Yeah, I’m supporting Chichoo myself. Crazy to see his journey and I don’t think he gets his flowers since he’s on the same team as KK and Smoggy.

Oh I wholly agree. I’m just noticing that the majority of posts aren’t from actual TH fans — just bandwagons.

Yeah, that’s probably more accurate. They’re probably over-represented by brain rot like Sentinelmain377 though.

It’s such a shame their fans suck.

Boaster vs. Florescent

Top 3 ordered by storyline:

• EG 2023 | Underdog Villains

• LOUD 2022 | El Classico and Redemption

• FNC 2023 | EMEA’s Last Hope

If Sen win Champs they’ll have the same story line as LOUD 2022 except that they’ll have actually won the first masters of the year.

If TH win they’ll have the same narrative as EG last year.

The new schedule separates the Split records but if it still uses groups then you could get screwed if you place 5th in a harder group when you could have placed 3rd-4th in the easier one — disqualifying you from playoffs.

Why doesn’t Riot run full round robins for each split and just have the teams play two matches a week? If that’s too dense, just add in two more weeks to the Split and run matches 4/7 days instead of just the weekend. I know there’s limitations with having to maintain the venue and paying for casters/production but it sucks that some teams basically have their season over by the end of the first Split. Super week proves it’s viable.

I’m just not convinced that the base minimum of only 12 matches per year is enough for the bottom 8 teams of each league to accrue experience or a community base. You might say they should have just won more but it’s crazy to me that Jawgemo, Demon1, Ethan and all of LOUD practically ended their seasons by early July after 10-15 total matches.

Something more needs to change.

A3 rn and I don’t play any Duelists

Ascent: KJ, Clove/Omen
Bind: Clove, Cypher, Chamber
Sunset: Cypher, Clove/Omen
Lotus: KJ, Omen
Icebox: Clove, Viper, Sage
Abyss: Astra, Viper
Haven: KJ, Omen

My Omen stats are horrendous for some reason so I’ve been trying to switch over to Clove where my individual performance improves dramatically. Think it’s because I care less about utility coordination and so my mechs get my full attention.

Breeze is the worst by far.

Icebox mid need a heavy rework.

Ascent is stale with paper thin walls.

Ranked:

1. Fracture
2. Lotus
3. Bind

Pro:

1. Fracture
2. Split
3. Lotus

Use Valoplant

Note buys, ultimates, and loss bonus (swing round or no).

Record initial positions for defaults and sentinel/viper setup.

Break round into phases: Opening defaults, Midround adjustments, and Postplant positions.

Look for patterns in how a team prefers to setup and the shortcomings of their comp.

Figured it’d be fun to look back at all the top 4 teams since the start of VCT and see all the teams that had a chance to be champions. It’s incredible that Loud is the only org that appears twice.

2021: TL | KRU | Gambit | Acend

2022: FPX | DRX | OpTic | LOUD

2023: FNC | LOUD | PRX | EG

2024: SEN | EDG | TH | LEV

Bump

Oh FNC as a team is fine. Its worse fans mostly deserve the hate though.

I have no idea why I wrote Haven. Must be watching too much FNC.

JohnQT +11 on Haven and carrying SEN to map 2.
Good to see EMEA on top!

Hope vitality picks him up.

Sayf | Trexx | Patitek | Hiro | Cender is the hardest roster EMEA will have seen since 2023 FNC.

catNmouse seems like a decent person

It’s funny because you’ll cheer for Sen after both EMEA teams get eliminated because of their “EMEA” Igl you pathetic bandwagon.

They made a lot of mistakes that match and every team does. I’d agree that they played “too safe” with some of the calling but that loss on Bind was simply a firepower diff.

More like disciplined and strategic. I just hate when teams I support lose because of stupid, basic mistakes — think PRX.

2021 Gambit
2022 Optic
2023 EG
2024 G2

Gives you an idea of my playstyle preferences eh

G2 beat Sen 2-0 and EDG 2-1
EDG beat Sen 2-1

But somehow Sen is better than both? Make it make sense.

G2 has Three fundamental problems.

1. They don’t prioritize setting up a heavily favored initial duel. Their lack of a star fragger means their primary means of space creation is rotation manipulation by defaults and utility spamming on executes. They lack the explosiveness that a spearhead would bring — icy just isn’t that guy. While their planned executes and anti-strats can feel overwhelming, their base firepower and playstyle doesn’t have the oomph to just dominate their competition. No prior international winner had this problem at the time of their success.

2. They fall apart during the mid round because they don’t know how to function in sub-groups outside of a holistic team. Champs EG grinded site executes and anchoring with man down disadvantages to really get good at identifying key positions for players to optimally play off each other. G2 players seem to lose track of their spacing when Valyn isn’t micromanaging and things get hectic. This is why they lose anti-ecos and toss man advantages like in the last round against FNC.

3. Leaf’s agent pool is limited to KJ and Viper.

   • They switched their Split comp from Cypher to Viper when they dropped neT.
   • They Permaban Sunset, the only map where KJ and Viper aren’t meta.
   • They force KJ for their Abyss comp when the map plays more similarly to Breeze with long rotates and no strong KJ lockdown positions.

Solution 1: Drop Icy and pick up Jawgemo or N4rrate. I hear comments about how rookies need to be fostered but Icy was always a Sentinel player and he does not cut it as a World Class Duelist.

Solution 2: Break the team up into a group of 2 and 3. Have them on opposite sides and practice scenarios ran by the 3 until the group of 2 can comfortably convert at least a 3rd of the rounds. Swap players around in the groups and repeat. This is heavy, tedious work but builds intuitive synergy between the players without having to rely on an overarching structure (Valyn) to hold their hands. They have a whole offseason and I hope they get to it because they claim they put in more work than everyone else.

Solution 3: Practice Cypher and Sage variations of their existing comps. The former suits their information-heavy midrounding style with greater freedom for Leaf to lurk while the latter shows promise on spam heavy postplant maps like Sunset and Abyss. I don’t care which way they go, I just need to see a proper 7 map pool.

I genuinely think Jawgemo would look like the best player in the world with support players as strong as G2. Give him props for the form he managed to show during Splits 1 & 2 despite being a one man show for the majority of rounds.

His record shows extensive flexibility and it wouldn’t take long for him to learn Gekko. Yoru is a slightly different story but Jawg also has experience with flashers and nothing icy has exhibited with the agent has been that complicated.

Their Permaban issue is straight up a Leaf flexibility concern. He needs to pick up Cypher and get good at it yesterday.

G2 has two fundamental problems.

1. They don’t prioritize setting up a heavily favored initial duel. Their lack of a star fragger means their primary means of space creation is rotation manipulation by defaults and utility spamming on executes. They lack the explosiveness that a spearhead would bring — icy just isn’t that guy. While their planned executes and anti-strats can feel overwhelming, their base firepower and playstyle doesn’t have the oomph to just dominate their competition. No prior international winner had this problem at the time of their success.

2. They fall apart during the mid round because they don’t know how to function in sub-groups outside of a holistic team. Champs EG grinded site executes and anchoring with man down disadvantages to really get good at identifying key positions for players to optimally play off each other. G2 players seem to lose track of their spacing when Valyn isn’t micromanaging and things get hectic. This is why they lose anti-ecos and toss man advantages like in the last round against FNC.

Solution 1: Drop Icy and pick up Jawgemo or N4rrate. I hear comments about how rookies need to be fostered but Icy was always a Sentinel player and he does not cut it as a World Class Duelist.

Solution 2: Break the team up into a group of 2 and 3. Have them on opposite sides and practice scenarios ran by the 3 until the group of 2 can comfortably convert at least a 3rd of the rounds. Swap players around in the groups and repeat. This is heavy, tedious work but builds intuitive synergy between the players without having to rely on an overarching structure (Valyn) to hold their hands. They have a whole offseason and I hope they get to it because they claim they put in more work than everyone else.

I think Trent still has it in him. He’s proven that he has the potential to be the best Initiator/Flex in Americas during 2022 and his incredibly dominant Ascension run.

His Fade and Gekko haven’t gotten enough reps since he was on Skye/Viper duty for most of 2023 and you can see it with some of his decision making. G2 lost key rounds because he was out of position or held onto utility that could have made the difference. I think part of it is tidying up his positioning so he doesn’t get caught out but then also setting him up to be their primary clutcher. I see him bait himself for his team way too often for how mechanically insane he actually is.

I’ll support LEV because of TGRD Tex and I want c0m to be a back-to-back word champion. It’s funny to meme on our perpetual flanker but he genuinely deserves more credit than being the Kiles of NA just because that Champions EG roster was packed full of hard-carry demons.

I wouldn’t mind Sen winning just so Sacy finally gets his flowers too. He falls into the same underrated category as c0m.

Yeah I quite enjoy G2. This game was pretty disappointing seeing how many mistakes they made. Definitely tilted.

Boaster doesn’t frag much but when he does they’re impact frags. Excited to see G2 Jawgemo next year.

G2-1. Icy goes nuclear on Bind and Lotus.

Every comp does but I think it’ll be the best pick once teams get used to lurking timings and everyone learns the best spam positions for post plant.

Yeah he did. Like 3.5 years ago during the games infancy, before he joined the NA scene in 2021 where he was made into the player he is today. He wasn’t born an American but he’s definitely an Americas player.

Edit: I know he’s technically considered an import on the GCD but his playstyle and community is NA.

While I agree that not having a dedicated Cypher is problematic, I think Abyss and Sunset are both maps that Sage would be exceptional at. They’re both stack-strong retake-weak side maps with spam heavy postplants — just reference the PRX comp.

How do they mess up such a simple tactic as jumping off the map? They gave TH 3 orbs, a kill and plant money. I just don’t see how FNC win in elimination match playing like this.

The KJ seems really lackluster compared to LEV’s Cypher and they kept getting flanked regardless of trips. Thoughts on them swapping it out for a Sage for plant securing and retakes? Sliggy seems to think it could work.

All of you are rushing to shit talk G2 but I don’t see enough appreciation for Champs c0m.

1. G2
2. G2
3. G2
4. G2
5. G2
6. G2
7. G2
8. G2

I just think it’s the best storyline and it’d be good for a T2 team to win and throw a wrench into Riot’s current system.

Valyn is a better midrounder and has matched Aspas for the kill record while maintaining Mako level consistency. The only think you could argue is that Boaster has a slightly more impressive comeback feat: Lock-In GF 3-11 vs. Shanghai Playoffs vs TH 2-11.

No viper means less A Default pressure on attack and a weak B anchor on defense. Maybe you’d have to swap out KJ for cypher to fill those roles?

Three versions then (Flaw):

Gekko | Sova | Astra | Viper | KJ (B Executes)

Gekko | Sova | Harbor | Viper | KJ (A Anchor)

Gekko | Sova | Astra | Harbor | Cypher (Post Plants)

I love this.

Gekko | Sova | Harbor | Viper | KJ

Makes me wonder how important pop flashes are when you can just use a Dizzy and Cascade to get the same effect.

Edit: you could swap out Harbor for Astra for a better A anchor and global presence and then use her recall stars instead of a cascade to get the same pop flash effect. A bit clunkier though.

The G2/FNC comp has the best coverage and flexibility but requires a team with exceptionally strong attack-side defaults.

Thanks! I didn’t want to make it a popularity contest — Clout is not the same a skill.

That’s a fair point. I do think G2 would then fall back on their Lotus which looks world class. JonahP looks like death incarnate on that map.

I considered placing him fifth but he’s too much an Op crutch and often overheats, leading to him throwing man advantages. You can argue that KK has a higher peak but he’s equally inconsistent. EDG needs him red hot to win while Icy perfectly fills the sacrificial entry role his team demands of him. Look at their H2H on Bind for reference.

G2 probably. They’ve been on an upward trend with Icy gaining immense confidence while LEV looked extremely shaky against TE. I think their Ascent is exploitable and G2 has anti-statted their Icebox before. Even the most recent H2H was close with the first two maps close OTs and G2 taking the third — that 1-3 could have easily been a 3-0. G2 also has a massive advantage when it comes to Pistols with a record of 21-7 across the year.

Map Veto: G2 | Lev
Sunset | Bind | Ascent | Icebox | Haven | Lotus | Abyss

Hopefully it’s a close 2-1 for entertainment but it could be a 2-0 if LEV aren’t in form.

He’s lowkey a flex at this point but his stats tank on anything other than Raze/KJ. I had a hard time justifying Hiro on the list (Cypher/Viper) and the choice was either Alfajer or Flashback and the H2H was clear. Alfa went +17 in a match his team lost 0-2 on KJ.

Duelist

1. Aspas
2. Zekken
3. Derke
4. BuzZ
5. Icy

Initiator

1. Riens
2. Trent
3. Sacy
4. Chronicle
5. c0m

Flex

1. JonahP
2. Wo0t
3. TenZ
4. Mazino
5. Zellsis

Smoker

1. Kingg
2. Valyn
3. Smoggy
4. Mako
5. Boo

Sentinel

1. Leaf
2. Benjyfishy
3. Tex
4. Chichoo
5. Alfajer

IGl

1. Valyn
2. JohnQT
3. Boo
4. Boaster
5. Nobody

Sayf | Trexx | Patitek | Hiro | Cender

Strong roster but I just don’t seem them winning an international — perpetual 2nd/3rd in region at best.

Pretty sure diamond still constitutes low elo. Players only dip their toes into macro at mid Ascendant. Everything below that is tdm with a bomb minigame.