I mean we like haven't yet seen it curious if forcing is becoming TOO obviuos on attack abyss since everyone knows g2's gonna do it, why not let them full buy stingers/guardians/spectres/etc. and just guarantee a bonus win. I love forcing don't get me wrong but we've invented 2 round 2 strats (forcing + jumping) so...

i read ascent/split out, corrode/bind in
Now i love corrode and ESPECIALLY bind (hate me all u want i love bind), BUT as a proud sova main i love ascent and the odin. Wish haven would've gone, that map is so pesky and has been here for ages.
Although ascent is arguably the most one-sided map in the pool because attack is just brutal since the chokes are tiny af

in any case that would still mean our hypothetical path is easier since it's just vitality that's hard this bracket is set up for g2 regional form (although ig we're now a chinese team if u think about it)

americas teams to g2 -> free (and by americas i mean every time that is NOT named loud)

trent is carrying his team, sayo's team is great. Every match g2 wins he's top-rated and i think top frag as well. Obv, trent's rating is higher than sayo's as a result

you did not need to say "dont mean to be racist"
literally nothign in your take is racist lol however i think that's just NOW they're bad, in the past they were better; unfair to remove spots prematurely without knowing next year performance

ykw they say...
FOURTH TIMES THE CHARM
lmao

we actually brought american soil to play on trust 😭 g2 please treat it like a regional

5th times the charm 🤞😭
G2-1 PRX

PRX ban Abyss, G2 ban Ascent (g2 don't have a perma-ban, they kinda play everything but i would say ascent and summit are their worst)
PRX pick Summit (? idk maybe sunset), win 13-9
G2 pick Haven (ik they don't play it too often but prx pretty weak here), win 13-11
PRX ban Lotus, G2 ban Sunset
Split remains, map 3 banger as usual G2 win 15-13

bro is more tilted than his team

i lowkey cooked with this bro they were so obviously tilted 🤣 give me full team comms that sht looked downright heinous from them bro how are you dying to your own teammate's tejo ult 😭
it's genuinely NOT kristal's fault bro i love kristal so man u have to RUN away from that team, don't walk, RUN bro they are screaming at him and yelling insults and MOANING mid-round how is he supposed to IGL bro they just ignore him and be toxic and tilt (well mainly patmen he's like 95% of the reason it's toxic)

their team synergy was never going to work.

i mean vitality sucks but
GE's comms are honestly criminal. Like, I'm shocked this team won anything. It sounds worse than my ranked comms, and basically each game I have a toxic instalock duelist.
Patmen is TILTING mid-round. Like he's complainig in VC, screaming at teammates and complaining about them mid-round after dying, sighing in frustration and blocking audio cues from teammates.
like Kristal is a miracle worker for getting this team to do good. He's calling for the team despite teammates screaming at him speicifcally almost all the time (#initiatorscapegoat), clutches, and has great util despite some m embers of his team complaining about everything he does (and i mean EVERYTHING, util or no util)

once GE starts to lose, they WILL lose hard because they're toxic af. I thought Frost was the problem, and I certainly think he's part of it because he is known as a very vocal and very talkative/expressive coach (like opposite of JoshRT), but man I feel like Patmen is cut from the same stone.

That being said, Vitality 2-1 GE after GE start to tilt.

Sato top 2 secondary duelists in NA (asuna and him u can argue either)
Kinggg top 2 smoke igls in NA (again, him and valyn)
trent top 2 initiators in NA (him and brawk - ofc imo it's trent, he's been top rated player itw for last 2 years that qualified for champs)
Oxy like best primary duelist in NA
Leaf one of the best flexes as well (i mean ofc neon but)

g2 looking great, just wondering how the style would work. Trent does a lot of the mid-round micro/macro for g2, and a lot of the other players contribute to the macro; imo kinggg's weak spot as an igl is mid-round calling (mainly macro, his micro looks good), so curious to see how it develops under a different system, particularly since joshrt kinda doesn't force his players to do anything, he's a super nice coach whereas sometimes you want a coach who forces changes and tells u ur diving off the cliff when you're trash (i feel like joshrt is just hte opposite, he's just always nice)

dead team buff?
trent better carry this team for like the 1000th match in a row (2 years in a row)

YOU would look good against china bro
okay trent is putting up like some straight devious numbers but bro it's Tyloo

dw it'll be 5-2 soon

adela deserves #1 change my mind

it's not 5-2 it's 4-2 bro we cannot be counting "radiant asia invitational" 🥀

dw fifth times the charm 🥀
real talk it's not a rivalry it's a bta at least we can beat like every other team

i feel like we're known as the china trolls cuz we lost to XLG 😭 i don't think anyone calls us china farmers

nah we basically never bomb out because we the real group stage merchants
g2 bomb out of playoffs as usual, but go undefeated in groups because it's g2 and what else would you expect
1 team beat EDG in champs 24 -> g2
last team to beat NRG before champs 25 -> g2 (lowkey woulda beat them in the groups too if we hypothetically couldve gotten them)

m0lescent

valyn smoke+igl
zekken duelist
JohnQT flex (main sentinel)
eeiu initiator
someone else duelist

where our money coming from bruh
ANYONE but ocelote iykyk

true but i feel like they should've at least TRIED to offer sato and kingg smth lol

dasnerth seen with tears falling down his legs 😭

WHAT on earth is my team doing 😭 where on earth is this money coming from 😭
look, sato over babybay is 100% an AMAZING move but how on earth did lev agree to this 😭
kingg over valyn is a bit weird icl, I think they're pretty on par shooting/skill-wise and even mid-round reads are pretty similar, but obv i feel like valyn is just more used to g2 than kingg (i mean no sht lol hes been here for ages)

like imo if we this rich i feel like valyn-sato-neon-leaf-trent is the optimal lineup if we really going for the win (not sure if we have the money for neon-sato though)

idk what temperature it is for him and maybe im just a spoiled american but sometimes when u have no power for ac/heater u just CANNOT sleep

real bro is spouting some real crap because they don't believe sova is better on all maps
my point is he can't be the best initiator because he can't play fade

no; the map he plays vyse on is lotus
The ideal comp would be double duelist with keiko; Ethan plays omen plenty, skuba stays on viper, problems solved (brawk on fade)
but they can't play it

the problem is LITERALLY that he plays other roles
he CANT play fade he plays vyse (and brim like once which was a little funny)
i'm fine with him flexing but you can't be a good initiator and not play fade

low rank players hate on the odin
the odin is not so hard to counter, it's just a way to anchor site; the same protocools to root out site anchors is the same protocool to flush out an odin. If you know all the bangable walls (like me), you can easily counter the lineup spots and flush them out

you do not have to game plan around brawk on sova bro
trent has the same rating as brawk while able to play skye/fade

nrg has to play around brawk's hero pool; ethan goes onto fade, keiko onto omen, brawk on vyse on lotus is wasting the potential of keiko on double duelist

mate he's an initiator player your pool can't just be sova
AT LEAST fade bro he doesn't have fade lineups
how can you be a scan ini player and not play fade 😭 it's almost unbelievable

brawk is crazy he's the same rating in stage 2 as trent and his hero pool isn't half as deep 😭 (it's literally just sova)

the problem is it's almsot the same as a vandal but slower, and they don't keep adding long range maps (summit and corrode are complicated - the mid space is incredibly long ranged, but i feel like the sites are so claustrophobic and the mains are close range)

this is FAR faster than a guardian, has more bullets in the clip, and is just 650 more
you can't make it two shot light, it has to be 3

i love broken agents too but i want FUN broken agents and in general broken initiators are not fun 😭
i love trent and i played tejo myself but man that tejo meta was boring af to play and play against

if only i could make it go

after the outlaw nerfs in pro play outlaw use hasn't been as high
watching loud vs 100t, you can see the impact of the light shield meta. Again, the problem is that the opponent makes it unpreidctable; they don't do it every round, but they do it enough so that it makes a creds difference but not enough so that outlaw is a reasonalbe purchase

go watch americas finals, you'll see light armors all the time

i took it how english works bro
and omen does not somewhat entry, if u have somewhat reasonable ranked teammates (hehe NOT ME lol) you'll never be first into site (first off you're smoking second off u should have entry duelists - omen tp doesn't distract crosshairs because they don't see you)

You just need a recon initiator, similar to sova/fade but perhaps with a flash instead of shock/seize (obv a drone ofc)

well people in pro play DO run light shield meta, they just do it intermittently (don't want to be predictable; if you do it like once every 3 rounds or something, then the opponent won't RISK an outlaw buy)

but also the majority of players play ranked, I think the patch notes can't be only for pro play

i'd rather have a nothingburger than the tejo release 😭
ideally we'd have something like a recon initiator that's balanced with sova and fade, not broken or absolute sht.

"similar to omen"
twin omen does not entry or recon 😭

as an initiator main myself with like 50000 lineups for sova and fade and kayo, i hope she's another scan initiator, on par with fade and sova.
The initiator meta is ALL sova and fade and the SMALLEST bit of skye (kayo, tejo, gekko, breach all have basically zero play and combine to probably not even skye's playtime). Although I'm not looking foward to memorizing more initiator lineups, I do want SOME diversity

As I say when writing essays, everything should have a purpose.
I think by introducing a 2900 cred gun, riot SHOULDVE made an attempt to counter the light shield meta. People rarely buy heavy armor these days, because in pro play, "leg shots" don't really exist - it's all headshots and bodyshots, and for teams with vandals, heavy = light = regen armor (for phantoms, there can be arguments for heavy armor, but if u get hs, they prob be hitting a bodyshot on u easily too)
with 50/bullet and 200/hs from any range, this gun does NOT care whether you are runing heavy shield or light shield, and in fact, all possible combos with warden and phantom/vandal bullets (50, 35/39, 40) actually do NOT care about light or heavy armor (if you take 1 shot, it's 100 health - 40x2 < 100 < 35x3; if you take 2 shots, it's 50 health -> 40x1 < 50 < 35x2)

riot should've made this gun do 44 damage imo. I know this number LOOKS weird (45 prob better, but phantom does 39 so who knows), but it means 125 < 44x3 < 150, and 44+35x3 = 149<150.
This gun just reinforces the light shield meta, and I don't really see a purpose to it.

you know what i said tyloo above 2-0 but
this fcking org had to ruin everything bro fckass org
like I love the players they're all amazing people but man I just can't support this fckass org and i KNOW the chinese crowd supports sword9 and will boo them even if it's the org not the player's fault (also i feel so bad for sword9 he has worked so hard for this even going back to QJ with kang kang)

g2-0 but hopefully the players aren't discouraged by their shtass org

*i'm saying what i WANT to happen, NOT what riot published because i don't like it

How will regions be split next year?
I think the big problem right now is EMEA and Central Asia; Americas, China are clear cut (Latam, Brazil, NA, China)
For Pacific, obv Korea/Japan, and then probably Oceania + SE Asia, which would leave S+Central Asia to pacific.
EMEA is massive though - Turkey gets its own, but is Western/Eastern Europe split, or do we put them together (and where do Russia + Caucasian countries go? Do we split Russia?)
And the middle east/african countries too

not sure how the regions are going to work but this is what I want:

Formerly Pacific -> Japan, Korea, South+Central Asia, Southeast Asia + Oceania (potentially combine southeast asia+oceania and S/C asia? I'm pretty confident each scene is big enough to have fans, but not sure if player quality will IMMEDIATELY jump to the necessary levels, or if we need to combine the regions for a couple years to boost competition more before separating them iykwim)
Formerly China -> China
Formerly Americas -> NA, Latam, Brazil
Formerly EMEA (this one's SUPER hard) -> Turkey, Middle East + Africa (again, similar to Southeast Asia + Oceania and South Asia, I think after a couple years these could maybe separate, but in this case, neither scene is developed enough so they have to go together), Western Europe, Eastern Europe (+Russia, Caucasians)

TO SHANGHAI FROM CHENGDU
WE ARE NO MORE TYGLOO
WE WILL SHOW IN THIS FIRST TO TWO
THE MIGHT OF CHINA TO G2

i know yall can see my flair i just like i support this team but idek anymore tyloo too and honestly i have way more faith in them than g2 even if i want g2 to win slightly more

https://www.vlr.gg/pickem/758e7e92
china crowd buff is REAL and yall arent ready for it