Many times it is more profitable for players to turn to content creation instead of playing professionally. Curry is definitely good enough to play on any tier 2 team and probably multiple tier 1 teams, but like you are seeing with S0m and FNS, content creation just makes way more sense in their situations. Why would you want to scrim 6 days a week 10 hours a day for league minimum when you can hop on stream and earn twice that for half the amount of time?

Another banger from that tweet: "Union had a 17-game winning streak. When it was about to reach the 18th, the Pancc lost interest."

Well they are excuses, and excuses are sometimes okay. And the score was 12-11, TL leading and the series tied 1-1, so yes, the luck that Gambit had did give them another chance to win the game which they won. But not every team is perfect and only the best teams in the world are consistent enough to be what you describe, I never called TL a contender nor would I think they had any chance to win Berlin, but they had a very high chance to make it and give EU 2/4 slots from EMEA.

First I was talking about TL, and secondly it wasn’t anything that Gambit had prepared that made them ultimately win that series, it just came down to luck, no practice helps someone get the luck they need to make their opponent take 1 hundredth more of a second to plant the bomb, at that point it’s just rng. And to your point about practice, none of us know what’s going on behind the scenes, so there is no real reason to speculate that they are not taking practices seriously.

Well when you say this you have to keep in mind EU was .01 seconds away from sending 2 teams to Berlin and CIS sending none, so I wouldn't over react just yet

Most of the money players make isn't from prize money, they make most of their money from brand deals and the contracts they sign with their orgs and since CS, and the players' streams, are still decently popular in Europe/CIS, along with the fact that CS contracts are massively inflated atm, makes it more lucrative to stay in CS for the time being.

Well I'd imagine one reason most of them aren't making any big moves is because can't make any unless they are willing to lose circuit points, that combined with the fact that there aren't really any big name free agents that would make those teams immediate contenders makes is really hard to see any big roster shuffles coming in the near future

By barely beat do you mean went 5-0 in maps and 2-0 in series'?

Ve9om have a trip down memory lane shall we? https://twitter.com/infamousbtw/status/1397363719655591937?s=20

The fact that the comp has no duelists isn't particularly new, for we saw that from TL on Haven a while back, we knew from Boaster during his VOD reviews on stream that they were going to change up a lot, and what they have essentially done is replaced their raze with an Astra (arguably the reason they lost to Sentinels on Bind). However, due to Astra's current Nerfs, her kit is now very slow, having to wait a lot longer between casts of her ability, and they are trying to compensate for this by sticking her on the same sight as viper, having her do most of the job of the controller and allowing astra to utilize her stun and pull to its fullest. I have no idea how good this will work, and I'm sure it will improve over time, right now G2 (Mixwell) have found a large hole in Fnatics default in Showers, where he finds amazing timings and is probably the reason they are winning.

Think it could have been worded a bit better, bang is obviously coming in to fill the permanent controller role the team has been missing for a while.

When TenZ literally switched to Val because he couldn’t perform on LAN, my guy just admit you were wrong

They did the same stuff over and over again? Dude who have you been watching?

And replace them with who?

The problem is much deeper than a game plan

I think they would love to run other comps, but because they don't have a solid IGL they cant make complicated comps work. They currently play a puggy/ more basic comp to get the most out of the fact that their team is mostly full of fragers and without someone who can take advantage of the abundance of utility that would be available by choosing other comps. You suggest that they just switch some agents, but they have been looking for a comp that will make this roster work for by switching some agents for almost 10 months now. If you have thought of a solution to their problem that involves them not changing the roster, I promise you that they have already thought of it and tried it in scrims.

Until Jett/OP gets another nerf, they will always and should always run 2, Wardell on Jett and An entry Fragger, as long as you have someone like Wardell that makes the most sense.

is a joke

Sova doesn't give the discreetness of a lurker and I kind of agree with you on Subroza/Cypher, but I do think the lack of a permanent IGL has limited them in terms of comps they can run. They currently play a more puggy style to make up for the lack of consistent and decent calling (as can be seen by the hot potato treatment the role gets between Hazed and Cutler). I think that if they get a permanent IGL, they will be able to commit to a certain comp/style that they can get really good at, for they won't have to be changing comps to make up for the fact that they have no actual IGL

He might be good in the clutch, but he doesn't produce the same amount of value on his agent and the same number of clutches to make up for his lack of an agent pool and make him worth keeping over Hazed; Those reasons would really only work if you were getting the same value out of him that 100T were getting out of Hiko.

They are probably not going to but they should, their style worked when the people's understanding of the game couldn't match up to the fragging ability of TSM and Wardell's OP, but now people's understanding of the game has much improved and Val has nerfed the OP so they are really in need of a big change if they want to win.

Why would you kick Hazed over Cutler, right now they need an IGL, accepting that they would only kick one, Hazed has demonstrated more fragging ability and agent flexibility

Subroza as much as you say he has been inconsistent, has averaged about 250 acs when playing on omen, very high for a smoker.

I like what you are thinking, but I don't think that is very realistic. I think TSM and most people think that subroza is too good of a player to be wasted on a sentinel and it would probably never happen, but I like where you are going. I do not think there is a future in adding another duelist to TSM, right now the meta around the world is shifting to less and less duelists as teams learn more how to get value out of utility that other agents can provide (Viper, Breach, etc.) and it would shift them to an even more puggy style team then they already are. Right now when series are tight Cutler's playbook is basically Wardell/Subroza go kill or Drone do something, and back when Hazed used to IGL it was pretty much the same; and the reason they could be playing this puggy style could be because of their lack of a solid IGL. As much as I like someone like Tex, there are so many holes that are filled by someone like Shinobi, Stani, or Poach who could potentially flex onto that second controller/sentinel/initiator role that would benefit TSM much more than a third duelist. I still think that this team has another entire advantage of its LAN experience that could benefit them greatly in the near future, so I do think they should get rid of more than they need to, but right now there are too many holes (Puggy comp, lack of coordination, etc.) that could be filled with a good and permanent IGL and the diversity/number of comps they could pull off would just come as an added bonus.

Just pent up frustrations from watching what was the best team in NA go to tier 2

For one, Subroza is so much better than Hazed will ever be on smokes, his lurking has almost been carrying this team as much as Wardell. Secondly Drone is still an entry fragger, unless wardell has an OP this team relies on Drone to create space, and as I said earlier that role only produces good results when the team is doing well, if he is set up well with a good IGL, he will look like the best Pheonix on NA again. Android has Daps, Asuna has Steel and Nitr0, Sinatraa and Sick have Shaz, and Food has Dapr, All the best of the best IGLs that set them up in really good spots, Drone has a combination of Hazed and Cutler who are no comparison. And if you want a new IGL, unless you are picking up Shinobi you need a sova, and no one on the market and the sova experience that Drone has, unless you were to trade him. But if you are proposing they pick up someone who again took a 6-8 month break from the game and just two weeks ago picked up the game to play at a Pro-level and IGL, I really dont see a better option.

1. You have only based your need to replace Drone on recent games. Sure he had one bad tourney, but he also acts as the entry fragger, and as an entry fragger is tasked with creating space, whether that means getting 3ks or dying so you can be traded. So obviously when your team does badly the entry fragger is not going to have the best stats in the world (you will have more deaths than the rest of the team and have a worse kdr). So founding an argument on replacing an ENTRY FRAGGER with just kdr is just stupid. And almost any respectable source your can find will say he is the best, maybe second best Pheonix in NA, a character that could be key in beating European teams who do not play against him as much.
2. This team needs an IGL, they been tossing around that role like a hot potato and you can really tell that it is hurting them. In all 4 of the maps they lost yesterday they had an even first half followed by a collapse in the second half; their coach admitted that they had terrible communication, which is at the end of the day the IGL's jobs to stimulate and control if it is not happening. They put Cutler on IGL because Hazed wasn't cutting it so you can throw that out, and you really think DAFRAN is going to fix that, and please don't even mention Brax, the guy plays two agents, Sentinel (Cypher) and Jett, both occupied already on the team by people YOU wouldn't replace (Sentinel - Hazed) (Jett - Wardell). I think if you wanted to make a good change to TSM you would need to get a solid IGL, right now TSM just needs someone who can call decent strats to help them get over the hump. Against LG their first halves were (6-6 & 6-6) and vs. 100T (6-6 & 4-8) (Because of some rediculous clutches from Hiko that would never happen with a GOOD IGL), followed by an absolute collapse that resembled that of an uncoordinated team that had no leader. Imo, someone like Dafran who has only been back for about 2 weeks and has no clue about any near-pro-level strats, and Brax who is just a pure fragger on roles already taken by current members on TSM. I think TSM if they were limited to only free agents, should try to get Shinobi; C9 had decent results w/ him on the roster and he has experience in succeeding with a star player like Wardell (TenZ); He also had the added bonus of filling the Sova role. If I wasn't limited to free agents and took into consideration real-life applications, aka the sizes and priorities of different teams, I would go for someone like JcStani (Immortals), this would be able to happen as Imt has a past of being an Org that prioritizes making money off of selling players rather than building for the future (Selling Asuna and Dicey to 100T), so I think that it would make it a real possibility for them to sell JcStani to TSM, who could flex onto agents like viper and possibly Astra to maybe mimic some International strats that have continuously killed TSM's puggy style of play. A more realistic kind of signing that could improve TSM's IGL position would be Andersin (Currently Kooky Koalas[Unsigned]) who would also flex onto Viper/Astra. Andersin was the IGL for the Slimey Boogermen, who made some noise during first strike with a lack of real talent and would be a decent choice as a permanent IGL.
   Overall: We saw it in first strike and we saw it yesterday, TSM just can't finish out matches, they have decent starts, which makes me believe that their gameplan/coach isn't the issue, its just when the team has an advantage, in situations where Subroza can lurk and get a kill, Wardell just out aims someone, or they have a man advantage retake/postplant, they always manage to throw it away, which really makes me believe that they just need a decent IGL who can take the situations that pure talent on TSM provides and convert it into wins, because right now Cutler just isn't cutting it. And replacing an entry fragger only because of kdr is just stupid.