well it's just a cultural diff man. i'm sure some of the things you think are offensive, they would be like whatever bro. their worldview is just fundamentally different

my opinion:

obviously death threats are bad. water is wet. but this is literally just what happens when you have a community with a drastic language barrier + cultural differences and try to instigate them. plat chat's intentions weren't to be assholes, they were trying to be funny. but in japanese culture that's a big nono, using strangers you aren't friendly with as the punchline to your humor. it's extremely rude and disrespectful, and obviously when said "disrespect" was proven to be wrong, they'd bite back.

not only are they the massive underdog, they’re coming off of 4 days straight of matches that g2 can analyze

basically a doomed match but i hope they put up a fight

i remember this guy went crazy making threads about how shit japan were when they lost to drx ROFL

radio silence now all good

i called drx and zeta and got everything else wrong ROFL https://www.vlr.gg/pickem/ea3c3e93

who cares, they had a goal and achieved it. tomorrow they'll put up as good of a fight as possible and result is what it is

#4 called this shit dont doubt my boy shota watanabe ever again

#ZETAWIN THREAD ONLY

wack if true

they play the closest to "proper" valorant out of any team, but there is so much randomness and individual pop off potential in a match that simply playing "correctly" isn't always going to mean you win

yay for sure but if people don't give laz his credit i'm gonna be pissed, guy is 100% one of the best chambers

quick skim shows nip took loud to 11-13 on fracture so they should be favorites, zeta are much less tested and they showed their hand against fnatic yesterday so NIP have all the tools to analyze their play

that top site jett plant pop is iconic lol, so effective yet simple enough that i can even call it soloqing in ranked

i don't get why he does this. did it work in brazil? i imagine loud rolls over any comp with reyna lol.

he has been supporting the japanese scene for a while now. even offered help reviewing CR’s vods back when they crashed out of the first lan

TLDR ratio

stopped reading at issax28

title

sugarz3ro specializes in astra, ppl said it would hurt him because omen and brim are more meta nowadays but it seems like it's still great so far

probably 2 trips 5 bullets no armor

yeah

chet just doesn't think before he speaks lol. obviously the shit he said in the interview was dumb. but claiming he's a bad coach and should be removed because of the contents of an interview is even dumber

best chamber in the world indisputably

hope prx doesn't have a mental block

forsaken said he would rather play any emea or na team than drx

as a DRX fan i agree. but it's normal to be enthusiastic when you watch them play, regardless of the caliber of opponent it is very satisfying to see the beautiful utility combos and how seamlessly they coordinate post plants/retakes/execs

i'm sorry to hear you feel that way :-)

i think the xerxia/prx/apac storyline is one of consistent growth and exceeding their potential. they've become dramatically better step by step from every event and it's been really amazing to see them come from the comic relief "just here to have fun" team that would entertain during the tech pauses to unquestionably threatening and even beating out na/emea

back again, today's preds went pretty well -- got the first two right and whiffed on zeta (gonna be honest, i was trying to jinx them as a japan fan)

optic 2-1 xerxia
yo man wtf you biased piece of shit! xerxia rolled optic twice now! how can you think they win!

yeah, im biased. idgaf, i think these two teams are close in skill and honestly i would be happy if xerxia won it as well. love to see apac representation. but i think what people overlook is the losing effect. when you play a team in a double elim bracket and have the opportunity to face them again, the team that lost has a massive advantage in being able to study their weaknesses and discover how exactly the the opponent exploited them. considering i think the teams are quite evenly matched, this factor is large enough to tip it in optics favor imo.
optic 55-45 xerxia

nip 2-1 zeta
honestly speaking i would love to predict zeta but I can see the match going in two ways, and nips victory is just slightly more feasible to me. i've watched all of zetas games and i can say that they are still not playing up to their potential they showed online. their fracture was sloppy and full of holes, and anyone can tell you how icebox was just hero plays round after round by honestly the entire team. and while i believe they have the ABILITY to recreate this against nip, it's not a consistent thing to fall back on. what is much more likely is only one or two players really shooting at all cylinders (laz +1), and ultimately i dont think that's going to be enough to penetrate the power of jail valorant

hope they prove me wrong though!
nip 70-30 zeta

hate, agree, disagree, below

zeta are still not performing at maximum, lots of sloppiness on fracture but they stepped it up during icebox. this team still has more potential to fulfill

not about hating someone, it's about using your platform for good

all good tho feel free to drop the innocent till proven guilty bar, that thing is fire

ye or they can lose in quarterfinals purely because of how close the teams in playoffs are

maybe it has to do with one community constantly instigating arguments and drama and the other one being nothing but respectful and a permanent underdog

the real answer is that sugarz3ro and tennn have no lan experience and it was their first game. so its normal for them to underperform

the second aspect of it is that if you watched the game, zeta got continually stomped in chain rounds which rendered their economy basically worthless, the amount of times they actually had fullbuy was pitiful so they kinda just got rinsed

crow, he was the igl in cs as well